With his latest sci-fi opus his twisty Best Picture winner Parasite. Based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, an “expendable” worker sent to a distant planet, where he’s killed and cloned over and over again (at least 17 times, per the title) in the course of his duties.
The high-concept hard sci-fi premise of Mickey 17 might make it sound like a drastic departure from Parasite, but it has more in common with Bong’s last movie than it seems. Like Parasite, it’ll have a dark sense of humor, and it’ll be a satirical takedown of class inequality. Mickey 17’s use of sci-fi storytelling to deliver social commentary puts it more in line with another one of Bong’s previous movies: his 2013 post-apocalyptic thriller Snowpiercer.
Mickey 17 & Snowpiercer Both Use A Sci-Fi Premise To Critique Capitalism
Snowpiercer Has A Literal Class System
Much like Mickey 17, Snowpiercer used its futuristic sci-fi story to deliver social commentary on capitalism and the class system. Set in 2031, after Earth has been ravaged by a new ice age, Snowpiercer takes place on a train harboring the last remnants of humanity. The train has a literal class system, with the lower-class engers being fed ground-up insects in overstuffed cars at the back of the train, and the upper-class engers living in luxury at the front of the train. Bong uses this conceit to comment on classism in modern society.
Mickey 17 has been delayed almost a year from its original release date of March 29, 2024.
In Mickey 17, an unscrupulous corporation takes advantage of a man in dire financial straits and employs him to become expendable. This is a grand dystopian satire of real-life corporations that exploit and disregard their workers. Mickey 17 deftly continues Snowpiercer’s thesis of using speculative stories about the future to examine the bleak realities of the present day.
Mickey 17 Will Be Even More Ambitious Than Snowpiercer
Mickey 17 Has A Much Bigger Budget Than Snowpiercer
While Mickey 17’s social commentary will surely be just as biting as Snowpiercer’s, it’ll also be a much bigger, more ambitious movie, because it’s been afforded a much larger budget. Whereas Snowpiercer was made for a modest $40 million (via Forbes), Bong leveraged the clout that Parasite’s Oscars success earned him to score a blockbuster budget of a reported $150 million for his next film, making Mickey 17 one of the riskiest box office gambles of 2025. This means Mickey 17 can explore its dystopian future on a larger scale with a broader cinematic scope.
Source: Forbes
Mickey 17
- Release Date
- February 28, 2025
- Runtime
- 137 minutes
- Director
- Bong Joon Ho
Cast
Mickey Barnes
Naomi AckieNasha
WHERE TO WATCH
- Writers
- Bong Joon Ho
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