For Mickey, dying is a living.
That’s pretty much his entire job: dying. As part of an intrepid expedition to colonize the icy planet Niflheim, Mickey is the colony’s sole expendable. His mind has been downloaded into a hefty techno-brick. And once his current body expires, the scientific team on Niflheim will just chug out a new one, using its handy-dandy organic 3D printer.
Mickey dies so that others might live. Or, occasionally, just for kicks.
Is this ethical? Heavens, no. Everyone admits that much. But Kenneth Marshall, a two-time failed senator on Earth and the colony leader on Niflheim, figures they might as well use the technology anyway. I mean, just the trip out to Niflheim was pretty dangerous, and who knows what terrors the planet itself might hold. A good, solid expendable will keep the rest of the colonists intact. As for Mickey, well, it’s just like the job title says: He’s expendable.
And so Mickey dies. Again and again and again. He’s died by radiation poisoning. By mysterious planetary disease. One time, he was shoved into the ship’s molten incinerator while he was still alive. Even if he survived the pathogen floating around in his bod, it was just easier for everyone involved—well, everyone but Mickey, I guess—to print out another one.
And honestly, the 17th iteration was pretty much guaranteed to expire just like all the rest. He’d taken a tumble down a huge ice hole and found himself in the presence of Niflheim’s native residents: something that looks like a cross between a musk ox and a pillbug (and stands slightly bigger than a Range Rover) and all her many, many, many children.
Mickey assumes he’s a dead man—again. He’ll be quickly devoured by the mamma creeper (as they come to be known as) or slowly consumed by her offspring.
But instead, the creature drags Mickey out of the burrow and sends him on his way. And Mickey is a little offended.
“I’m perfectly good meat!” He shouts after the mamma creeper. “I taste fine!”
Meanwhile, back aboard the ship, Mickey 17 is presumed to be dead and eaten. And so they welcome Mickey 18 to the ship.
Won’t Mickey 17 be surprised when he gets back!
Mickey 17 seems like a kindly fellow. He knows what it’s like to die, and he takes pains to keep most everyone and everything else alive—human and creeper alike.
Mickey 18 isn’t nearly as sweet. Indeed, he comes out of the printer acting a bit pathological. But he eventually takes a shine to his older, um, sibling, and 18 does what he can to protect 17, even at great and eternal risk to himself.
And then there’s Nasha, who loves and cares for all the Mickeys she’s had the pleasure of knowing—and of sleeping with. (More on that later.) She stays with Mickey during some of his lingering deaths, apparently the only person who cares about easing his suffering. She also risks plenty to save both Mickeys and creepers, and that’s nice.
And while we’re doling out praise, let’s give a whispery hoorah for Dorothy, a scientist who seems significantly less sadistic than her peers.
This would-be fledgling colony on Niflheim has a certain faith-based bent. Failed senator Kenneth Marshall appears to be in cahoots with a “particular religious organization” with obvious Christian trappings. Kenneth’s main assistant and handler appears to be a powerful figure in the church, and Kenneth at times appears to be a pairing of a smarmy televangelist and a doomsday cult leader. At one point during a small dinner gathering, one of the guests pauses to pray for a fallen friend. And when there’s a lull in the prayer, Kenneth, his assistant and Kenneth’s wife, Ylfa, burst into a sort of worship song, complete with hallelujahs and references to God.
Before leaving Earth, and during a debate on the ethics of the technology of human printing, Kenneth Marshall agrees with the technology’s most vocal critics: “Human printing is a sin,” he says, adding that multiples—multiple copies of the same living person—“are Satan’s work.” The religious figures we hear from agree: Only one individual soul per person, please. So, by definition, any multiples would be soulless. But Kenneth and his religious lackeys believe that these “works of Satan” can still be used. And apparently, their arguments sway this particular ethics council.
Naturally, we hear a lot about death throughout the film, though no one speaks of an afterlife. Mickey continues to respawn his personality in each newly printed body. And when another character dies, her companion believes that she’s simply gone—forever. “In the entire universe, she’s not there,” she says. Those facing death and eternal extinction face it, without exception, with fear.
Mickey references “ethical fights and religious blah blah blah.”
Nasha and Mickey—at this point, Mickey 1—meet early on in their four-plus-year voyage to Niflheim. We see them repeatedly engaged in intimate activities (no nudity or explicit sexual movement, but it’s clear what they’re doing). And at one juncture, they giggle over the stick figures they’ve drawn that illustrate a variety of sexual positions.
Nasha continues her relationship with “Mickey” through all of his many physical iterations. And when she discovers that there are two Mickeys now around, she claims both of them as her own. While under the influence of a drug, she smooches with one while groping the other. And while one Mickey is uncomfortable with this highly unusual ménage a trois, the other seems to be open to the idea—even playing with his clone’s hair.
Sexual activity is frowned upon during the trip to Niflheim, though, as a wasteful expenditure of calories. Kenneth’s wife, Ylfa, tells the colonists that Kenneth considered banning all sex aboard the ship, in fact. But Kenneth promises that once they land and establish themselves, they’ll be a part of the “greatest sex encouragement campaign in history.” He goes on to discuss how colonists will be encouraged to spread their “seeds,” and refers to Niflheim as “virgin vanilla ice cream, touched for the first time.”
Kenneth and Ylfa invite a female colonist to dinner. Kenneth praises the woman’s fantastic genes, claiming that she may be the closest genetic equal of himself and Ylfa. “Am I just a uterus to you?” the woman bluntly asks Kenneth, after which Ylfa quickly tries to steer the conversation in a more positive direction.
A female colonist, Kai, appears to be bisexual. She has a close relationship with another woman aboard the ship (though the boundaries of that relationship are never fully defined). Later, we see her with another woman—her companion leaning her head on Kai’s shoulder. But in between these two relationships, Kai seems quite interested in Mickey. And when two Mickeys are part of the works, she proposes to her rival, Nasha, that they split the two between them.
We see Mickey’s bare backside. Someone unsnaps a woman’s bra, and we see her bare back. Mickey goes shirtless frequently.
Pretty much all of Mickey’s deaths are horrible—though some are worse than others. At one point, while the ship is still en route to Niflheim, scientists ask him to go outside the ship, where he’s exposed to extraordinarily lethal levels of radiation: One scientist asks him to describe, in detail, what’s happening to his body, and he requests that Mickey remove his glove (in the vaccum of space) so he can get a better look at what the radiation does to his skin. Before he can do so, something slices Mickey’s entire hand right off the bone, and it flies next to the ship.
A horrific disease claims him as well. And in one scene, Mickey appears to slowly die in a freezing chamber. Mickey 17 has his own brush with death, as well—plummeting perhaps 20 feet to the icy ground below. Mickey marvels that he wasn’t snapped in half.
Why would Mickey volunteer for this horrible work? He figures his fate might’ve been worse at home, where he and his best-and-only friend, Timo, were in debt to a notorious loan shark. Two weeks before their loan comes due, they’re invited to watch as the man henchmen saw the leg off another debtor with a chainsaw. Even so, we eventually learn that Mickey’s escape from Earth still wasn’t enough: He receives a cryptic message that one of them will have to die and be cut into at least 13 pieces—all video recorded for the loan shark’s enjoyment—in order for the other to live.
Mickey is thrown alive into the ship’s lava-filled incinerator, and several others nearly die the same way. An ear is bitten off. We hear about an apparent suicide. Someone is crushed under an avalanche of rock and ice. Blood gushes beneath someone’s outfit. Two people are blown to bits. A sentient creeper is shredded by bullets. People are beaten horrifically. Mickeys fight. A character nearly has her neck snapped.
And … there’s more: Body parts of creepers get cut off and diced. Guns are pointed at people’s heads. We see a few very bloody wounds. A nerve gas is nearly let loose. The entire human colony is threatened. We hear that Mickey’s mom died, and Mickey blames himself. Someone is poisoned. A character constantly wants to kill others. Occasionally during the printing process, Mickey falls out of the printer and onto the ground, due to the indifference of the technicians. Someone is burned on the cheek by a red-hot piece of iron. Punches are thrown. Swords are raised.
We learn that one of the creators of the human printing process was, in fact, a psychopathic killer: To commit a series of brutal murders against homeless people (one of which we briefly see), he duplicated himself.
Nearly 60 f-words and about half as many s-words. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “crap,” “d–n,” “h—,” “d–k” and “pr–k.” God’s name is misused nearly 15 times, four of which also include “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused once.
A character sells an illicit drug. He has a network of several addicts that he sells to, and we see at least a couple of characters quite high on the stuff.
A couple of folks drink wine with dinner.
I’m not quite sure if I’ve seen quite so much vomiting in a movie since Stand by Me. When Mickey is afflicted with a Niflheim disease, its primary symptom is upchucking blood. We see plenty of messy exhumations of hemoglobin in a blessedly brief sequence. Later, however, Mickey also consumes almost raw meat that’s been injected with an experimental drug. He vomits repeatedly.
The colonial trip to Niflheim comes with a whiff of, if not racism, certainly genetic superiority. Kenneth at one point refers to the “pure, white planet” of Niflheim, and he does talk a great deal about genetic purity.
We hear reference to human waste.
Mickey 17 is helmed by Bong Joon Ho, the director who brought the world the Oscar-winning film Parasite. And like Parasite, this story has plenty it wants to say. Unlike Parasite, it doesn’t know how to say it.
Narratively, Mickey 17 can feel jumbled and confused. And it feels just as mixed-up in terms of the quality of its messages, too.
The film comes with a deeply humanistic outlook, with its fraudulent form of faith made to look ludicrous, manipulative and sinister. The movie is obsessed with death, and it firmly tells us that to imagine any life or hope after your final earthly goodbyes is just as ridiculous.
The violence and language can both be pretty extreme, and even salacious. And its sexual morality? I’m not even sure what to make of Nasha’s relationship(s) with 18 different iterations of Mickey. But even if we generously conclude that’s a twisted form of monogamy, Mickey 17 still comes with plenty of intimacy issues.
Mickey 17 is interesting, to be sure—just as the planet Niflheim is interesting. But while its native creepers are cool and all, Niflheim sure mostly looks like a barren, cold place—so desolate that one wonders why anyone would ever go there.
And perhaps, after witnessing this film’s insignificant sound and fury, moviegoers might ask the same thing about Mickey 17.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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