Think Christian: A Faith and Pop Culture Podcast · Think Christian

Mickey 17’s Wretched Resurrections

·35 min·3 clips

themes on its mind

Think Christian opens with Josh Larson introducing Mickey 17 as Bong Joon-ho's latest film and a clear shift from Parasite. The movie swaps the tightly controlled suspense of that earlier work for a futuristic setting and a madcap comic tone. Robert Pattinson plays Mickey, a laborer on an interplanetary mission in 2054. He is deep in debt and running from a loan shark when he signs on as an expendable. That role means taking on dangerous jobs that often end in death. Each time Mickey dies, a new body is printed and his memories are uploaded into it. When the discussion begins, he has already died sixteen times. Josh Larson is joined by J.R. Forsteros and Sarah Welch-Larson. Together they ask whether the film lands as well as Parasite. The conversation keeps circling back to class and to the way the mission depends on Mickey's disposability. It also moves toward Christian ideas about the image of God and religious hypocrisy. A bleak stretch involving Mickey working alone in the snow becomes a way into labor and exhaustion. The panel notices how little the mission seems to value him as a person. They point out that he is given no extra food and pushed as hard as possible. That treatment is named as distinctly anti-Christian. The discussion also lingers on the odd fact that each printing of Mickey feels a little different. One version is whiny, another is spicy, and another is meek. The guests take that as evidence that copying a person does not erase individuality. Even so, the people around Mickey keep treating him like a resource. The film itself, they say, clearly sees Mickey as human and distinct. The episode widens from movie details into questions about labor, dignity, Sabbath community, and how society labels the people it wants to use up.

As heard by us

A story about disposability turns into a serious conversation about dignity and the image of God.

On Think Christian, the panel treats Mickey 17 as a story about disposability, labor, debt, and the logic that makes one person feel replaceable.

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Why you'd press play

Play this for a faith-and-pop-culture take on Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho's madcap sci-fi comedy about bodies, debt, and dignity.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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