“I’ve always felt a little different than everyone else. So I did what any outsider would do, made weird art.”
-Katie Mitchell, The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Spoilers, probably.
I’m not going to sit on any kind of throne when it comes to the numerous creative endeavors I’ve undertaken except to say that I’ve made my share of incredibly weird art. For the longest time I was something of a kingpin in the Phineas and Ferb fandom, longer than I care to admit, and that’s about as much detail I will go into there because I did wind up deadfic-ing my fans and they deserved better than that. (Get enough drinks in me and listen to me rant about my fanfiction being on tvtropes and how Disney stole it, though). Maybe that’s unfair, but then we’re all unsatisfied with our work to some degree- anyone creative is. I’ve had a short story published this year, I self-publish fantasy novels, I do some poetry and hell even my work-work is in some way creative. Cocktails and wine pairings are art in their own way.
I once attended a fantastic online class series about writing and worldbuilding hosted by Dr. Moiya McTier, host of the Exolore Podcast and the most amazing blend of science and folklore in one person I’ve met since my best friend. In it, she posited that all of us, every day, participate in worldbuilding. How we arrange apartments, set tables, dress, build a morning routine. It’s all worldbuilding, it’s all creative, and by extension everyone, everywhere, is in some way creative.
To listen to the wisdom of The Mitchells vs. the Machines, we’re all a little weird, too.
And that’s great.
It’s the best, really, and something we should embrace fully. I wish a movie like this existed when I was writing Phineas and Ferb fanfiction, thinking about dragon schools, presenting a high school thesis about Bioshock being art, and dancing to Karma Chameleon and Gangnam Style with my friends at prom. The wholesale love Mitchells has for the creative, the weird, and the genuine have already catapulted it to the near top of my favorite movies of all time (still should blog about that), and put it among my favorite stories of the past year.
There is genuine passion in near every fiber of this movie. I have to begin by talking about the animation, mainly because a scene from the movie is now my laptop background. Moments of awe-inspiring imagery in a PG movie about a misfit family fighting the robot apocalypse, and I’m being serious about the awe-inspiring part. (As Rick Mitchell puts it: “It’s like a Journey album cover.”) They’re almost surreal, even to the characters.
“Welcome to the Rhombus of Infinite Subjugation.” “Cool. I like the design.”
That’s the grandeur. But the beauty of Mitchells is also in its minutiae: Katie relying on autocorrect while texting, one of her friends, Jade, having jade_runner2049 as her insta handle, the way a minor character puts on ‘cool shades’ during a fight scene in the background, the fact that the robot writing everywhere is actually translatable! Katie’s emotions are displayed with little floating drawings instantly relatable to any weird artist who hears music through the day, sees book titles in regular conversations, notices the lines and the lightning while waiting in line at the bank. Every frame is a little snapshot of care and detail, and make rewatching the movie endlessly enjoyable.
“I am experiencing it. This is how I experience things.”
It's also one of the funniest things I’ve seen in years. On my first watch there were four separate times I had to pause the movie from laughing (“That came with the frame!” “Prancer belongs to the canyon now!” “Dog? Pig? Loaf of Bread? System Error!” (The sole quote from this movie to make it onto the quote board). “Why would someone build that?”) Mitchells understands timing, planting and payoff, and how to trust an audience better than most pieces of media these days and it’s wholeheartedly refreshing to experience.
As an aside, that last line in the parenthetical is about a giant laser-breath empowered furby seeking to avenge its fallen children who themselves proclaimed “Behold! The twilight of man!” In case you needed a metric of just how weird this movie lets itself be. We all know I am a fan of scenes that go out of their way to embrace being absolutely unhinged and moments that embrace sheer absurdity and run, (see: giant gingerbread Godzilla man) and it was about here I was absolutely sold on this movie. There’s a comforting self awareness inhereit to limitless creativity like this, especially as Mitchells pokes fun at the very genre it inhabits: “Have you ever seen a movie where the heroes just give up? What if the Ghostbusters said, ‘You know what? Let’s hide underground, eat some dog. Let the ghosts destroy New York.’”
It's by no means a perfect film- I do think some of the humor will irreparable date poorly (even now, if there’s one thing I would change it’s the halting of the plot to make a cat filter joke). Mitchells is also a little front heavy when building its emotional undercurrent, and its climax seems to stretch a little too long (not that it isn’t marvelously entertaining and another example of running with absolute absurdity without a care). Its critique of technology and tech companies feels a little surface level and relatively unnecessary to the overall theme of embracing weirdness and creativity and the importance of family. While the humor and the animation are beautiful, subtle, and limitlessly creative, the messaging can feel a little on the nose (“Well, well. If it isn’t quirky young teenage hero Katie Mitchell?” (okay, I do chuckle at that line still.))
Combined with some of those pacing issues, there are a couple moments of drag.
But for every one of those moments, there are five to make you laugh and three to make you cry. That last bit is important, and I think it relates directly to the way the movie handles what I can again only describe as a love of the genuine. Katie herself admits near the beginning, “My parents haven’t figured me out yet. To be fair, it took me a while to figure myself out.” Not long after, we get the crushing admission from her parents that, “If that girl leaves and never comes home again, that’s a problem I don’t think we can fix.” At the film’s subverted emotional climax, we have Katie acknowledging that when it comes to her family, all the weirdness is endearing, from the bad baking to the screwdrivers to the dog that can’t see straight. There’s love there for everything that makes everyone unique, and a celebration of everything we can do with our range of gifts. I think it’s one of the better messages out in the world right now.
I’m working on more than a few writing projects right now. Some of it has me googling whether or not horses can drink from straws, and whether or not that means unicorns can or not. I need to study more about how birch trees bloom. What powers should dragon scales have, never mind that there are feathered dragons in a different one of my stories. Every morning I sit down at my desk surrounded by art that inspires, listening to songs bursting with creativity, and more recently I’ve been going to concerts and movies alone. I dance like an idiot at closing time while flipping through books about new concepts in cocktails and now I have to think up wine pairings for a menu I’ve never tasted all in the name of good, competitive fun.
I do it all with a smile, and a little flash of The Mitchells vs. the Machines in the back of my brain.
“Well, I believe this group of weirdos is the best hope humanity’s got. So, let’s get weird.”