In Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, Alan Manikova, born to a rich political family, is somewhat of an outlier, barely content with the typical indulgences of wealth and power. After opening a research facility and becoming one of the richest guys in the universe on the profits of the human replication technology he invents, he shifts location to another planet. Not just any planet, either, but one with apathetic factions of super-rich folks who express no sense of community: the indifferent and the selfish. In no time, his clone army takes over the planet.
In Bong Joon Ho’s recent film adaptation of Ashton’s book, however, Manikova is reimagined as a psychopathic murderer using his clones to construct airtight alibis while on a murder rampage against the unhoused. This is just one of the many ways in which Mickey17 differs from its inspiration. Here’s another:
At this point, you may be wondering what I did to get myself designated as an Expendable. Must have been something awful, right? Murdered a puppy, maybe? Pushed an old lady down a staircase?
Nope, and nope. Believe it or not, I volunteered. (p. 20)
Mickey7 is an entertaining meditation on immortality and memory, a philosophical journey that questions the very essence of identity and what it means to live and die. But Mickey17 is an entirely different animal. Bong, never one to shy away from a carnival funhouse, hijacks Ashton’s intellectual framework and repurposes it as a radical, comedic reimagining of the world we inhabit today—one dominated by economic disparity, racial divides, and the ever-hungry pursuit of power. In the end, we get a film teetering on the edge of nihilism. It’s existential, yes, but in a way that shows the absurdity of the world we live in. And isn’t that somehow more terrifying?
Ashton’s Mickey Barnes is an Expendable, a man who literally can’t die—as long as he’s willing to keep signing up for the worst, most dangerous jobs. He is assigned to a mission to settle a planet known as Niflheim—the land of mist and death in Norse mythology—which is infested by a native species, the creepers. As soon as something needs to be done that’s really risky—disease, radiation, death—Mickey is summoned. When he dies, his employers print a new version of him, just like getting a fresh pair of socks. But after one such “routine” death, Mickey7 comes back to find … himself, in a way. Mickey8, the other Mickey, is lying in his bed.
Duplicates are considered an abomination, thanks to the precedent set by the Alan Manikovas of the world. But hey, they’ve got a planet to colonize. What could possibly go wrong?
The book, at its core, asks one simple question: Are you really you if your body gets replaced every time you die? Sure, you’ve got your memories, your favorite pizza toppings, and that one awkward high school moment, but does that really make you the same person? Are the copies truly the same person, or are they just new variants—new iterations—of a man doomed to never truly live?
This is the key to accepting this job, Mickey. You are the Ship of Theseus. We all are. There is not a single living cell in my body that was alive and a part of me ten years ago, and the same is true for you. We’re constantly being rebuilt, one board at a time. If you actually take on this job, you’ll probably be rebuilt all at once at some point, but at the end of the day, it’s really no different, is it?
When an Expendable takes a trip to the tank, he’s just doing in one go what his body would naturally do over the course of time anyway. As long as memory is preserved, he hasn’t really died. He’s just undergone an unusually rapid remodeling. (p. 84)
Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey17 forgoes the quirky reflective nature of its source material to focus instead on class and economic inequality. After all, can you care about the existential dread of being a clone when you’re too busy being exploited for labor? In Bong’s world, Expendables are glorified laborers who die over and over, only to be reprinted like industrial machinery. They are living paradoxes: individuals with memories, desires, and fears, who are nonetheless seen by society as expendable. It’s a great metaphor for the working class: considered unimportant, replaceable, and always expected to keep going.
The core of both the novel and the film may seem similar—Mickey dies repeatedly, gets reprinted while the mission to invade a new planet goes on—but it’s the tonality that diverges drastically. The film is far more interested than the book, for instance, in showing how the elites sit pretty while the rest of us are stuck in a cycle of exploitation, recontextualising the original material to speak directly to the inequities of today’s society.
Similarly, in the novel, Mickey’s repeated deaths and reprints raise philosophical quandaries, posing a version of that universal inquiry into what makes us who we are. The secondary characters (Berto, the best friend; Nasha, the girlfriend) remain secondary to his journey. The movie, meanwhile, gives plenty of screen time to the secondary characters, each bringing their own layer of absurdity and creating an overall spectacle. And let’s be clear: The absurdity works. You’ve got Mark Ruffalo playing a Trump-like caricature of a megalomaniac while his spouse is obsessed with sauces (at one point, she claims that “sauce is the true litmus test of civilization”). It’s entertaining, it’s biting, it’s everything you want in a political satire. While the film’s shifting tone detracts from the book’s introspection, it’s ideal for the larger commentary on power and control. But at the end of the day, you might be left wanting more depth.
The book’s Expendables are people trapped in a moral vacuum, and the questions about their humanity are harder to laugh at. So, while the film is busy making punchy political jokes out of Expendables, it’s skimming over other complex moral questions. Ashton’s Mickey7 turns inward through questions about identity, memory, and the cost of survival. It wonders what it means to die, to return, and to remain yourself. Bong’s Mickey17, on the other hand, crackles with noise and satire, a firework of commentary on exploitation, colonization, and manufactured obedience.
Both book and film are worth experiencing but for different reasons. They’re variants, divergent evolutions of the same genetic code, reflections from different mirrors: one cracked with doubt, the other warped with irony. To experience both is to see how storytelling can stretch and transform a single idea into two wildly divergent truths, each brilliant in its own right. Each version orbits the same existential sun but burns with different fire.
Read.
Watch.
Witness the full cycle.