The Mitchells Vs The Machines
OUT OF NOWHERE, The Mitchells Vs The Machines dropped on Netflix and became one of the year’s must-see movies — a dazzlingly animated, riotously funny, sci-fi-infused adventure about a family facing an A.I. uprising, from writer-director Mike Rianda and the team behind Into The Spider-verse. The filmmaker talks us through its most glorious moments.
MEET THE MITCHELLS
The film begins with the robo-pocalypse in full flow, introducing the chaotic Mitchell clan as they speed into battle, before rewinding to establish their domestic life. “The movie totally broke unless we started with robots,” says Rianda. “When you start with the promise of the movie, you can relax during the part where you’re getting to know the family.” The tone is established immediately with the first ‘Katie-vision’ cartoon scrawl across the screen: “WORST FAMILY OF ALL TIME”. “It’s like a stock ‘cold-open’, so we tried to make it as inventive and wild within those boundaries as we could.”
THE KATIE-RION COLLECTION
Budding filmmaker Katie (Abbi Jacobson) has killer taste in movies (“I have a Katie Mitchell Letterboxd account that I keep putting off,” Rianda admits) and spins them into her own DIY shorts — from ‘Dial B For Burger’ to ‘Portrait Of An Idiot On Fire’. “As a teenager, that’s the type of thing I would do all the time — take something real fancy and then just, you know, ‘Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Dog Fart’ or whatever,” he laughs. “I love Lady Bird and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire. Those,
I think, to the current generation are like what the Coen Brothers were to my generation.”
CONNECTION FAILED
While Katie connects to the world through her phone and laptop, Luddite dad Rick (Danny Mcbride) sees it all as a distraction. The film’s themes of family relationships and technology collide as Rick accidentally smashes Katie’s laptop in the heat of an argument. “The audience don’t gasp when a guy’s taken away by robots, but they gasp when the laptop breaks,” says Rianda on its impact. “The movie has to function like a romantic comedy. If the audience isn’t actively rooting for these two to come together at the end, then the whole movie doesn’t work.”
RELATIONSHIP GOALS
The opposite of the Mitchells? Insta-friendly aspirational family The Poseys, with real-life celeb couple John Legend and Chrissy Teigen voicing parents Jim and Hailey. “I was expecting their entourage to come in, sweep the room, ‘Don’t look at Mr Legend, eyes on the ground!’ But they were so nice, and so game to do a bunch of dumb improv,” Rianda recalls. “We were trying to play on the fact that they
seem so wonderful on Instagram and you’re like, ‘I wish my family was like them!’”
SYSTEM ERROR
While nearly every Pal-chipped robot hunts for the Mitchells, two malfunctioning androids join them under the ‘human’ aliases ‘Eric’ (Beck Bennett) and ‘Deborahbot 5000’ (Fred Armisen). They were a key part of Rianda’s first brainstorm on a five-hour drive from LA to Salinas. “The dumb robots were day one,” he confirms. “Initially we had this bananas idea where the family had to kidnap the President. But one, things got bad in US politics, and more importantly, people just loved the robots and could give an eff about the President. Immediately the movie worked 100 times better.”
FAST & FURBY-OUS
The film’s centrepiece sees the Mitchells battle a kaiju-sized Furby — realistically rendered from furry head to fuzzy toe, with Hasbro’s blessing. “For every character like Rick, we did these intense schematics with calisthenic poses, his spine and his pelvis,” explains Rianda. “For the Furby, we just handed [the artists] a Furby like, ‘Make this, please!’” Between Mitchells and Uncut Gems, the Furby cinematic renaissance has truly begun. “Any time we can be in a sentence with the Safdie Brothers is all I want.”
BEAST-MODE LINDA
In the final fight against the PAL uprising, mum Linda (Maya Rudolph) becomes a slicing, dicing warrior, gleefully ripping robo-hearts out of robo-chests. “Storyboard artists don’t get enough credit,” says Rianda of the sequence’s serious action chops. “If you look at Guillermo Martinez’s storyboards and the movie, it’s one-to-one —
I was obsessive about it: ‘It needs to be exactly like the boards!’” The results immediately popped. “We were all screaming when we saw the animated dailies: ‘Ahhhhh! Power-sliiiiide!’”
MID-FLIGHT FIGHT
Katie and Rick reunite to battle the PAL robots, soaring through a sky packed with pastel explosions and Katie-vision rainbow streaks — an action sequence of pure joy. “One reason it feels so joyous is that the world has been oppressively Tron-like for the previous 15 minutes. All of a sudden it’s nature again, blue skies and clouds and sunlight,” says Rianda, also noting the needle-drop of the pair’s favourite song, T.I. and Rihanna’s ‘Numa Numa’-sampling ‘Live Your Life’. “They’re saying, ‘I’m sorry and I love you,’ without saying, ‘I’m sorry and I love you.’ Instead, they’re singing this ridiculous Romanian song that I love.”
MEET THE (REAL) MITCHELLS
As the credits roll, the filmmakers and stars share their own family photos in a sweet closing touch. “I wanted to make something that was about a real family, so I used my own as inspiration,” says Rianda. “Once I did it, I felt insane to just be like, ‘This is about my family, not anybody else! Screw you, Jeff [Rowe, co-writer]!’ To me, all of the people on the movie are superheroes, and I want to see their names in flashing lights. How could I not have them and their families?”
THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES IS ON NETFLIX NOW