Monarch

Calvin is a young, hot-headed and ambitious monarch butterfly living at the Milkweed Butterfly Conservatory in Canada. Most of the other butterflies, birds and insects enjoy the luxuries of captivity. But not Calvin. He longs to escape and fulfill his birthright to go on the monarch migration to Mexico. For Calvin, life inside the conservatory is a daily attempt to find a way out, much to the chagrin of his parents. This involves trying to get past the mechanical air blowers that keep him inside. One day he watches a little girl with curly hair as she walks through the entrance doors with her curls bouncing in the air jets. He has an idea and manages to convince his best friend Trevon to come with him. The two young monarchs hide inside the girl’s curls and manage to exit into the giftshop before being spotted by a conservatory attendant. They quickly switch vehicles as a bald woman passes by, and emerge into the sunshine clinging to the woman’s ears as giftshop earrings. Calvin and Trevon explore the town outside the conservatory before settling in a park for their first night of freedom. The next morning, they are saved from a scary encounter with a playful dog by a young female monarch named Luna. Luna explains that she’s part of a group of wild monarchs that are going on the migration. Calvin and Trevon meet the others in her group—an assorted bunch of misfits named Crazy Dave, JP, Trish, and Wilson who is immediately hostile toward Calvin. Calvin and Trevon return to the conservatory to say a final goodbye to their parents through a window. This doesn’t go well, and they return to Luna and the others to settle in for the night before the start of their migration journey the following morning. In the middle of the night, Trevon wakes Calvin to say he can’t do it and is going back inside the conservatory. The next day, Calvin leaves the town with the others. They fly by a lake and over fields to reach the official start of the migration route where millions of other monarchs are camped out. The next morning, Calvin and the others begin the migration with millions of monarchs. Calvin, Luna, JP, and Crazy Dave get captured and released by a large group of schoolchildren with nets to trap and apply tracking devices to the butterflies. After flying through several states, the migration encounters a tornado. A roof tile collides with Calvin’s group and several other monarchs and carries them away from the migration to touch down at an abandoned warehouse. Calvin is devastated at being separated from the main migration until Luna tells him about a map on the wall where he immediately recognizes the Mississippi River. He comes up with a plan to reunite them with the main migration, and presents this plan to everyone. They leave the warehouse that night, leaving others behind that can’t or won’t make the trip. They fly overnight and land on a bridge that crosses the Mississippi River. There are no boats. His plan dissolves until Calvin spots a bundle of tree trunks tethered together in the river. He hatches a plan to get one loose for them to ride down the river on. Dave volunteers to hop onto the strap that binds the tree trunks together and saw through it with his sword pendant. As Dave works on the strap, a distant speedboat sends waves into the tree trunks. The strap snaps and Dave falls into the gap between two tree trunks. Despite Cal trying to save him, Dave falls further into the abyss. The larger group of monarchs sit on the tree trunk floating downstream. Doubt, grief and despair consume Calvin. Everyone falls asleep apart from Calvin and Wilson. Wilson offers a half-hearted attempt to console Calvin which starts an argument. In the middle of this, a jaybird swoops down and plucks Wilson off the log. Calvin grabs one of Wilson’s feet and is taken up with him. Calvin forces the jay to drop Wilson from its claws by climbing up the bird and ramming his proboscis into the jay’s eyes. Wilson lands on top of some monarchs who join their wings together and break his fall. Calvin makes the jay crash into the log, which catapults him into the air and almost into the river. But Wilson catches his foot before Cal enters the water. Calvin takes stock of the situation as the log approaches rapids. The log gets pummelled by water and some monarchs perish, including Old Bill who has one polystyrene wing. The log comes closer to a waterfall as the monarch migration passes overhead. They start to jump off up one by one, but Luna’s foot gets stuck and Cal stays to help her as the log goes over the waterfall with them on it. Cal just manages to get Luna free and they get thrown onto the riverbank. Cal and Luna sleep under a leaf in a tree by the river. The next day, Calvin finds a nearby train track and wakes Luna to show her. They watch as a train passes them. Calvin tells Luna about his plan to board the next train to San Antonio, where the migration passes through. Calvin meets a kitten by the train track and does it a favor by getting rid of its fleas. He then introduces Luna to the kitten. A train approaches and the cat is in a tree with the two monarchs clinging to its fur. The train has an open door, and the kitten waits for that carriage and leaps off the tree and onto the train. Later, inside the train carriage, Luna and Calvin play cards while the kitten sleeps. We get a quick snapshot of a little girl who asks her daddy for a kitten. Her daddy says that maybe Santa will bring one for Christmas, and she’ll have to wait and see. A coyote appears from the shadow in the corner of the carriage and attacks the kitten. Calvin tries to save the kitten and almost ends up in the coyote’s mouth but is saved by Luna. They land in corn flour that coats their wings and prevents them from flying off. The coyote pins them to the wooden floor with his claw. When it looks like they’re about to be eaten, the kitten jumps on the coyote’s back. The coyote tries to get the kitten off and, in the process, its claw snaps off. A severed claw pins Calvin and Luna to the wooden deck of the carriage. In his struggle, the coyote trips and falls through the door, taking the kitten with him. She lands in a tree and he tumbles down a steep bank. The kitten ends up in the arms of the little girl who wants a kitten for Christmas. The coyote lands beneath a cow in a field just as the cow raises its tail to release a cow pat. Calvin and Luna get free of the claw but Cal’s wing is damaged. Luna realizes they’re on an express train and will need to find a way to stop it at San Antonio. Calvin gets the idea to puncture bags of corn flour so the train driver thinks it’s smoke and stops the train. It works. The train stops outside of San Antonio, and they get off. Luna spots a tourist information centre and they decide to see if there’s any information about the migration. There are books and souvenirs related to the migration as well as a big sign to advertise the migration passing through that location. They both lie flat against a book cover and wait for a family to buy that book and take them to the site of the migration. They arrive only to discover that they missed it. They sit on a hill holding each other as the sun sets, and share their first kiss. The next day, they wake to find monarchs on trees. They meet a monarch from Texas who tells them about the delayed western migration coming from California. All is not lost. Calvin and Luna are on the beach in Mexico and meet up with Trish and Wilson, who are now a couple. Back at the conservatory the following year, a young female monarch enters the conservatory using the same technique as Calvin. The monarchs all gather for a story session to tell the legend of Calvin Monarch. The facts have been distorted. The newbie takes the stage and introduces herself before telling the real story of her great-great-grandfather. Meanwhile, lepidopterist Professor Stoveler is presenting at a conference. He talks about a mysterious monarch that he found—deceased and intertwined with a female monarch. When he ran the data on Calvin’s tracking device, he discovered how it had created a new migratory flight path never seen before. The professor says that only a very special monarch could have done this.