Chip N Dale's Gadget Controversy Totally Misses The Joke

There's been a lot of controversy surrounding Gadget in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, and all of it misses the joke that the movie was trying to make.

Chip N Dale's Gadget Controversy Totally Misses The Joke

Warning: Contains spoilers for Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.

There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding Gadget in Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers, but all of it misses the point of the joke the movie was trying to make. Gadget is one of the most popular Disney characters of the past several decades – to the point that there is an actual cult surrounding her (via The Mary Sue) – so anything that the movie did with the character was bound to elicit some sort of reaction from people. That being said, the specific thing people have been reacting to shows that they’re completely missing the joke that’s being made.

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers takes place in a world similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and reimagines the original cartoon as a TV show the characters were all actors on and, naturally, shows what they all got up to after the show ended. Gadget is happily married in present day, but it’s not to Chip or Dale, but Zipper, and the two of them even have forty-two kids together. The decision to have Gadget be married to Zipper, of all people, caught most by surprise – not just because Chip and Dale were the more popular options, but because the cartoon had always portrayed Zipper as something between a sidekick and a pet, so the idea of them becoming a couple came across as somewhat surreal.

With Gadget being paired up with Zipper, someone who could be considered a pet, and even having dozens of children, it makes sense that Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers would face backlash from people who felt this was a weird move. At the same time, that backlash misses the joke the movie is making. Anything the movie did with Gadget’s romantic life would have incited some level of controversy, so the movie seemingly decided to lean into that with the most out-there option available. The idea of Gadget being romantically involved with Zipper is obviously ridiculous, but that’s the reason the movie went with it; it flies in the face of anything people would have expected, and that’s why it’s supposed to be funny.

The backlash from the joke also ignores the in-universe context behind it. As previously stated, the Rescue Rangers cartoon in the Disney+ original movie is just a TV show the characters were actors on, so even if Zipper was treated as a sidekick at best in the show, in the movie’s version of reality, he’s just a regular person; the movie even emphasizes this by replacing his unintelligible buzzing with a deep, human voice courtesy of Dennis Haysbert. By a similar token, even if Gadget the character had more chemistry with Chip and Dale in the cartoon, that doesn’t mean that the real-life Gadget would be interested in the real-life Chip or Dale, or vice versa.

No one is obligated to like Akiva Schaffer of The Lonely Island’s Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers having Gadget marry Zipper, since it is a weird direction for the movie to go in, with or without the context of the original cartoon. However, the entire fact that they’re together is supposed to be a joke on account of it being so random, in addition to having an in-universe justification for it, so the controversy ends up being ridiculous. The decision was ultimately one of the best ones the movie could have made, and any outrage people have expressed has only served to feed into the joke and make it stronger.