Bong Joon-Ho-“Mickey 17”: Learn to die!

“It is terrible to die. I hate it. It scares me. ”That says Mickey. And he needs to know. Because Mickey has died quite often. Which is why he is repeatedly asked by curious fellow human beings, how it is, dying.

Mickey turned dying into his profession, so to speak. Strictly speaking, it is not at all about Mickey, who speaks here, but Mickey 17. Because Mickey, with a full name Mickey Barnes, has long been dead. But he always dies unsightly death. For example, on an unknown virus on a distant planet, which is to be populated, but about which humanity does not yet know anything. In such a case, Mickey is always sent before the spaceship ends up. Because: Who knows what to do what you always snow on such a strange unknown planet, on which it always snowes and at first glance there is no life far and wide, threaten in the end if you are unexpectedly exposed to your atmosphere? Therefore: first send out Mickey. When Mickey then comes back from his patrol and spits blood to finally die roasted afterwards, you know that something cannot be right on this planet. In this way, Mickey 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 died. After all, for a good cause: After all, science defeated the virus thanks to a vaccine.

Before the confusion becomes too great: We are in 2054. The world is, as you can guess, in no nice condition: raw material shortage, environmental collapse, overpopulation. Hardcore capitalism of our time has requested its toll. But science – financed privately, of course – has made great progress: you can clone people. The material required for the production of cloning is available: they are made from “human socket”, that is, from human intestinal contents and from everything that is otherwise so lagging behind from a person after his death. A beautiful energy cycle.

Mickey 17 is such a clone. More precisely: he is an “expendable”, which in German means about as much as “more unnecessary”. Or also: “to be consumers”. Which is a very good name for the job that he does. When he was not yet Mickey, but still Mickey Barnes, he – in need and with the intention of escaping from planet Earth – put his signature under a contract that provides for the following: Mickey will work in research in the future, as an “expendable”. That means: Mickey is a human guinea pig where things are tried out, which often result in his death, for the benefit of humanity. For example, if the effectiveness of a newly developed fatal nerve gas has to be tested, you first test it for Mickey. Mickey then dies, mostly in a bad and exhausting way. But that’s not a problem, because the contract he signed says that Mickey-or more correctly: a clone from Mickey-is freshly printed out of a super-modern 3D printer (“human printer”) the next day. Mickey’s complete data, in particular his identity, its memories, that is: His contents of the brain, are all stored cleanly in the laboratory, and whenever Mickey is taking his life during the exercise of his profession, Mickey’s clone is already on time the next morning. That means: the old Mickey is dead, live the freshly fabricated Mickey! And then the life begins again. You never know whether the new life only takes 12 minutes or several months. But that’s the job.

So far, the South Korean film director Bong Joon-Ho, a specialist for grotesque films that take a close look at the capitalist conditions of the present and future, has not shyly shyly gave in terms of criticism of class society and its consequences: his first feature film “Barking Dogs Never Bite” (2000) tells of poverty and social hierarchy; In the dystopian science fiction thriller »Snowpiercer« (2013), the proletariat rehearses the uprising against the rulers living in the saus and brewing; In “Okja” (2017) it is an attempt to act humanly in a world dominated by great corporations that focuses on; In the film satire “Parasite” (2019), a poor family is more and more nested in the villa of a rich.

The social commentary is not uncommon in Bong Joon-Ho’s film satires at the same time: the class barriers are impermeable; In an unfairly and structural violence, the escalation of violence is the necessary consequence; The socially disadvantaged and marginalized wear instead of recognizing the class conflict, the struggles with each other.

With his new film “Mickey 17”, Bong has now presented a pretty funny black science fiction comedy in which-like in the stories of the American writer Philip K. Dick, a main representative of the “New Wave” science fiction of the 1960s-an anti-hero in an advanced capitalist Identity of man and the genesis of reality must deal. Here, with the means of comedy, a number of philosophical questions are dealt with: What is man? What is his life? What is death? Is death a good or an evil or neither of them? And what are the benefits of mortality? Philosophizing means learning to die!

Marshall’s speech and accent are modeled on the huge infantile-chimney. Trumps.

In addition to the dark comedy, which is common at Bong, Slapstick and Action is again delivered in “Mickey 17”, everything is nicely prepared in a retrofuturistically designed setting: The expedition to the above -mentioned bargeable and cold winter planet by spaceship is financed by the Christian fundamentalist Kenneth Marshall, a narcissistic, slown, reactionary politician Followers on the targeted planet wants to found a colony of “pure broken” people and who is otherwise only interested in personal enrichment and his own well -being. Anyone who thinks of Trump, Musk or Merz is not completely wrong. In any case, the director has left numerous clues in his film that are difficult to ignore: Marshall’s speech and accent are based on the infantile-grandchildren bricking of Trump. His imaginative uniform resembles that of the officers of evil “Empire” from the “Star Wars” saga, the uniforms of which in turn have a design, for which the Nazi unifter uniforms clearly formed the template.

In the hierarchy of the spaceship crew, Mickey 17 is the human estate, so to speak. He and the other exploited people who have to do the service here wear mouse gray coats, and at the food edition they get indefinable gray chunks than food while drinking two floors higher champagne.

At some point in the course of the action, Mickey 17 will deal with his doppelganger. Better said: with Mickey 18, his clone. Although it is also a clone himself. Doesn’t matter. In any case, Mickey 17 should have died on the previously mentioned inhospitable planet on which he was left behind for the sake of simplicity. “I wish you a pleasant death!” (“Have a nice death”), his colleague still says goodbye to him. But then Mickey 17 surprisingly preserves from great, unsightly crawling animals that look like oversized cellar naves. Mickey 18 has already been printed out at the time. And so inevitably arises. Because surplus clones, so -called “multiples”, are not intended.

Bong’s fusion of turbulent screwball comedy, creature feature and socially critical satire is a terrific cinema. It’s just a shame that the film ends “more hopeful when we are currently earning it,” as Alison Willmore from “New York Magazine” writes.

“Mickey 17”: USA 2025. Director and book: Bong Joon-Ho. With: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo. 137 min. Now in the cinema.