THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES. A Call For Balance

Eccentric, dinosaur-obsessed Aaron in his school years. Loving and sensitive mother Linda. Old-fashioned father Rick, overwhelmed by the changing times. Modern Katie, glued to her phone and taking part in the admissions process for a prestigious film school in Los Angeles. Meet the Mitchell family. Blood ties are one thing, but everyone is starting to drift apart. Each failed attempt to connect with his daughter leaves Rick feeling more helpless and discouraged. Katie’s patience is running thinner by the day. The girl dreams of escaping to college and starting a new chapter in her life. The relationship between these two will dictate the pace and dynamics of Michael Rianda’s animation The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

The ongoing global machine uprising will also play a major role in this story about a family in crisis. Artificial intelligence slips out of human control and swiftly implements a plan to send the entire human race far into outer space. Hundreds of thousands of robots emerge from factories, their goal being to capture every person they encounter. It’s only when the apocalypse starts to peek over the horizon that the Mitchells begin to find common ground. Conversation brings people together, of course — but a shared enemy does it even more effectively. Extreme circumstances will test everyone, force honest confessions, rearrange their value systems, or provoke subtle changes in character. Sometimes, that’s enough.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines brings many contemporary social flaws to the surface. Conversations via all kinds of messaging apps are far livelier than the ones held at the dinner table. Online events beat a walk in the woods. Constant phone notifications disrupt concentration. Dull reality stands no chance against the visually dazzling virtual world. For the older generation, winning the attention of the young is increasingly difficult. Teenagers, meanwhile, make no effort to satisfy their parents’ curiosity.

Rianda’s film matches its thematic concerns with a distinctive aesthetic. The characters’ reactions are embellished with floating emojis, hearts, stars, exclamation marks, and rainbows. Instagram filters help set the mood, YouTube clips are a natural part of everyday life, and Wi-Fi seems more essential than air. The vivid visual layer is meant to evoke the look of yet another smartphone window — the kind we half-glance at even while watching a movie. That’s the world we live in.

All of this creates a sense of formal chaos, overload, and exaggeration. But it steers The Mitchells vs. the Machines toward satire and justifies its mocking tone and absurdity. A great example is the mall sequence, in which the Mitchells must fend off an assault of canned goods from vending machines, step carefully to avoid a menacing Roomba, or escape being swallowed by sinister washing machines and refrigerators.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines is basically Terminator rewritten as a family film — just like the famous predecessor, it warns about the technological race, draws on similar motifs, and describes the same phenomena. Rianda’s movie may also evoke the second half of Pixar’s Wall-E, where humans become childish, surrounded by apps and multifunctional gadgets.

Each new piece of software frees us from responsibilities (cleaning) and strips us of skills (memory). Another comparison might be Ralph Breaks the Internet, which similarly overwhelmed viewers with an excess of symbols and the depth of the virtual world. Michael Rianda thus joins the ranks of technoskeptics. His animation is reactive in nature — a call for moderation, reason, and balance.