Chicken Run

On this unlocked Matreon episode, Jamie and Caitlin cluck about Chicken Run! Check out the screening of Chicken Run that we're presenting at American Cinemateque's Friend of the Fest in Los Angeles on August 25 -- tickets at linktr.ee/bechdelcast and here's the article in Film School Rejects by Brianna Zigler that we reference -- https://filmschoolrejects.com/revolutionary-spirit-of-chicken-run/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdecast, the questions ask if movies have women
and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy. Zeph and
Beast start changing with the Bechdel cast. Cluck cluck, full
clutch cluck. Queen, how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm doing so great? How are you.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Never been worse? And I cannot overemphasize that. But today
we are here to release I think kind of a
banger episode. Oh yeah, we're unlocking an episode from our
Patreon aka Matreon. If you enjoyed this episode, you should
obviously be subscribing. It's five bucks a month and it'll

(00:46):
give you access to over one hundred and fifty episodes,
plus new ones every month with Caitlin and myself. But
it's Chicken Run Week. It's Chicken Run Week.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yes it is.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Oh, you didn't think it was Chicken Run Week.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well it is.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Well it is.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Take that and there's a reason.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
There's a method, Yes there is.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
So this is an episode that we originally released on
the Matreon in February twenty twenty one as a part
of a theme that we didn't have a good title for.
But the theme itself was I think pretty solid, which
was movies with animals in the title, because we did
Chicken Run and Coyote Ugly, Yes, which has nothing to

(01:23):
do with animals.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, and two movies that are really like, couldn't be
less in conversation with one another, true, but two fun
episodes to do and Chicken Run I mean an all
timer movie film. There has since been a sequel released
on Netflix that I have not watched yet, what about yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I just watched it yesterday.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
My niece loves it and she's four, So there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
It was fun, I would say, not as good as
Chicken Run the original high bar kind of nothing, hy
Barticlear exactly. Anyway, you released this episode like three and
a half years ago, so if you hear some references
that feel a bit dated, that's why. If you're like,
why are they bringing up the sonic the Hedgehog movie?

(02:12):
Why are they talking about pandemic stimulus checks as if
it just happened, Well, that's wild.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
I guess what. We weren't even vaccinated. Like, really, take
yourself back there. We were in the thick of it,
and we're in the thick of it now. But it's
in a different way. The reason we're doing this is
if you're in the Los Angeles area, you're in freaking
luck because we are hosting a screening of Chicken Run
at the Low's feel As three with American Cinematech on

(02:40):
August twenty fifth. We're so pumped. We technically hosted as
screening with them last year, but neither of us could
go this year. Things are a little different because you
had COVID last year. I have COVID right now, so
I'm not gonna have it in three weeks. So yeah,
we'll be there.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
We'll be there presenting Chicken Run. Yes, this is part
of American Semitech's Friend of the Fest podcast festival, where
they have podcast hosts introduce one of their favorite films,
and we have the honor of presenting Chicken Run. And
we're like, hey, what better way to promote that screening

(03:20):
than to unlock our Matreon episode on Chicken Run. And
that's what we're doing right now. A men, Now, if
this is your first episode of the Bechdel Cast or
you know, you don't really know who we are and
what we are, we well, first of all, my name's
Caitlin Deronte.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
My name is Jamie loftus.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
This is our podcast where we examine movies through an
intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test as a jumping
off point. But Jamie, what's that well?

Speaker 1 (03:51):
The Bechdel Test is a media metric originally created by
queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace Test
because it was co created with Alison Bechdel's good friend
Liz Wallace. This test was created as a joke, a
bit a lark an idea, a passing fancy by Alison

(04:12):
Bechdel for her iconic comic Iconic Comic Likes to Watch
Out for Great Comic. She's basically commenting on how infrequently
women talk to each other in a queer context originally,
but the way it's been adapted for the mainstream is
that it's looking at how infrequently people of marginalized genders

(04:34):
are allowed to speak about not men. So there's a
lot of versions of the test. The test we use
is this, two characters of a marginalized gender with names
must speak to each other for more than two lines
of dialogue about a character who is not a man,
and I honestly forget with Chicken Run. I honestly forget

(04:56):
you're gonna have to consult with us three and a
half years ago because they they know.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, well, if you want me to spoil it for
you right now, they definitely pass the Bechdel test.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
I mean it is mostly about Yeah, this is a
chicken matriarchy in any case, that is what we're releasing.
And if you are in the LA area, we would love, love,
love for you to join us on Sunday, August twenty fifth,
at four pm. We're going to put the link in
the description of this episode. We're also going to be
plugging the hell out of it on social media, and

(05:29):
please join us.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's eighty four minutes long, and it's been eighty four
minutes minutes and I can still smell the chicken chickens.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yep, I can still smell the chickens.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
The chickens had never been used.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Which is the whole point, Which is the whole point
of Chicken Run, which is the whole point. They're trying
to escape with their lives exactly. Yeah, just a perfect movie.
We would love to watch it with you. I you know,
I want to dress up like a chicken. There I
said it. I want to dress up like a chicken
do it. I don't know, like I've never really made
I believe in myself that I can make this happen.

(06:06):
I don't know what that's gonna look like, but you
should come and see see if we pulled it off.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yes, definitely, so yeah, grab tickets for that. You can
also find the tickets on our link tree link Tree
slash Bechtel Cast and Yeah, we are so excited to
present this movie and we hope to see you there.
And in the meantime, enjoy this unlocked Matreon episode of
Chicken Run. Jamie, what's your relationship with Chicken Run?

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Chicken Run's one of my favorite movies ever. I love
Chicken Run. I remember seeing it in theaters with my
family and being like, wow, look at this chickens run
and not really understanding you know, feminism, patriarchal structures or
or you know, workers live, and yet Chicken Run really hit.

(07:03):
I loved it. I thought. I remember being scared when
they go into the Chicken Machine. It was like for
me right up there with Toy Story three, where it's like,
oh my god, these adorable characters are entering a doom
machine and I'm so scared. I just love I just
love Chicken Run, and I watch it probably about once

(07:23):
a year for fun, depending on whether it's streaming places.
I just watched it a couple months ago because I
remember texting you about it, like fairly recently, and then
you came up with this brilliant theme, You're welcome, and
here we are back at Chicken Run, and yeah, I think,
I mean, there are elements of it that don't hold

(07:44):
up for me, but I think by and large as
a movie, as a product, as a story, as a romp,
as a romp, I mean, I think it holds up
extraordinarily well. And I still love it. And I tweeted
about loving today, and then you get five trillion people
be like, but what about mel Gibson? As Like, I

(08:05):
am aware that mel Gibson is in this movie. We
will talk about it, but I'm not gonna let mel
Gibson take away Chicken Run from me. I really love
this movie and fuck mel Gibson. Two things can be true.
What's your history with Chicken Run?

Speaker 2 (08:24):
I haven't seen it as often as you, but I
too love this movie. I saw it when it first
came out in two thousand. I think I saw it
like a couple times. I think that was my first
introduction to that type of like stop motion from that
studio specifically, because I don't think I saw anything Wallace
and Grammt until after this.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, I think that I didn't see any Wallace and
Grammat until unless they I don't think they showed the
short and I don't think I saw it until like
Curse of the were Rabbit, and then I went back
and saw the short cartoons. Right, everything from this studio
is so fucking beautiful, Like all of the Arden and
Studios stuff is just like incredible.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, And I always get so I get and people
might drag me for this, but I get this studio's
content sometimes confused with Laika content.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Oh, I mean they also do could blame you thank
you so much ascept a bully. Yeah no, I mean
like the because Leika is like Coraline and shit like that.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Right, Yeah, but like similar, like especially with what did
I see recently missing Link that came out like twenty
nineteen or something. Yes, I was like, oh, this is
probably the same studio as Chicken Run. And then I
was like, oh wait, no it's the other one.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
So looks very similar yeah, Thelika movies do like quiet,
and I feel like there's a lot of like they're
also all very British, yes, and so I feel like
it's also the tone to the movies, or I'm sure
that there is some overlap app creatively, but they're like, yeah,
they're very British stop motion movies. If anyone's if anyone
bullies you about that, launch me out of the chicken

(10:09):
what is it the catapult? Yeah, the chicken catapults.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
I'll attack them more like the chicken polt.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Oh god, the sheer resourcefulness of these brilliant chickens.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
I know. Oh, I can't wait to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
There's so much to talk about. Even in it's the
areas where it is not amazing, there's still a lot
to talk about, Like this movie. Now that I was
paying attention to the politics of the movie and not
just being like I love these chickens, which is usually
where I'm at when I'm watching Chicken Run. I'm eating
a plate of nachos and I'm like, these chickens are

(10:46):
so cool. But this is like this movie is like
if Animal Farm had gone right basically, yeah, like it's
animals like seizing the means of production. I have a
whole thing about it. But like they're seizing the means
of production, they are overthrowing the oppressive force. But there's
no like there's not enough infighting that the whole operation

(11:10):
gets sabotaged, like they liberate themselves. It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
It is beautiful. It's also what So we recently were
guests on the podcast Creature Feature talking about B Movie,
and I feel like this is what B Movie was
like maybe trying to do and then like utterly fumbling
and failing every step of the way.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah. B movie just ended up being like, Wow, capitalism
it's awesome. No, no, no, its it rocks. Although I
was thinking I was thinking about B Movie when Larry
King died, because I'm like, wow, what was his name?

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Me, Larry King?

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Be Larry King. That was like maybe his best maybe
his best work, his best credit, Yeah iconic. Yeah. No,
So Larry King's not in this although I wish he
was instead of Mel Gibson. Seriously, the Mel Gibson of
it all. It's so it fucking sucks that he's in
this movie, man, because other than that, it is like

(12:07):
such a fabulous.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Movie. At least we don't have to see Mel Gibson's face.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
It does make it easier to I mean, it's I
hate that he got paid to be in this amazing movie. Yeah,
at very least he's playing an evil fraud. But then
also he's forgiven at the end.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Oh, don't get me, Sack.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
There's a lot to be taught. I'm just like, you
know what, he should have just left and stayed gone.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
And stayed gone exactly.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
I don't know why, Like I thought, I really thought,
because I've been thinking so much about when we redid
Beauty and the Beast and we had that whole conversation
about like the burden of forgiveness on female characters, and
I didn't totally. I don't know. I just I'm never
paying super close attention to the plot points of Chicken Run.
And so I was like, she, Ginger comes so close

(12:58):
to like subverting that and being like, fuck you get
out of here, you coward, right, But then he shows
up and then she I'm like, Ginger, I mean, live
your life, don't let me tell you how to live, Ginger.
But like Ginger, I feel like we can just do better.
We can do better.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Ginger can do something.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
I'm not opposed to Ginger finding love, but like Rocky
really literally it sounds like my mom of just like
my mom's like, you're gonna go off with some guy
from Rhode Island, which is literally who Rocky is. He's
some guy from Rhode Island. True, Ginger, do not just
go off with some guy from Rhode Island. I mean

(13:39):
that whole thing. We'll get there, but.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yes, yeah, we'll get there. In the meantime, should we
recap it?

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yes, I'm sorry, I'm getting like so excited. I have
like a full glass of wine and I'm so excited
to talk about chicken run.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh my goodness, I love it. Uh, let's take a
quick break and then we'll come right back for the recap.
So the story is as follows. We open on a
chicken farm. The chickens are, they talk, and they're they're people,

(14:17):
But their chickens.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
The most horrifying thing. I mean not horrifying. I don't
know how the animation gets away with not being scary,
but giving a farmful of chickens full sets of human
teeth is such like a decision that it should look
scarier than it does, and I feel like it speaks
to the animation that that is not extremely because wasn't
that like the reason that they completely reanimated the sonic

(14:41):
the Hedgehog movie is because they're like, why does he
have human teeth?

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Oh? I thought it was because his like proportions were
all wrong.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Wait let me oh, hold on, Maybe it was a combination,
because that sounds right as well.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Because he was like, his like proportions were just like,
like his leg the length of his legs and arms
were just like really bizarre. And they were like, this
looks terrible.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
So we're both right and and I forgot how scary
the first sonic was. Yeah, so he both looked too
much like an animal and his proportions were like two
Uncanny Valley photorealistic, Like he just looks like a blue cat,
but he has like a full set of like Joe
Biden viniars, Pete Davis whatever, whoever, Walton Goggins vinyars like

(15:29):
mm hmm, just really scary stuff. For some reason, the
chickens and the roosters they're allowed to have full sets
of teeth. It doesn't bother me, Yeah, why not.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
I'll allow it. So one of the chickens, our hero Ginger,
is organizing a mass escape for her and all the
other chickens to basically do a prison break. And I
also read that when this movie was like being developed,
they were just like, let's do the Great Escape but
with chickens.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Which is like, holy shit, right, what a what a
wide swing?

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Why didn't I think of that? You know?

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
So we meet some of the other chickens. There's Babs,
who is always knitting. There is Mac who is the
brainy chicken in Stem.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
She's a chicken in Stem.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
A chicken in Stem, and you'd love to see it
at last, at long Last.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
She's also Scottish, which is constantly made a joke off,
and I'm like, I can't tell if this is offensive
or if I just don't live in the UK, but
she's very Scottish.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
She also wears glasses.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
She wears glasses exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yes, there's Bunty, who lays a lot of eggs. I
think that's kind of the main thing that we know.
She's very fertile, Yeah, very fertile, full bursting at the
seems with eggs. There's also an old rooster named Fowler
who's like a former military man and he's always carrying

(16:59):
the world War two, yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Or he says you did. He was actually just a chicken.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
He's just a chicken this whole time. Yeah, but he's
always caring on about his glory days.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
So Ginger is trying to escape and she gets caught
by mister Tweety, Mister Tweety's dogs and Missus Tweety.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Oh and iconic villains so scary. When I was a kid,
I was so scared of her. But I think, you know, Jen,
we'll have a more full discussion about her. But like
where older women are so often fully demonized, with Missus Tweety,
it's not because she's jealous of this. I think she's
very logically motivated and true. And I also think that

(17:42):
she is I forget where I thought this as I
was watching, and I'm like, you're reaching, Jamie. But then
I saw someone else wrote about it. I was like,
I think that she's supposed to be like low key
Margaret Thatcher. Oh, she styled kind of similarly. I think
she's supposed to be like rural Margaret Margaret Thatcher. That's
my working theory that at least I have their name

(18:04):
written down here, that at least one writer also thought.
But she's at least she is an She is like,
she looks kind of like an evil stepmother, but she
is a very highly motivated capitalist villain. Yeah, iconic, iconic, scary.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
And voiced by Miranda Richardson.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, too amazing.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
So Ginger gets caught and is thrown into solitary confinement,
and as soon as she's released, she plans another escape,
and another and another. We get a montage, each one
ending in her getting caught and put in solitary.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
They're all funny, Yes, I like when they dress up
like missus tweety and almost escape. Oh and then it's
just a dress full of chickens. Oh, I'm laughing.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
The visual comedy in this movie is outstanding genius.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
It's so good all Yeah, Like these chickens, they are
cracking me up eighty four minutes straight.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Even the scene where like they're trying to escape like
a trough they're like covering themselves up with it, and
then they flip over and all their legs are just
sort of flailing about. Like just the visual of their
legs is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, Like anytime they're on, the chickens are on like
stationary bicycles. I'm laughing like it just chickens are funny
and and they're also you know, maytriarchy seizing the means
of production, so they're also very inspirational. Here is it's true,
Oh dressful of chickens, Like, who's gonna no, I can't

(19:40):
write a joke that good dressful of chickens hilarious.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
So mister and missus Tweety this is an egg farm,
not a poultry farm yet, but they're keeping track of
the chicken's egg production, and if a chicken doesn't produce
enough eggs, the Tweeties chop that chicken's head, which we
see not like the gory details of it, but so
sad though, Like a chicken gets murdered within the first

(20:07):
ten minutes of the.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Movie talk about steaks, I mean, yeah, immediately that it's
life or death for the chickens because of what's her name?
Her name is Edwena Chicken Edwena at this on this view,
at least, I'm like, at least she didn't like it
would have been even because this is a g rated movie,

(20:29):
which is wild for how many times they almost knife
the chickens, right, But at least Edwena didn't. I was
worried that she was gonna go like, ah, like, but
it's just silent.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
You just hear like the thunk of an axe.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
I wonder if they're like if she clucks when she's beheaded,
it's PG or something. I don't know. That's too much.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Right, Oh my goodness. And also missus Tweety is sick
and tired of the farm's minuscule profits, and she sees
an ad to turn her egg farm into a gold
mine by producing chicken meat rather than chicken eggs. Meanwhile,
Ginger is trying to hatch a new plan to escape.

(21:14):
Get it hatch.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Ginger in these scenes reminds me of like every DSA
meeting I've ever been to, where there's like one highly
motivated person trying to get like fifty well meaning people
to pay attention to a good idea, and everyone's like, wait,
huh what huh. It's literally Ginger is a branch leader

(21:38):
of the DSA, and no one on the zoom call
is listening to.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Her exactly, so basically, she just keeps pitching ideas to
escape because her whole thing is she's not happy with
the expectation to lay eggs every day until she is
what is it plucked, roasted and turned into chicken dinner
or some some I forget the quote exactly.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Right, because it's like the Tweeties, even before they sell poultry.
Once you don't lay eggs, they will just eat you.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Correct. Yes, So she's not satisfied with this being her
fate and that's why she is longing to be free.
But the other chickens are like, well, you know what
if we don't try to escape because it never seems
to work.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Right, it's exhausting, I'm tired. And then that line where
Ginger is like, there's not just fences outside of the coop,
there's fences in your mind, and you're like, well, like exactly, Oh,
she's amazing.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
She's a what a speaker, truly, and yeah there's stuff
to talk about with the complacency of the other chicken.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
I love, it's literally it's just it's a Marxist tail.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Okay. So the other chickens are like, well, let's maybe
not escape. So Ginger is hopeless until a root stur
named Rocky this is mel Gibson boo yeah, flies into
their farm and Ginger gets the idea for the chickens
to escape by flying over the fence and out of
the farm, and she wants Rocky to teach them to fly,

(23:18):
but Rocky is not interested in that. But he cannot
leave because he broke his wing crash landing into the farm.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
And then there's a great scene where they have to
like negotiate of like what services he's going to provide,
because at first he's like, no, I'm not gonna help you.
He kind of reminds me of like Chicken Han Solo
a little bit where he's like, screw the collective. I'm
just a I'm just a guy, and I'm just a
horny guy wandering the earth, and screw you. And then she,

(23:49):
you know, she kind of she's got them. She's like,
I'm not just going to This is where I feel
like there's a really cool something set up that the
ending doesn't really follow through on of like she does
not have sympathy for him, just because he says that
she should like in to establish their relationship, which is
such a strong way to establish a relationship between like

(24:10):
in a kid's cartoon. Right. Oh, I just wish it
stayed that way, but I love that. I love that
first scene where he's like what, You're not gonna help
me because I'm cute and she's like, fuck you, right
to the guillotine, sir.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
And then I mean this is like, this is just
like a good screenwriting comment. But he's like, okay, fine,
I'll teach you everything I know, which he doesn't know
anything because spoiler alert, he doesn't know how to fly,
but he just like omits that, which is the same
thing he does to the two rats that we.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
See Timothy's more. Timothy's spall like, let this man play
not a rat for once in his life.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
He might as well have been playing scabberds. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Literally, I'm just like, this man is being typecast as
a literal rat, and that's not nice. He was a
really good mister Poe in Series of Unfortunate Events, which
I am. I think I am going to choose that
for my birthday this year on the Matreon ooh yeah,
but yeah, poor Timothy's ball when I was like, wait
a second, it can't be and I'm like, god damn it,

(25:13):
they're still making Timothy's Ball play a British rat. Maybe
this is how he got cast in Harry Potter.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Ye, this was before the first Harry Potter movie.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
That would be really yeah, because he doesn't even come
in till like the later movies, right, like the third
or fourth or something.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
The third one.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, so that would be really sad but also kind
of funny if they were like, well, you know he
can play a British rat, well, Timmy's ball weird.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah. So back on the farm, So some men show
up from the circus to collect Rocky the rooster, so
like he's a runaway from the circus. Ginger realizes this,
so she makes a deal with him that the chickens
will hide him if he teaches them to fly, and

(26:02):
he agrees.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Amazing negotiation by Ginger.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Incredible. Yes. Then the next day Rocky starts training the
chickens to fly by not doing anything related to flying,
and they don't seem to be making any progress because
chickens can't fly.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, it's kind of like evokes I think that these
movies were made too close together, but like it evoked
the be a Man sequence from Mulan for me of
just like an insecure man leading a group of soldiers
for a mission that they will fail at. I guess
that's where I was coming from.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Sure, Yeah, I mean a training montage is a training
montage is a training montage. You know they're I.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Guess I just don't watch many movies with trade. I
think these are the These are the only two movies
I've ever seen with a group training montage.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Oh my gosh. Really I have seen are.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Other movies with training montages that are like a big
group of people, because I'm like, I've seen movies with
training montages, but I just feel like these movies two
years apart. I think that's why I'm just like, uh
huh oh yeah. Insecure guy leads a group of soldiers
that don't really know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
I mean, just like any sports movie where like the
whole team is training, there's you know, dozens of those.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
I've seen, remember the Titans. I haven't seen many sports movies.
I think that's why I'm like, Wow, look at these
two iconic movies borrowing from each other, Mulan and Chicken Run.
There's no way, but that was what I thought.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Sure, Well, gotta watch more training montages.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
They're great, apparently, I guess.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Okay, so the chickens are trying to learn to fly,
no progress is being made, and then the equipment for
turning the farm into a poultry farm arrives and we're like, wow,
those steaks that we thought were all ready pretty high,
guess what even higher?

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Who Now they won't stop rising.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
They really won't. So some of the chickens, including Ginger,
are growing skeptical of Rocky because nothing seems to be happening.
She wants results, but he's also this like pompous, shitty
guy who's just like being dodgy about everything. Classic. Then
missus Tweety doubles their food rations to fatten the chickens

(28:28):
up so they produce more meat, which Ginger figures out
and tells the chickens, and then everyone is all sad
because they realize they're about to be murdered. And then Rocky,
to cheer everyone up, throws a party, right, and Ginger's like,
wait a minute, maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe
he's actually this good, nice guy after all, and his

(28:49):
wings seems to be better. So she's like, Okay, tomorrow
you can fly for us and show us how it's done,
and he's like, yeah, yeah, definitely, I can definitely sure
definitely do that. Uh huh huh.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
God, he's such a coward. I always, I always forget
that he never even like admits. There's no scene in
which he's like, Okay, I actually can't fly. At least
then he would have a shred.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Of like integrity.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, but he's just a total like weak coward.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
I mean, I'm it's nice, you know, for our purposes.
It's it's interesting that like Ginger figures out that he's
a fraud. She finds in the next scene, she finds
us the other half of the poster that basically says
he's a circus act. He can't really fly. So it's
good that she discovers that. But I'm like, this fucking
guy from Rhode Island is just lying, lying, lying, and

(29:45):
then he bails. He never even he never has to
face the music.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
It's he's there. There are like one or two moments
where it's clear that he's like trying to work up
the nerve to tell her, but then doesn't he You
might say he chickens out.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
He chickens out. He's the biggest chicken in the movie,
not just physically because he's pretty tall, but he's a cat.
He's a cowardly he's a chicken chicken. Yes, he bails,
he gets his little chicken bindle and he gets the
fuck out of there.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Also, does he ever apologize to her at the end? No,
he doesn't, didn't think so she there.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
There are a few elements of like very girl there.
For the most part, I feel like Ginger's character like
manages to skirt around late nineties girl power feminism, but
there's a few moments where it's like he never apologizes
and there's that classic I feel like this happens in
every Mary Kate Nashley movie where he calls her like

(30:48):
a diminutive thing. He's like dollphace, angel beak or whatever,
and then she goes, my name is Ginger, and it's
like that edit some if you said a sentence like that,
that that's feminism, And like there was a time where
I feel like there's that happens in like Disney's Hercules
as well, where it's like, at least with Ginger, she

(31:09):
genuinely is like I think, a really feminist iconic character. Yeah,
but I feel like sometimes that's a shorthand for men
writing quote unquote empowered female characters. It's like, that's not
my name, this is my name, and you're like that's
all we get.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
It's like, don't it happens in my name? Yeah, it
happens in Transformers with Megan Fox, where like her boyfriend
is like, come on, little bunny, and she's like, I
can't tell you how much I'm not your little bunny. Meanwhile,
she's like humping the hood of a car.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Don't ask me, don't ask me why. This is the
only thing I remember about New York minute starting Mary
Kate and Ashley. But that happens, for sure. I think
Dean from Gilmour Girls is like, hey, kid, and then
Mary Kate or Ashley is like, my name's not Kid, it's.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Mary Kay or Ashley.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
Whatever the fuck? Yeah, I'm Mary kay and or Ashley
and he's like, whoa. What you said back there really
made me think, like you're just like that. So that happens.
But at least other things happened in Chicken Run, you know. Sure,
But that whole thing that was like my little nineties
feminism Antenna went up when she's like, the name is Ginger, mister,

(32:19):
like that whole thing whatever, Yeah, it's still Chicken Run.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Do you think Ginger was named after Ginger Spice?

Speaker 1 (32:27):
I was thinking about as tohold by Ginger and then
I looked, did you ever watch that cartoon?

Speaker 2 (32:31):
No?

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Oh my god, it was a really good like, Okay.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Who is is someone me owing?

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yes, there's this cat. It's not Flea hungry.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
For his chicken dinner. Oh it's a different cat.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
No, it's Flea sitting at the window. Because there's a
lot of alley cats in our neighbor feeds and fixes
and relief, like it's like a catchabuili system. But there's
cats around, and Flea will talk to them. But there's
this one cat that we have checked on them multiple
times and they seem fine, but they just keep They
just kind of yell and then we're like, are you okay?

(33:06):
And we're like if given him food or her. I
don't know what the gender of the cat is. I like,
I secretly, I'm like, what if the cat is pregnant?

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Gregs and just is like uncomfortable because she's full of Gregs.
I don't really know what's going on, but it's been
going on for a week and every time she starts screaming,
flee gets stressed out. Oh I don't know.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
I'm just thinking of a bunch of little kittens named Greg.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
The little Greg's running around five hundred. Anyways, chicken run right, Yes.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
So where do we leave off? Oh Ginger, Yeah, he's
a fraud, but she doesn't Ginger doesn't know that yet. Meanwhile,
missus Tweety has gotten the equipment together, the U and
it's basically just this machine that turns a chicken to
a packaged chicken pie, and she wants to test it out.

(34:04):
So they grab Ginger and put her in the pie machine.
Rocky goes to save her. The two of them go
through the machine. They managed to escape and fuck up
the machine, and now everyone's like, wow, Rocky, what a hero, even.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Though he does nothing at least because I was like,
oh god, we're damseling Ginger. But then it's like Rocky
truly does not help in any significant way, and that
he just kind of joins the distress, Like.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
You mean, like when they's inside the machine.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, I mean mainly, I mean, I guess it seemed
more like a group effort and it wasn't like she
was damseled and now, oh no, he has to like
single handedly rescue her, and it was at least like
a group effort to get out of the machine in
one piece.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Sometimes well, I was I was like paying super close
attention to this because I was like, okay, is it
like he saves her sometimes she saves him sometimes, Like
how how does that dynamic play out? And it felt
to me like he does do a few things to
save her from certain death, she does one thing to
save him. But it felt to me like the scales

(35:13):
were tipped into like she is being damseled territory and
he does have to save her a few more times
than she saves him, or that she's able to save herself.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Interesting, I was, I was not doing the exact math
on it. I was, at least I guess I was
more expecting like, oh, we're damseling her and then it's
going to be a clear cut like end of The
Little Mermaid, like I'm gonna defeat the villain, and then
you know it's at least a little more subtle than that.
But yeah, I mean I totally trust that. I wasn't. Yeah,

(35:44):
I wasn't keeping counts. Yeah, I just love Chicken Run
too much. Disappointing, disappointing Chicken Run, do better, Chicken Run.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Seriously, So he he emerges like this heroic you know, Wow,
I saved her and then he and Ginger have a
little moment and we're like, uh, oh, don't like where
this is going.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
But you know, you know, I'm like in the year
two thousand. You know, it's so fucked up. She doesn't
need him.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
No, no, she really doesn't. But the next morning it's
time for Rocky to show them his flying abilities, but
he's nowhere to be found. And this is when he
leaves behind like the rest of the circus poster showing
him being shot out of a cannon, revealing that he
cannot fly and never could. And we're like, oh, wow,
have we arrived at the low point of the movie much?

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, it sounded like a second And what's more, Ginger's
lost all hope the end of it.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Until Ginger gets the idea, inspired by Fowler's time in
the Royal Air Force, to fly out of the farm
by building an airplane slash giant flying chicken apparatus. So
they get to work on building this while mister Tweety

(37:10):
gets to work repairing the chicken pie machine and he
finally fixes it, so now it's like a okay, and
it's now or never. The chickens roll out their flying
chicken plane. They take off Rocky comes back to help,
but missus Tweety is there trying to stop them. She

(37:30):
grabs on They have to scary, very scary scary. They
have to fight her off, and they do and then
they you know, finally fly over the fence toward their freedom.
And then the movie ends with the chickens living in
like a grassy nook paradise.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Like Chicken Themyscira basically like yeah, except that there's like
a few men allowed to be there. Yeah, they end
up in chicken paradise the end.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
So let's take another break and then we'll come back
to discuss where do we want to begin.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
I think, I mean, I would like to kind of
get the you know, touch on the mel Gibson stuff
at the top and as well as the stuff we've
been just like alluding to the whole time of like
for me, two of the most crushingly bad things about
this movie are the fact that mel Gibson is involved.

(38:42):
And I don't don't I don't even want to like
rehash his crimes here, but he's I mean famously his
career has been more or less like unfortunately not stopped,
but you know, impeded significantly by the number of anti
semitic and missile is and violent things that he's said
over the years. And so unfortunately we've had a discussion

(39:06):
of this sort in our What Women Want episode as well,
because I think that's the other big mel Gibson movie
that we've covered. Yeah, but nothing, it's it's fucking inexcusable,
and no matter what we say about this movie, there's
there's no excusing mel Gibson and the fact that he's
still cast and shit today like is inexcuse, like inexcusably bad.

(39:32):
He should not have a fucking career at the very least.
So I just wanted to touch on the mel Gibson
stuff at the top, Like, no matter how much love
that we have for this movie, doesn't excuse anything mel
Gibson related, Right, But going off, I guess the number
one thing, or not the number one but up there

(39:52):
of like the things of this movie that don't hold
up for me, is the the chicken love story. You
don't need it.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Why is there a chicken romance?

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Why? Yeah, it's also not like I feel like it's
interesting because recently on the show, I think we've encountered
actually like a few different heterosexual love stories that felt earned. Yeah,
but this is not one of them. This is not earned.
This love story sucks and it feels very It feels
very studio notesy to me because it doesn't really fit

(40:24):
into the story.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Uh uh yeah, for a number of reasons. One that
Rocky spends a large chunk of the movie lying to
all of the chickens.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Classic two thousand rhetoric.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, and specifically Ginger because she's the one, you know,
kind of orchestrating him, teaching them how to fly. She's
negotiating with him, so he's like kind of directly lying
to her first and foremost, he is nagging her and
like you mentioned, calling her, you know, sexist names.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
And it's kind of dealt with in a very I mean,
I think unfortunately, it's dealt with better than a teen
movie of this year would deal with it, because at
least she doesn't like she I don't know. The first
half of this movie. I like how she responds to
his bullshit, like she is using him for a very

(41:17):
specific purpose and wants nothing to do with him outside
of his immediate use to the collective that she feels
beholden too. And then it's like the last half hour
of the movie, that whole, like I thought really subversive
setup just totally falls apart, and I'm like, and then
it just becomes fucking like she's all that of like

(41:39):
or ten things I hate about you? If like, oh,
this person who like has been nothing but cruel to
me actually loves me and I don't care to dielide
and I don't and I do who care? Apology? Never
heard of it?

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Like right?

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Just oh god, why does Rocky have a redemption arc?
Like get rid of it?

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Get rid of Yeah? He he abandons them in their
like their moment of dire need, like he does everything
wrong every step of the way, does not deserve redemption
the fact that Ginger just like forgives him and yeah,
that whole like burden of forgiveness applies here, Like why

(42:23):
because again he doesn't even do the bare minimum. Really,
he just throws a party to like cheer some people up.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
But he does that selfishly too. He does that to
distract from the fact that he can actually help them, right,
I just it's so frustrating because it's like the burden
of forgiveness thing bothers me even more in the way
it plays out in this movie. Because this isn't saying
much for Beauty and the Beast, But you know, when
Belle meets the Beast, she's gonna forgive him one hundred percent,

(42:52):
no doubt in your mind. There's never like, oh, is
she gonna go her own way here? Because bell is
not beholden to collective there we have yet to see
a feminist theme or her interact with a woman. We
have no reason to believe that she wouldn't like.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
And it's a fairy tale going in, so you assume that, Okay,
the main woman, the title woman, and the title man
are probably going to get together at the end.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Exactly. Yeah, it's like Beauty and the Beasts. It's not
like Beauty like bales on the Beast because he's a
fucking asshole. Like that should be the title though, Chicken Run,
Chicken Run, Chicken Run, so waved toxic character like there.
It just it would have been so easy and more

(43:39):
more like I think, like thematically satisfying to have her.
It just seems like it doesn't make sense with her character,
Like the way she said, she's set up so distinctly
and so strongly as like a character who would not
I keep almost saying a person she's a chicken. She's
a chicken who would not have any patience for this

(44:00):
kind of shit. And then the second that he like
lies in a way that means he is no longer
useful to her collective mission, she would never talk to
him again. Like, it just doesn't make sense none at all.
It just doesn't make sense other than they talked on
a roof once, which is another contrivance that it's like,
oh god, come on.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah, especially like you said, the way that she is
characterized in the beginning is just like having these you know,
strong values and wanting to be autonomous and not be
a cog in the egg machine, right and not that
like someone who you know, a woman who is like

(44:40):
strongly convicted couldn't and wouldn't end up with a romantic partner.
But like she seems to like have a good chicken
head on her shoulders. Yeah, you know, she doesn't tolerate
bullshit from anyone, right, much less a shitty man who
again lies and nags her and abandons her and like,
just like all he does everything wrong. There's nothing about

(45:04):
what her character had been established to be that would
make you think that she would be at all willing
to forgive him right, and yet that's what she does,
even though he does not apologize or hold himself accountable
at all for anything he did.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
No, I mean in the way that he's like, I
don't know, Yeah, the whole I want to give the
writer of this movie, who's written a lot while committing
the sin of being a sis man, has written a
lot of like iconic children's movies that I really love.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Wait, what else has he done? I forgot to look
him up.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
His name's Carrie Kirkpatrick. He wrote James and the Giant
Peach the movie. He wrote Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, he
wrote Chicken Run, he wrote The Little Vampire, iconic like,
He's written a lot of classic kids movies. And he
also wrote and directed small Foot, which was one of

(46:05):
the animated Bigfoot movies that came out a couple of
years ago. And it is the good one?

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Is it? The one that was? And Zendaia is me.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Chi, Yes, it is that one he wrote. I mean,
had he not written and directed small Foot, we wouldn't
have Sunday's Meat Chie. So there's a lot, you know,
there's a lot. But he's like, he's written kids movies
that at very at least have stuck with me that

(46:37):
seemed to be like pretty different for their time at
least or not just like you know, fill in the
blank kind of movies. Sure, I wouldn't be surprised, And
maybe I'm giving Carrie Kirkpatrick too much credit here, but like,
I wouldn't be surprised if, like in two thousand, Mel
Gibson is this big star, if notes come back of like, well,

(46:57):
we have to have the mel Gibson Rooster character redeemed
by the end of the movie, and there should be
a love story, because that's pretty standard for these kinds
of movies. But it just, I don't know, it sticks
out extra unfortunately in a movie that it has so
much like really power, Like the first half of this
movie is like incredible, and then starting at the point

(47:19):
where Ginger is low key Damsel, I feel like that's
one of the first cracks you sort of see of
like oh no, oh, no, contrivances are starting to happen.
But I don't know, like a good half of this movie,
I'm just like, fuck, this is really cool, Like yeah, yeah,
so the love story in this one, I can't can't

(47:40):
defend it in any way doesn't make sense with the character.
There's no earned redemption, there's no apology. I don't want
to see chickens kiss period, and especially if those human
teeth in their beaks are all clacking around nasty. Where
are those teeth rooted? They don't have gums, you know,

(48:01):
hard to know why these dentured chickens are kissing. And
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
I know why? Why? Well, I know why they have teeth? Oh,
because go on, it's because Jerry Bruckheimer was like, get
these chickens somephon ears.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Oh, that's great foreshadowing for our coyote ugly episode, Jerry Bruckheimer.
That I mean, I knew. I wish I didn't know
as a Jerry Bruckheimer movie going in, because the second
you see someone's mouth, you're like, well, I know who's
behind this, uh Bruckheimer teeth Lord Michael's and Jerry Bruckheimer like,

(48:37):
someone's gotta someone's gotta hold these men to account about
the whole teeth issue, Like what is wrong with you?
Like sirs creepy old men being like why don't you
get a new mouth, young lady? Like get away from me,
young man. I mean, they don't, they don't discriminate by
gender of who they will force to get a new mouth.

(48:59):
Anyone will get new mouth for these at least there's that,
So that's yeah, they are god so creepy. Anyways. Yeah,
the relationship aspect suck.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Hate it. Get it out of there. You could easily
remove it. The movie would be even better than it is.
And yeah, I hate the chicken romance.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
No chicken romance please.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Another thing that I felt was in the same vein
of like why is this here and why did you
make this choice because it goes against everything that had
also been set up about like Ginger especially was when
they're rolling out the Chicken plane at the end of
the movie, see where you go. They engineered themselves, They

(49:45):
designed it themselves, they builded themselves. And then they're like, okay,
we're ready to take off. Fowler, go get into the
pilot's seat because you have to fly this thing. And
he's like, well, I don't know how to do it.
I was I was a mascot in the in the
Air Force, so I can't fly a pilane.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
First of all, you're like, a chicken was a mascot
for the Air Force in World War Two?

Speaker 2 (50:08):
What you know what Sorry to all of the UK listeners,
but I would not put it past.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
That's really me. That's so funny, that's so funny. Yeah,
sorry UK listeners, but you've.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Got some weird mascots.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah. I also found this plot point really frustrating.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, okay, So what happens is basically they're like, Fowler,
you need to fly this thing, and he's like, well,
I don't know how to do it, and they're like,
but you're our only hope, and it's like he has
no more experience than any of the other chickens. Why
wouldn't Ginger fly or why wouldn't Mac the brainy stem
chicken fly it.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
I thought Mac was the more logical choice for this,
especially because it's like it's one thing like they could have.
I don't know, it's just such a weird choice because
on one hand, it's like, I like where that scene
is going, where there's kind of this theme throughout Chicken
Run of men overcompensating and like men putting their pride

(51:09):
first and being deceitful because of their own insecurity and
because of their own pride, and like that's the theme
with Rocky and that's a theme with Fowler. And I
like that. I think that that's like an interesting dynamic
to play around with. And so Rocky is exposed as
being a fraud. He bails, right, Fowler is exposed as
being a fraud, and it's like, Okay, I like that

(51:31):
they made that choice because it's like his character kind
of is reflected that the whole time. He's always like,
look at me, look at me. And then if he
has to do anything, he's like, oh, I don't know,
ask Ginger because she's the only as told by Ginger,
it's the only like she's the only person that knows
or chicken. She's not a person, she's a chicken. She's
the only person chicken in the Oh my god, it's

(51:53):
so stressful. She's the only chicken in the coop that
like is she's like the organizer, right, And yeah, so
I like that his character is kind of exposed as
a fraud. But then it's like, if you're gonna do that,
why immediately in the same scene offer him a redemption
arc Like that's such a weird choice. Yeah, this should
have been like Mac should have been at I mean,

(52:15):
Mac at least had an integral like it seemed like
she was like command control inside of the plane. But
she should have been driving the fucking plane.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Come on, Yeah, I would have liked it way better
if maybe like Fowler sort of like of his own accord,
gets into the pilot's seat, like realizes he can't fly,
and then like Ginger's like, wait, you can't fly, Well,
then get the hell out of there. Hey, Mac, you
engineered this thing. Surely you know how it functions. You

(52:45):
fly the plane. And then she's like, yeah, here I go.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
I wanted to. I wanted to see Mac and Ginger
in the front seat of the plane doing the damn
thing like I it's it's frustrating because it's like and
it's not I'm not even saying, like kick Fowler off
the plane, like just put him on a bike. Just
put him on a bike. Yeah, you know, like I
think that you know Fowler, it seems like he is
the kind of character. He is very flawed. He is

(53:11):
like very pompous, but he can be worked with in
a way that I don't think Rocky can. Right, Like
he has like loyalty to the chickens of the coop
at least, and it's like, don't toss him off the plane.
But don't tell him to drive the plane. He just
told you can't drive the plane, like what? And then
I feel like there that was another thing that, Like, God,

(53:34):
most of my problems with this movie are in the
last ten minutes, which is frustrating because I just like,
it's such a chicken run is so good, but like,
if we're if we're if we're pecking it apart. Wow,
I know.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
It's catching cocka doodle do, cock a doodle do? Tell
more one of the cockodoodle doos and cocka doodle don'ts
of chicken run?

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Oh my god, Wait, now I forgot. I was gonna say,
I'm so sorry for no, We're just making so many perfect,
hilarious jokes. Wait, there was something. Wait, I'll get a.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Chicken pun chicken instead a chicken run.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Okay, wait Fowler. Fuck. I don't know. I don't know
it had something to do with Fowler. I don't know. Sorry, Oh,
I'll figure it out of Itally, I just I got
so taken in. Yeah, I don't know. I guess. It
just seems like this movie was making really interesting points

(54:43):
about masculinity and the expectations of masculinity, but then they
just kind of offered all the male characters who had
displayed those traits in immediate redemption arc at the very
end for no reason, for.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
No reason, completely under like they did nothing to earn.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
I think, like, honestly, I think that like I would
have accepted a Fowler redemption act if he had had
to work for it, and if he had had to
like accept Oh I remember, I was gonna say, but
if he had had to like be humbled in some
way instead of being constant like that was his arc,
was that he was not humble even though he didn't
know how to do anything right, Like, so that should

(55:26):
be the resolution of like, Okay, we don't hate you Fowler,
but like sit down, you know, like yeah, that's but
that doesn't happen. Oh, so that was okay. So what
I was gonna say is, in the majority of this movie,
I thought it was interesting and like generally kind of
cool how the chickens. The chickens are not like Mary

(55:48):
sued at any point where it's not like they suddenly
know how to get out of the coup. They suddenly
like they pick up a whatever and all of a
sudden they're superheroes and they like you see them working
closer to their goal. You see them try and fail,
you understand kind of what their journey is. But then
at the end, Fowler is Mary Souon where all of

(56:11):
a sudden he's like, I don't know how to ride
a plane. Two seconds later he's like, I'm driving the
plane right. How though, Like it's for a movie that
seemed pretty conscious of like showing the character arcs of
like how they're getting closer and closer and closer to
knowing how to do what they need to. Hm, it's
such a weird last minute choice to just be like,

(56:32):
all of a sudden, this character that never gets his
ego checked once, even though it seems like that's where
the character is going, right, can suddenly magically drive a plane.
Like it's just weird.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like you said, Mac, we it's established
that Mac is the brainy chicken and stem she does
complex you know, calculus and physics equations and all you know, geometry.
Who knows what all she's even.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
Doing bits of shit. It's out of my pay grade.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
I don't know, right, But they're like, yeah, byye, but
she she understands thrust, you know, she like designs this
catapult and then she's put in charge of engineering this thing. Babs,
who is seen constantly knitting, is in charge of manufacturing.
And like other chickens are you know, getting the material.

(57:26):
They're like all doing something in contributing.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Which I appreciated that that was paid off on too.
That like her because the knitting thing, it's like, oh
you could. I was like, is this a reductive thing?
What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? But then like that
that plant and payoff baby, she's like she's a textile manufacturer.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
She sees the.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Means of productions in her little chicken hands.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
M h.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
I love her.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Yes, So yeah, that was disappointing to me that they
did that whole thing with Fowler. And then the the
other thing that we already talked about a bit and
we don't need to reh too much was just the
you know, women need to be saved by men, even
when they're all chickens so like.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Which is frustrating because it's like Ginger is so set
up to be able to do it that there's really
like I was, I was able to get as far
as like, Okay, I understand why Ginger would enlist Rocky's help,
but the second she finds out he's a fraud, I
have no like we no longer have any narrative excuse

(58:30):
to like have him even in the story, Like right.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Yeah, I don't I don't mind that she enlists his
help because he seems to be able to fly and
they need to learn how to do that, and.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
We've already seen them try and fail so many times
that it's like, oh, okay, Like narratively, it like she
will you know anything that seems promising, she will try
mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah, So I don't mind that at all. I'm talking
more just specifically about the she gets put in the
chicken pie machine and Rocky like goes in after her,
and yeah, like her feet are stuck in the dough.
She he has to pull her out of the dough
before she gets crushed. They're about to get splatted by gravy.
He takes like a vegetable and like crams it into

(59:13):
the gravy machine. At the very end of that sequence,
she does pull him out of the pie and get
him out of the oven. So she does one thing,
but it's mostly him rescuing her.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
And the thing is like there, see I wasn't. Yeah,
I mean we already kind of ash. I wasn't keeping
track of like who is doing how much in that scene.
But the whole time I was watching that scene, I
was like, this should be like Mac, or this should
be like I guess that it's that's okay. I guess that.
That's kind of like the last kind of issue I
have with how the Chicken Collective is written at times, right,

(59:53):
they are sometimes written too and it's like, God, everyone
take this with a grave of salt, because it is funny,
like a grain a chicken feed can feed. But like
the chickens are I think framed as being like quote
unquote hysterical at times where they are put in. I mean,

(01:00:16):
the thing is like the steaks are very high, and
so it's not like they're overreacting, but they are often
like ah, like they're they're always panicking, which which makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Very funny to look at.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
It's so the thing is, it's so funny to watch
the chickens panic, and so I'm like hah. Then I'm
also like, but wait a second, wait a minute, this
podcast has destroyed my brain. I can no longer enjoy
cartoon chickens running around I have to be like, but
what are the implications of the cartoon chickens running around?

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Let's the inherent sexism here?

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Yeah, but I think there is something like there is
like the chickens are sometimes made out to be like
I think like humorously overreacting, right, if we're saying, you
know that a lot of these like these chickens are
drawn from life, human life, so that we were to
imagine a group of women panicking and running around, and
I think that it's kind of most egregious. And when

(01:01:11):
Rocky is like I've got this and no one kind
of stands up to be like, well, Gingers are like leader,
like she's our leader, Like no one offers to go
with him, there's no like it just seemed almost.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Like they like volunteer him, right, They're like, you have
to go do it, Rocky.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Which strikes me as like a little cowardly of the
chickens of like Ginger is addicted to putting her life
on the line for all of you chickens, Like why
are none of the chickens like let's make sure, Like
I just kind of wish that in that scenario, I
don't even like hate. I think that it's like plot wise,

(01:01:50):
seeing the how how dire the chicken machine is and
how scary it is, like that is a valuable plot point.
But you know, it's like maybe Fowler could have been
kidnapped or one of the chickens could have gone to
like navigate their way out with Ginger. Like I just
ultimately the fact that the chicken knife machine pop pie

(01:02:12):
scene ends up serving the romantic narrative. I just didn't like.
I don't hate that the scene happens. Yeah, I was
so scared of it when I was a kid, and
I would have been just as scared if it was
like Mac or Babs or like whomstever else. And it
also makes more logical plot sense to me that one
of her like lifelong chicken friends would go I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yeah, I think my fix would be if well, then
mister Tweety is like I know, oh, I know, just
the chicken because he has a vendetta against Ginger, so
it makes sense that Ginger are in solitary right exactly.
I think my fix would just be like Gingers able
to save herself, because we've seen her be very resourceful

(01:02:56):
this whole movie. Can't she just for self and get
herself out because yea, the function it serves in the
story for Rocky to save her does sort of ignite
their romance, which doesn't need to be in the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Their trauma bonded chickens. You're like, I don't need this,
or even if we need to have Rocky show up,
maybe he shows up and he's completely useless because that's
kind of his thing. And then she's She's like, oh great,
now it's twice as hard for us to get out
of this chicken machine. You fucking lose her like there.
I don't know. I just like, yeah, I don't like

(01:03:30):
because it's I think that that's such a scary effective
scene and to have it service this like I don't know,
romantic subplot that we both hate. I was just like, man,
don't love it. Should we talk about things we love about? Yes? Kay? Okay?

(01:03:50):
I read a lot. There's like kind of a stunning
amount of think pieces about Chicken run oh, which I
do love because I had all these that I'm like,
are these irrational?

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Am I?

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
And And some of them were and I won't bring
them up, but others were. Okay, So I do feel
pretty confident and I'm pulling I'm gonna be reading from
uh two pieces. One is from Bitch Media by Dehan
Jotanovic and the other is from Film School Rejects by

(01:04:23):
Brianna Ziggler that kind of comment on the either the
like hyper feminists or because I kind of went into
Chicken Run being like, oh, this is like a really
feminist movie, but it's also a really like I'm gonna
quote the piece because I always like it's a very
anti capitalist piece of g rated children's art, which is

(01:04:46):
so fucking cool, like yeah, yeah, And and Brianna Ziggler
in particular gets like full on into like Marxist theory,
which is like locate out of my pay grate, but
like she is, she is right where it's like I
did you read Animal Farm in high school? I did, so,
Like there we were confronted with kind of an Animal

(01:05:07):
Farm style situation here, right, And it's based on literally
a movie called The Great Escape about people like escaping
a prisoner of war World War II camp, and so
it's like pulling from some pretty dark stuff. So I
just want to read a section of Brianna Zigler discussing

(01:05:28):
the Marxist themes in Chicken Run because I truly do firmly. Like, Yeah,
Ginger reminds me of every DSA chapter leader I've ever
interacted with. Like, Okay, So here's what Brianna says. Quote
the Tweeties farm and their chickens mirror the oft maligned
working environments and practices of our modern day capitalist society.

(01:05:51):
We're only valuable to our bosses as long as we
can provide them with labor and therefore profit. As soon
as we aren't profitable, we're disposable and reply. Thus this
idea of Marxist theory inherent within chicken run, the objective
of Marxism being the self emancipation of the working class
i e. The chickens. German philosopher Karl Marx believed in

(01:06:13):
a socialist revolution in order to bring about control of
political power for the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat,
as he called it, would give the proletary public ownership
of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. I'll skip
down a little bit. It gets pretty dense. Part of

(01:06:36):
Marxist theory also includes this idea of seizing the means
of production. Means of production being what is used to
produce goods and seizing them, as in taking control and
using them for the greater good instead of personal gain
as with capitalism. Thus, the chicken's entire bodies are the
Tweedy's means of producing goods as well as being the
goods themselves. In the end, the chicken's ultimate way of

(01:06:59):
the escape relies entirely on their bodies hand powering a
plane they built all by themselves unquote. So it's like,
also this incredible labor story where like, you know, I
feel like missus Tweety is kind of like a classically
evil hyper capitalist villain, right, and I think that it

(01:07:21):
framed even slightly differently. She's basically a girl boss, right,
where she's like, I'm going to start my own business
and like, yes, ladies, let's grind these chickens to death,
like that kind of vibe where she is motivated by
personal profit. And then the chickens like they are basically
performing some form of like unpaid prison labor. They are

(01:07:42):
held captive. They are used strictly for what they can produce,
which at first is their eggs, which are immediately sees
from them, with the only exchange being food, you know,
the ability to continue to live and produce, which already
you're like, okay, this is a labor story. And then
when they are no longer useful to produce eggs, they

(01:08:03):
are then harvested for the personal profit of missus tweety.
So yeah, I just thought it was like a really
heady but fascinating point that, like the means of production
at first are the chickens' abilities to produce eggs, and
then eventually the means of production once it becomes clear

(01:08:25):
that it's actually more profitable to just mercilessly harvest the chickens,
the means of production becomes their actual bodies, and so
then using their bodies to escape is also seizing the
means of production. Like strictly by having bodily autonomy, the
chickens of Chicken Run have reclaimed the means of production
and they can self determine what they want to do

(01:08:48):
with their lives on Chicken Island. I just so shout
out to Breonna Ziglai. I will send you this link
so we'll have it in the description as well. But
it was phrasing things that I didn't quite have like
the Marxist vocabulary to say. But it's like, fuck, yeah,

(01:09:08):
It's like on top of the fact that we are
living in a chicken matriarchy. They literally like liberate themselves
from capitalism.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
It's yeah, it's amazing, it's amazing. I like the commentary
too on. So not only is Missus Tweety this like,
you know, capitalist stooge bourgeois owning and controlling the means
of production villain. She also she's like explaining the branding

(01:09:40):
that she wants to do for the chicken pies that
she intends to sell, and she's like, yeah, they're going
to be called Missus Tweety's chicken pies and her husband
her husband is like missus and she's like, yeah, a
woman's touch makes the public seem more comfortable. So she
understands like marketing, but also like she understands like the

(01:10:01):
patriarchal structure that her chicken pies are going to be
like distributed and sold to.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
She's literally a girl boss. She's a chicken girl boss.
Like she understands the patriarchal structure, and instead of using
that understanding to liberate herself and other people she's operating,
she's continuing to operate inside of it in order to
turn a profit for herself. Personally, she's a girl boss,
and I really like that her downfall is underestimating the chickens,

(01:10:33):
like she That's where I'm just like, Okay, Carrie Kirkpatrick,
are you a socialist? Because like the especially with how
the tweeties talk like the chickens the chickens do, they
are the chickens are socialists, but it's kind of like
worded a little more ambiguously for them. But when the

(01:10:53):
tweeties are talking, I'm like, this guy took a couple
courses because like mister Tweety is made out to be
really paranoid for saying like the chickens are organized, like
the chickens are going, they're like plotting their escape. And
the reason that missus Tweety ultimately or part of the
reason the chickens are able to seize their bodily autonomy

(01:11:14):
and build a plane, is because missus Tweety doesn't believe
that the chickens are intelligent enough, like the underclass chickens
being beneath humans. Yes, that the underclass is like intelligent
or motivated enough to organize and rise up, And so

(01:11:34):
I liked that that's like that's made explicitly clear, like
a bunch of times that missus Tweety does not believe
that people, not people with their chickens, that living creatures
she views as lesser than and less intelligent than her
could possibly outwit her, which I feel like you can

(01:11:54):
apply that. I mean, that applies to a wide array
of historical risings. But right, I like, how I I
think that missus tweety and and mister Tweety, I mean
they're both kind of villains in that you get kind
of two kinds of capitalist villains. You have like the
super motivated one and then you have the kind of
the bystander.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Right, so just sort of like passively participating, and.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Like, to mister Tweety's credit, he does notice that the
chickens are organized. It's just no one believes mister Tweety.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
Yeah, missus Tweety's gaslighting him the whole time. She's like,
it's all in your head to her own detriment. Yeah, yeah,
she should have just listened. Believe mister Tweety.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
Believe mister Tweety's believe. How did you feel when mister Tweety? Okay,
this was kind of I was like, oh, how did
you feel when mister Tweety was very willing to let
his wife die. At the end, I was like, kind
of always just like, I guess she's not nice to you,

(01:12:59):
but you're like benefiting from everything she's doing. Like I
kind of didn't. I was like, mister Tweety, that's like
fucked up. You're just gonna let your wife get all
ground up.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
I think he is. He's had it up to here
with her gaslighting him and just being cruel to him
and making unreasonable demands of him the whole movie, and
she's and he's just like, you know what, I've had enough.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
Off of their head. I just like, I guess I
don't know, not that I have this like well of
sympathy for missus Tweety, but I'm like, damn, the one
person who she thought was her ride or die was
very willing to let her get turned into a pot pie.
Yeah she does live. That also felt very g random.
She doesn't get ground up. She lives, but then she

(01:13:46):
also gets crushed by a wall, so maybe she does die.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
So maybe she does die. Hard to say, I have
three jokes that I love in particular in this movie.
One of them is toward the end when mister Tweety
goes to all the chickens to put them through the
chicken pie machine. They're like, what's the plan, Ginger, and
she's like attack, so they all attack him and he's
like in the background flailing around like all covered in

(01:14:11):
chickens and he's like, the chickens are revolting, missus tweety,
and she says, finally something we can agree on.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
The wordplay that is really funny, Yeah, amazing iconic.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
And then also my two other favorite jokes are when
the chickens are trying to learn to fly and they're
just sort of like falling everywhere. One of the rats
is like, it's raining. Hen hilarious, right, I love I
love a pun. And then this one unfortunately works because

(01:14:45):
mel Gibson being cast as Rocky. So I'm but after
Rocky is exposed as a fraud, I think it's Bunty
says I knew he was fake all along. In fact,
I'm not even certain he was a mayor, which is
funny because mel Gibson is also not American, but he's
doing an American access.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Oh I didn't realize that that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
I don't know if that's intentional, but I was like,
so God, that's such a peak Mel Gibson joke that
it's like, yeah, to be there there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
I also had a whole section that about how Rocky
the Rooster represents the hollow promises of the American dream
enlighten me. I won't take as long as I did
for the chickens being socialists, which they were.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
But that's fine. I have my own little allegory that
I'd like to share.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
But okay, great, go on. Yeah. I also had a
little thing that I wrote down and I was like, Okay,
if I can find one writer that has mentioned this,
I will say it on the show. So okay. So
you know we're on a chicken farm somewhere in England, right,
We're in the UK. At least we know that there

(01:16:02):
are Scottish chickens there, so it's kind of ambiguous where
it is. Anyways, an American chicken shows up, right, he
kind of flies out of the sky quote unquote, and
he promises all these amazing things, and he's like, I
can do this, I can do that. I've seen everything,
I've been everywhere, I've lived this really rich and satisfying life.

(01:16:25):
It turns out that he has been deceitful and that
there's nothing behind all these huge promises that he's made
to them, and he's kind of like made off on this,
you know, reputation of being this like intrepid American when
in fact, you know, he is completely lost in his

(01:16:46):
life and he is strictly running on this like hyper
masculine American image and it ends up being false and
all the layers are pulled back. So I wrote down
Rocky the Rooster better example of false American dream than
Great Gatsby. Oohoo, hot take, Oh wow, hot take. I

(01:17:10):
think you know goodness eighty four minutes and you get
the message way easier than reading The Great Gatsby.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
I like all of our references to orwell, we've read above.
We've got an f Scott Fitzgerald in there. Okay, we
haven't readst in.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
We went to an American high school.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
Okay, but don't get used to it, because I won't
be reading any more books I've read.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
That's why we're not doing Jane Austin January, because we
don't want to read a book. Don't make us Oh
my god.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
No, I yeah, I like that. That works for me.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
What was your allegorical connection? I'm excited this is maybe
me reaching. Okay, I'm perfectly willing to admit that, but
because you know, I was rewatching this through the Bechdel lens,
I was also thinking that the chicken farm could be
interpreted as like an allegory for the patriarchy, and by

(01:18:12):
that I mean like the institution of the farm, like
not its occupants, but the farm as an institution, and
how it's like physically made to be very restrictive, like
a prison, especially because the expectation for the chickens is
to use their bodies to produce something that this institution wants,

(01:18:36):
much like the way the patriarchy historically for millennia has
expected that the role that women take on in society
is to bear children and raise them. And that's not
exactly what the chickens are doing in this movie, but
it's still this like patriarchal expectation for anyone with eggs

(01:18:59):
in their bodies to use their bodies to incubate either
like the eggs themselves or like human babies that come
from egg cells. And you know, for human women, historically,
that's been the role that we've been ascribed and that's
what value we have been seen to have in society. Yeah,

(01:19:23):
and not much beyond that. And obviously that's less true
for human women today. But I still think this allegorical
patriarchy argument works. Oh for sure. I think it's like
run by a woman, but it absolutely is a patriarchal structure. Like, yeah,
just because a women's at the top doesn't mean it's

(01:19:43):
feminists for the last time.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
People, Right, women can still uphold patriarchal standards. We've said
it before, we'll say it again.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
And that kind of echoes like turf ideology too, of
like defining womanhood by the ability to reproduce, which is
how a lot of you know, like turfs kind of
continue to perpetuate harm towards trans women and like, you know,
saying that being a woman is defined by your ability
to reproduce, which obviously intentionally excludes trans women and it

(01:20:17):
excludes people with wombs who don't want to have children.
Like it's just such an absurd Yeah, and I totally
agree with you. Like it goes back to like, oh,
your value is determined by your ability to perpetuate X
y Z in this case food life, right, whatever, and

(01:20:38):
then if you're not deemed useful enough, then we'll just
eat you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
Yeah, so that was my whole thing, because like, the
chicken farm is extremely restrictive. It is sort of like
based on these very rigid gender roles and expectations for
the chickens. And I was like, what is this but
the patriarchy it is.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Yeah, it's also like the turf patriarchy on that, like
where it's like, you know, if you only define an
animal by their ability to reproduce, your excluding so many
out of sheer you know, does either prejudice or desire
to profit or often both. Yes, So you know we

(01:21:22):
should have you know we I think that they should have.
You know, let missus Tweety die. She should have died.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
She was she was.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
You know what if nothing else, I'm like, we've gotten
this far, Like, let's do the guillotine. Yeah, we're here.
I don't care if it's PG. Make it PG and
drag out a chicken guillotine.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
One thing I liked in this movie was and that
I wish we had more of, and I think if Rocky,
had Rocky's storyline up been treated differently, we would have
gotten more. Was Ginger and Max friendship and their collaboration.
I really thought that there was kind of more to
kind of mine from that relationship, because you do get

(01:22:06):
a few scenes with them. They are like they're both
friends and they are like co organizers, where I liked.
I always love when there is I mean there there
is sometimes internal conflict at the Coup, but it is
not it's it's I don't know, it is, like I thought,
pretty logically driven conflict. It wasn't just like, well, there's

(01:22:29):
a lot of women in this area, so of course
they're going to be arguing with each other.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Like right.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
I really liked that, especially with Ginger and Mac. They
both brought something different to the table. Ginger was like
an ideas person. Mac was a logistics person. Chicken I
keep saying person.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
I mean they're personified chickens. They're base, they're people. Chickens
are people too. I'm peta now, oh my god, streful.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
There's like, you know, we have our right brain chicken
and our left brain chicken and they're colaborating. And I
like that they sometimes disagree with each other, but it's
never like and now we're fighting and like everything is over.
Like there's even one scene where Ginger is kind of like, well,
Rocky's going to teach us how to fly, so don't
worry about it. And MA'X like, I believe that, but

(01:23:20):
has he flown? Like the way that they approach conflict
to each other is very respectful, Yeah, and seems true
to their friendship. And I just really liked it. I
felt like that could have been an example of like
a needless argument between two female characters in a a
story that is treated in a pretty grounded way of

(01:23:42):
like Max sort of knows that Gingers drinking the rocky
kool aid too much, but isn't you know, isn't aggressive
about it? You know, She's like you definitely could be right.
I believe you, but like, but considered, they don't need
to know it, but like, have you considered, we've never
seen him fly? Like, I just I liked that. I
thought that was like a really positive, subtle dynamic that

(01:24:05):
I wish we had gotten more of a look at.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
Yeah, but like you said, I appreciate that there wasn't
just like all this chicken infighting because oh women, female
chickens be petty, so they have to be constantly arguing.
Any conflict within the chickens felt justified, And that kind
of brings up that the complacency thing I mentioned earlier
of like, again, if you're looking at this chicken farm

(01:24:30):
as like a capitalist machine or as the patriarchy, and honestly,
what's the difference. You know that there's often complacency with it,
like among the masses, because when oppression is normalized, as
it often is in capitalism and the patriarchy, you don't

(01:24:53):
often have the tools or resources to break out of it,
or you know, sometimes you don't have the full awareness
of what's even happening because you know, maybe the oppression
is kind of subtle, or again, like it's just been
so normalized and you have yet to unlearn the toxic ideology.

Speaker 1 (01:25:12):
Or it's just like a conflict a verse, like it's
you can't not see where the chickens are coming from there,
because it's like their fear is like if we quote
unquote overreact to this, maybe we'll just get killed, or
like maybe our predicament will somehow worsen exactly. Yeah, I
don't know. I was like I was full like galaxy

(01:25:32):
brain meme watching that can play some chickens because it
does like it almost I got into an argument with
someone for reasons right like a few weeks ago about
the two thousand dollars checks that we.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
We here in the US were supposed to have.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
Received, and then all of a sudden, the Biden administration
was like, actually you got six hundred, so now it's
gonna be fourteen hundred. Fourteen hundred plus six hundred equals
two thousand, so shut up, like you should be happy.
And how there was like a lot of kind of
infighting online about like, you know, people who are like,
just take the fourteen hundred dollars, like, just take it,

(01:26:07):
and then other people are like, but we were promised
a lot more, and like we feel justified in arguing
that we should get at very least what we were
promised instead of having to accept these kind of piecemeal things.
And I know that that's not exactly what's going on
in Chicken Run, but I did think of it because
it's like, you know, the chicken's legitimate fear is like

(01:26:30):
if if we rock the boat too much, we are
putting ourselves in danger, which is true. And they even
like say that explicitly towards the end, where like gingerfull
On like beating her chest battle cry like we're gonna
die oppressed, or we're gonna like we're gonna like die
trying in this effort, and then she's able to like

(01:26:51):
get the energy she needs to get the chickens to revolt. Yeah,
but it makes sense that it's like I always appreciate
because I feel like a lot of times, every every
day like the e your everyday chicken type character is
made out to be like not smart, when that's very
often not true, and I feel like it's not even

(01:27:12):
productive to tell a story that way of like anyone
who is like oppression is normalized is not smart, Like
that is kind of a ridiculous precedent to set.

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:27:24):
I like that as far as the chickens go, we
at least do understand in story why they are, you know, nervous,
because they've seen what happens to chickens who step out
of line. They get fucking beheaded.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):
Uena gets her head chopped off.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
So I don't know. Yeah, I found that like that
part to be like really affecting of Yeah, of like
they're not just like sheeple, you know, in the way
that I think some like large groups of people or
like towns people in movies are made out to see them.
They're not total sheeple, like they're they're chickens with the

(01:28:00):
legitimate concerns, right, and just because they are like it,
I agree that they should rise up and that the
time has come, and I'm glad that Ginger was able
to motivate them, but you also see where they're coming from.
At the beginning, I'm just like, oh, these are just
people who are like, let's take the fourteen hundred dollars check.
Why are you so mad? And it's like, right, I
don't know. I was like, okay, fourteen hundred dollars check, chickens,

(01:28:22):
got it, wrote that down. Fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
But and then also just like it reinforces Ginger is
this like is this feminist icon? Like she's the one
who's like, you know what, yes, the steaks are high,
Yes we might die, but we are going to die regardless, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:28:44):
Like it was just so bleak.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
Right right, But yeah, I think her the quote was
like we're gonna die free chickens, or we're going to
die trying. And then Babs is like those are only options.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
Hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Yeah, it's uh, she's like, you know what, I've had
enough of this, fed up and we're gonna revolt.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Yeah, yeah, and it's like and by that point it's
like they are so they're like literally, if they don't
do anything, they're only extending their lives by a short
amount of time. And so it's like, okay, the time
has come, like uprising, we're building a plane and then
the one man here is gonna magically know how to
fly the plane. Don't love that, but the I don't know.

(01:29:26):
I just the way that the uprising was like orchestrated.
You're just like, shit, I got all I got all
worked up. I was like, damn, she's right, She's right. Yeah,
Ginger is amazing. Ginger is so amazing. I hate that
she has to date Rocky, some guy from Rhode Island
at the end. It's so not okay, you have nothing

(01:29:47):
going for him. I liked how we kind of alluded
to this earlier. But I like how Babs is seen
doing like she's knitting. She's like a nervous knitter, and
she's doing kind of like traditionally domestic and I feel
like that's another thing that sometimes we see in movies
that are like trying to present themselves as feminists, where
they're like fuck domestic work, when that's actually really reductive

(01:30:11):
to people who perform domestic work of any gender. Like
I like that it's not just a joke of like
the work, the traditionally feminine work she's doing ends up
like being a big part of the reason that they're
able to fly.

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
Yeah, that's great. Love it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
I love that this, like this coop, this revolution is
inclusive of all sorts of women and all sort of
like any everyone is welcome to the revolution, including Rocky,
which is like, well, let's where are we going to draw.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
The line, but like draw the one somewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
But I do like I like that the we haven't
really talked about the rats because who really cares, but
like the rats sort of redeem themselves to some extent.
They sacrifice something that's important to them in order to
join the revolution, and there is some sort of like
like hesitate to say there's like restorative justice applied to

(01:31:03):
the Timothy's Ball rat, but it's like kind of true,
like they they are welcome to the revolution if they
are willing to contribute in a meaningful way and not
be assholes, and like that is kind of it seems
like that's kind of the line of like who's welcome
and who isn't is like, will you act in favor
of the collective if you will get on the plane, baby,

(01:31:25):
jump on a bike. I love it. Yeah, let's build
a plane and get out of here.

Speaker 2 (01:31:33):
Seriously, Here's something else I like, which is that Bunty
is voiced by Emelda Staunton aka Aunt Lucy from Paddington.

Speaker 1 (01:31:45):
Aka She's gonna play the Queen. And the last season
of The Crown.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
Oh cool, cool cool? Yeah, you have watched The Crown yet.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
But it's boring. It's boring, but I've seen every episode,
which is a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
Also, how is Fouler not voiced by John Hurt?

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:32:05):
I was like, oh, that's for sure John Hurt. And
then I looked it up and it's like it's not
John Hurt and you're like, what.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
It's whoever you call? When John Hurt is an.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
Available Benjamin with throw I guess that's very British sounding.
Yeah right, And then speaking of voice acting, okay, so
oh yeah I saw this or not. But the sequel
of Chicken Run is in development. I think it's slated
to come out in a couple of years this year.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
Actually, it comes out in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
Oh, no kidding. Oh my goodness. I looked it up
on IMDb and it said that it was tentatively to
be released twenty twenty three, but also, IDK maybe maybe
the pandemic has pushed Maybe it was originally twenty twenty one,
but the pandemic pushed it back.

Speaker 1 (01:32:50):
Aandemic has pushed back. All I don't they're fun industry
insider info because I work in stop motion animation. Stop
motion animation that makes sense, yes, not which the animation
is kind of impossible to do without people in the
same room, so yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
But anyway, so the A sequel is in development, and
the voice actor who plays Ginger, Julia Sawala.

Speaker 1 (01:33:16):
I have never tried to say her name out loud.

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
Yes, so apologies if I got that wrong, But she
revealed in July twenty twenty that Ardman, the animation studio
behind Chicken Run, intended to recast her, saying that her
voice now sounds quote too old, and Julia said, in

(01:33:39):
response to that, I have officially been plucked, stuffed, and roasted,
which is the quote from the movie that I butchered earlier,
butchered loved that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:49):
She was like, listen, you think I don't deserve to
be in Chicken Run. Here, I am quoting Chicken Run.
This is such a bullshit thing. Yeah, that there, And
it seemed to be done because it sucks because it's
like Mel Gibson is rightfully not coming back for the
next Chicken Run movie, and so they kind of use
this as a blanket excuse to get rid of Julia

(01:34:13):
Sowalha as well, when it's like, but she didn't do
anything like she this is her. This is an iconic
I always like it's it's so frustrating. How like if
there's any area of acting where agism should particularly not
come into the mix, it's fucking cartoon voice acting seriously,

(01:34:35):
like that is a level of agism that is just
like almost inconceivable because you're just it's there was like
a similar discussion going on for it. This was like
five or six years ago, but when the new Powerpuff
Girls cartoon was coming out, they were like, we're getting
the old Powerpuff Girls are not coming back because they're
forty now, and it's like, well they were twenty five

(01:34:58):
when they were the Powerpuff Girl, Like what are you
talking about? It's so it is so like bizarre and
frustrating that there's ageism in any area of entertainment, right,
but like in particular voice acting, it's like on what grounds.

Speaker 2 (01:35:13):
Yes, not that any of it makes sense, but like
that makes the least amount of sense.

Speaker 1 (01:35:19):
We're in such a level of fantasy where it's like
she is voicing a claymation, Chicken. How are you too
old to voice a clamation? Chicken? Yeah? That was That
story is so fucking fry, especially because it's like we
should just now. It's like we can't purely be thrilled
for a new Chicken Run because it's like what at

(01:35:41):
first when I remember when that came out, when it
was like, oh, Chicken Run, but this time no Mel Gibson,
sign me up? But yeah, but you can't. I really
I'm curious if there's ever gonna be especially if it's
being pushed back to twenty twenty three. I wonder if
that prompted any discussion in the right direction, because it's

(01:36:02):
like there's no reason to recast Ginger, absolutely none, especially
like a movie going to Netflix where you don't need
to promote it like on what grounds. Yeah, Ginger is
an icon, And I'm also very glad that Julias Sawall
has spoke up yea for herself because.

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
There was backlash. I mean, I'm reading I read this
on Wikipedia, our favorite scholarly journal, of course, and it
didn't go into a whole lot of depth about like
the backlash that the recasting received, the people saying that,
you know this is extremely ageis why is this happening? Yeah,
so I don't know a lot of details about it,
but there was I mean, maybe the studio will listen

(01:36:44):
and be like, sorry, we goofed, Julia come back.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
I really hope so, because it's like I don't know,
I know that it's like foolish. Just I just I
have such a strong love for Ardman animation, like all like,
don't recast Ginger, you fight?

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
Like yikes.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
Yeah, I was disappointed to hear that. I was interested.
Did you know, Caitlin that Chicken Run is the highest
grossing stop motion movie ever by like a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:37:18):
I did also read that on Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
I forgot how like Chicken Run was like a moment
Chicken Run was fully I was curious, but like this
this movie came out the year before there was an
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Yes, which was such
a Bummer. I was just like, Wow, Chicken Run. I
feel like would have had it on lock.

Speaker 2 (01:37:40):
So yeah, I was reading that it got snubbed for
like because it was like it could have been a
contender for Best Picture.

Speaker 1 (01:37:48):
But that just doesn't happen in animation. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):
Right, So basically everyone's like, g whiz, kind of sucks
that Chicken Run didn't win anything. Let's make a Best
Animated Feature categor the following year, which was won by Shrek.

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
Never forgot there's, I mean, of all the iconic things
about Shrek, the fact that it won the first Animation
Academy Award is like wow, just wow. Chicken Run walked
so Shrek could run, and that is a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
That is a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 (01:38:21):
I wish the Chicken Run had more trophies, but the
fact that Chicken Run was so rawly powerful that people
were like, we need a new oscar so we can
give it to to Shrek.

Speaker 2 (01:38:35):
That's so bleak.

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
Oh my god. Shrek is funny though, So you know,
what can you do?

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):
While we're covering Shrek two this year? Sometime on the matrix,
we spoke it. We spoke it in reality, we manifested it.
Chicken Run is really.

Speaker 1 (01:38:51):
Like so iconically good and I want to marry Chicken Run.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
I love Chicken Frun.

Speaker 1 (01:39:01):
It's amazing. I saw I was a PlayStation game, and
I was like, what, whoa? I know? I want to
play the PlayStation Chicken Run game.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
Damn too.

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
Yeah, did you have anything else? Anything? That's about everything?

Speaker 2 (01:39:13):
I know? That covered? I'm pretty sure Yeah, that was
everything I had. So this movie does pass the Bechdel test.

Speaker 1 (01:39:22):
Not between many many chickens, so many chickens. Chickens talking
about seizing the means of production passes the Bechtyl test.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
Period when chickens talk to each other about the laws
of physics such as thrust passes the test.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
I wonder if that's like it sounds like that's the
sort of thing that I'm like, it sounds like science.
I wonder if we have any any any listeners in stem?
Was the Chicken science accurate? Because I just want genuinely curious.
It sounded real to me, But everyone saying science and
movies sound real to me. Let us know, Yeah, how

(01:40:03):
many nipples were given this thing? Hmmm?

Speaker 2 (01:40:06):
I would give it? I can. I want to give
it like three or three and a half. It definitely
gets points taken off for you know, those like early
two thousand era, like hetero romance getting wedged into the
story for absolutely no reason, several male redemption arcs that

(01:40:30):
are completely unearned and undeserved, female character having to be
saved by a male character, that kind of stuff. Yeah,
but it's like this society of chickens who like form
their own matriarchy even though they are living within this
like these oppressive confines of this like capitalistic patriarchal structure.

(01:40:55):
They're like, not for me, not on, not today, We're
gonna kape out of this, and they do, and they
are extremely motivated, they're extremely active. They're iconic, absolutely iconic.
I think I'm going to give it three and a
half nipples, and I'm going to give one to Ginger,

(01:41:20):
I will give one to Mac the chicken, and Stem,
I will give one two Babs, who's knitting saves the day.
And I will give my half nipple to Edwina, who
does unfortunately get murdered maybe before we even meet her,

(01:41:43):
but I.

Speaker 1 (01:41:43):
Feel like she kind of ends up being like I
feel like I wish that Edwina's name was invoked more
of like she's kind of a martyr for this cause
like her, like that is the last straw. They're like, Okay,
they're taking Edwena, Like there should be a statue of
Edwena on Chicken Island, and I hope there is because
she like she literally that she's kind of the inciting

(01:42:05):
incident in a lot of ways of just like we had,
like the steaks have never been higher. It's we're not
bucking around anymore. They took it Weena from us, and yeah,
now I'm like, damn it Weena should be like literally
like a cultural chicken icon.

Speaker 2 (01:42:20):
Truly. Yeah, she's like the Joan of Arc of the
Chickens exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
I'm gonna I'm gonna maybe overdo it a little. I'm
gonna get this four nipples because it is literally a feminist,
socialist movie that is g rated for children and it's
about chickens, and so uh there, I totally agree. I mean,
we've we've hashed out kind of the shortcomings. Most of
my issues with this movie are in the third act.
Feels like a lot of studio notes of like we

(01:42:49):
gotta have these chickens with teeth kissing, which nia don't,
and like we have to have all these last second
male redemption arcs, even though they're not set up in
any way, and it's actually set up for a way
more interesting ending. But all that said, it's literally like
it's a story of a matriarchal chicken society seizing the

(01:43:11):
means of production, demanding bodily autonomy, defeating capitalism, and moving
to Chicken Island. That is amazing. That is so amazing.
I wish that there were more women involved in the
production of this movie. I will say, like Ardman is
a company that I fully love that is a bunch

(01:43:32):
of old white British guys, and I hope that that
is no longer the case. I own. I haven't been
keeping up with their roster of people. It seems to
usually be the same couple of guys, much like Pixar.
But all that said, I mean it's this, It's like powerful,
and it got me all worked up. Even now when

(01:43:54):
I watch Chicken Run, I want to join a revolution,
and I think that's a great thing for children and
to rise up against their oppressors and build a plane.
So I'm going to give Chicken Run four nipples and
to give one to Ginger. I'm and to give one
to Mac and give one to Edwina, and I'll give
one to Babs because she makes the textiles that make

(01:44:17):
the plane fly. Baby. Yeah, yeah, shout out. Chicken Run
really a cultural moment.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
This movie also, in addition to you know, inspiring me
to revolt more, yeah, I also am like, yep, I
think I might have to fully commit to veganism. Now
there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:44:38):
You don't that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
Thank you so much. I'm on My current food intake
is I get one meat cheat a day. Sorry for
a day. I get one meat cheat a month where
I can eat meat once a month, and then the
rest of my meals are vegetarian or vegan. But now
I'm just like, damn, Chicken Run might push me over

(01:45:02):
the edge and I might have to just commit. We'll see.
I'll keep everyone posted.

Speaker 1 (01:45:08):
Ginger is an absolutely, I mean an inspiration. She really is.
She's a feminist. I think she's entering my pantheon of
all time feminist icons because she's not a feminist that
just works to liberate herself, which I feel like if.

Speaker 2 (01:45:21):
She's uplifting other chicken women.

Speaker 1 (01:45:23):
That which is, which is like one of the most
core important things is like, you're not just working to
liberate yourself, because then you're just a girl boss. You're
working to liberate the collective of the oppressed. Now we're
fucking talking and that's what Chicken Run is saying. And
I love I love Chicken Run. Yeah, it's it's almost

(01:45:47):
a perfect movie. Let me rewrite the last, you know, half.

Speaker 2 (01:45:50):
Hour seriously, like end of AC two onward. There's just
some changes that could be made and then it would
be perfect and.

Speaker 1 (01:45:57):
They wouldn't even need to be big changes. You can
still on like a plane of flight and Chicken Island
just sea the things. Oh, anyways, an amazing piece of cinema.

Speaker 2 (01:46:08):
Wow, Well there you have it, folks. That was our
unlocked Chicken Run episode unlocked from the Matreon, which, again,
if you like this episode and you're not yet a
Matreon subscriber, you should do that immediately by going to
patreon dot com slash spectal Cast and subscribing for a

(01:46:29):
mere five dollars a month and that gets you two
bonus episodes every single month that are always on a brilliant, genius,
incredible theme.

Speaker 1 (01:46:39):
Yeah, we've never missed. I actually and I sometimes speak
sarcastically randomly, But I actually do think of the Matren
we have rarely, if ever missed in one hundred and
fifty one hundred percent hit rate.

Speaker 2 (01:46:52):
Only hits, Yeah, only the hits for our Matrons.

Speaker 1 (01:46:55):
There's only one time on the in the history of
the Matreon where we accidentally did not cover a movie
at all, and it is one of our best episodes
we've ever recorded, So we've.

Speaker 2 (01:47:05):
Never Yes, are you referring to the episode where we
tried to talk about the shape of water and instead
got carried away talking about the three eleven cruise.

Speaker 1 (01:47:16):
Yes, and all of the hilarious ways that it would
be funny for it to sink like the Titanic, Like
I just the band is already on the boat. The
point is, and that could happen again at any time. Yeah,
So join us at the matreod. It's fun, it's it's
it's still the discussion you love, but more of a

(01:47:39):
more vibes. There's vibes over on the matred.

Speaker 2 (01:47:43):
Tons of vibes.

Speaker 1 (01:47:44):
Yeah, and if you want to have even more vibes
still again, if you are in the Los Angeles area,
please come and join us on Sunday, August twenty fifth
at four pm at the Lowsphilas three. Thank you to
American Cinematech for inviting us to participate in Friends of
the Fest even though we aggressive we both did not
show up at our screening last year.

Speaker 2 (01:48:06):
We had good reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
We had good reasons. My dad was in chemo and
you had COVID and this year neither of those. They're
non issues. They're no issues. And so please join us
for Chicken Run. It's been eighty four minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:48:19):
It's been eighty four minutes, that's right, And you can
grab tickets. We'll have the link in the description of
this episode. You can also go to link tree slash
Bechdel Cast and get those little.

Speaker 1 (01:48:32):
Tickets, those little tikies, those.

Speaker 2 (01:48:34):
Little chickens, those for Chicken Run. Is that anything?

Speaker 1 (01:48:40):
No notes? Episodes over, Bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:48:48):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch
is designed by Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to
Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit

(01:49:11):
Linktree slash Bechtelcast