Review
Culture
Death & life
Digital
Film & TV
6 min read

Mickey 17: If we replicate then where does our humanity lie?

Bong Joon-ho has a stark warning about dehumanization.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Two cloned humans stand side by side.
Warner Bros.

One of my favourite films of the last decade was Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, a groundbreaking masterpiece in social commentary, humour and suspense. It won four Academy Awards in 2020, including Best Film - which was a first for a non-English language film - as well as numerous other accolades. So, when the director’s latest project, Mickey 17, was announced, I was eager to see if Bong could deliver another cinematic triumph of similar beauty, depth and precision.  

Mickey 17 took me by surprise. To be honest, the change in genre took some adjusting to, but as I recalibrated my expectations, I realised that the film nevertheless retained Bong’s trademark thought-provoking and daring exploration of identity, purpose and the human condition.  

Mickey 17 is in fact the eighth major film from Bong Joon Ho, but he is probably best known for Snowpiercer and Parasite. These films share common themes, particularly the stark divide between rich and poor and the rigid, two-tier nature of human society. In Parasite, we see the poor trapped in the flood plains of Seoul while the elite live in grand houses on hills. The film is structured around the visual metaphor of descent and ascent. In Snowpiercer, the class struggle is represented by the different carriages of the train, with the poor at the back of the train suffering in squalor while the privileged at the front enjoy luxury. 

Us and them 

In Mickey 17, this theme of societal hierarchy continues but in a futuristic, intergalactic setting. The divide now exists between the expendables—a class of human clones used for dangerous tasks—and the higher echelons of the spaceship crew, who are embarking on a mission to colonize a new planet.  

Mickey’s journey to the spaceship begins in poverty. He and a supposed friend start a business, funding it through a loan shark. When the business fails, the loan shark threatens their lives. Desperate, Mickey signs up for the space expedition, barely reading the fine print—only to discover that he has agreed to be an expendable. 

All expendables are humans who have been digitized – their entire bodies, brains, and psychologies are stored as data. When they die, they are simply reprinted, with only a week’s worth of memory lost. They exist to perform dangerous tasks such as testing the effects of radiation exposure, new vaccines, or extreme planetary conditions. In Mickey’s case, he has been fatally experimented on 16 times. He has been resurrected to his seventeenth version, and while he is still called Mickey, the question is whether this Mickey is the same Mickey who signed up for the space mission in the first place.  

What does it mean to be human? 

One of the film’s central philosophical questions is: What makes someone human? Mickey is biologically and mentally identical to himself, yet each iteration has a different personality. Some versions of him are more caring, others more aggressive or anxious. If he is just a replica, then where does his humanity lie? Is he just a product of his genetic code, or is there something more—something intangible—that makes him who he is? 

It is the same question that has been asked since the beginning of time. The Bible claims that the first human beings were created in the image of God, but what does that mean? Did that first iteration of humankind have the same power, the same worth, the same purpose as God? This was the forbidden fruit dilemma – Adam and Eve were already like God, but the serpent tempts them to eat the fruit so they could be like God in a different way.  

In our technologically advanced world, we are faced with the same fundamental difficulty in defining personhood: are we physical and spiritual beings with intrinsic dignity, infinite worth and unique purpose, or are we just biological replications existing for pre-programmed functions. If human cloning were to become common practice, would each clone be truly human?  

What is a human life worth? 

As far as the ship’s crew is concerned, Mickey is expendable. His pain, suffering, and even his existence are secondary to the mission. While the crew pursue the possibility of extending their own influence and power by colonising another planet, the expendables have no influence or power at all. The portrayal of this devaluing of human life is the most challenging of themes in Bong’s most popular films. In Parasite, the poor are only useful to the rich until they become an inconvenience. In Snowpiercer, the people at the back of the train serve those at the front, but they are seen as disposable. In Mickey 17, this exploitation is taken to its extreme—Mickey’s entire purpose is to die over and over again for the good of others. 

In a world that often assigns value based on productivity, Mickey 17 provides a stark warning about dehumanization. If we begin to measure worth based on what someone can do rather than who they are, we risk treating people as commodities. The Adam and Eve story turns that on its head. They were declared ‘good’ before they were given their roles to take care of one another and creation. Their function was an overflow of their dignity, not the other way around. And even after the forbidden fruit incident where the world was infected with sin and death there is a thread that reminds us that each life is precious. The Psalms declares that each of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made”. Jesus spent his life upholding the dignity of those society deemed inconvenient and expendable – the poor, sick and marginalised.  

What does death achieve? 

Despite dying multiple times, Mickey still fears death. Even though he knows he will be reprinted, the experience remains terrifying. No amount of technology, it seems, can remove the instinctive human fear of mortality. In fact the question that everybody that has contact with Mickey wants to ask is what death feels like, because everyone, whether a friend or simply a user of Mickey has to confront their own mortality. 
In the final act, Mickey makes a choice. Instead of living in an endless cycle of death and resurrection, he chooses to grow old with one person. He destroys the only means by which he could achieve immortality. The film is suggesting that relationship is more important that reusability. Finiteness—the ability to die permanently—is part of what makes life meaningful. 

The Bible teaches that there is an Adam 2.0. While the first Adam brought sin and death into the world, the second Adam – Jesus – brought redemption and eternal life. Both Jesus and Mickey choose death to break the cycle of suffering. But while Mickey chooses to abandon his contract as an expendable, Jesus willingly became expendable for the sake of others. His death was a once-for-all sacrifice that broke the power of death for all.  

What about resurrection? 

If there is life beyond this life what does it look like? Is it merely reprinting? A chance to try again? Or is there, as Adam 2.0 leads us to believe, a resurrection into a whole new world that even science fiction cannot begin to imagine? 

At its heart, Mickey 17 asks profound existential and ethical questions. It forces us to confront what it means to be human, what that human life is worth and how we deal with our mortality. It doesn’t provide us with answers but it invites us to wrestle with these crucial ideas. And in doing so, it points us back to the only hope that is worth having: a view of life where value is not earned, our existence is not expendable, and death is not the end. 

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Article
America
Character
Culture
Leading
Politics
1 min read

A question of character: why do some evangelicals back Trump?

Whatever leaders say, it's what they do and who they are that matters.

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

President Trump speaks in the White House
The White House.

The USA is a strange place. At least to us foreigners. Already this year I have spent two separate weeks there. The first was a week in Texas where Trump/Vance flags flew triumphantly and shops proudly displayed MAGA hats and related merchandise. The second was a week on the liberal west coast, in San Francisco and Seattle, where it was Pride flags that fluttered in the wind, and Trump and his lackeys were viewed as the enemy of everything good and true. There could hardly be a greater contrast. 

I've been trying in particular to get my head around why evangelicals have so solidly backed Donald Trump, especially so since I grew up with and still to an extent own that label here in the UK. I spoke recently with Walter Kim, a gentle, thoughtful Korean-American leader of the National Association of Evangelicals. He pointed out that the evangelical constituency in the USA is far more ethnically diverse than the image of the white, country-music loving, confederate flag-flying southern Republican that we often assume in Europe. Many evangelicals worship in churches which are ethically very mixed, and who have no time for Trump whatsoever.  

For him, the name ‘evangelical’ had been hijacked by a political movement. Many people assumed that if you are Republican in your sympathies, voted for Trump, and are resistant to the ‘woke’ policies of the Democrats, then you must be an ‘evangelical’ regardless of your religious or theological convictions. Bizarrely, he pointed out that in a recent survey, a significant number of Muslims had claimed the designation ‘evangelical’. I told you America was a strange country. 

Now of course, many evangelicals do support Trump. Yet even among them, it is hard to find anyone who will mount an argument for him as a moral exemplar, a shining example of virtue and integrity. Even those who support him acknowledge his own moral frailty, his murky past in relation to women, financial dealing, and truth-telling. Be that as it may, there appear to be two broad positions evangelicals take for supporting Trump. 

One is to say that his character may be flawed, but his policies are good. Tim Alberta's book on American Evangelicalism, The Kingdom the Power and the Glory, suggested that for some evangelicals, voting for Trump was “nakedly transactional - Christians trading their support sans enthusiasm in return for specific policies.” 

Most evangelicals are of the opinion that there is something fundamentally wrong with putting an essentially male boxer in a ring with a female one. They feel distinctly uneasy with the widespread and cavalier destruction of what they consider to be nascent human lives in the womb. They value traditional marriage and the family as a key building block of a healthy society and as the best means to bring new lives into the world and nurture them through their formative years. Some think the right to carry a gun is a safeguard against lawlessness and encroachment on the privileges of the individual.  

They may also be nervous of the impact on the USA of illegal immigration, dislike economic policies which have raised the cost of living - especially tough if you are poor, are anxious about the rise of China as a world power which, if its growing influence across Africa is anything to go by, threatens domination across the globe in coming decades with an atheistic regime hostile to Christianity and religious freedom. 

For them, the Democrats under Joe Biden seemed to ignore all of these things. They seemed to be wrapped up in a small bubble of their own marginal issues and grew out of touch with ‘mainstream America’. And so many evangelicals voted for Trump, with deep reluctance given his moral frailty. His polices were OK, but the deal was worth it, even if his character was dodgy. 

Yet, as Alberta observes, there is now a different strand of evangelical support for Trump, much more bullish and brazen. He is, they claim, yet another of many flawed leaders that God has used for his purposes in the past. In the Bible, King David had his mistress’s husband murdered so he could marry her; his son Solomon had a weakness for women and yet was used by God to build the great Jerusalem Temple; King Cyrus was a Persian king who allowed the Israelites to return from exile. Trump is now the chosen one of God to restore America as a Christian nation, despite his flaws. 

In both of these approaches, the assumption is that good character is desirable, but not essential for leadership and establishing good government.  

I am not so sure. 

Of course, getting good policies matter. Yet character matters just as much, if not more. 

As it happens, the story told in the Bible doesn’t think flawed, unrepentant leaders are good leaders for a nation. After the contract killing, King David realised he had done something terribly wrong and was deeply remorseful for his actions. Solomon's wandering eyes caused untold damage to Israel in future years, leaving it open to all kinds of destructive idolatry. And Cyrus was never a king of the nation of Israel anyway, just a neighbouring potentate whose foreign policy enabled something good to happen. 

The problem with adopting an unrepentant leader with deep moral failings is that leaders set the tone for the organisations that they lead. It's true of any school, church, business or government. Whatever leaders say, it's what they do and who they are that matters just as much. And that is because what they do and how they are gives an idea of the kind of behaviour that is least permissible, but at most recommended, to get things done.  

A leader who achieves results through bullying, demeaning opponents, getting rid of the people who confront him, and who thinks that making a lot making a lot of money is both the main aim in life and the marker of success, sends out the unspoken message that bullying, domineering and making money are the thing to do. This is how to get on. Such behaviour will always be overlooked with a smirk, or even rewarded. He - or she - sets the tone for the nation / business / organisation / church. 

It's an age-old rule. Kids pick up the behaviour of their parents. Churches reflect the personality of their pastors. Businesses end up taking on the character of their CEOs. Boris Johnson fell from grace as Prime Minister of the UK not because of his economic or social policies (if he had any), but due to his character – an inability to tell the truth eroded trust and came home to roost in the end.  

Of course, getting good policies matter. Yet character matters just as much, if not more. We might argue the toss over whether Trump's tariffs, his standing up to China, his approach to getting a peace deal in Ukraine, his reversing of illegal immigration is, or is not, the right policy. But the way he goes about these things speaks more loudly than the policies he adopts. The way we do things is as important as what we do.  

In leadership, competence and chemistry matter. But in the long run, character matters the most. 

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief