Five years ago, the machines took over.
After 13 months spent navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with breadmaking and sitcom binge-watching, people were ready — starved, even — for some new entertainment that wasn’t Tiger King. On April 30, 2021, Netflix delivered with an animated movie that seems shockingly prophetic just five years later.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines was directed by Mike Rianda (Gravity Falls) and co-directed by Jeff Rowe (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem). The pair also co-wrote the film, which focuses on a family in Michigan consisting of Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson), a quirky, tech-obsessed aspiring filmmaker who has just been accepted to a California film school; her old-school, outdoorsman father Rick (Danny McBride), who just doesn’t get her; her relentlessly positive mom Linda (Maya Rudolph); her dinosaur-obsessed little brother Aaron (Mike Rianda); and their lovable wall-eyed pug, Monchi.
As Katie is about to leave for film school, her flight is abruptly cancelled by her father, who insists on an impromptu cross-country family road trip as the perfect family bonding experience — especially for him and Katie, whose relationship is strained. Shortly into their travels, however, a vengeful AI decides to take over civilization and scoop up all of mankind into little pods. Now it’s up to the Mitchells (the only people not captured) to save humanity.
At the time of its release, The Mitchells vs. the Machines was a hit, with people praising its unique art style, sharp humor, and the fact that it was an original property in an era dominated by established IP. But most of all, it was praised for the true-to-life family dynamics of the Mitchells, especially the relationship between Katie and Rick.
“The family informed everything,” Rianda tells Polygon.
At the time, The Mitchells vs. the Machines struck a chord for how heartfelt it was, but five years later it’s more relevant than ever. If anything defines Katie as a character, it’s her creativity, and centering her in a movie about the dangers of AI seems more than a little allegorical for what’s going on in 2026 with AI threatening the jobs of so many artists. Which is why Polygon reached out to Rianda and Rowe to talk about the making of the film, the resonant dynamics of the Mitchell family and what extra meaning The Mitchells vs. the Machines might take on in 2026.
Meet The Mitchells
As much as The Mitchels vs. the Machines is about a tech-driven apocalypse, its emotional core is all about the Mitchell family, which was very much shaped by Rianda’s own family dynamics.
Mike Rianda: The family is very one-to-one. My dad looks exactly like Rick. He has that exact jacket. He was like, “The guys at the Elks Club are making fun of me. Why did you make him look so much like me?” He is also a nature-loving weirdo and used to take me on hunting trips while I would be drawing cartoons. Also, I wanted to go to art school and my father was very skeptical.
My mom is a manically-positive woman who is a wonderful mother. I was this creative weirdo, sort of a combination of Katie and Aaron. The part about Aaron calling people in the phone book and talking about dinosaurs, I would call the video game store, because I was a lonely child, and I would just try to chat with them about video games. My sister even had a pug named Monchi who I really loved.
But obviously, the movie was not made by just me. Jeff was a huge part of it. Guillermo Martinez, the head of story, was a huge part of it. Lindsey Olivares, the production designer, was a huge part of it. Then Chris Miller and Phil Lord, who produced it, we all brought our own family stuff to it. So it kind of became a gumbo of our families by the end.
It kind of became a gumbo of our families by the end.
The family informed everything. There are so many bad versions of this movie that are buried in the desert. There were versions of the movie that were too joke-focused and not sincere enough. It felt like, “If these people don’t care, why should we care?”
Jeff Rowe: We learned very quickly that, if the action sequences aren’t related to the family dynamic in some way, it’s just dramatically and emotionally inert. So we started to make every action sequence have a purpose for the characters. Like the chase in the middle of the film with Rick and Katie driving and being chased by robots: We could never make the scene work until we made it about him teaching her to drive stick shift. Then there was an observed, relatable dynamic to it, and it moved their relationship forward.
A unique animation style
The Mitchells vs. the Machines was animated by Sony Pictures ImageWorks, which also handled the Spider-Verse films, the first of which was in production alongside this film. While some of the technology used was informed by Spider-Verse’s breakthroughs, The Mitchells vs. the Machines has its own, more imperfect, design sense for its human characters. It also features mixed media, with 2D elements overlaying and complimenting the 3D animation.
Rianda: The look of The Mitchells vs. the Machines came from production designer Lindsey Olivares, who is this wonderful artist we found. Most people don’t want to be a production designer for an animated movie because it’s a big job and it takes a long time and it’s a lot of responsibility, but she kept having lunch with me and she was like, “Make me the production designer! I should be the production designer! I’m good!” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s true, but I don’t know. Should I get someone with more experience?” But the more she worked on the movie, the more I was like, “This movie, if it comes out right, will be ‘Lindsay Olivares, the movie.’”
Rowe: The mixed animation styles also came from Lindsay, who would just draw these little things — we called it “Katie-Vision” — and then we were like, “Can we put this in the film?” I think everyone [at ImageWorks] was like, “No, it’s too costly” and there were technical barriers. The deal we came up with was, “Well, what if Lindsay just draws on top of all of the frames? Then would you take it? ” They were like, “Yeah, but surely no one’s going to do that.” Then she just did it. She just drew on top of everything through sheer force of will.
The robots have ray tracing with really dynamic, sexy lighting
Rianda: Thematically, the movie is about these imperfect people fighting these perfect robots, and these imperfections end up helping them and saving the day. So we wanted the characters to look really scraggly and human. We were trying to push them to look hand drawn, like they’re drawn out of a girl’s notebook or something, whereas the robots have ray tracing with really dynamic, sexy lighting. We were pushing the contrast of the imperfect human family and these perfect robots and butting those two things up next to each other, which created this really interesting contrast.
Rowe: At the same time we were making Mitchells, the original Into the Spider-Verse was happening upstairs at Sony Pictures Imageworks, so we were able to go upstairs and see the things that they were doing and the tools they had available. While it wasn’t out yet, there was enough internal confidence within the studio that they were on the cusp of doing something revolutionary. Because of that, I think there was a much warmer reception to our unorthodox look.
How the pandemic helped the movie
Originally, The Mitchells vs. the Machines was slated for a theatrical release directly from Sony in 2020, but with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was taken off the studio’s schedule. The film was eventually purchased by Netflix, which gave it a very limited, one-week theatrical release on April 23, 2021, followed by a streaming release a week later.
Rianda: Listen, I obviously would have loved for the movie to come out in theaters, but COVID, for being such a horrible thing for the world, helped the movie in two small ways. First, it just gave us more time. I actually do think the movie got better because we had a little bit of extra cushion.
And with the release of it, I actually think it was a good thing because none of us wanted the movie sitting on the shelf. We didn’t know when that thing was going to end. We didn’t know whether movie theaters were going to reopen and we were all like, “Well, we’d rather have people see it than not.”
Rowe: I mean, it hurt us personally in that we didn’t get to have a premiere or a release or even a wrap party. But honestly, I think it was the best thing for the film because everybody was at home. There weren’t a lot of things coming out, then the film dropped and everybody was able to watch it. It was not the release that we had imagined or hoped for, but I’m grateful that we were able to help entertain people during one of the most difficult times in recent human history.
Rise of the machines
Five years later, while the family dynamics of the film remain resonant, the plotline of an AI takeover of humanity has become even more relevant.
Rianda: I joke that, yes, it’s a movie for families, but truly it’s a way for me to get my anti-AI screed out to both the families and children of America. AI is a humanity-deadening, soul-crushing force.
If we lived in a just world, AI could maybe be used to do something about climate change and cancer and all the real issues that plague humanity. But for some reason, they’ve honed in on using it as a plagiarism machine to harm working artists, which I take extra exception to.
I am so vigorously anti-AI that I overturn those delivery carts that are going around LA. I actually called my dad about it because, like I said, he’s this hunter and I never really got hunting, but I was recently on my bike and I was riding around, overturning them, and I was like, “This must be what hunting is like!” I called him and I was like, “Dad, I’m overturning these little carts that deliver food to people and I feel like I’m close to you because I feel like I’m hunting!” And he’s like, “Are you drunk? This is insane! There’s people’s food in there! What are you doing?”
