Illustration by Michael DiMilo
★★★★☆
The Disposable Man: Review of Mickey 17
By Geoff Carter
You’re never quite sure what you’re going to get with a Bong Joon Ho film. From the linear class battle laid out in Snowpiercer to the convoluted twists and hidden spaces of Parasite to the heart-rending pathos and bioethics of Okja, his movies tend to turn conventional plotlines on their heads. Joon Ho’s films typically (as much as they ever are typical) take sharp left turns from the conventional tropes of science-fiction and political activism into areas questioning humanity, morality, and the effects of capitalism on a society where people and technology are intertwined, and in most cases, interdependent.
While Mickey 17, his latest movie, covers much of this same thematic ground, it is also a marvelously dark satire that not only lampoons class structures, but takes on present-day would-be autocrats and dehumanizing labor practices head-on.
The year is 2050. The film opens with a shot of Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson) lying in a frozen crevasse. He has obviously fallen in and seems hurt. A shuttle flies overhead and stops to retrieve his valuable flamethrower but its pilot Timo (Steven Yeun), who is also Mickey’s best friend, leaves him to die—mostly because, as he is an expendable—a clone who will be reprinted as Mickey 18 after his death.
The narrative flashes back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo are being chased by loan shark Darius Blank (Ian Hanmore) for money they owe him. To escape, the two enlist on a four-year voyage to colonize the frozen planet of Niflheim. With no appreciable skills to offer, Mickey Barnes agrees to be an expendable, a high-risk position which sometimes results in death. Expendables, however, are designed to be “reprinted” after their death—their bodies cloned and their memories replanted.
Over the course of the four-year journey, Mickey is subjected to cruel experiments resulting in death and has been reprinted a total of eighteen times. He has been exposed to deadly levels of radiation, a lethal virus (and tested with various iterations of a vaccine) and been exposed to all sorts of other pathogens. He has died seventeen times.
On the voyage to Niflheim, a romance blossoms between him and Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who is the one person on board who seems to acknowledge Mickey’s value as a human being. To others, he seems to be a sort of lab rat.
Back in the crevasse, Mickey is confronted by a group of creepers, a native species that resembles a cross between a cockroach and an armadillo. They save Mickey by pushing him out of the crevasse. When he returns, Mickey 17 discovers that because he is presumed dead, he has been reprinted and that Mickey 18 is now living in his cell. Because there is a law forbidding “multiples” or two clones to exist simultaneously, Mickey 18 tries to kill 17, but they are interrupted by Timo completing a drug sale. Mickey 18 tries to kill Timo but is interrupted by Nasha, who sees the advantage of having two Mickeys in her bed.
Mickey 17 is summoned to have dinner with megalomaniacal leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) and security guard Kai (Annamaria Vartolomei). Mickey gets violently ill. Kai saves him and attempts to seduce him, but Mickey 17 goes back to Nasha, who is in bed with Mickey 18.
While unveiling a commemorative rock, Marshall confronts two creepers. One is killed while Mickey 17 captures the other. Thousands of creepers gather outside the ship seeking to recover the captured creeper—one of their babies. Ylfa wants to harvest the creepers for culinary reasons, and Kenneth goes out to conquer them, wiring Mickeys 17 and 18 as bombs to kill the creeper leader.
As a pure science-fiction tale, Mickey 17 is a compelling and fascinating tale on its own merits. It also—unsurprisingly for a Bong Jo Hoon work—raises questions of ethics and humanity bound up in technological advances (as in Okja and Snowpiercer), as well as examinations of class differences (Snowpiercer, Parasite), politics of personality (Snowpiercer), and a recognition for the autonomy of all living things (Okja).
There is a scalpel-sharp satirical edge to Mickey 17, especially whenever Kenneth Marshall, the charismatic leader of the mission, is on the screen. He has led his cultlike following on his expedition to the froze planet. His zealous followers wear red baseball caps inscribed with his motto “The One and Only” (sound familiar?) and hang on his every word during his cultlike rallies. He is a preening, blustering figure reminiscent of Mussolini and other (more modern would-be strongmen). He underfeeds the crew while he enjoys sumptuous meals and lives in luxury with Ylfa, his manipulative and scheming wife. He treats his crew like cattle.
Mickey’s life has very little value to anyone other than him. He is expendable. As his life is devalued, so are his feelings and humanity. He is subjected to torture and suffering ostensibly for the greater good, but oftentimes for sheer entertainment value. In a couple of scenes, as his reprint is coming through the printer, a sort of cat scan like machine, technicians ignore him as his body drops to the floor. The other crewmen, Marshall’s followers, are barely a step above Mickey in the pecking order. Because of low food supplies, they are instructed not to have sex in order to preserve energy. In the meantime, Kenneth and Ylfa live in the lap of luxury.
Until Mickey realizes they saved him, the alien creepers are considered to be dangerous. Marshall’s plan to exterminate the entire population (and Ylfa’s plan to harvest them for food) without any attempt to communicate with them speaks to the arrogance and selfishness of humans to take life and inflict suffering upon other creatures without thinking. When Dorothy, one of the scientists, constructs a translator, the mother creeper gives Mickey 17 their terms. A life for a life. One human for the dead baby creeper. A type of justice as old as humanity.
An interesting twist in the story is the differences between the Mickey clones. Nasha, who has known them all, remarks that some seem more aggressive or more thoughtful than others. Mickey 18 is definitely more assertive than his immediate predecessor. This anomaly of course begs the question of what makes personality, or even—in a stretch—the soul. If identical memory banks are installed into an identical physical copy, what would cause these personality differences? Why does Mickey 18 seem to have more of a moral conscience than Mickey 17?
Like all of Joon Ho’s movies, Mickey 17 bears more than one viewing. In fact, it’s almost a necessity. As a writer and director, he underling the social inequities and dangers of technology—sometimes related, sometimes not—through dark (but sometimes hilarious) satire and parody—and even slapstick. His films are simultaneously hilarious and harrowing, concrete and abstract, and all too close to the bone.
To see a Bong Joon Ho film is to hold a funhouse mirror up to our own faces and see every iteration of our inner selves. It’s not always pretty, but it is a true reflection.
Comments