MICKEY 17

Name: MICKEY 17
Item: MICKEY 17
Author: Review

"Mindless Melodramatic Marxism, but Sometimes Entertaining"

Family Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

MICKEY 17 tells a story that’s often exciting, comical and weird (in a fun way). However, Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the evil Christian politician is so over-the-top that it helps turn MICKEY 17 into a ham-fisted, hateful piece of Marxist propaganda. As such, the movie not only attacks capitalism, it also viciously attacks Christians. MICKEY 17 also has abundant foul language, many “f” words, intense violence, and some lewd scenes. Discerning moviegoers will reject it.

Content:

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Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong humanist, implied Marxist but very strongly politically correct, worldview in a science fiction story with very strong anti-Christian, anti-capitalist elements where the head villain is a failed Christian politician (his stupidity lost his re-election campaign according to a line form the movie) and businessman who’s leading some of his followers and other people to establish a colony on another planet (the actor playing the Christian politician does a hammy Donald Trump impression to go along with the movie’s depiction of a corrupt, tyrannical Christian, capitalist politician), plus some light and brief homosexual allusions in one short sequence, and the movie has some redemptive, moral elements such as a sacrificial death by one character, title character makes sacrifices for the colonial expedition, movie promotes compassion and truth (but within its humanist, politically correct worldview), and good guys try to make peace with an indigenous intelligent alien species of bug-looking creatures;

Foul Language:

About 91 obscenities (including about 48 “f” words), four GD profanities (most if not all said by the Christian villain), 11 light profanities, one or two obscene gestures, and a few instances of vomiting when a character gets fatally sick or is deliberately poisoned;

Violence:

A few instances of very strong violence such as an astronaut walking in space gets his hand torn off while people inside a spaceship eat next to a window looking out into space as the hand floats by, a shot of bloody hands implies a character has slit their wrists, and man ingests a deadly virus on a planet and later vomits blood against the window of a medical observation capsule, and lots of strong action violence and perilous situations such as some physical fighting, clones repeatedly die, would be assassin points a gun at political leader, but the bullet hits a large builder brought back from a planet’s surface, a little bug creature comes out of the boulder later and many people panic, soldiers fire weapons at creature but miss, people dangle above an incineration hole with fire at the bottom a creature with a hook in it, man is poisoned and gets sick but survives after vomiting, a large explosion occurs, small but scary intelligent bug creatures are led by a large intelligent but scary bug creature that seems to be their mother, [SPOILERS] people are frightened by the creatures but they are benevolent unless threatened, the mother bug creature demands a death when one of her children is killed, creatures gather around human facility and threaten total annihilation of the humans while the evil leader of the humans wants to spread a gas that will kill all the bug creatures (there’s kind of a stalemate at the end of the movie), evil human leader’s wife cuts off and cuts up a little bug creature’s tail and mixes it in a blender to see if it will make a tasty sauce, a large droplet of blood may be a person’s blood to be used for cloning, and a man is ordered to shoot himself in the head, but he doesn’t;

Sex:

Briefly depicted fornication in one scene after kissing/hugging and after briefly implied fornication in another scene, scenes imply that a cloned man’s clone is fornicating with the cloned man’s girlfriend after the cloned man survives a deadly situation, implied oral sex in one image, stock figures on a computer screen imply sexual positions, and it’s briefly suggested that the two identical male clones can engage in sex, but the suggestion is rejected;

Nudity:

Upper male nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking content, but man buys and uses oxycontin, and there are references to another man selling the drug to people on a spaceship and at a colony facility on an ice planet; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Loan shark has two men kidnapped and threatened (one scene depicts them tied up and gagged), movie has a politically correct subtext about immigrants potentially mistreating an indigenous group of beings (this seems to fit in with the movie’s Marxist, humanist, politically correct worldview), and lying and manipulation.

More Detail:

In the English language movie MICKEY 17, Oscar winning South Korean filmmaker Boon Jong Ho adds Christianity to his usual Marxist attack on capitalist society. MICKEY 17 tells a science fiction story about a young man who unwittingly agrees to be killed and cloned repeatedly as part of a system to detect deadly diseases and other fatal dangers on a new planet that’s being colonized by a company led by a religious fanatic and controversial politician from Earth who bears a striking disposition similar to Donald Trump’s. MICKEY 17 tells a story that’s often exciting, comical and weird (in a fun way), but Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the evil Christian politician is so over-the-top that it turns MICKEY 17 into a ham-fisted, hateful piece of Marxist propaganda attacking Christians. Sadly, Ho’s communist movies often win awards at film festivals and awards shows. For example, his 2019 anti-capitalist diatribe, PARASITE, won an Oscar for Best Picture.

MICKEY 17 begins with Mickey Barnes deciding life isn’t working out for him on Earth. After getting in trouble with a loan shark, he and a friend go to apply for a colonizing expedition to an ice planet. Disgraced Christian politician Kenneth Marshall, who speaks in bombastic tones and sounds like Donald Trump, is leading the expedition with his wife, Yifa.

At the space port, many people are applying to leave Earth. People are desperately trying to qualify. There seems to be good reason for their desperation. Outside the spaceport, it looks like some kind of cloudy pollution dust is raining down noisily on the facility.

Mickey’s friend, Timo, is lucky. He gets assigned to work in security. Mickey, however, finds out he’s signed a document where he will be an “expendable.” A woman asks if he read his contract. He lies to her and says yes. As an expendable, Mickey will be assigned deadly tasks, such as doing space walks to fix the spaceship or exposing himself to the deadly atmosphere of a planet’s surface. Each time Mickey dies, his mind, memories and personality are downloaded and “reprinted” into a new cloned body.

Meanwhile, Mickey right away hooks up with a beautiful woman, Nasha, who becomes his soulmate and sticks by him through thick and thin.

Trouble arises, however, when Mickey No. 17 crash lands on the planet, and into a cave. His “friend,” Timo, leaves him down there, but Mickey is saved from death by the large, benevolent bug creature and its little progeny that live on the planet.

Mickey makes it back to the human colony on the surface but finds out they’ve already reprinted Mickey 18. It’s absolutely forbidden to have more than one clone running around at the same time. An evil man once did that and used his clones to commit murder and other nefarious crimes. So, if Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 get caught, both will be put to death.

The two clones go into survival mode, although Mickey 17 is immediately jealous of Mickey 18, who’s now sleeping with his beloved Nasha. Meanwhile, their Christian leader, Marshall puts the whole colony in danger when he decides to wipe out all the intelligent bug creatures on the planet.

Part of MICKEY 17 has a theme of death, sacrifice and resurrection. However, the sacrificial martyrdom in the movie comes with a villain being deliberately killed at the same time. This resembles Islamic martyrdom, not the kind of Christian sacrifice and martyrdom the Bible extols. Also, the head villain is the Christian politician, who’s depicted in a hateful, despicable manner. As the main villain, Mark Ruffalo gives an over-the-top performance that mimics Donald Trump. At least twice in the movie, his character is depicted singing some kind of crazy pseudo-Christian hymn with other people. Also, his top Christian aide is very obsequious, and his wife is outrageously obnoxious. The melodramatic, clownish nature of all this not only makes the movie’s anti-Christian attacks more annoying. It also mars MICKEY 17’s artistic and entertainment quality. The main villain in a movie that aims to entertain people shouldn’t be too clownish. Otherwise, you undercut the story’s credibility.

MICKEY 17 also has lots of strong foul language, a scene of depicted fornication, some other lewd content, and references to drug abuse. The movie’s many “f” words are a sign that the director, writer, producers, and actors should have spent more time perfecting their script, especially its storytelling and character development.