New Netflix animated release The Mitchells vs The Machines may not be a Pixar film, but it continues a trend that ran throughout the Toy Story movies. The bold movie, directed by Mike Rianda and produced by Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse directing team Phil Lord and Christopher Miller is another boundary-pushing animation from a genius team. And it's bursting with pop culture references and in-jokes, including one big nod to The Shining.
Initially intended to release in January 2020 before several delays exacerbated by the COVID pandemic pushed it to 2021 and Netflix, The Mitchells vs The Machines is a triumphant love letter to sci-fi that manages to be completely of the moment without immediately dating itself. That is largely thanks to Rianda's team's efforts to add in timeless reference points alongside zeitgeist commentary and nostalgic delights like one incredible Furby sequence. It's the kind of movie that requires a real commitment to freeze-framing to fully enjoy the levels of work put in.
One of the more subtle nods comes thanks to film-loving hero Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) whose personal journey sees her aching to leave home to go to film school. As an amateur filmmaker, Katie's room, work, and even her outfit show her love of cinema, including her socks, which are very clearly a nod to the carpet design of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. While Lord and Miller don't have an obvious link to Pixar, the animation giants had the same affection for Stanley Kubrick's seminal horror, adding a number of Shining Easter Eggs to the Toy Story series. Katie's socks in The Mitchells vs The Machines shared that trope, suggesting another strange influence from the horror on animation.
Director Mike Rianda actually does have a link to Pixar, even beyond his time working on Gravity Falls for Disney. He was trained as a storyboarder under the company banner before starting as a writer on Gravity Falls in 2010. Whether that imprinted enough on him to inspire The Shining love is another matter, but it's an interesting link all the same. More likely is that The Shining's cultural heritage has bled into the work of other filmmakers generations down the line. It's a strong testament to the film's enduring legacy, particularly when films as wildly different and innovative as Toy Story and The Mitchells vs The Machines show their love.
Other movie references in The Mitchells vs The Machines range from Dial M For Murder through Tron and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, and it will take multiple viewings to catch them all. It is, fundamentally, a film that knows where it came from, in terms of sci-fi movie history, but it is also an artwork dedicated to the process of making art. Like Toy Story's repeated use of The Shining as a reflection of the directors' love of the classic horror, The Mitchells vs The Machines' Easter egg is part of a tapestry of references that speak to the same love on a larger scale. In fact, the movie's very approach to film-making, which places Katie as a kind of in-universe live director, is a broader nod to the joy of creating.