Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S8E7 “Ricker Than Fiction” (written by Rob Schrab and directed by Douglas Einar Olsen).
This week, James Gunn’s Superman drops in theaters. And in this week’s Rick and Morty, James Gunn himself (voicing himself) is the villain. It’s another semi-meta episode, which includes Dan Harmon’s story circle. Is it an episode about using AI to write? Is it an episode about fans trying to force the direction of a movie/show, thinking they know better? Yeah, definitely both of those. And it’s a blast.
Rick, Morty and Jerry are watching the newest installment of Maximum Velocitree, featuring robot trees doing action stuff. Tannenbaum, looking like a golden Christmas Tree, introduces the other Robo-Trees: Arbor Knight, Red Wood, Palme D’or, and Cypress. While Jerry is fully invested, Rick and Morty are disinterested and angry at the direction the series is going. Rick demands to speak to the manager, James Gunn. Rick and Morty (with Jerry in tow) storm into Gunn’s office, ordering him to stop ruining Morty’s childhood and flooding the movie with comic relief characters and instead “put more cool sh*t in the story.” Gunn tosses Rick the script to the next story and says that writing is difficult, and after five years and half a billion dollars, still only a miracle will make fans like it. Rick declares that what the movie really needs is him and Morty, and they portal out with the script.
Jerry thinks the script is pretty good, but Rick’s new invention, the Movie-Lizer, can potentially make it better: it makes movies at the speed of thought (he invented it during the title sequence). The Movie-Lizer uses a prompt-driven CPU, where one types a tweak, and the AI fills in the rest. Their first prompt is for Tannenbaum to shoot supervillain Baron Thistle, and the second is to sentence Tannenbaum to prison for shooting an unarmed man. Jerry protests, but Morty calls out the “formula-driven Save the Cat bullsh*t” for making people not care about the last couple of movies, and an agreeable Rick types in the prompts to make them care about the Robo-Trees again.
The result: Rick and Morty get beamed into the Movie-Lizer, into the world of the Robo-Trees, who immediately attack. “The Movie-Lizer Last Action Hero’d us! We’re characters in the movie now, Morty!” yells Rick. However, Jerry is still able to communicate with Rick and Morty from the safety of the garage, meaning that Jerry is responsible for commandeering the Movie-Lizer to assist them. His initial prompt is to summon a 2007 Kia Spectra, a “cool getaway car.” It’s better than nothing, and Rick and Morty use it to escape the Robo-Tree onslaught.
Rick surmises that the Movie-Lizer will just eject them once the story concludes, and instructs Jerry to send them to the end of the movie. Jerry nervously responds that an error in the machine is telling him that there is no antagonist, and therefore no third act in the 3,000-plus-page script, so they’re stuck there indefinitely. Even Jerry understands that the changes Rick made to the story put them in this situation and offers to restore it to the original state, but Rick furiously refuses and tells Jerry he’s a terrible writer. Rick’s idea: bring Baron Thistle back to life so they have an antagonist to carry them to the third act.
And so they do, Frankenstein-style, and the first thing Thistle does is bite Morty on the shoulder, prompting Rick to immediately cave Thistle’s head in with a shovel. Jerry detects a new antagonist—it’s Morty, suddenly transforming into Son of Thistle. This increases their chance of ending the movie, but they still need a third act. Originally, Baron Thistle was going to kill Tannenbaum, but with him dead, Morty as Son of Thistle could do the job just as effectively. Rick leaves, instructing Morty to rally the Hench-Weeds once more while Rick breaks Tannenbaum out of prison.
In the Warner Brothers Commissary, James Gunn is in a bad way. Approached by Zack Snyder (also self-starring), Gunn asks his friend if they’re losing touch with the audience. Snyder confirms that it was Rick who stole the script, and declares that Rick doesn’t represent the “real fans,” he’s just the smartest man in the universe. “He can’t do what we do…probably.” As Snyder leaves to hit the gym with his tray of creatine, Gunn narrows his eyes, seemingly planning his next move against Rick.
At Baron Thistle’s castle, Morty finds the Hench-Weeds packing things up. With Thistle dead, they’ve got nothing left to do. Morty declares himself the Son of Thistle, and convinces the Hench-Weeds to get their plan to melt the ice caps back on track. One of the main Hench-Weeds, Samantha, laments that Thistle never appreciated his underlings, and Morty promises to change that, easily sending the Hench-Weeds into an appreciative frenzy.
In prison (no specifics on how he got there), Rick meets up with a completely miserable and defeated Tannenbaum in the chow hall. “Everyone sucks until they don’t, that’s the arc of every good story,” Rick tells him. Rick convinces Tannenbaum to help him incite a riot, which violently spreads across the entire facility and allows them to escape (the prison also blows up, awesome!). Happily reuniting with the other Robo-Trees, a grateful Tannenbaum gives Rick one of his ornaments, but the reunion is interrupted by a social media post from Son of Thistle (Morty), threatening their plan to melt the ice caps. The Robo-Trees mobilize to stop them.
During the battle, Morty is frustrated at being unable to find Tannenbaum to kill him. Rick pulls him aside, confessing that he kind of likes Tannenbaum, but Morty angrily pins him down and demands that Rick let him kill Tannenbaum. Unfortunately, both the Robo-Trees and the Hench-Weeds see Rick and Morty together, and are united in trying to kill both of them.
Jerry has been lured away from the Movie-Lizer by Gunn adopting falsetto to imitate Beth. Gunn is trying to steal the Movie-Lizer, but Jerry isn’t fooled for long and returns to the garage. He socks Gunn across the face, and returns to the Movie-Lizer to realize that Rick and Morty have completely derailed the story, sending it on a straight line away from the Story Circle. Rick tells Jerry that the tools he needs to write have always been there. Not inside him, but under the workbench. “What is it, some sci-fi device?” asks Jerry. “Better. It’s magic,” Rick replies.
Adderall. It’s a bottle of Adderall.
After taking two of the pills, Jerry returns to the keyboard and all of a sudden, this new story rips. Rick and Morty fall through an air vent into New York, commandeer a Lamborghini, and engage in a ridiculous high-speed chase as they evade the Robo-Trees and Hench-Weeds. Jerry sends them to the North Pole with everyone else in hot pursuit. As the Robo-Trees exit their ship, Tannenbaum nervously stays behind, conflicted over his newfound friendship with Rick. Morty activates the superweapon to melt the ice caps and send the movie into its climax, and the Robo-Trees arrive at the command deck. Samantha also pops up to declare that Morty never liked her, and the two of them begin fighting as the Robo-Trees prepare to gun Rick down.
However, Tannenbaum throws himself in front of Rick, begging the Robo-Trees not to kill him as he’s a good man. Rick takes a deep, sad breath and tells them that he only pretended to like Tannenbaum to get him killed. He reaches into into his jacket, and Tannenbaum, thinking he’s about to draw a weapon, shoots him. But Rick was actually pulling out the ornament that he was gifted. He staggers backwards, grabs Morty, and the two of them plummet into the heart of the doomsday weapon.
At the graves, the Robo-Trees crown Tannenbaum as their leader and the title card flashes. Jerry and James Gunn emotionally look on, and Gunn’s tears spill onto the keyboard, bringing Rick and Morty back into the real world. Realizing that making movies is hard, Rick and Morty decide that they’re going to just be impossible-to-please fans and set off to “troll some comment sections.”
Best Moments
- After Jerry summons the Kia Spectra, Red Wood yells, “It’s a family sedan! Shoot iiit!”
- As the Lamborghini pulls up, the driver pops out, declares that he forgot how to drive, gives Rick and Morty the keys, and is immediately pulverized by a speeding bus as he steps away.
- At the graves of Morty and Rick, the Robo-Trees comfort a distraught Tannenbaum by saying, “You saved the world from another unarmed man.”
- In the post-credits stinger, Rick and Morty leave Jerry to enjoy his time in the Movie-Lizer in Space Jam 7. Summer enters the garage with a draft of her “raptor porn” she’s been writing, leaving it on the tray and inadvertently uploading it. Jerry starts screaming.
