Treated as expendable

Director Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 is filled with metaphors, but at its core, it is a film about expendability. The key theme is being expendable—which is also the job title that protagonist Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) applies for. Mickey, desperate to escape from loan sharks and join the planet Niflheim’s immigration program, unknowingly signs up for a job where he is meant to be used and discarded. As the word expendable suggests, he is consumed, eliminated, and then cloned. Using advanced printing (cloning) technology, a new body is created for him, and his memories are copied over—just like transferring data to a new computer. Mickey's purpose is to serve as a test subject, helping to develop technologies like vaccines that allow humans to survive in harsh new environments. By the time we meet him, he has already died 16 times and been reborn as Mickey 17.

“You are expendable. You are here to be consumed.” These chilling words come from Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), the leader of the Niflheim Pioneers. To him, Mickey is not a human being but merely a disposable tool. The same logic applies to the planet’s native creatures, which Marshall sees as obstacles to be eliminated for progress. Through Mickey’s story, the film critiques a world that treats people as disposable and questions whether human dignity can exist in such a system.

Bong Joon-ho stated that the film is not directly about any +896 politician, but he admitted that Marshall often reminded him of Trump. When Trump disrupted global trade with his tariff policies, many people outside the U.S. likely felt like expendable pawns. However, the issue goes beyond international relations—whether in politics or the labor market, there are always those who see others as mere consumables.