The Unsung Hero of The Mitchells vs.The Machines
*Spoilers Ahead*
A few nights into a recent heatwave that my city of Minneapolis experienced, my family and I sequestered ourselves to the basement for popcorn and watermelon, with a side of box fans, to watch The Mitchells vs. the Machines. We all enjoyed it, which is saying a lot, because my youngest didn’t even make it through Paddington last month because it was “too scary” when the blundering bear inevitably got scolded. But this month, while we all laughed our way through the robots’ confusion over categorizing the family’s pug dog and the various misadventures the Mitchells faced while fighting off a global robot takeover, I found myself thinking about the movie’s deeper themes days later.
The main storyline of the movie centers around Dad Rick Mitchell and his daughter Katie’s struggling relationship (and you know, the robot attack), but the character I found myself thinking about as I did the dishes the next day was the Mom of the family: Linda Mitchell.
Throughout the movie, she is depicted as the quintessential first grade-teacher type - all soft-voiced kindness and heart-shaped earrings. She is the family’s peacemaker, and we see her going as far as writing teleprompt cards for her husband as he stumbles like a newborn giraffe through an apology to Katie. We watch as she seeks out her daughter in the quiet moments, telling Katie with utter sincerity that she believes in who she is.
Linda Mitchell personifies the idea that the peacemakers will inherit the earth, and we saw her, time and again, sow seeds of peace as an act of courage and compassion. As I watched her remain calm through the tumult of her family dynamics, I felt a familiar guilt creep into my conscience. A mother myself, I wish I was more Linda Mitchell, but I find myself relating to my family more like Rick Mitchell instead — with his good intentions gone awry and with his flat-out lack of relational insight, compassion, and gentleness in some moments.
As we neared the climax of the movie, I began to inwardly resolve to channel my inner Linda Mitchell (or you know, my inner Holy Spirit) as I began to think about parenting the kids through their bedtime routine once the movie ended. I anticipated the resolution of Katie and Rick’s relationship, subtly restored due in no small part to the peacemaking work of Linda Mitchell, right alongside the restoration of the world gone robot-wrong.
But then — a surprise.
During the final conflict between the Mitchells and the machines, there comes a moment when the kids are separated from their parents, and we watch the robots zooming to capture the kids and imprison them.
And what do we see next? Linda Mitchell.
She creates a diversion, putting herself between her children and their would-be captors, sacrificing herself, only to find herself imprisoned in their place while they are able to escape. In that moment, she embodies Good News, arms outstretched to protect her children from danger like Jesus on the cross, and she displays a strength that had lain hidden beneath her purple t-shirt embroidered with hearts and flowers.
Her character development does not stop there. Minutes later in the fim, after she’s broken out of her cell, she channels the strength of one thousand mothers lifting one thousand cars off of one thousand babies, and she breaks free from her robot captor when she sees her youngest child about to be attacked again. She yells:
“I am Linda Mitchell, Mother of two. Look upon me in fear!”
She then proceeds to embody a combination of Bruce Lee and William Wallace, taking out any robot in her path with her swinging purple purse. We see her glasses splattered with robot blood as she pulls out the heart of one robot.
And in that moment, relief flooded me. I am not a natural-born peacemaker. I have tended towards rightness and fairness from the day of my birth, and I have a proclivity towards arguing and defending myself before I ever think to concede and apologize. Linda Mitchell and her teleprompter cards of peace are worth striving towards, and I seek to grow that in myself every day. But I felt seen and known as a mother when Linda Mitchell, fueled by her love for her children, turned rogue warrior. I felt the freedom to be my full self as a mother through Linda’s valiant efforts to save her children and restore order; I saw a beautiful example of mothering that was strong as well as soft.
I saw Linda Mitchell as the true hero of the movie, a character so stable that she could use both compassion and extreme force to cultivate restoration - both within her family and for the salvation of the world. She portrays such a rich picture of Jesus - who both looked through the chaos of the crowd to compassionately connect with the woman who’d quietly touched his hem and who also sent dove cages crashing to the ground in an effort to right the wrong he saw being done to his children, being done to the Truth, in the temple corridors. In Linda Mitchell, we find permission to operate within the broad spectrum of love, from tenacious to tender, as we seek to establish restoration within our families and within the world at large, robot attack or not.
