Spies in Disguise

Spies in Disguise is a 2019 computer animated film. It was the last film that Blue Sky Studios produced before Disney acquired the company and shut down its animation division. Will Smith and Tom Holland star as the leads.

Lance Sterling is the best spy the US has from H.T.U.V. (Honor, Trust, Unity, and Valor). He can walk into any situation and walk out of it with a lot of destruction in his wake. Except on his latest job, he is framed for stealing a drone called the Assassin and an internal affairs agent named Marcy Kappel has a warrant for his arrest.

Enter Walter Beckett, a nerdy Gadgeteer Genius and Technical Pacifist who works in H.T.U.V.'s technology lab. Lance fires him for replacing a grenade in his tool-belt with a hologram of kittens and glitter, as Walter argues that you don't need to fight fire with fire all the time. He then remembers that Walter told him about an invention which can make him "disappear" and tracks down the kid. Hilarity Ensues when Lance tries Walter's invention without thinking, and they have to work together to stop Killian.


 * Beware the Cute Ones: Lovey is a sweet pigeon and an emotional support animal to Walter. She also suggests killing Marcy a few times to Lance, who tells her that's not happening. In the climax, she wields a weapon and saves Marcy, only to reveal in pigeon-speak she was aiming for Marcy's head.
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Walter is a nice kid who wants to make the world a better place with his inventions. He also makes it clear that the inventions he has are effective; the device that makes the person into a blob invokes And I Must Scream, the truth serum makes one spill uncomfortable truths, and the "serious string" will immobilize anyone unlucky enough to get stuck in it. When Killian pins him down in Venice, Walter uses the breadcrumbs in his pocket to sic about a hundred pigeons on him as a distraction.
 * Both Sides Have a Point: Walter and Lance spend most of the movie disagreeing about using lethal force and weapons on enemies. Lance asserts, and is constantly proven right, that bad guys and villains won't play nice, and they don't care if you are a pacifist. Case in point, Killian pins down Walter in Venice and tortures him to lure out Lance when Walter calls Lance for help. Walter, on the other hand, believes that you can always find another solution. If fight fire with fire is your default solution, then "everyone gets burned". We also see that he is correct that the violent solution isn't the only way.
 * Break the Haughty: Most of this movie is a Humiliation Conga for Lance, but he brings it on himself for the most part. His going Leeroy Jenkins to grab the Assassin from Kimura means that no one can give him an alibi when the Assassin goes missing and Marcy shows footage of "Lance" stealing it. When he breaks into Walter's house and steals what he thinks is a drink of "diet soda," he finds out too late that the drink was the concealment invention, which Walter wanted to calmly explain to him before testing it out. Not to mention that Lance's pigeon body means he has to adjust to not having hands.
 * Clear My Name: Lance spends most of the movie trying to prove that a man with a robotic hand framed him for stealing The Assassin.
 * Driving Question: Can you stop a bad guy nonlethally? Walter and Lance disagree on this point, with Walter believing that if your default solution is to "fight fire with fire, then everyone gets burned." Lance, who has more experience in the field,
 * I Work Alone: Lance believes that he doesn't need a team. He's chagrined on realizing he needs to take Walter with him on his mission to stop Killian, since Walter is the only one that can change him back into a human. Later, he finds out that the motley flock of pigeons who adopt him are actually quite useful in helping play Keep Away in Venice, and provide backup support during the climax.
 * Reality Ensues:
 * The reason why Lance initially fires Walter. As he puts it, Walter tampering with his gadgets, well-intentioned as they were, could have endangered Lance and compromised the mission. That the kitten glitter hologram didn't get Lance killed is besides the point.
 * Lance insists on using his signature Cool Car, private jet, and luxury yacht to travel around the world to find Killian. As a result, Marcy tracks him and Walter down in record time because only Lance has those specific vehicles.
 * In La Playa del Carmen, Marcy and her team track down Walter and Lance to Kimura's hotel room. Lance tells Walter to engage in parkour, and treat it like a physics problem. Walter realizes he can calculate the jumps and uses his video game to do so, just as Marcy breaks into the room. She goes Oh Crap and screams at Walter to stop. Walter jumps... and falls gracelessly, much as she expected he would. He's a teenage boy who has never done parkour, and gangly scientist body does not mean a person can act out a physics problem, because life is not a video game. To accentuate that point, his video game avatar falls and saves "GAME OVER".
 * Surprisingly Happy Ending: At first the movie verges towards Bittersweet Ending since despite
 * Technical Pacifist: Walter doesn't believe in using gadgets to attack others and hurt them. He will, however, use self-defense if necessary, like siccing a hundred pigeons on Killian when the latter is threatening to cut him to pieces to lure out Lance. Not to mention that one invention will turn a person into a motionless blob, and it is very discomfiting for the target.
 * Villain Has A Point: Sure, Killian is a monster who plans to commit mass-murder. At one point, however, he tells a captive scientist that the US government never cares about the collateral damage it causes on its missions. Lance himself has no response when Killian explains his motivations:
 * Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Deconstructed. Lance would rather go for this solution as his default, and we see the downsides of it. He blows up Kimura's hideout in the Cold Open, destroying an aquarium and nearly drowning everyone. While he doesn't kill directly, he does cause a lot of collateral damage with his flair for the dramatic, something his boss mentions with exasperation. There is also the downside that the Mooks who survive his antics remember his face, and pack heat for the future. Killian also reveals that