Free Birds(2013)

Plot Summary

• Reggie the Turkey (Owen Wilson) has always been afraid of Thanksgiving because turkeys have always been on the menu. Reggie knew that each holiday on the calendar had food at the center of it, and on Thanksgiving, the turkeys were the meal. Reggie had seen turkeys being cooked and served as food for Thanksgiving and was scared out of his wits.However, his attempts to warn his farm-based flock constantly fall on deaf ears and has made him an outcast. Reggie says that the humans are fattening the turkeys so they can be served as a feast. Reggie believes that turkeys are really simple minded and easily distracted. When a turkey is taken away for culling, the other turkeys believe that it is being taken to turkey paradise. Reggie always had trouble fitting in as he looked different to all the other turkeys and always had a contrarian thought and a questioning attitude. Even the female turkeys found him lame. Turkeys slept in a flock and Reggie was not invited.When the other turkeys finally realize what's going on (the humans arrive at the farm to collect the turkeys for the Presidential feast), they throw Reggie in front of the humans in an attempt to save themselves.In a surprise twist of fate, he winds up being named the "pardoned turkey" by the President of the United States / POTUS (Jimmy Hayward). POTUS wanted a bigger turkey to pardon, but his daughter (Kaitlyn Maher) liked Reggie and threw a tantrum that she wanted to take Reggie home. Reggie is subsequently taken to Camp David. Reggie finds the TV remote and on TV he sees advertisements for a Pizza place that delivers. Reggie gets addicted to a soap opera on TV. Although initially hesitant, Reggie soon eases into a routine of doing nothing but enjoying pizza delivered to him by the Pizza Dude (Scott Mosier) and watching Telenovelas.About three days before Thanksgiving, Reggie gets bag-napped by Jake (a turkey) (Woody Harrelson), the president and the only member of Turkey Liberation Front. Jake takes Reggie to the forest. Jake tells him that a "Great Turkey" (who appeared in the sky with a voice that came from everywhere) told him to find Reggie and take him back to the first Thanksgiving with him to take turkeys off the menu once and for all, thereby saving all turkeys throughout time.Jake was also given directions by the "great turkey" to a secret military base that hosts the time machine. At first the base only seems to be a normal garden shed, but then Reggie triggers a hidden mechanism by mistake which transports them deep beneath the surface of the Earth to a camouflage bunker. The bunker was heavily guarded, but Reggie thought as the pardoned turkey, he would be recognized and left alone. But he is attacked instead, only to be saved by Jake.Despite interference by federal officials (The POTUS was also at the bunker to test the time machine) and several attempts by Reggie to trick him back to the surface (Reggie intentionally leads Jake to the exit than to the time machine), Jake manages to commandeer an egg-shaped time machine (just as it was being prepared for a test) with an A.I. software named S.T.E.V.E. (George Takei) (Space Time Exploration Vehicle Envoy) and takes Reggie with him. The test pilot was ordered to evacuate the time machine as the turkeys entered the test chamber and eventually commandeered it.The egg-shaped machine first reaches a space between time where the past, present and future intersect. Once there STEVE is activated automatically and asks for the destination, which Jake provides as the First Thanksgiving. The machine decides the destination to be Plymouth Colony, the same day in 1621, 3 days before the first Thanksgiving. Reggie experiences side effects such as accelerated aging, rapid evolutionary regression, erratic genetic mutation into an adorable baby dragon, and many other exotic animals. STEVE hides itself in the forest with an invisibility cloak, as it charges itself with solar power.Once in 1621, they are immediately attacked and separated by colonial hunters led by Myles Standish (Colm Meaney). Reggie and Jake are quickly rescued by native turkeys led by Chief Broadbeak (Keith David) and his two children Ranger (Jimmy Hayward) and Jenny (Amy Poehler). Reggie is immediately smitten with Jenny. Broadbeak explains that the turkeys in the area have been forced underground (underneath a tree) since the settlers came and that they can't risk fighting back without the settlers taking them. Ranger is livid with Reggie as his flock was trying to lead the humans away from their nest, but Reggie's arrival disrupted their plans. Standish and his men locate the turkeys in the trees and pursue them. While most of them escape, but 2 turkeys are captured by humans.Jenny has a lazy eye. Jake and Ranger contest for the leadership of the turkeys. 2 of the turkeys were captured by Standish, and Jake wanted to rescue them, but Ranger wanted to protect the remaining flock. Jake retorts that Ranger lacks courage, prompting a turkey fight between the 2. Jenny has to intervene and stop the 2 alpha males from tearing each other apart.Governor Bradford (Dan Fogler), the governor of the Plymouth colony says that the colony does not have enough food to survive the winter. He knows that the colony will not survive if the settlers do not make friends with the native Americans. He asks the colony for 3 days to solve the food problem. Standish promises turkeys to Bradford for a feast. Standish knows that the turkeys are leading the hunters away from their nest, deliberately. He changes the direction in which his men search for it.The next day, Broadbeak has Jake go with Ranger to spy on the settlers with Reggie and Jenny springing all the hunting traps they've set up. Despite initial hostility, Ranger and Jake find out that the settlers have already begun preparations for Thanksgiving as well as where they keep their weapons. Meanwhile, Jenny, who believes Reggie is lying about being from the future, is impressed with his unorthodox way of springing the traps as he accidentally falls on them and sets them off and miraculously escapes each one.However, they are soon intercepted by Standish and Reggie is forced to get her in orbit over the planet aboard S.T.E.V.E., validating everything he said in the process. Reggie tries to convince Jenny to go back to the future with him once everything blows over, but she tells him she can't bring herself to leave the flock no matter how much she likes him.Jake drags Reggie away from Jenny and tells him he has a plan to attack the settlers. However, Reggie has gotten sick of all his unproved stories and threatens to leave. Jake tells Reggie he has a plan to attack the settlers, and that this entire trip to the past was very important to him, and proceeds to tell Reggie that when he was young, his mother told him to escape from his factory farm with a clutch of unhatched eggs to start a free flock. While Jake managed to escape, the eggs were taken back by the scientists. Jake says that this journey was for him to make up for his failure, maintaining that the Great Turkey convinced him to go through with this. While still reluctant to believe what he said, Reggie still goes along with the plan.They blow up the weapons shack, and rescue Amos and Furley, two native turkeys who had previously been captured by colonial hunters, but Jake inadvertently leaves a gunpowder trail back to the tree the turkeys are hiding under. Standish and his men flush the turkeys out from underground, capturing enough for the feast. Broadbeak sacrifices his life to help the remaining turkeys escape. Jenny is sworn in as the new chief and orders the remaining turkeys to prepare an attack on the settlers.Despite Jake's attempts to get him to stay, a heartbroken Reggie heads back to the present. Once back at Camp David, Reggie is confronted by three future versions of himself. Through the awkward conversation, Reggie discovers from one of them that he was the Great Turkey, having used S.T.E.V.E. to throw his voice and appearance. Jenny, Jake and Ranger lead the turkeys in an attack on the settlement just as Chief Massasoit and his tribe arrive. Reggie goes back in time to stop the attack, inadvertently trapping Standish in the time stream. Through S.T.E.V.E. and the Pizza Dude (who was also brought back to the First Thanksgiving), Reggie convinces the settlers and the arriving Indians that pizza is a more acceptable food than turkeys, taking them off the Thanksgiving menu entirely.In the end, Reggie decides to stay with Jenny while Jake takes S.T.E.V.E. in order to look for new adventures. Jake returns in S.T.E.V.E. moments after leaving Reggie and Jenny, with a chicken and a duck in his wings, Jake starts to tell the turkeys about the Turducken. This implies to Reggie and Jenny that their antics have caused the future to be thrown out of whack.

Storyline

• After years of fruitless warning of his farmyard brethren of the coming Thanksgiving doom, Reggie the Turkey finds himself spared as the annual Pardoned Turkey. However, Reggie's easy life is disrupted by Jake, a fanatic turkey who drags him along with the insane idea of going back in time to make sure turkeys are not part of the first Thanksgiving. Through foolhardiness and luck, the pair manage to take an experimental time machine to do just that. Now in 1621 at the Plymouth colony, Reggie and Jake find themselves in the middle of a turkey clan's struggle for survival. In doing so, their preconceptions of the world and themselves are challenged forever in a conflict from which the world will never be the same. — Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com) Standing out from the rest of the flock for his exceptional intelligence, Reggie, an ordinary and plump farm turkey, realises the terrifying truth that his end is near, and so is for the remaining of his feathered companions. But, when the President of the United States himself chooses Reggie as the year's traditional "pardoned turkey", a lush life in the bosom of the White House awaits, only to be interrupted by Jake, the radical activist. Clearly out of his comfort zone, Reggie must team up with the strong-willed brother-in-arms to fulfil their species' higher mission: to travel back in time to the First Thanksgiving in the unknown Plymouth Colony of 1621, rewrite history, and make sure not a single turkey is ever again on the holiday menu. But, can the intrepid time-travelling duo inspire their fellow fowls to fight for their lives? — Nick Riganas Reggie the turkey has always been afraid of Thanksgiving because turkeys have always been on the menu, but his attempts to warn his farm-based flock constantly fall on deaf ears and has made him an outcast. When the other turkeys finally realize what is going on, they thoughtlessly throw Reggie outside in an attempt to save themselves, instead of listening to his escape plan. In a surprise twist of fate, he winds up being named the "pardoned turkey" by the President of the United States and is subsequently taken to Camp David. Although initially hesitant, Reggie soon eases into a routine of doing nothing but enjoying pizza delivered to him by the "Pizza Dude" and watching Mexican Telenovelas..