Sauce as Civilization

Mickey 17

Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 (his first movie since his Oscar winning Parasite) is an oft-blunt yet engaging commentary on colonization, class, capitalism, and what humankind chooses to value. Among the themes of survival, exploitation, and existential philosophy lies an unexpectedly potent symbol — sauce. While it felt trivial at first glance, after ruminating on the movie for 24 hours since I watched it, I realized that in the hands of Bong, sauce transforms into a profound metaphor.

After all, what place does something as seemingly frivolous as sauce have when set against themes of classism, human expendability, and colonialism? That’s how I drew the conclusion that this fixation is no accident. Within the film’s meticulously constructed world, sauce becomes more than just a culinary delight — it morphs into a multifaceted metaphor, one that probes at civilization’s hallmarks, indulgences, and hypocrisies.

So, I decided to read a bit about sauces and how they have played and continue to play a crucial role in civilizations. And this post is a result of that understanding combined with my own interpretation of the role sauce plays in Mickey 17, and why this metaphor is a clever albeit a satirical take.

Sauce as Extravagance and Identity

Sauce is luxury, an “extra” that turns sustenance into something pleasurable. Food, at its most basic level, is functional — it nourishes and sustains. But sauce takes this fundamental necessity and elevates it into art. Similarly, human civilization is rooted in practicalities like shelter and survival, yet it’s defined and remembered by its embellishments — cultural rituals, art, philosophy, and, of course, cuisine.

“Sauce is the true litmus test of civilization,” remarks Ylfa Marshall (Toni Collette) in Mickey 17, her manicured nails clicking against a blender in which she turns a native creature’s tail into culinary attempts. Ylfa is obsessed with sauce because it represents refinement, hierarchy, and aspiration — qualities central to her colonial agenda. Her husband Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) envisions a “pure” (translation: “white”) society on the new icy planet, where life is rigidly controlled and strictly hierarchical. Sauce, for Ylfa, and the Marshalls, is a marker of who belongs at the top.

Haute cuisine historically reflects similar values. The French five mother sauces, as codified by Auguste Escoffier, became symbols of class distinction, serving as the baseline for fine dining and cultural superiority. Other global sauces — Mexican mole, Italian pesto, Ethiopian awaze, have long been expressions of cultural identity. Yet, in Western culinary narratives, sauces created by colonized cultures were often devalued or appropriated.

Mission Niflheim

On the calorie-restricted spaceship en route to Niflheim, the icy planet, sauce becomes a poignant delineator between necessity and luxury. While crew members scrape by on gray, unseasoned rations, the Marshalls luxuriate in steaks draped in vivid sauces. Here, sauce defines the gap between survival and civilization. Much like the ruling classes in human society, the Marshalls secure their privilege using resources harvested from the labor and sacrifice of others — the workers, soldiers, and even Mickey, the titular “Expendable” (someone who can be reprinted after death).

This stratification echoes real-world inequities. Fine dining adorned in sauce once symbolized bourgeois privilege, its decadence inaccessible to the working class. Makers of haute cuisine — kitchen staff and farmers — often operated invisibly, much like Mickey, who labors and dies repeatedly for the success of the mission. Sauce becomes an edible metaphor for the exploitation that underpins both the Marshalls’ fictional society and analogous systems of power on Earth.

The symbolism of sauce deepens in the film when the expedition encounters the native creatures of Niflheim. For Ylfa, these “alien” beings — doused in her colonial gaze — serve one primary purpose: inspiration for new sauces. The creatures’ individuality, their place in the planet’s ecosystem, or their survival are irrelevant to her. What matters is extracting flavor, distilling novelty, and packaging it into something consumable.

The film subtly critiques Ylfa’s lack of appreciation for craft and tradition, as she sloppily hacks an alien tail and blitzes it in a blender, a crude imitation of culinary art that symbolizes colonial disregard for the cultures they exploit. Her clumsy attempt at refinement parallels the hollow ideals of Marshall’s colonial mission. Ylfa’s sauces encapsulate the Marshalls’ vision of their new civilization — something that mimics sophistication but is hollowed-out by their disregard for the labor and life that make it meaningful.

Layers of Humanity in Sauce

Despite its colonial critique, Mickey 17 also acknowledges sauce’s intrinsic connection to humanity’s capacity for creativity and connection. On the dying Earth the characters have left behind, culinary diversity flourished across boundaries of class and geography — offering moments of pleasure, identity, and shared humanity. A bowl of Vietnamese nuoc cham or a pot of Oaxacan mole represented not just sustenance but resilience and pride.

The absence of sauce aboard the lower decks of the spaceship — like the absence of beauty, art, and individuality — reflects the mechanical, joyless existence of an exploited underclass. Just as sauce enhances flavor, human civilization is enriched by the “unnecessary” elements of life — beauty, creativity, and the celebration of difference.

The “Expendables” of Flavor

Mickey, an Expendable, is repeatedly “reprinted” after each death, reduced to a tool for hazardous experimentation and systematic sacrifice. He is a man denied not just autonomy, but richness in every sense.

This is painfully visualized in the dinner scene where Mickey’s plate is conspicuously devoid of sauce, his steak swimming in plain, gooey, unadorned juices. Where sauce represents luxury for the ruling Marshalls, its absence for characters like Mickey (Robert Pattinson) underscores their dehumanization. The contrast between his meal and the artful dishes served to Ylfa and Kenneth Marshall speaks volumes. Mickey might be a reprint of a human, but in the Marshalls’ hierarchy, he will never warrant the “extra effort” that sauce symbolizes. The lack of sauce strips him, and by extension all expendables, of the dignity and pleasure the ruling class takes for granted.

Ylfa’s obsession with crafting sauces on a calorie-conscious, utilitarian spaceship is deeply ironic. She imagines herself bringing culture to an uninhabited world, yet her methods mirror the exploitative colonial structures Earth’s civilization sought to escape. Her sauces are more about maintaining power dynamics than celebrating culture, more blenders than bechamel, more theft than technique.

A Better Use for Sauce

Ultimately, Mickey 17 proposes a sharp question about humanity’s identity — do we simply replicate the exploitative systems of the old world, or can we choose something better? The Marshalls use sauce as a means to build divisions, as much as they use their invasive, resource-draining colonization of Niflheim itself. But perhaps the indigenous residents of the icy planet, whose lives are untouched by human hierarchy, represent an alternate possibility for humanity — a chance to rebuild civilization without replicating its mistakes.

Sauce, in this context, could symbolize a different kind of extravagance — one grounded in connection, creativity, and care, rather than dominance or exploitation. A sauce shared among equals — created collaboratively, seasoned with respect — is civilization at its best.

A Cinematic Litmus Test

Through Ylfa’s fixation on sauce, Bong Joon-ho draws an incisive parallel between the frivolities of space-age colonialists and the hierarchies of our current world. Sauce becomes more than a culinary flourish; it’s a test of our values and priorities. And it makes us ask questions.

Perhaps, the key to moving beyond Earth’s mistakes lies in rethinking even the simplest things, like how we make sauce and, more importantly, who we imagine it’s for. Are the extras in life, like sauce, hoarded by the powerful, stripped of meaning and history, or can they enrich us all?

Mickey 17 may use sauce as satire, but it’s also a reminder that even the smallest details — culinary or cultural — carry immense symbolic weight.

For the Marshalls, sauce is a remnant of Earth’s decadence, a marker of their self-proclaimed “civilization.” For the crew, it is an unattainable luxury, a reminder of their dehumanized state. And for the viewer, it is an invitation to contemplate civilization itself — the ways we construct it, celebrate it, and sometimes, use it as a veil for unjust systems.

Sauce, in its humble essence, adds flavor where there is none. By elevating it to a metaphor for human ambition, Mickey 17 asks us to question whether we’ve mistaken indulgence for progress. Can the drab rations of the ship offer more substance than Ylfa’s ostentatious blends? Can civilization be rebuilt not as a glossy, exclusionary regime, but as something nourishing for all?

These are the questions that linger — like the aftertaste of a truly unforgettable sauce.