Storks(2016)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

SHORT VERSION:
Along their journey to deliver Diamond, Junior and Tulip meet Jasper, the stork who tried to keep Tulip when she was a baby. He explains to Tulip that he did that because he wanted to be her parent, and he has spent the last 18 years finding the pieces of her broken address beacon and reassembling it so he can finally deliver her to her family, but there is just one piece left that he can’t find. Tulip shows him that she carries the last piece, and after it is placed in the beacon, it shows her where her family lives. Junior soon tells her that he was supposed to fire her, and she should just go to her family because there is nothing waiting for her back on Stork Mountain. Tulip thus tearfully says goodbye to him and Diamond before riding away on Jasper.

Junior arrives at Diamond’s address, but he discovers that it has been altered when Hunter, his bodyguards, Pigeon Toady, and a small colony of penguins appear at the door. Hunter first fires Junior before telling him that the penguins will be looking after Diamond until she is old enough to be returned to the human world, and this whole incident will be kept under wraps because he fears that Cornerstore will be ruined if word gets out that Junior accidentally made a baby. Junior is tied up and left where he is while Hunter and company take Diamond back to Stork Mountain. A short time later, Tulip shows up, having decided to go back to Junior and Diamond rather than meet her family, and Junior tells her all about what has happened.

They quickly return to Cornerstore just as Storkcon is beginning there, and though they recover Diamond from the penguins, they are discovered by Hunter and all of the other storks while attempting to flee the building. They run into the baby factory with the storks chasing after them, and after they are cornered at the baby-making machine’s control panel, Junior rashly decides to stick the letter box’s hose into the machine, flooding it with letters and creating a multitude of babies. Hunter takes control of one of Cornerstore’s crane robots and attempts to destroy the baby factory with it, but thanks to Diamond as well as a bunch of small birds seeking revenge on him for all of the abuse that he has put them through, Hunter winds up trapped inside the robot and falls down Stork Mountain to his death, along with the entire Cornerstore building.

After a speech from Junior where he tells the storks that delivering babies is their true calling in this world, the storks deliver all of the new babies to their families, and Junior and Tulip finally deliver Diamond to the Gardners and say farewell to her. Junior and Tulip become the co-bosses of Stork Mountain, and the movie ends with Tulip – with Junior, Jasper, and all of the other birds of Stork Mountain accompanying her – finally meeting and embracing her family.

LONG VERSION:
While Junior, Tulip, and the baby (whom they have named Diamond Destiny) are at a rest stop, they are spotted by Pigeon Toady, who has been following their trail ever since he noticed how suspiciously they were behaving back at the Cornerstore.com building while they were trying to sneak Diamond into Tulip’s workshop shortly after her creation. Toady reports his findings to Hunter, and Hunter tells him that they must keep it under wraps before saying that he is going to make him the new boss of Cornerstore instead of Junior. He then says that they need to stop the delivery, but Toady informs him that they don’t know where Junior, Tulip, and Diamond are headed. Hunter replies that that won’t be a problem because they are going to let the trio come to them. To that end, he and Toady go into the baby factory and use one of the machines to change Diamond’s delivery address on her beacon.

Junior and Tulip eventually reach a shipyard intending to illegally board a cargo freighter so that they can complete their delivery, but they come under attack from the wolf pack they earlier encountered, all of whom fell in love with Diamond and wanted to raise her as one of their own. Eventually, the wolves completely surround them, but then they get some unexpected help in the form of Jasper, the exiled stork who tried to take Tulip when she was a baby and who has been following her, Junior, and Diamond ever since they left Stork Mountain. He flies through the wolves, grabs hold of the trio, and drops them safely onto the deck of the departing freighter, and though Tulip initially expresses to him how furious she is with him for orphaning her, she calms down after he explains that he tried to keep her because he wanted to be her parent. He then says that, after her address beacon was broken that same fateful day, he has spent the last 18 years searching for and reassembling the missing pieces to it so that he can finally deliver her, and he pledged to secretly watch over and protect her until that time came. He shows off the beacon as he tells her this and says that it is still missing one piece, and Tulip tells him that she has the missing piece on her necklace. She places it into the beacon, and it activates and shows her where her family’s home is. Tulip tells Junior how thrilled she is that she will finally get to meet her real family and will do so after they finish delivering Diamond, but Junior – whose feelings were hurt after Tulip said “real family” because he has come to care about her and Diamond – finally admits to her that he was supposed to fire her but couldn’t bring himself to do it, then tells her that it would be best for her to just go to her family because there is nothing waiting for her back on Stork Mountain. She thus tearfully says goodbye to Junior and Diamond before riding away on Jasper.

Jasper takes Tulip to the front door of her family’s house, but she finds she can’t muster up the courage to ring the doorbell, and she then thinks about Junior and Diamond and starts to regret having left them. Seconds later, just as Jasper takes his eyes off of her, she hurries off towards Diamond’s altered address. Meanwhile, Junior delivers Diamond to the altered address, and he finds Hunter waiting for him, along with his bodyguards, Toady, and a small colony of penguins. Hunter first fires Junior before showing him that the house is just a façade, then he has the penguins seize the baby. Hunter explains that the baby will be raised by them, given how good they are at babysitting, and when she is old enough, Cornerstore will return her to the human world. Junior tells him that Diamond must be delivered, but Hunter replies that the company can’t let the news of the new boss accidentally making a baby get out because it will cause their stock to plummet and drive the company into ruin, and he adds that Diamond’s parents can never find out about her. Junior is left bound and gagged on a chair while Hunter and company take the baby into a helicopter bound for Stork Mountain. Meanwhile, the Gardners – Henry, Sarah, and Nate – are visited by a police officer and told to take down the landing platform that they constructed on the roof of their house for the stork because it is not up to code. Nate protests this, saying that the storks won’t be able to deliver his baby brother without it, but his parents tell him that the policeman is right, and they have to accept that the storks don’t deliver babies anymore, leaving Nate depressed.

Tulip arrives at Diamond’s fake address and finds Junior still tied up inside, and as she frees him, he tells her that Hunter has taken Diamond from him. After he wonders how they can get back to the Cornerstore building fast, she uses her phone to purchase a refrigerator from Cornerstore, and after it is rapidly delivered, she immediately has a return order placed on it so they can stow away in the box and quickly get into the building without anyone noticing. They return just as Storkcon (the world’s biggest stork convention) is beginning, and after they notice the penguins taking Diamond up to the flight deck in an elevator, they hide themselves in a spherical delivery box costume and navigate their way through the storks to the elevator. They reach the roof and stop the penguins before they can put Diamond into their helicopter, and after the penguins point out that the baby is asleep in her pram, both sides engage in a hushed fight. Junior and Tulip end up distracting the penguins by tossing a box full of bells into the air for them to catch, giving them the chance to snatch Diamond and then escape back down the elevator. They return to Storkcon and meet up with Dougland, a chicken employee of Cornerstore, who got a text from Junior requesting that he find him and Tulip some jetpacks so they can safely get away with Diamond, but Dougland informs him that he and the other flightless birds were only able to come up with one. Junior and Tulip get into an argument over who will get to use it, causing Diamond to awaken and squeal loudly, which alerts Hunter and all of the other storks to their presence.

Junior and Tulip run with Diamond into the baby factory with the storks hot on their tail, and they end up getting cornered at the control panel for the baby-making machine. Hunter demands that they hand over the baby, but Tulip soon grabs a letter containing a request for a baby and tells him that she will send it into the machine and create another baby if they don’t back off. Intimidated by this, Hunter tells Junior that he is willing to let bygones be bygones if he just hands over the baby and says that he can still become the boss, but Junior doesn’t buy it, and he rashly proceeds to stick the hose connected to the letter box into the machine, flooding it with tens of thousands of archived letters. The machine turns on at full power and makes an enormous amount of babies, and it also generates lightning strikes that start to hit the bridge and cables anchoring the Cornerstore building to Stork Mountain. After Hunter screams for someone to shut the machine down, Toady decides to fly at it on his personal flying device in an attempt to destroy it. Unfortunately for him, one of the machine’s components hits his aircraft and sends him crashing into its power box, then one of the machine’s claws locks him inside a delivery pod and throws him outside into the penguins’ helicopter, destroying it (though both he and the penguins survive the explosion). The damage to the power box causes the machine to malfunction and start churning out more and more babies, and Junior and Tulip rally the storks (and the jetpack-wearing flightless birds) to safely get the infants down onto the floor.

Soon after, Hunter breaks into the factory driving one of Cornerstore’s giant crane robots, and he declares that he is going to destroy the entire factory. However, the robot’s control switch gets too close to Diamond when he attempts to do so, and she starts playing with the buttons, causing the robot to go nuts before falling outside and getting entangled in Cornerstore’s cables. As Hunter moves around trying to get out of the robot without success, he causes more and more of the cables to snap, and then the small birds that he has abused during the film decide to get revenge on him by knocking a primary cable loose, triggering a chain of events that causes the entire Cornerstore building to break off of the mountain, sending both it and Hunter towards the ground far below. As he plummets to his doom, Hunter decides to take Junior, Tulip, and Diamond down with him by using one of the robot’s grappling claws to grab hold of and yank down the section of flooring that the trio are standing on. However, the three protagonists are able to avoid death when Tulip gets on Junior’s back with Diamond and forces his injured wing to flap so he can fly them back up into the factory. After landing, Junior notices that his wing works again, and Tulip deduces that he must have simply dislocated it while trying to stop the baby machine as it was creating Diamond and it must have popped right back in when they landed.

After casting their eyes on the multitude of new babies, Junior makes a speech to all of the other storks convincing them that they ought to go back to delivering babies because that is their true calling in this world. After Tulip informs Junior that they don’t have any delivery pods, Jasper suddenly appears and points out some nearby stacks of blankets that they can use to carry the babies in. The storks deliver all of the infants to couples and single parents all over the globe, and Junior takes Diamond to the Gardners’ home with Tulip riding along on Jasper. Junior gives Diamond to her new family, but as the parents sign the necessary papers, Diamond touches Junior’s beak, causing him to experience a vision of her life to come, which shows her doing such things as ballet dancing, training in martial arts, graduating college, and getting married. Junior and Tulip tell Diamond that they love her and take off, and though Nate is initially displeased over how he didn’t get the baby brother he wanted, his mood brightens after Diamond displays some ninjutsu skills, which is what he had hoped for the most in a sibling.

Later, Tulip – now the co-boss of Stork Mountain along with Junior – heads back to her family’s house so she can finally meet them, but with her to lend their support are Junior, Jasper, all of the storks and other birds of Stork Mountain, and even the wolf pack. Her parents answer the door when she rings the bell, and she sees that she has a rather large family who all have curly red hair like her. After she greets her parents, her entire family rushes towards her and gives her a big hug. Junior goes to leave, satisfied that Tulip has finally been delivered, but Tulip has him join her in the group hug, considering him to be a member of her family.