Why is “Inside Out 2” Smashing Box Office Records?
It’s the Pixar sequel nine years in the making, with a new emotion — Anxiety — in the spotlight. So what makes Inside Out 2 the film everyone wants to see right now?
Once upon a time, the famed Pixar powerhouse had a Midas touch for moneymaking that even Taylor Swift would envy. Movies like Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, WALL*E and Up built Pixar’s unassailable rep for quality, and made billions at the box office. But that long, lucrative era shuddered to a screeching halt during the COVID years (hey, didn’t we all).
With cinemas shuttered, parent company Disney were forced to drop three shiny new Pixar features — Soul, Luca, and Turning Red — straight to streaming. And that just felt weird.
Cut to 2022, and Pixar’s big hope back in cinemas was Lightyear — but the Toy Story spinoff underperformed badly. 2023’s Elemental then suffered the worst opening weekend in Pixar’s nearly three-decade history. Cue panic buttons being smashed. Critics of the COVID streaming strategy blamed Disney for breaking Pixar’s streak, saying they’d inadvertently “trained” audiences to expect A-Grade animated premieres on demand at home.
So there was a lot riding on Inside Out 2 — and without a single toy, clownfish or cute masterchef rat in sight, studio heads were understandably nervous. Well rest easy, Pixar honchos — your newie smashed the record for the biggest international animation opening of all time. And it collected a staggering $725 million globally after just ten days in cinemas.
So how does Inside Out 2 step things up?
In a nutshell, central character Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) is growing up. She’s 13 now, and her core emotions — joy, anger, sadness, fear and disgust — aren’t quite vibing with her emerging new teenage challenges. They’re simple emotions that powered Riley when she was a kid. But now that she’s dealing with more nuanced and confusing stuff, a new gang of somewhat more complicated emotions have popped into her head’s quarters (get it?).
Say hello to envy, embarrassment, ennui and anxiety — and before you can say “panic attack”, Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke) starts ruling the roost. Against the backdrop of Riley going to a three-day ice hockey camp where she’s desperate to impress the cooler, older girls, Anxiety and Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) begin an uneasy partnership at the controls of Riley’s grey matter which quickly spins into an all-out mental war.
The goal for Inside Out 2 is to gently examine aspects of mental health and render them not just digestible for kids, but enjoyable for anyone. It’s no easy task. Too sophisticated and it’d be dull; too simplistic and we’d get a sugary sweet metaphor. But Pixar don’t set themselves easy tasks. Instead, they’ve crafted a satisfying narrative in an invisible world — explaining how our emotions, memories and experiences all connect to build our sense of self.
How does Inside Out 2 help kids interpret their emotions?
Emotions are weird. Growing up is scary, friendships are complicated and the human body is… [sniffs] disgusting! It’s no wonder new emotions are coursing through Rileys’ brain. So when Anxiety and her pals crash the party, the conflict steadily builds. It’s a mirror of what most pre-teens go through, as simpler emotions take a backseat to the more layered stuff. As Anxiety explains to Joy, “You’ve done a great job, but Riley has more complex emotions now — she doesn’t need you anymore!”
The moral is that “less mature” emotions, like joy, always have a place in our lives. Pixar get that lesson through to kids (and the adults that need to hear it too!) with one key metaphor that’s as effective as the original film’s core memories idea.
Riley’s “sense of self” is a glowing sculpture that takes pride of place inside her mind. It’s built from threads of memories and ideas that weave together into, essentially, a belief system — one that we can see. It’s a brilliant yet simple way for kids to grasp that what they feel, think and say IRL coalesces into something tangible.
As a kid, Riley’s sense of self was a soft, calm web of simple concepts like “I’m a good friend” and “I’m proud of myself” (we hear the sentences echoing around). Director Kelsey Mann and his team of animators show Riley’s sense of self changing as SHE changes — from soft and blue to fiery, jagged and fragile. As she competes at the intense ice hockey training camp with Anxiety dominating her mind, negative threads of self-talk (like “I’m not good enough” — ahh, that old chestnut) add more spikes to her uncomfortable new sense of self.
Of course, the story revolves around Joy fighting hard to restore Riley to the caring, confident person she’s always been. In a key scene, Joy points out to Anxiety, “You don’t get to choose who Riley is. You need to let her go.” It’s emblematic of the negative-positive tug of war that many of us navigate as part of our own daily self-talk — especially as a teen, when self-criticism can take your stream of consciousness into somewhat murkier waters.
How does Inside Out 2 bring tricky concepts to the screen?
If there’s any filmmakers on Earth who can take a cloudy concept and make it crystal clear, it’s the Pixar gang. Think back through their catalogue and, time after time, they’ve managed to visualise human experiences that are tough to unpack (look no further than the wordless opening sequence in UP, which became an instant cultural milestone).
While Pixar’s earlier film Turning Red dealt with the physical changes of puberty, Inside Out 2 keeps its focus inside Riley’s brain, where puberty is suddenly “demolition day”. Cue the crew of construction workers, as a literal wrecking ball swings into Riley HQ to smash her normal brainwaves to bits. Feels about right! Any parent will empathise with the line, “Ever since that puberty alarm went off, nothing around this place works like it’s supposed to!”
The story hits its stride when, drunk with power, Anxiety uses a kind of catapult to launch Joy and her fellow “kid” emotions into the darker recesses of Riley’s brain. She rounds them up by sealing them in a big jar — in other words, Riley literally bottles up her emotions. Chef’s kiss.
This sets in motion Joy’s quest to get back to HQ and regain control, so we get an adventure movie — but instead of braving a jungle or a desert, Indiana Jones-style, the characters are navigating synapses and memory banks. As Riley’s behaviour changes, the landscape of her brain changes too, blocking their path in genius ways.
In the real world, when Riley starts folding irony into her language to impress her older friends, a giant crevasse opens up in her mind — it’s a “sar-chasm”. When she plots ways to impress her hockey coach, Joy and co. are trapped in a literal “brainstorm” (with hailstones of ideas). They’re just two examples of Pixar’s ace skill at bringing fuzzy real-world concepts to life.
How does Inside Out 2 hit the mark for adults?
The clever visuals aren’t the only bonuses Pixar have layered in for the enjoyment of us “olds”. If you’ve got kids or have taken someone else’s little tykes to the movies before, you’ll know that checking-your-watch-every-5-minutes feeling — when all that’s on screen is a colourful, empty distraction. Joyously (sorry), Inside Out 2 is not that film.
There’s meta references that will get a grin from anyone born before 1999. When Joy destroys a big screen that’s amping up Riley’s anxious impulses, “Big Brother”-style, it’s a direct parody of Apple’s infamous “1984” Macintosh ad (inspired by the Orwell novel, it’s one of the greatest commercials ever made). Another scene pokes fun at the real SOCIAL complexity of puberty: Riley realises her friend’s hiding the truth by scanning her face like the T-800 Terminator.
There’s also deeper stuff going on that might give your grown-up heartstrings a tug or two. At a key point during Anxiety’s frenzied time at the “controls”, Joy feels like she’s out of options. She doesn’t know how to stop Anxiety from steamrolling all of Riley’s other thoughts and feelings. Her quiet admission is a bit of an “Oooof, too real” moment for the adult crowd: “Maybe this is just what happens when you grow up. You feel less joy.”
So what’s the takeaway from Inside Out 2?
It’s fascinating that, from the huge kaleidoscope of teenage emotions they had to draw on for this long-awaited sequel, Pixar landed on anxiety as their “star”. The studio’s creative chief, Pete Docter, says: “We tried out a bunch of different characters, including Guilt and Shame, before arriving at just the right cocktail of ingredients to tell this story.”
In other words, anxiety “tested” best with audiences. What does that say about our collective state of mind? Well, to feel anxious in 2024 is nothing if not relatable. Anxiety is the most common of mental disorders — and according to a US National Institute of Mental Health study, an estimated 31.9% of adolescents have experienced some form of anxiety disorder. Yep, ONE in every THREE teens.
Director Kelsey Mann said that his hope for the sequel was simply to “ tell a story that made some teenagers lives that much easier.” We’d say he might’ve undersold his efforts there. Inside Out 2 is a film that could help teens AND the people who love them. By cracking open complex feelings and springing them into eye-popping life, the amateur psychologists at Pixar have scribbled the prescription for a clever delight that’s “about something” — and will no doubt prompt a stack of important parent-child conversations.
Is that the secret to Inside Out 2’s inbound billion-dollar success? It’s impossible to say, but your child will leave the theatre a lot more equipped to appraise their own minds than they would seeing The Garfield Movie. You might, too. All we can say for sure is, this kind of box office will definitely bring on the threequel. Riley should be about 21 by then, right? We can’t wait to see how her next emotions, Shock and Horror, navigate the rental property market.
Originally published at https://good.film.
