Mickey 17 is a movie that has a lot going on. But there’s a simple way to cut through all the noise and get to the core meaning. If you’re a long time reader of Film Colossus, you probably know what I’m going to say. If you’re new here, remember this for the rest of your life.
Compare the beginning to the ending. Almost everything you need to understand the intent of a movie is there in the contrast between how the story starts and where it ends.
The key thing for Mickey 17 is the very last moment, when the title screen shifts from “Mickey 17” to “Mickey Barnes”. That tells you that the movie has something to do with identity. The next step is to contextualize that theme. Let’s start at the beginning.
Mickey 17 Explained: Key Concepts
The movie opens with Mickey waking up in the crevasse, freezing, expecting to die. But then Timo shows up. We don’t know it yet, but Timo’s supposed to be Mickey’s friend. Instead of trying to save him, Timo only cares about the flamethrower Mickey dropped. He justifies his lack of concern by acknowledging that they’ll reprint Mickey anyway. Why risk himself, strain himself, to save his dying friend, since his friend will be “brought back” to life? He doesn’t actually value the Mickey that’s in front of him.
Mickey receives that same treatment from many on board the ship. He’s the lone Expendable and people don’t take his pain or feelings seriously. Leadership treats him like crap. The head scientist inhumanely kills Mickey numerous times. He is, afterall, an Expendable. Because of that label, because of the nature of his job, he becomes disposable—others stop seeing Mickey as a fellow human, they treat him as if he were a tool. There are dozens of examples of this dehumanization.
Hopefully you’re starting to see how that sets up the importance of the card changing from “Mickey 17” to “Mickey Barnes”. The number is part of that dehumanization. Each Mickey is one of many. Easily replaceable, so none are valued. By giving him back his name, he becomes, once again, a singular individual who deserves empathy, compassion, respect, and everything else. So the entire movie is about the tension between Mickey’s dehumanization and rehumanization.
That’s why Nasha is so important. She’s the one who never forgets Mickey’s humanity. There’s that scene where the scientists leave Mickey to slowly die in a cloud of nerve gas. Initially, we just see Nasha outside the chamber, woefully observing. Later in the film, it’s revealed that she actually fought the scientists until they gave her a suit and let her go into the chamber with Mickey and hold him until he died. Just so he wouldn’t be alone. That made me tear up in the theater and it’s making me tear up again as I write this.
Loyalty is a recurring motif in the film. Nasha stands by Mickey when others don’t. The creepers stand by one another. Two of the creeper babies go missing and most of the population shows up to get them back. Their unity contrasts the division in the human ranks (when Mickey went missing, did anyone actually care to look for him?). And it must be noted the only reason Marshall enjoys so much power, despite his clear idiocy, is because he has people who are loyal to him: Ylfa, the weird manipulative church guy, his supporters, etc.
Mickey 17 ends with the announcement that human printing is now illegal. They have a ceremony to blow up the printer that made each new Mickey. That device is what allowed for such extreme dehumanization. So its destruction marks society’s dedication to valuing each individual.
I know Mickey 17 can feel all over the place, like it’s throwing a lot at you, but it’s very consistent in exploring this theme. Re-watch the movie with all of this in mind, and it will seem a lot less chaotic and a lot more coherent. Now, let’s go deeper.
The Larger Statement About Class
When trying to understand a movie, you start with the foundational stuff that I just explained. That gives you an idea of the broader concepts. In this case, Mickey 17’s concerned with the value of human life and how that impacts someone’s self-worth, their relationships with others, how society treats them, etc.
But there’s a next step. You need to recognize the context of the concepts. The antagonist is a dictator-figure who prioritizes himself over the people he leads. While everyone else has their food rationed, and is asked to be celibate for the 4.5 year journey to Niflheim, Kenneth and Yfla Marshall live decadently. Their apartment is richly decorated while everyone else stays in sterile, draconian quarters. They eat lavish meals as the rest of the population dines on slop.
Remember, the entire basis of the Niflheim mission was to test human printing away from Earth. That’s what Marshall proposed at the hearing.
Quote: Human printing is a sin. Multiples are Satan’s work. However, I’ve been contemplating how can we use this abomination for our common economic benefit? I propose a trial-run of human printing, far from Earth, under the strictest oversight, limiting such individuals to one per expectation, per planet, under the designation “Expendable.” Multiples. In the case of Multiples, we exterminate every offending individual, in totality, mind and body, all for the sake of public service.
You have a Church-backed politician asking to use a “sin” for a common economic benefit. That positions Mickey’s dehumanization as a byproduct of politics, economics, and religion. He is, for all intents and purposes, a metaphor for the exploited worker.
Once we understand that, Mickey 17 suddenly parallels Bong Joon-ho’s last movie, Parasite, as an exploration of class and exploitation. Parasite focused more on the consequences of class disparity rather than the system that creates such disparity. While Mickey 17 actually dives into the system itself and what allows such disparity to occur.
His answer? People. We’re the ones who make such disparities possible. And Bong Joon-ho boils it down to a pretty simple binary: bad things happen when people don’t look out for one another, they get better when people do.
That’s it.
Mickey became an Expendable because Timo took advantage of their friendship and used Mickey to take money from a loan shark. If Timo had been a better friend, Mickey’s life wouldn’t have been in danger and he wouldn’t have had to flee.
But the buck doesn’t stop there. That’s the point of Mickey 18. Mickey 17 blames himself for everything that happens, and because of that he often lets himself get taken advantage of. Mickey 18 has more self-respect so is able to call out the bad behavior of others. Mickey pressing a red button in a car isn’t what caused the crash that killed his mom. It was a manufacturer defect. Mickey 17 blames himself. Mickey 18 blames the manufacturer. Except 18 gets too emotional and tries to kill all the bad people. So each one represents a different extreme: one is too accepting, the other is too punishing.
Mickey’s final dream about Ylfa captures all of this. Yfla’s obsession with sauce is a motif that encapsulates the class divide. Food has historically been a class battleground. And sauces are such a luxury item. And her printing of Kenneth Marshall symbolizes how there’ll always be a new dictator—something history (and even modern times) has proven over and over again. Mickey 17’s response to the two embodiments of class and politics is to healthily channel 18’s anger and confidence to say “fuck off.”
So Mickey 17 is a very “power to the people” kind of movie. If we stand united, like the creepers, like Nasha and Mickey, we can take down dictators, in all their forms and incarnations. Society improves. But the more Timos there are, the more people who prioritize themselves over others, the easier it is for demagogues like Kenneth Marshall to seize control and exploit. When dirtbags like Marshall have power, they turn individuals into numbers and society starts to wither.
Right now, in the year 2025, there are plenty of corporations who see employees as numbers. Just last year, someone working at an Amazon warehouse posted a photo of a “thank you” the company sent to warehouse employees. Why the thank you? Because a Prime Big Deal day broke records with $14.2 BILLION in sales. Tons of actual, living, breathing people working in warehouses around the country had to do an incredible amount of work to ensure all those items made it to their destinations in 1-2 business days. It’s kind of insane when you think about it.
What was the thank you gift? A bag of candy. It had a single Starbust, a Tootsie Roll, a piece of Extra Gum, a Lifesaver Mint, and a Pixie Stix. To put that into perspective, Walmart charges $4.72 for a bag of Lifesaver Mints. Each bag has 105 pieces. That comes out to $0.04 per mint, or less than a nickel. A 35 stick pack of Extra Gum is $3.97. That’s $0.11 per piece. A 400-piece bag of Tootsie Rolls is $8.34. $0.02 per roll. You get the picture.
$14.2 billion in sales and the people who make sure everything gets to where it’s going get five pieces of cheap candy with a pretty insulting message.
In 2023, Rick Jacobs had a heart attack at an Amazon warehouse in Denver. He died on the shipping dock. One shift ended and the next started, meaning many of Rick’s co-workers walked by the scene, the body blocked, they said, by cardboard boxes.
A quote from a Guardian article: “Finding out what had happened after walking through there had made me very uncomfortable, as there is a blatant disregard of human emotions at this facility. Management could have released those employees affected by offering [volunteer time off], so that they did not need to use their own time, but nope, that did not happen…No one should have been told to work alongside a dead body, particularly after witnessing it. Day shift comes in at 7am or 7.30am, and we were never informed until we arrived to where it had occurred. No warnings before walking into the building. No on-site counselor. Simply a flyer put out days later informing us of how to receive mental health counseling.”
Corporations can take advantage of workers because a lot of people take a Mickey 17 approach and feel they deserve the treatment. They accept it. And there are people who support the status quo because they benefit from the status quo. Bong Joon-ho’s reminding everyone that it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to accept things as they are. That’s not to say revolution and anarchy are necessary. Just that there’s a healthy middle ground between accepting dehumanized exploitation and descending into violent upheaval. The only way the system improves is if we stand up for ourselves and each other. The more politicians, companies, and organizations see us as individuals the more likely they are to actually value us. As a number, we’re replaceable. As individuals, we’re priceless.
Cast
- Mickey – Robert Pattinson
- Nasha – Naomi Ackie
- Timo – Steven Yeun
- Kenneth Marshall – Mark Ruffalo
- Yfla Marshall – Toni Collette
- Kai – Anamaria Vartolomei
- Preston – Daniel Henshall
- Dorothy – Patsy Farran
- Arkady – Cameron Britton
- Agent Zeke – Steve Park
- Shrimp Eyes – Angus Imrie
- Gemma – Holliday Grainger
- Pigeon Man – Tim Key
- Based on – the novel MIckey7 by Edward Ashton
- Written by – Bong Joon-ho
- Directed by – Bong Joon-ho
