We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in.
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
We know things are bad, worse than bad.
They're crazy.
Silence! The great and powerful Oz knows why you have come.
You've got to say, "I'm a human being!" God damn it!
My life has value!
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature!
Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think, or what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts.
Yeah, thank you.
You're beautiful.
I love you.
Yes. You're beautiful.
Thank you.
Ha-ha. It's showtime.
It's time to buckle up for Making Sense of the Madness.
And who loves you and who do you love?
Got it.
Everybody, Jason Bermas here, and today we're going to do something just a little bit different.
We're going to do a movie review of Mickey 17, the recent sci-fi picture from a gentleman who won Best Picture for Parasites, what, in 2020?
I believe.
And the thing that was really interesting about that, and I will admit the closest thing that I saw to Parasites was the Simpson parody of it in Treehouse of Horror.
But it is the first film, non-English film, to win the Oscar for Best Picture in the United States.
Not the first.
To be nominated by far, and let me just say this, I specifically remember probably, what, late 90s, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
At that point, I was like, whoa, you know, this thing actually has a chance.
It was one of my favorite movies, and to this day, one of my favorite films that is not in English, Apocalypto, is probably the coup de grace of those films.
However, Mickey 17 caught my eye earlier this year when myself and a couple friends, I think it's the last time I've been to the movie theater, we went to go see the comedy Y2K, which was kind of like a parody if Y2K happened.
And in the trailer for this thing, you're essentially introduced to the quote-unquote 17th iteration of Mickey.
A person who signed up to basically become what they call an expendable that will be regenerated over and over and over again, not only on this space journey, this mega space journey of human beings going to colonize a planet,
but essentially entire mission even when they are also on the planet.
This guy is treated as less than human.
So that right off the bat got me interested because number one, it's kind of the farce of space travel.
That's a big thing, you know, that we talk about these megaships.
But then the idea that you're going to be able to upload your consciousness and live through forever regenerating a biological you.
Obviously, a lot of the transhumanist stuff that we cover goes well beyond that into other realms, and even some of that is hinted in the film.
So before we go any further, I do want to say that there are going to be some minor spoilers in this film, or in this review.
So if that's an issue and you want to go watch the movie first, I totally get it.
I would say the movie is worth watching.
The thing that really turned me off about it...
And really, first of all, it's sci-fi schlock.
Even if the part that we're going to talk about, the obvious Trump parody in this, were not a large part of the picture, it probably gets a B. Not a B +, a B at best.
Some people might love it, but it's been done better, and a lot of the...
Tropes of sci-fi and the messages over and over and over again are here.
But the big thing that bothered me in this is that the main villain protagonist, played by Mark Ruffalo, is a clear parody of Trump.
Not necessarily a good one and not necessarily a direct one.
You know, this movie is based on a book and apparently the two characters...
Are extremely different.
But what really upset me about this is that not only do you get this over-the-top parody of Trump in it, it's played by a very anti-Trump guy, Mark Ruffalo, who, by the way, I have a lot of respect for.
I think he's a smart guy and was one of the few celebrities to stick his neck out for 9-11 Truth.
We'll get into that later on.
But in the film, you have the white supremacy tropes.
You have the using religion as a mechanism of political power tropes.
And we're just going to hit all of it.
We're going to talk about the film.
What I need you to do right now is thumbs it up, subscribe, and share.
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Let's get out the Building 7 chapter of Fabled Enemies all the way from 2008 and together we can do this.
Bong Joon-ho and Mark Ruffalo say Mickey 17's villain isn't based on Trump.
Yeah, right.
Listen, Ruffalo, just to show you just some of the things that were inserted here, okay?
Now, you know, this is a new segment in the film very early on where they're talking about immigration.
It's a clear parody of not only Trump and his immigration policy, but you also see all the red outfits.
You also see the circle.
Right there.
I think that's an allusion to perhaps the Q symbols.
When we're first introduced to Marshall, he's got the exact Trump outfit on.
And then when we get close up, here we are.
We got the red hats and everything.
So it was pretty clear to me that was there.
And this is just a screenshot of Ruffalo with the lips.
Throughout it, also trying to sound like him.
Okay? So, no doubt about it, in my opinion.
What I want to talk about now is the film.
So, first and foremost, the positives of the film.
When you look at...
The story being told by the 17th iteration of this Expendable is kind of from this sweet, simplistic individual that they're trying to portray.
And it seems like he's been this way the entire time.
It's really not a spoiler because it's in the trailer.
Essentially, he doesn't die when he's supposed to and they print another one.
And this one, for whatever reason, is unlike all the others.
Even though it's supposed to be the same exact thing, okay?
It's more aggressive, etc.
And by the way, when you look at these technologies, I think this is fantasy land.
In fact, when they talk about hard drives, they even have a parody of a brick-like device that they call the brick that stores your memories and how it is utilized in order to...
Redirect those memories after it's been uploaded, you know, right up to the very moment of death, essentially, is supposedly how it works.
They don't really explain it.
But I will give them this, and this is a big spoiler for later on in the film, when they start talking about the people that invented this technology, they actually get into how one of the creators of it,
okay, He's a serial killer.
And the way he's able to do this, you know, spoiler again, is that he's utilized this technology and printed several of himself so he will have an alibi while he goes and he murders homeless people.
So again, there's a lot of good stuff in here where they show the psychotic nature of this.
There's the political debate going on, but that's really where you get the Ruffalo character who...
Exploits social media.
Exploits religion to get into this position of power where they're going to be off-world.
And this thing was filmed prior to the 2024 election.
So in that scene right there, they actually make a dig at Trump that he just keeps losing elections.
Ha ha ha.
And the reason why...
Look, guys, you got to give the guy some credit.
Let me just...
If you didn't know, Trump did make fun of him.
Without watching his movie, okay?
Because after his movie Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020 and became the first non-English language film to do so, the president, Donald Trump, declared himself displeased.
At a campaign rally right after the win, Trump said, what the hell was that all about?
We've got enough problems with South Korea and trade.
On top of that, they gave the best movie of the year.
Was it good?
I don't know.
At least he admitted he didn't know.
And then he brought up things like Gone with the Wind and Sunset Boulevard.
Hey, he's a politician.
That's a whole lot different than him being portrayed in this as a cold-hearted, sinister, racist.
I mean, they play the white supremacy card in this, which is totally insane.
And then, you know, one of the other big tropes in it.
That I didn't necessarily love is the human race or the colonizers on this planet.
I don't know if it'd necessarily be wrong, but once again, the natural species in this is an intelligent species, but not advanced like us technologically, right?
It's almost an allegory for Native Americans.
And once again, you know, the evil white colonizer.
So there's a lot in this.
You know, again, spoiler alert, they are making commentary, I would say, that is negative to the idea that we should play God and just have print human beings, right?
And clones and all these other things.
I think that's a positive thing.
There's also something else that's snuck in there.
So when they do arrive on the planet...
They have Mickey go out first, and then they act as though there's a deadly virus and the human beings can't inhabit it.
So they're constantly experimenting on him to try to create a vaccine, which they do, so that all the humans on the ship can go onto the planet.
And later on, it's kind of alluded to in a one-liner.
That what they were really doing is they weren't creating the vaccine necessarily for everybody there, although they don't say that.
So maybe it was a dual purpose.
But they were developing a weapon.
And they then test that weapon out.
So, you know, maybe you want to wait for it to come down in price or to your favorite streaming service that you're already paying a fee for and you don't want to go rent it on Xbox or whatever stick you have or your smart TV.
Probably worth a watch.
The acting is pretty good.
Ruffalo does deliver an over-the-top performance.
But again, I want to remind people, Ruffalo, you know, they attacked him for testifying to Congress on science.
Why? Because he questioned 9-11.
So this further iterates to me and should reiterate to you that none of this stuff is really about left or right.
It's always about right and wrong.
Once again, $5, $10, $15.
It does mean the world to me.
I hope that you enjoyed this little movie review and you check out not only the other videos out there, but the documentary films that are free.
Loose Change Final Cut, Invisible Empire, A New World Order Defined, Fabled Enemies, and Shade the Motion Picture.