Spoiler Warning: The following contains spoilers about Mickey 17 by Bong Joon-Ho, out today.
There’s a moment in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 when Mark Ruffalo’s Trump-like character is grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt.
That might sound like an on-the-nose reference to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July 2024, but Bong insists it’s not.
“Everything in this film was shot in 2022 in London, and that sequence was written in 2021,” Bong tells MovieMaker. “The way we shot it is exactly how it is in the script.”
It’s the kind of eerie coincidence that could only happen in a Bong Joon Ho film — or maybe in real life, where the lines between satire and reality blur more often than we’d like.
And it’s just one of the many reasons why Mickey 17, Bong’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Parasite, has already become one of the most talked-about films of the year.
Mark Ruffalo as a Trumpian Televangelist
Ruffalo’s character, Kenneth Marshall, is a larger-than-life populist leader with a rhetorical resemblance to Trump.
In the film, the colonizing mission Marshall leads is less about survival than self-aggrandizement. He’s a failed American politician who reinvents himself as the leader of a space-colony expedition to Nilfheim, a frozen planet that offers humanity a second chance (or so Marshall claims).
But Marshall isn’t just a politician. He also runs what amounts to a corporate church. In fact, he has his own televangelist TV show where he delivers sermons that blend religious fervor with corporate slogans. It’s part of what makes him such an absurd yet chilling figure: a man who uses faith as a tool for control while profiting from his followers’ devotion.
Bong tells MovieMaker that this idea came from observing modern religious organizations.
“If you think about religious organizations these days, a lot of them have a business enterprise on the side to maintain the organization,” he says. “They put out a religious slogan, but actually, they operate like a corporation with these profitable businesses. That’s just how modern religious organizations work these days.”
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Marshall embodies this duality perfectly. His sermons are designed to inspire loyalty and obedience among his followers. His wife Ylfa, played with Machiavellian flair by Toni Collette, is equally complicit, using her charisma to manipulate those around her.
“Ylfa doesn’t exist in the novel. She’s a character I was quite ambitious with when adapting the novel into the script,’ Bong says. I really wanted to portray this dictator couple, a cult leader couple.”
A Fervent Anthem
One of Marshall’s most memorable moments comes during a worship service where he leads his televised congregation in song. The piece is an original composition by Jung Jae-il, Bong’s longtime collaborator who also scored Parasite.
Bong had one specific request for the song: it needed to have a “switch” in the middle: a moment where the beat suddenly picks up and transforms into something rapturous.
“I personally don’t go to church,” Bong says, “but when I see videos of worship services, there’s always this point in the middle of a song where the beat suddenly becomes really fast and everyone starts clapping. The mood switches, and everyone pours their hearts out singing.”
That moment of collective fervor was something Bong wanted to capture, and critique, in Mickey 17.
The lyrics for the song were written by Sharon Choi (Bong’s interpreter during Parasite‘s awards run) and Jung Jae-il together. It’s both catchy and unsettling; a hymn that feels uplifting on the surface but carries undertones of manipulation when paired with Marshall’s performance.
Bong Joon Ho and Mickey 17: Prophecy or Coincidence?
And then there’s that assassination scene.
It would be easy to dismiss it as pure coincidence — a case of art unintentionally imitating life. But Bong has always been attuned to the zeitgeist, capturing societal anxieties with uncanny precision. In Parasite, he explored class tensions that resonated globally. Now, with Mickey 17, he seems to have tapped into something equally timely.
Whether intentionally or not, the scene adds another layer of intrigue to an already complex film. It forces viewers to confront uncomfortable questions about power and violence.
For some audiences, Marshall will feel like satire; for others, he might hit too close to home.