*** WARNING: I am basically going to summarize the movie now. I guarantee that this comment contains more spoilers than you think it will. It is worth seeing the movie before you read this. ***

I am commenting on this a bit late because I wanted to avoid the spoilers and go see the movie before reading your review of it.

WOW! Just... wow. I am going to buy this movie when it comes out.

I don't even know where to begin.

I think that the fact that she was basically just an oversized regular woman was symbolic and very appropriate. She grew in size on her wedding day, right before getting married to a self-centered asshole. The scene was very interesting. She was alone outside the cathedral after being told they weren't going to paris when the meteor hit her. Everyone is inside waiting on her, when her mother comes out and sees her crawling her way up the hill, covered in mud.

The mom is like, "where were you?! come on!" When her daughter says "I think I just got hit by a meteor..." the mom dismisses her and says, "Come on, every new bride feels that way. What happened to your dress? Thank goodness I have wipes."

She was trying to say what had happened to her, but her voice was completely ignored. Even if she was just talking about how she felt emotionally, wouldn't "I think I just got hit by a meteor" maybe be something you might want to talk about before committing yourself to somebody else (especially somebody who just put you on the back-burner of his life)?

So, she is dragged back inside. Right before saying her vows, the veil is lifted and it turns out she is glowing green. Then she grows... and grows... and grows.... until she's hunched over and the chapel is too small for her. She stands up and bursts through the roof. Symbolic much? The marriage would have been too small and restrictive for her.

So then everybody screams. Ahhh! A giant powerful woman! Oh no! Monster! She is trying to tell people to chill out when she is subdued by the army and taken to their bunker of monsters.

She tells the army man in charge that she just wants to be normal. She just wants to be small again and go live a normal life, and she's not going to hurt anybody. The reply is basically "sorry ma'am. You're dangerous."

When she first wakes up and walks around the common room where the monsters hang out, the other monsters are hiding out of sight and can only see her walking around through the doors of their cells. You here indirect commentary about "wow, those are long legs. What did they capture this time? Is it just a pair of legs?" The answer is no.

I could be looking wayyyy too much into this, but that seemed like a little stab at objectification. The heroine is not just a pair of long legs; she is a person.

So she hangs out with the monsters, who have no idea what to do with a female. They're like "oh no, now we can't play our man games! What do we do now?!" That scene could have been annoying, except that their reaction is clearly stupid. They end up deciding to just be happy that they have a new cell mate, and they introduce themselves to her.

While in prison, she does everything she can to be "normal." She allows the mad scientist to experiment on her with his mad machines. He hooks her up to electricity, says "you might feel a pinch in your brain." She's okay with that, because she is willing to take that risk in order to fit in. When watching this it made me think about all the things that women subject themselves to in order to fit in to normative standards. Not only physically (plastic surgery, diets, restrictive clothing) but also mentally and emotionally. What are we willing to go through to be normal? A lot. Are we willing to risk our health and our intelligence (brains)? Sometimes, yes.

The experiments don't work. At the time, she is devastated.

So then plot happens. An alien sends a giant robot to earth to seek the "quantonium" that was in the meteor that hit Susan at the beginning of the movie. The robot lands, there is a kick ass scene with Steven Colbert, and then the monsters are called to fight the robot. Jennrain covered really well how kick ass the scene is where she fights the robot. She is awesome.

When it is over, she's talking to the other monsters, and she is like "wow, that is awesome! Did you see how awesome I am? I just defeated a giant robot and saved San Fransisco! I am so strong and powerful!" Her friends tell her that she is in fact amazing and powerful and awesome. Then she remembers her boyfriend and she says something about how now she will go back to her boyfriend and work on being small again. Her monster friends are like, "What?! Don't you want to be big and strong? Why would you want to go back to being normal?" She is conflicted at this point.

The monsters are free now because they defeated the robot, and so Susan goes home. Her boyfriend is not at the party that her parents threw for her, so she goes to his office, and they have a talk on the roof. He is upset and nervous about how big she is. She is confused, because she assumed that he would stick up for her and stand by her and help her become small again. Instead, he tells her that he can't possibly do that because it might hurt his career. It is a great, feminist conversation, where she basically says, "I am important to this relationship too. I expect to be the priority sometimes if this is a real partnership, and you need to make some sacrifices in order for us to be together." He can't handle that and he dumps her.

She goes for a walk and runs into her monster friends, who skipped out on the party because everyone got scared and ran away. She sits down on top of a gas station (ha! priceless.) and is sad for a while, but then she comes to the conclusion that her ex is a real selfish asshole and she gets angry. She says, "I am never going to shortchange myself again!"

At this point she is abducted by the alien. When the monsters were able to defeat the robot, the alien got the news that an earth woman had the quantonium. He looked at the footage and said something along the lines of, "WHAT? This woman doesn't deserve that power. She wouldn't know what to do with it. If she doesn't want to give it up, I will have to go to earth and take it from her body by force."

Now, I could be looking too much into this, but I had my feminist antenna on at this point and I swear this whole plot arc was a very subtle pro-choice message. We have a woman who has just discovered her power and autonomy--much of it physical--and we have a man who wants to come and take it from her.

After he abducts her, there is a really awesome scene where he has her in a force cage that he tells her, condescendingly, she won't be able to get herself free from, because she doesn't know how to use the quantonium in her body. In response, she punches through the force field and tears the cage apart. She then goes after him relentlessly. She is much more powerful than he expected.

Unfortunately, she is subdued (I don't remember how now) and ends up being taken to the extractor. All that the extractor will do is take the quantonium away from her and make her normal again, which is what she wanted for most of the movie. However, now that she has decided not to "shortchange" herself and now that people are depending on her to be strong, she does not want to be normal anymore and she resists the extraction.

Now we get into where I think I might be onto something with the pro-choice argument. When he takes the power away from her, what do you want to guess is the very first thing he does with it?

He reproduces. Himself. He makes clones of himself, and while he's doing it you here a broken monologue about how this all started when he got pissed off at his wife.

This aspect of the story makes me see a fairly subtle reference to the attempts of men to exert power over the reproductive capability of females. Since it is framed as him trying to violate her body and take away her power, I see it as being pro-choice. There is never any abortion or pregnancy imagery with her, but it is definitely framed in a "my body, my choice" sort of way.

In any case, the power is taken away from her and she is small again. Her friends come to rescue her, and in the process of getting away they are separated. The friends tell her to run away and save herself and go live a normal life. Instead, she decides to confront the alien, take her power back, become big again, and save her friends.

The alien repeatedly tells her, "if you were going to stand up to me, you should have done it while you had the quantonium." However, she doesn't give up, and she takes him down while she is small. This scene is incredibly bad-ass and empowering. I don't know how to describe it. The power is HERS and not HIS, and so she takes it back. She doesn't get any help from anybody else; she does it on her own.

At the end of the movie, her pompous ex-boyfriend comes up to her and tells her that he's willing to marry her if she'll apologize. He also assumes that she will move to New York with him and give him an exclusive interview, which makes it very satisfying when she tells him to get lost.

One of my favorite things about the movie is that there is no replacement boyfriend. There is no romantic hero who saves her. She does not fall in love. I kept wondering who the "new man" would be after it was clear in the beginning of the movie that her boyfriend was a loser. In most movies, even if we do get a strong heroine who dumps a loser boyfriend, she always finds a replacement. It's a law. Movies always work that way. Women cannot remain single if they are the star of a movie, even it's a movie for children.

Not the case here, which I think may be my single favorite thing about this movie.

I kept wondering if it would be the cockroach, because he says so many complimentary things about her. However, by the end of the movie it is pretty clear that he is not romantically interested in her, he just thinks she is impressive and awesome, and his compliments are not flirtatious. None of her male friends are trying to get in her pants.

Maybe she will find Mr. Right, and maybe she won't. It doesn't matter, because she is Gigantica, and she has saved the world.

I am a bit starry-eyed right now, and I may wake up tomorrow realizing that I just over-sold this movie. However, I found it extremely empowering to watch. You all should go watch it, and keep your feminist glasses on (as well as your 3D glasses) the whole time, because that will make the experience twice as good.

I really hope that this movie does well in theaters.