#experimental era

Harold had taken Jack to Vasilou Corporation from age two to seven. Bringing him to the laboratory level of the building nightly explaining to his son he had a blood disorder and he needed treatments, which was all a lie.

Jack would be repeatedly injected with a serum Harold crafted to give humans metahuman powers. Hoping he could repeat the process he already did with Kat. Kat had been the first of his experiments so trial and error was sorted out.

With Jack, Harold knew what to anticipate and put Jack in a stasis tank for him to recover quicker with each injection. The serum altering Jack's DNA as his ability to detect lying formed. He became more agile and accurate with his guns.

Harold had told Jack to always watch over his sister Kat and if she lost control he would know what to do. Jack was a failsafe in case Kat couldn't control her powers. His secondary ability would contain Kat's powers through holding her hands. Acting like a shield.

Once Harold was convinced Jack's powers were stable he began to take his son with him to be introduced to the Greek mafia.

The process to gain these abilities cost Jack's mental health, developing a phobia of drowning and claustrophobia because of the stasis tank in his younger years.

Wdym by into something and then stopped? Animal comedies?

Would you have preferred a girl chicken as originally intended?

I personally have trouble deciding because I like the one we got, he's silly, but the girl looked cute and I think she had potential too.

I love the Chicken Little movie! Probably because of my childhood nostalgia. It was on so often on the Disney Channel. But also because it's one of the Disney movies that can genuinely get a laugh out of me even after all these re-watches. (Another is Meet the Robinsons)

I love that Chicken Little's friends all have a specific type of media that they represent. Runt is music. Abby is literature. Fish (my favorite character) is movies. Because the point of the movie is communication and those things are how that group of misfits communicate.

I love that the whole story is so simple: it's just about a kid who feels like his dad doesn't "support him." But what he really is feeling is "I have to earn my dad's love."

And of course that's not true. But his dad makes him feel like that because Buck has the same feeling of inadequacy that Chicken Little has. Chicken Little spends every day compensating for how small and incapable he feels. Buck spends every day compensating for how bad of a dad he is.

He keeps saying "your mom was always good with stuff like this," and apologizing over and over before anything's even gone wrong, and he'd rather "lay low" than try harder, because he's given up before he even gets started. He doesn't believe he should even try because it doesn't come naturally to him, what to say or do, when his son is hurting.

But you know what, baseball doesn't come naturally to Chicken Little! Crossing the street doesn't come naturally to him! And he keeps trying anyway. The one thing Chicken Little won't try is clearly communicating what hurts.

Which is also a really good parallel to what's going on with the aliens. They freak out and panic because they think the earthlings have stolen their kid. The earthlings freak out and panic because they think the aliens are coming to wipe out their home. But nobody's actually communicating with each other. Just like Chicken Little's whole relationship with his dad is broken because they won't communicate with each other.

And speaking of insecurity, you know why Chicken Little's and his friends don't immediately think the aliens are just there to harvest acorns? (Because why would they guess that--but I mean, on a meta-narrative level) Because the whole TOWN has the same insecurity problem Chicken Little and his dad suffer from! They're a town centered around acorns. They have great acorns. Why wouldn't they assume the aliens are there for their acorns? Because the acorns aren't "mighty." They lose all their baseball games to neighboring towns. Their mayor is inept. They rush into a panic the moment anyone sounds the alarm.

It's a stretch but not really

I love that Chicken Little's motto is "today is a new day." I love that. It's very Disney. And speaking of being very Disney, despite the Experimental Era:

Our buddy The Wishing Star is in this movie.

sighhhh

it would be fair to say the revival is over with Encanto being the closing bow. but whether you like the current films or not, I'd argue we have gone back to the Atlantis-Lilo and stitch days of trying something a little different.

Strange World with its solar punk feel

Wish with its animation mixing plus the Emperor's New Groove/Kingdom of the Sun backstory

even Pixar is getting into it. I'd argue they are in their bronze age right now with an outright love story like Elemental or attempting a cinematic spinoff like Lightyear [Which was completely unfairly ignored, it's actually really good]