Episode 114 - The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021)
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
The Netflix feature The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021) gets the Fantasy/Animation treatment, as Chris and Alex offer up a discussion in this episode of the film’s dysfunctional family dynamics, road movie structure, and its spectacular sentient robots techno-narrative. Topics include the contribution of Sony Pictures Animation to the Hollywood computer-animated film industry and stylistic links to both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2009) and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman, 2018); The Mitchells vs. the Machines’ critique of technology that seemingly sits at odds with its own visual enjoyment of the pleasures of screen culture; timeless vs. timely storytelling via the contemporaneity of the film’s intertextual referencing and depiction of digital natives; the historical whiteness of AI and the racialising of voice-activated virtual digital assistants; the realisation of Katie’s queerness and the fraught logic of equating screen visibility with progress; the potential to read the family through neurodivergent frameworks; and how Mike Rianda’s film provides an ultimately uneven and highly performative portrayal of ‘madcap’ antics, female creativity, and outsiderdom.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Suggested Readings
Faber, Liz W. 2020. The Computer’s Voice: From Star Trek to Siri. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
King, Geoff. 2002. Film Comedy. London and New York: Wallflower Press.
O'Meara, Jennifer. 2022. Women's Voices in Digital Media: The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Summers, Sam. 2019. “Adapting a Retro Comic Aesthetic with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Adaptation 12, no. 2 (August): 190–194.