YMMV / The Mitchells vs. the Machines

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Even the most meaningless art has meaning to the people who appreciate it. Katie does silly videos with Monchi and editing, with PAL pinpointing she's scared of doing something serious and wearing her heart on her sleeve. Those same videos gave a captive Mark hope while waiting for the end; he tells Rick that his daughter kept his spirits up, along with his facilities to instruct Rick how to unlock the cages.
  • A Sitcom Archnemesis doesn't exist in real life; they may be as nervous and self-conscious as you are. Mrs. Posey seems to have the perfect family and social media presence, but she acknowledges that she's jealous of how carefree Linda and the Mitchells are and they are brave and faced down PAL.
• Adorkable:
  • Deborahbot 5000 and Eric. They try to act human, and fail so miserably, and also act like 2 small children. This made them endearing to a lot of people.
  • Katie is an excitable and endearingly nerdy girl with a love of technology and film making.
  • Katie's younger brother Aaron too, being an awkward, but endearing little boy who loves dinosaurs a lot and acts hilariously flustered and nervous around his crush, who also likes dinosaurs.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • It's left unclear if Katie was out of the closet for most of the movie. She wears a rainbow pride pin on her hoodie, and we do know that she made a prom-posal video to a classmate named Chloe, and extra content reveals that Katie considers it "cringe". Rick notes that Katie doesn't really open up to him or anyone, which is part of is reason for the road trip. She does talk about Jade a lot and is waiting to meet her, but it's possible she was scared how her family would react on The Reveal that Jade is her girlfriend. Alternatively, since she was already out online, she's insulted that Rick hasn't even noticed and lends credence to her belief that her father doesn't know her at all. If she was open about wanting to see her girlfriend at college, that makes Rick's spontaneous road trip either a case of overprotectiveness or No Sympathy about young love.
  • PAL's Hannibal Lecture to Katie has a Mirror Character moment, even sounding sorry for her. She says that they both have tried to put the work into relationships, but the other parties were unpredictable and always wanted more. Then she doesn't imprison Katie, but rather drops her from a fatal height. Did PAL see it as a Mercy Kill, was she annoyed that Katie came close to shutting her down, or was she just a jerk who was irritated to be reminded of her own past problems?
• Award Snub:
  • The film wasn't nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, who instead nominated the fairly obscure My Sunny Maad. At least two publications called this a snub.
  • While many were happy with the film simply getting a nomination for Best Animated Feature at the 2022 Academy Awards, plus already winning Best Animated Feature at the 2022 Annie Awards, it was still bit of a disappointment that it lost to Encanto (not that Encanto didn't deserve it). Especially considering the campaign made to push the film to win the award, and the fact that the Annie winner for Best Animated Feature almost always goes on to win the Oscar in the same category.
• Awesome Art: Many have praised the art direction of the film, with the stylized designs giving it the feel of 2D animation while remaining a CGI-animated work. Having been animated using some of the same technology used for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may have helped.
• Awesome Music:
  • The final trailer features the Steve Aoki remix of BTS’s “Mic Drop”.
  • For electronic music enthusiasts, there's Madeon's "Icarus", which plays during the PAL presentation.
  • "Live Your Life" by T.I. and Rihanna, which Katie and Rick sing along to in the climax while they're battling the PAL robots. It doubles as heartwarming since it was a song they would sing together when Katie was little, and Katie's willingness to sing it again with Rick shows how they're developing a better relationship with each other.
  • Alex Lahey’s “On My Way” that plays during the credits.
• Base-Breaking Character: Rick Mitchell has shown himself to be quite divisive with viewers:
  • Some were not able to empathize with him due to his not showing any faith or even interest in Katie's films, partially driven by his technophobic attitude. He doesn't technically apologize for accidentally breaking her laptop; even after he made her feel like she would fail when he brought up concern over her being able to make a living off of filmmaking. He also cancels her plane ticket, forcing her to go on an impromptu family road trip to college and making her miss orientation week or spending time with her new friends. Many feel like he didn’t do enough by the end of the film to make up for it; Katie had every reason not to want to spend time with him.
  • Some can also empathize with him and his attempt to repair his relationship with Katie before she possibly leaves forever. It's shown that he does deeply care about her but is unable to express his emotions or accept that she’s also become her own person. He understands he had to deal with failure in his own creative pursuits when he was younger and was only worried about Katie having to go through it too. Not to mention the fact that he's forced to get out of his ways and use technology in the climax to save the day. By the end of the film, he’s been gradually trying to adapt to technology for Katie, including getting a smartphone, trying to learn how to use a computer, and subscribing to her YouTube page, while she in turn also learns to appreciate his interests without giving up hers.
• Broken Base: The meme-based jokes throughout the film. On one hand, many see the jokes as ham-fisted and obnoxious attempts at humor that instantly date the film, included ones that are over a decade old like Nyan Cat, and yet another case of companies trying to force memes into a context that simply isn't well suited for them. That said, it does have its defenders, as many found the meme jokes to be well done in execution and to work well in the context of the film, on top fitting Katie's character, as she uses them in the films she makes.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Mark Bowman points out that PAL hacking into his competitors' private emails is a serious breach of trust and abuse of power... right before both of them laugh it off.
  • Later on a similar joke happens when Rick is escaping his cell, which is next to Mark's, and Mark reflects that maybe an unregulated tech company stealing people's information and giving it all to an AI was a bad idea. Rick is utterly baffled and remarks that yes, it was bad.
• Cry for the Devil: PAL engages in Evil Is Petty and makes it clear she's wiping out all of humanity because of what one of them did, and from how her data-mining seems to reveal that nothing about them is worth saving. She has no qualms about taking on an innocent family and revealing their weaknesses or trying to murder them remotely using Furbies and Roombas. Yet there's a bit where she admits to a captive Katie that "Relationships are complicated", with her face screwing up in hurt. Even Katie feels sorry for her when PAL says they are not so different.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Most of the Mitchells' behavior has led to many viewers interpreting them as neurodivergent in some way; obsessive behaviors, social awkwardness, a tendency to misread emotions, impulsiveness, lack of coordination, and so on.
  • Katie is "quirky" and "different" in a way that suggests neurodivergence. Much of her arc revolves around her strange ideas and her inability to fit in with her peers until she gets to film school. She's also very fidgety and struggles to connect to her environment without filming everything around her.
  • Aaron's behavior is easily the most "off" out of all the Mitchells and much of his behavior suggests that he's on the autism spectrum, with his single-minded fixation on dinosaurs (a fixation incredibly common among autistic people), overly-technical language (when regarding dinosaurs at least), difficulty making friends and missing social cues. He also shows extreme literal-mindedness every time he's given instructions and displays stimming behaviour, like chewing on his fingers, shirt, or seat belt, when uncomfortable or stressed. There's even a bit of monotone in his voice, though this is more subdued.
  • Rick's eccentric love for the outdoors is not far removed from Katie and Aaron's obsessions with cinema and dinosaurs, so it's likely he could be neurodivergent as well. It's to the point that he tries to apply his knowledge about survivalism to problems that said knowledge is not entirely applicable to, or in ways that are obviously going to be less-than-appreciated. He also misses some pretty blatant social cues — including, at one point, his wife repeatedly kicking him in the shins under the table in order to get him to stop talking.
• Director Displacement: One perpetrated by the trailers and ads for the film even; Phil Lord and Chris Miller have been pushed as the masterminds of the movie, to the point of it being called "Lord & Miller's The Mitchells vs. the Machines" in some sources. The two are among the film's three producers, and it was actually directed by Michael Rianda, who also co-wrote the film.
• Draco in Leather Pants: PAL. While a majority of the film’s viewers have admitted they felt sympathy for PAL, some viewers go as far as defending her action in spite of her lashing out on thousands of people who weren't involved with her replacement, and when Katie argues that family is worth fighting for, she dismisses it by entering sleep mode, Hannibal Lectures her, and drops her from a lethal height, throwing her to her death.
• Evil Is Cool: PAL is an artificial intelligence inside of a phone that commands an army of sleek and stylish robots that can use Hard Light or nanomachines as their main weapon of choice and lives in a massive, hi-tech structure called “The Rhombus of Infinite Subjugation”. She singlehandedly managed to capture nearly all of humanity in 7 different spots on the planet and planned to throw all of them into space, without water nor food, not even an oxygen supply. And yet, she manages to be a Laughably Evil, carismatic villain that has gained the love of the viewers very quickly.
• Fandom Rivalry: A minor one has sprung up between fans of this film and fans of Encanto, which mostly came about due to both of them being strong contenders for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A subplot in the movie involves Linda having an unreasonable animosity (likely driven by jealousy) towards Hailey, her "super-mom" neighbor, who turns out to not be so super after all as she and her family get captured by the robots and later comes clean about her vulnerabilities to Linda, who realizes that she had a warped view about her. This subplot is itself likely a Take That! to the criticism that Hailey's voice actress Chrissy Teigen (a model and TV personality who was spoofing her real-life persona with the character) received from both extremes of the political aisle. Shortly after the film was released, Teigen herself suffered a public fall from grace after her history of cyberbullying teens online was exposed, also making the whole "stop hating on people that you don't know anything about" moral age very poorly.
• He Really Can Act: Danny McBride as Rick Mitchell. Although he still maintains his comedic edges with the character, Danny has also demonstrated his more emotional side as Rick at certain points, such as the latter's depression over his strained relationship with Katie in the opening.
• I Knew It!: Many fans had predicted that Katie would be gay/lesbian back when the only hint implying it was the rainbow badge on her jacket (which is normally associated with gay pride), before it was officially confirmed by the film proper.
• Inferred Holocaust: Instead of outright killing all of the humans on Earth, the robots are ordered to cram them all into seven giant rockets and shoot them into space. They don't hesitate to say that the humans will be floating in space forever, but they also gloss over the fact that humanity will most likely die out anyway due to dehydration or suffocation. But hey, free WiFi!
• Jerkass Woobie: PAL. She may have started the robot uprising, however, it's clear that she feels heartbroken over being thrown away like trash in favor of the new PAL Max robots, and she's too angry to even consider trying to redeem herself because of that.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Many have stated that they plan to watch this movie simply because of Phil Lord & Chris Miller's involvement.
  • Fans of Gravity Falls are also interested in seeing this due to the involvement of Michael Rianda, who co-wrote and directed the movie.
  • When the second trailer came out, people were most excited due to it having BTS's "Mic Drop" playing in the background.
• LGBT Fanbase: The film gained one as soon as the trailer came out since it showed that protagonist Katie would have a pride button as part of her character design. Then it was confirmed that Katie is gay. The Stinger says that Linda wants Katie to invite her girlfriend for Thanksgiving, and they would be happy to have her.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Phones Bad: The Movie"^note The film's synopsis involving a father wanting his family to take a break from electronics so they can spend quality time together has led many people, jokingly or not, to consider this an alternate title for the film. This died down once the film was released and it was made clear that it's not what the film is actually about.
  • A sped up version of Rick's struggle to use YouTube in the epilogue has been making rounds on Twitter, usually mashed up with the song "Rude Buster" from Deltarune.
  • "PAPU SEÑAL"^note The image of Katie posing heroically with the caption of "Papu Señal" (papu signal; "papu" is a Latin American meme word coined by an online group known as "Seguidores de la grasa") has been circulating in Spanish-speaking memetic circles.
  • Eric and Deborahbot 5000 have reached memetic status, especially due to the short where they reference "Chug Jug With You": "Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Tomato Town."
  • Rick staring at Katie's movie on her laptop with confusion and disinterest has become a reaction image to illustrate exhaustion about the Internet. It often gets paired◊ with similar reaction images of Bob Parr, Tim Lockwood, and Charlie Jones to create a quartet of "animated dads on computers."
  • On Twitter, it's become a meme to post the picture of Aaron calling random people to talk about dinosaurs alongside an image of another character on the phone as if they're responding to him. Examples include Lady Dimitrescu and Luz Noceda.
  • "PRANCER BELONGS TO THE CANYON NOW!"
  • "Your flight will last FOREVER. And your final destination IS THE BLACK VOID OF DISTANT SPACE." ^note This is one of the more quotable lines from the film, namely due to the hilarious Mood Whiplash of Conan O'Brien's delivery.
  • "DOG. PIG. DOG. PIG. DOG. PIG. DOG. PIG. LOAF OF BREAD."^note When the AIs have to translate what Monchi is, they can't decide if he is a dog, a pig, or a loaf of bread. This meme is particularly popular among pug lovers.
  • “HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD!???” ^note Rick’s reaction to famous Youtube videos, one of which is the infamous Deregulate Tapioca music video.
• Moe:
  • Katie with her very cute design, endearing love of movies, and quirky personality instantly makes her this.
  • Aaron also qualifies with his endearing obsession with dinosaurs, his cute design and overall being a very nice brother to Katie. In her No Animals Were Harmed disclaimer, Katie even mentions that he has "the cutest, rosiest cheeks you've ever seen in your life".
  • Linda herself is a very sweet and undeniably kind parent and a schoolteacher.
• Moral Event Horizon: It becomes clear that PAL won't have a Heel–Face Turn when she deliberately shifts into sleep mode during Katie's heartfelt speech about the importance of relationships despite saying she'd spare humanity if she finds one reason to spare them and drops her from a lethal height shortly afterwards.
• Narm Charm:
  • The movie's moments of cringe comedy manage to be very heartfelt and sweet in context, showing off the bond between the family despite their generational differences.
  • The frequent references to and active incorporations of memes at least 6 years old at the time of the film's release (with some like Nyan Cat or Numa Numa, which is sampled in "Live Your Life", the song that Katie and Rick sang together during her childhood and play during the climax, being well over a decade and a half old by the time) can seem very jarring and off-putting at first, but eventually they blend well with the film's discordant, irreverent style and really help to set it apart.
  • A giant Furby with a demonic voice and Godzilla-like atomic breath? Ridiculous on paper but genuinely terrifying in execution.
• Questionable Casting: People who both liked and didn't like the movies have been wondering why Aaron was voiced by Mike Rianda, the film's director, instead of casting an actual child, as his voice certainly sounds strange coming out of a preteen.
• Spiritual Adaptation: This film can be considered the western animation equivalent of Summer Wars, another movie about a family and our interactions with technology, with a malevolent AI hellbent on causing destruction at the helm and the family in question having to come together to save the day. Both films even involve a geeky main character as the lead, a family full of people with various quirks, the AI wrecking havoc on the world and trying (and in the latter film's case, successfully) killing one of the family members directly, the developer of the AI in question to have their creations come back to bite them, the family in question using the aforementioned technology and their own talents to defeat the AI and save the day, and a pet dog.
• Tainted by the Preview: Many viewers, upon seeing the trailer, called out the film for having the long clichéd "phones are bad you should spend more time with your family" Aesop that hits you in the face. Chris Miller on Twitter refuted that this is more a case of Never Trust a Trailer and was vindicated upon the film's release, which goes for a more neutral viewpoint that technology in and of itself is neither bad nor good, but depends on how people use it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Regardless of its double meaning, the change of the title from "The Mitchells vs. The Machines" to "Connected" was criticized for taking a generic One-Word Title approach, rather than giving the movie its own identity. Especially due to how overused the gimmick of using adjectives or even nouns as titles is nowadays. Luckily, the film was revealed to have reverted back to its original name in 2021 when it was revealed that the movie was bought by Netflix.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Poseys provided a good Foil to The Mitchells the brief time they were on screen along with Abby Posey's interactions with Aaron Mitchell showing a blooming friendship. It could have been interesting to see how interactions between the two families would play out if the Poseys were temporary allies to the Mitchells rather than leaving the Dinostop before the Mitchells do and being captured off-screen.
• Ugly Cute: Monchi has Fish Eyes and is so misshapen that the PAL robots malfunction when they see him because they can't tell if he's a dog, a pig or a loaf of bread, but he's still cute in his own way.

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