- “D'oh! Stupid, worthless creatures! I am sick and tired of making minuscule profits.”
- ―Mrs. Tweedy
Melisha Tweedy, better known as Mrs. Tweedy, is the main antagonist of the 2000 animated film Chicken Run and its 2023 sequel. She is Mr. Tweedy's ex-wife and former boss.
Background[]
Personality[]
Mrs. Tweedy is an extremely cruel, greedy, selfish, hot-tempered, intimidating, ruthless, raging, devious, manipulative, abusive, and cold-hearted woman who only uses chickens to get money, which she and her husband are very low on. She is also highly ambitious, with lofty aspirations of increasing her own wealth, and possesses a notable sardonic wit. She is always looking for a chance to bully Mr. Tweedy and the chickens, and despite her nastiness, she does show cleverness at times — she is the one who comes up with the idea of buying a pie machine to use to make more profit from the chickens. She also shows impatience with her husband, shown when she contemplates buying the Pie Machine and when the Pie Machine is broken. It is also demonstrated that she and her husband disagree on many things—when Mr. Tweedy is attacked by the chickens, he calls to her, "The chickens are revolting!" and she, doing other things at the time, says to herself, "Finally, something we agree on." However, she didn't know he didn't mean revolt in the context she was thinking of. She is also shown to be an extremely sadistic woman who had shown to take great pleasure with the idea of murdering the chickens, displayed with the evil smile she gave to the chickens she selected for slaughter during Roll Call right before they were killed. She is physically and verbally abusive toward her husband, hitting him with clipboards, throwing a hot pie into his face, and literally kicking his butt when he didn't repair the pie machine properly, and her abuse possibly extends towards their dogs, as they are shown to be afraid of her. She also has a curious habit of not calling her husband by his first name, Willard, though this was not uncommon in rural Yorkshire at the time. The only clear reason she has to marry Mr. Tweedy is his farm, though she did also pinch his butt, suggesting she at least is attracted to him physically. Her Achilles' Heel was her inflexibility, her sometimes rash decision-making, and narrow-mindedness, as her coldly logical mindset meant she overlooked the chicken's ingenuity, and when she attacked the aircraft, it would crash and take her down with it, had she successfully killed all the chickens and rats onboard. As with most psychopaths, she excelled at putting on facades and manipulating others, as she retained a cordial veneer, as a sweet farmer's wife when she talked to Rocky's owner, and the public image she created was a rosy-cheeked, sweet woman.
Appearances[]
Chicken Run[]
Circa. 1959, Ginger the chicken attempts to escape from the Tweedy's English farm in Yorkshire, England. However, she is caught by Mr. Tweedy and is put in a coal bin after Mrs. Tweedy orders her husband to deal with Ginger. One week later, she checks egg-hatching chicken, and one who is not hatching is none other than Edwina. Mr. Tweedy strangles Edwina and gives her to Mrs. Tweedy, ready to execute her as a death sentence and become poultry for dinner. Mrs. Tweedy discovers with great frustration that profits are constantly going down due to the small number of eggs they have, presumably due to the chickens' multiple attempts to escape. Her husband, Mr. Tweedy, correctly suspects the chickens are "up to something" due to their attempts to escape, but Mrs. Tweedy silences him, believing that they (apart from Mr. Tweedy) are the most stupid creatures on the planet. After seeing an ad for the machine, she orders a chicken pie-making machine, thinking it would increase her profit tenfold.
After setting up the machine, Mrs. Tweedy and her husband attempt to kill Ginger in their machine in order to test it, but are thwarted when a visiting American rooster named Rocky rescues her and clogs the gravy sprayer, almost destroying the machine. The chickens begin to prepare their ultimate escape plan: creating an aeroplane out of their sheds to fly off the farm. In the meantime, Mrs. Tweedy forces Mr. Tweedy to fix the machine. After the repairs are done, Mrs. Tweedy tells Mr. Tweedy to fetch all the chickens. However, Mr. Tweedy finds out that most of his tools were stolen for the chickens' plan, but he is attacked by the chickens and tied up. He attempts to warn Mrs. Tweedy about this, but she ignores him, unaware of what's going on. Just as Ginger is about to set up the ramp to help the aeroplane fly off, Mrs. Tweedy tries to stop her with her axe, finally seeing what's really going on. Fortunately, Rocky (who left until he saw an advertisement for Mrs. Tweedy's Chicken Pies) returns and uses his bike to knock Mrs. Tweedy unconscious, accidentally throwing the axe in the air. Mrs. Tweedy comes to and sees the axe falling towards her and land right next to her neck, making her pass out again from relief. With Mrs. Tweedy knocked out, Rocky and Ginger set the ramp before escaping with the other chickens in their plane.
Mrs. Tweedy then wakes up again and goes off to pursue the escaping chickens, now insanely mad, wielding the axe as the chickens are flying in their plane. Ginger tricks Mrs. Tweedy into cutting the rope with her axe, and she lands in the safety valve of the pie machine, making it explode. At that rate, Mr. Tweedy (who just untied himself) told his wife for not coming to the fact that the chickens were organized in the first place. This only enrages Mrs. Tweedy, who growls at him in anger, but having enough, Mr. Tweedy pushes the doors down on her, finally one-upping his wife.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget[]
However, Mrs. Tweedy is revealed to be still alive (and unfortunately well) and continues her chicken farm business. She partners with Dr. Fry to create a profitable empire of producing chicken nuggets. Having learned from her mistakes after her past encounter with Ginger, she creates her chicken farm with advanced technology such as electric fences, camera driven gun-toting moles and laser-guided explosive ducks as well having security guards for patrols to make sure the chickens will not escape her grasp this time and treats them as dangerous as human beings.
Appearance[]
Mrs. Tweedy wears a burgundy dress with an upright collar, a black brooch at the throat, black muck boots (occasionally), red gloves that go up to her forearms, and sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She has long, dark brunette hair pulled back into a tight bun at the top of her head.
In the sequel, she now wears a plum purple long-sleeved dress with a swan-neck collar, short black gloves with small openings, black leggings, and plum purple knee-length boots with small black heels and soles. She also has long volume strait hair that styles in a high bun held by a plum purple hairband as well as bright sky blue eyeshadow and thicker eyelashes.
Abilities[]
Being a farm woman, she carries a hatchet that she uses to behead chickens. She manages to wield it surprisingly well in battle. Additionally, she excels in balancing the business, carefully overseeing the profits, and marketing her produce, being the brains behind the operations and leaving most of the physical labor to Mr. Tweedy, though she too, is a tough as nails, athletic, highly coordinated, strong woman, with amazing stamina.
Trivia[]
- Mrs. and Mr. Tweedy's last names were presumed named after Tweety from the Looney Tunes. However, it is more likely that they are named after tweed, a material commonly associated with farmer's clothes in the United Kingdom, where the film is set.
- Mrs. Tweedy is similar to Andrei Strasser from Mighty Joe Young: Both are animal haters who yell a lot. They both also have dim-witted henchmen who eventually redeem themselves by standing up to their respective leaders after spending enough time suffering miserably under their respective leaders' abuse, although Mr. Tweedy didn't say something to Mrs. Tweedy after he enraged her.
- Mrs. Tweedy also resembles Gladys Sharp from Over the Hedge: Both are animal haters, both have one man working with them, and both get annoyed with their henchmen. Both are the main antagonists of their respective DreamWorks films and both want to exterminate the animals in the film to achieve bigger profits.
- Mrs. Tweedy is considered to be one of DreamWorks' most evil villains (along with General Mandible, Lord Shen, Gallaxhar, Dagur the Deranged and Drago Bludvist).
- Both Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy's management on their chicken farm, as well as the chicken farm itself is somewhat equivalent with typical prisons (or rather super-maximum security prisons) for humans in real life than normal real-life chicken farms for the following reasons: Fences around Tweedy's farm are covered with barbed wire in similar manner with real life prisons. It's said that all chickens must lay eggs properly and never attempt to escape or they were punished via either being locked within the coal bin or death penalty via butchering. This is somewhat similar with real-life prisons where all inmates must obey the rules within the prison or receiving severe punishment. Mr. Tweedy's job, along with his hounds in the movie are almost comparable with security guards in real-life prison, while Mrs. Tweedy herself on the other hand, is comparable with prison wardens.
- During the early development of the film, the filmmakers considered to have Mrs. Tweedy as the one who was tied and gagged by the Chickens at the film's climax, but the idea was scrapped and she was replaced by his ex-husband Mr. Tweedy.
- Mrs. Tweedy is the first DreamWorks Animation character to be a female antagonist, followed by Eris from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.
Quotes[]
- "It's a pie machine, you idiot. Chickens go in, pies come out."
- "Chicken pies, you great lummox! Imagine it! In less than a fortnight, every grocer's in the county will be stocked with box upon box of Mrs. Tweedy's Homemade Chicken Pies."
- "They don't plot, they don't scheme, and they are not organized!"
- "What did you do, ya great pudding?!"
Gallery[]
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