Mickey 17 and the Spectacle of Distraction

Review by Squalor

For the first half of “Mickey 17” I was tricked into thinking I was sitting through a good movie, a rarity nowadays. It had an interesting premise: The protagonist, Mickey, has no choice but to sign up as an “expendable” on a space mission to colonize a distant planet. Not really understanding what he signed up for, he’s to act as the test dummy for a spaceship which contains a human cloning device. Every time Mickey dies, his body is reprinted and his memories are re-uploaded. Subjected to brutal experiment after brutal experiment, scientists expose him to huge amounts of radiation, lethal gas, the toxins on a new planet, and new vaccines. In one of his many lives he survives for only 15 minutes as a scientist gleefully tells him that he’ll be the iteration of Mickey with the shortest lifespan to date. Mickey is sacrificed again and again for science, subjected to indignity after indignity, given no choice but to be a test subject for technologies developed entirely without his say.

All of this is a promising allegory for a technocratic class imposing changes on society without consent from the general population, sacrificing the health of the planet and the dignity of individuals for the sake of “progress.” But then it’s revealed to us: the main antagonist spearheading this whole space venture is Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a failed politician, successful businessman, and buffoonish spectacle. His supporters don red hats. He dodges an assassination attempt. He's a stand-in for Trump. Midway through the film, Marshall reveals to Mickey that he plans to colonize the planet and establish a “pure master race.” This is where the film devolved into a parody of a bad SNL skit on Trump. Indigenous extraterrestrials are discovered and Marshall orders the scientists to “gas them all.” Rather than the film raising questions around space colonization and advanced technology, the message instead became: Space colonization is good and fine, the real evil is creating white interstellar ethno-states. Technology is fine, it just needs proper regulation.

The setup of an intriguing idea followed by terrible execution was done again and again throughout the film. A running gag throughout the film: scientists hastily rush to try out a newly developed technology on Mickey, disaster ensues. At one point a synthetic meat prototype leaves him in immense pain. The experimental pain-killer the scientists then rush to give him amplifies his pain so much that Marshall is ready to shoot him to put him out of his misery. In a world where scientists and engineers developing AI openly admit that they’re opening up “Pandora’s Box”, this felt salient. A well-done satire of how scientists are bumbling around creating technologies that will always have unforeseen negative consequences for the public. But the film quickly abandons this thread. The protagonists’ salvation comes from a scientist. The same scientist who was complicit in Mickey’s suffering—watching him humiliated, strapped to test tubes and naked in chambers—becomes the unexpected hero. The scientist develops a device that allows our protagonist to communicate to the aliens threatening to kill humanity;  somehow able to conjure up a device that flawlessly allows humans to communicate with aliens that she just discovered a day ago. The movie thus sidesteps any meaningful exploration of the inherent recklessness and selfishness of scientists or the dangers of scientific advance in and of itself. The message was not: Scientists and the technocratic elite are criminals pushing dangerous technologies, exploiting the Earth and humanity in the process. It wasn’t even: Every technological advance comes with unforeseen consequences that cannot be predicted in advance. What could have been an interesting probing into the modern mindset of technological advancement at all costs was sidestepped completely in service of a bog-standard moral lecture on how we need to rally together to defeat Trump.

This film repeatedly raises questions about technology and its creators but never truly engages with them. At one point we are given the backstory of the scientists who developed the human cloning device. “The problem was, the head scientist was a sociopath,” Mickey tells us. We then learn that the head scientist secretly created two clones of himself in order to have an alibi for when he went around stabbing homeless people (just so you’re clear he's not a typical scientist but an evil loon). What could’ve been a clever commentary on how scientists engage in scientific work for their own amusement, ignoring all ethical implications, not particularly caring about how the technology will end up negatively impacting society, instead becomes a commentary on how bad actors can misuse technology. In a scene near the end the evil white nationalists use the human cloning technology to revive themselves. A clever commentary on how advanced technology ends up granting a select few—the technocratic elite—unimaginable power? How the technocratic class is seeking to play God through transhumanism? No, it’s suddenly revealed that this was all just a bad dream.

What held the potential for sharp critique of technology and its technocratic architects quickly fizzled into an insipid call for unity against the far-right. Is every technological advance an experiment done on the public without their consent? Are scientists acting not out of some benefit to “better” humanity but because of the personal fulfillment and other personal motives they get out of their own work? Is space colonization itself inherently and inevitably hellish and dystopian? Is the technological system expanding and seeking to subjugate everything it touches? Are people treated as pawns in the march for “progress”? What happens when a technology with potentially disastrous consequences is out there, just waiting to be used? Who cares! If we can defeat all the bad people (like Trump), technology holds the key to a utopia! Don’t question the technological basis of society, don’t question the people pushing their experiments on the public, don’t question anything. An issue inherent to both the right and the left--the blind pursuit of technological growth at all costs--is ignored in favor of a lecture on how we need to vote blue no matter who.

But does any of this really matter? Art imitates life and life imitates art. As technological advances are destroying the planet, subjecting people to indignities, granting technocrats increasing power, and threatening to erase what makes us human, people are instead taking to the streets to protest the current figurehead in office. This movie is only adding to the trend of propaganda that keeps the public distracted from the real issue. The real insult being its treatment of the technology problem. Mickey 17 is another joke of a film in a long and predictable line of popular media that rehashes the same tired narrative of working together to further progress by defeating its perceived enemies.

Copyright © 2025 by Wilderness Front LLC. All Rights Reserved.