Inside Out's Main Problem (VIDEO SCRIPT)

(Sits) So I think I figured out what’s going on with the Inside Out movies.

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If I were to choose 5 of the most prolific Pixar films over the course of their time under Disney’s thumb, one of them for sure is Inside Out.

/It had heart. It had emotion. It had everything that the likes of their back-to-back emotional gut checks that were WALL-E and Up had in a way that reminded you of Buzz and Woody’s foil dynamic from the first Toy Story./

And just like Toy Story 3, this little movie about how the emotions of an 11 year old white girl moving to San Francisco from Minnesota had ALL the homies digging through their own memory dumps to give their imaginary friends one last big hug while ugly crying over the fact that we ever forgot about them in the first place.

It’s me, I’m homies.

Inside Out is a children’s movie on the outside, but is just FILLED with imagery and concepts that a lot of us adults never had a good way of describing how certain things felt to us growing up when it came to feelings, emotions, and dreams and stuff.

/It literally became one of Pixar’s masterpieces overnight, which is why a lot of people were a bit iffy when Disney announced we were getting a sequel and new emotions attached to the established Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Lewis Black - I mean Anger./

That’s why I wanna take this time to not only revisit the only movie that made me feel bad about a white girl from a swing state with parents capable of buying a house in modern day San Francisco...

But also see how this sequel nine years in the making holds up in regards to what it adds to what the 2015 original established and if there are any noticeable patterns I can see if Disney decides to run this beautiful concept of feelings and emotions into the ground just so they can say they have another successful franchise in their pocket.

Don’t worry, I live in a swing state so I can make that joke...

That means, yes. There will be spoilers for both of these films. So go watch them on either home video, digital or on Disney Plus first. There’ll be affiliate links for the physical and digital copies of both in the description if you wanna own them and help out the channel a bit at the same time

That ALSO means that in regards to everything you’re about to watch, just know that these are my opinions, my points, and you are welcome to agree or disagree with them as you see fit.

But if you end up liking what I’m putting down, my name is La’Ron Readus; offering you critique and immersion of your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media 

And if you like what I do here or on my main channel, feel free to join my Patreon...

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Also make sure you subscribe to the channel, turn on notifications, and subscribe to my Substack newsletter!

Not only is it the home for all of my written editorials, opinion pieces and reviews for film and television after they debut on Patreon...

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Now with that out of the way, let’s prepare to talk about the most accurate depiction of a panic attack in an animated movie for the 3rd time in the past 3 years.

Oh, come on. Don’t look at me in that tone of voice; you’re getting tired of hearing it too.

Inside Out (2015)

Inside Out is an art piece.

/Not to be confused with Pixar’s ACTUAL art piece The Good Dinosaur, which was basically the film they made to test out their new CGI innovations and technology like Bambi was to Disney Animation/

One could argue that Finding Nemo originally had the same purpose, but there’s a reason why Marlon and Dory are household names and not, uh... (looks on phone) Arlo...? Arlo (looks at camera and nods)

Anyway you’ve probably been bombarded with the Inside Out variant of the One Pixar Joke people who think they’re interesting make till the cows come home, I’m sure.

“WhAt iF FEELINGS hAd fEeLIngS??” What if you had more than one fucking BRAINCELL Laurence? How about you stop getting your humor from Reddit and buy a book of Dad Puns like the rest of us respectable 30 year olds? (Pause) Ya piece of shit???

/Anyway, I say everything that’s meant to be taken seriously because this film is beautiful. Both in the characterization and delivery of the story, and also in the cinematography and art direction./

Riley and the real world was pretty much what I expected at this point in my Pixar viewing career.

/Unless there’s a specific STYLE of human and whatnot that they’re going for -- like Luca and Turning Red, for instance -- how Riley and the other humans looked, including places like Minnesota and San Francisco, isn’t really any different than the way Pixar had been animating the real world and the humans within it since the likes of Finding Nemo/

No, it’s the landscape and the individuals inside Riley’s head that stand out to me the most.

/It was the use of color, the physical representations of mental concepts and constructs, the endless memory storage shelves resembling that of the lumpiness of the human brain. Even the way all of the five emotions present could be easily identified and associated with their appropriate emotions both on a visual and personal level./

Visual art-wise, the movie just works.

And it works so much that despite it being released in 2015, a rewatch of the film 9 years later on televisions that just have the at-this-point standard 760 and 1080p resolutions proves that it can still compete with the innovations of the studios more recent work.

No, I don’t own a 4K television. No, I don’t own any movies on 4K Blu-Ray. No, my regular-degular Blu-Ray collection is NOT bigger than my DVD collection. Yes I AM poor. Now LEAVE ME ALONE!

Now while that’s great and all, and while I appreciate a good image on the movie and tv screen, the story and the characterizations of both Riley and her family and her 5 core emotions is what took the cake for me, both when I saw this 9 years ago and watched it over again.

/Amy Poehler as Joy makes sense the less you think about her voice belonging to Leslie Knope from Parks and Recs and more when you simply realize how much her voice matches Joy’s look and energy./

Although some performers just from seeing the daily performance they put on for the public naturally feel like the perfect fit when you associate them with their corresponding emotions.

/Like Phyllis Smith as Sadness, Bill Hader as Fear, and ESPECIALLY Lewis Black as Anger./

Even seeing how their personalities and attitudes drive Riley’s decision-making process felt organic to watch, because every one of them felt in sync with what we got to see of her growing up to the point of the initial story.

Seeing how everyone worked in tandem to her development -- well, ALMOST everyone -- helped make the scenario of Joy and Sadness being excavated from the main control room more dire, because of how much of a...slightly less-maintained machine they represent as a whole.

/Because, yes; we can all agree and say that Joy was the main problem. The way she managed the other emotions, the way she prioritized the happiness Riley experienced, the way every other emotion has 1 memory of their own for every 15-20 that she has. Joy at this time in Riley’s life is the most problematic Disney will allow Pixar to make a protagonist of theirs, let’s be real here./

But it’s IN that ridiculous range of freedom that Pixar found the perfect way to show the kids watching this movie that what Joy did is an unhealthy way of dealing with depression.

/Prioritizing happiness over any other emotion. Refusing to see or focus on the other emotions in memories that are overall consumed by Joy. Keeping sadness both away from any memories so that she wouldn’t “infect” them or allow her OWN core memory she developed into the core memory holder because it wasn’t happy./

Joy was a visual representation of masking; trying to ignore your other feelings just to try and convey that you’re fine when in actuality you’re not. Inwardly, Joy’s main priority was keeping Riley happy and making sure she STAYED happy. Toxic positivity, basically.

/Thanks to her dominance in the control room, she continued to do so by any means necessary even when it was evident that Sadness in some instances not only makes sense, but should be healthily distributed just as much as the fabricated happiness Joy has been forcing her to focus on./

She was so focused on getting back to the control room to get things back to normal and making sure Sadness “didn’t ruin anything else,” /that she was completely gobsmacked in witnessing Sadness both successfully and HEALTHILY get Bing Bong over his instance, because FEELING SADNESS IS NECESSARY./

Now does Joy eventually learn this? Yes.

/Albeit she had to do it in the land of Misfit Memories and actually experience her OWN sadness first in order to see that emotionally-linked memories are NOT just one emotion at its core, but she does eventually./

Damn, not Joy having to experience sadness herself before realizing how much Sadness actually matters. This really IS a white woman.

/But it’s BECAUSE Joy finally realizes this, we get two of the most emotionally charged tear-flowing-ass scenes in Pixar’s career since Up, and -- in my opinion -- wouldn’t get again for a while until 2017’s Coco./

All of these things -- including the revelation and watching how gut-wrenchingly accurate Riley’s translation of Joy and Sadness’s journey was -- help put 2015’s Inside Out on the list of my Top Five favorite Pixar films. Up there with Up, Wall-E, Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3.

Now, the question is: Does Inside Out 2 hold up?

Inside Out 2 (2024)

So before I say anything, I must admit that it was INCREDIBLY easy to tell that this is not a Brad Bird situation.

And what I mean by that is that I can tell that this story and movie was not concocted by the original minds behind the first movie.

This was not Pete Docter, and this was not Ronnie del Carmen. However, this ABSOLUTELY was Kelsey Mann and Meg LeFauve playing on the same deluxe Lego set that Docter and del Carmen made back in 2015.

/Everything fit and matched the theme of the set you paid 90 to 120 dollars for and is easily interchangeable with what already exists, but a trained eye can tell that these bricks were either from a bin of random pieces or from an expansion set that was made to be played with the same set, it was just never initially part of the set you spent all that money on./

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though; there have been plenty of instances in which a writer and director different from the writer and director of the original properly shows that they belong to play with this sandbox once their work is released. James Cameron’s “Aliens,” for example.

/The addition of the Stream of Consciousness, you can tell, was a way of introducing a plot device similar to the Train of Thought in the original movie, for example. But it’s through it that we get a lot of good visible expressions of aspects that, while not shown in the first movie, feel right at home with what it established./

(Those guys are jerks. Those guys are jerks)

I say this because this film introduces a good amount of new iterations of common human feelings and situations that the first one didn’t, and it’s familiar enough to match the world but fresh enough to tell that it wasn’t always here.

Would they have felt more integrated if they were initially created by Pete and Ronnie instead? I have no clue. But as of how they CURRENTLY exist, everything is on par with everything else.

Secondly -- and this is specifically for those of you who know who you are -- (up and down palm with a frustrated look on his face) R-Riley is Bi AT BEST.

/She’s thirteen and JUST started puberty. She likes K-Pop and Boy Bands. Two of her Top 4 crushes are the kid she bumped into at the end of the first movie and a black dude; like she OBVIOUSLY likes boys./

As a fellow Bisexual, I can vouch for the commonality of not showing IMMEDIATE attraction to both sexes at the same time; I thought I was straight until I was 12 or 13 because at the time, I only liked girls.

/Because, trust me. I saw the way Riley was looking at Val when she helped her up./

It’s Disney, so OF COURSE they’re gonna make sure it’s presented in a “I just thinks she’s cool” way worldwide, /but if Riley was anything during that moment, I guarantee you the one thing she wasn’t was straight./

So I see the vision, and I understand the yearning for it. All I’M saying is “let’s just take known facts into consideration from time to time.”

Anyway, I do have to admit that I wasn’t quite at home with this one like I am with 1.

/I do like how a lot of the new expressions of common concepts were introduced into the overall world. But while I did enjoy the moral that this movie tried to convey, it didn’t have the same weight the expression of the original film did./

I didn’t get a swell of emotion at this film’s equivalent of Bing Bong biting the bullet, only for the waterworks to finally fall by the time Joy and Sadness learned to collaborate to get Riley in a group hug with her parents.

I feel that it had a lot to do with the delivery when it came to Inside Out 2. The first movie showed that through acknowledging the necessity of other emotions beside happiness, you can deliver some powerful presentations of the freeway congestion that is the emotional spectrum.

/But because we’re dealing with seeking control and self-worth, the end result of Riley’s panic attack feels less like Inside Out’s ending and more like the result of the umpteenth Disney Channel and Nickelodeon sitcom where the main character makes up with their estranged best friends./

And while I can totally see why one could get emotional at the end when all the emotions hugged Riley’s fluctuating new Sense of Self, it just didn’t hit me like that unfortunately.

Not to say that seeking control and self-worth isn’t made to be a topic of these kinds of movies, because it totally is.

/Considering the type of person that Joy is, Anxiety is the PERFECT emotion to serve as a mirror-reflection foil for her. They both want the best for Riley and utilize unhealthy ways of going about it. But because it’s Joy that needs to learn this lesson -- go figure -- Anxiety’s extreme is significantly amplified so that, through her actions, Joy can see where her own fault lies and go about being better about it./

Also, while I’m happy to admit that was an AMAZING depiction of a panic attack, I’m gonna stay out of the “this was the best display of” war, alright?

Puss in Boots’ depiction was good, I was told Ted Lasso’s version is also good but I wouldn’t know because I don’t believe in Apple TV Plus, and this movie’s depiction was good.

But as far as this one being the BEST? I don’t know, man. I’m not an orange cartoon character based on a Jim Henson design voiced by the Nepo Baby of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman whose levels of anxiety grants them access to the Speed Force whenever they get overstimulated by bad “What ifs.”

/It definitely FEELS that way, but trying to claim this as the best just because Pixar found a way of translating that feeling visually, I believe, isn’t fair to the other people who translate extreme panic and anxiety in ways that DON’T reflect it that way/

/It can be a REALLY GOOD visual translation without it having to be the VERY BEST visual translation, you know what I mean?/

And there’s a lot of things about Inside Out 2 character and development-wise outside of Joy’s lesson that I thought were ALSO really good

/I like that the other core emotions had a turn outside the control room with Joy this time around. I like that they challenge her more often than they did in the first one now that they acknowledge they’re just as important as her, but are still supportive of her -- ESPECIALLY when she takes the Happiness mask off. Seeing Embarassment pine over Sadness was cute as fuck and made my heart swell a bit, alright? I’m a hopeless romantic; sue me!/

Even the way Anxiety is “handled” I thought was really great.

/Thinking about the things we CAN control is one of the best ways of dealing with anxiety, but this was the first time I saw a visual depiction of what it could look like if you actually personified these emotions, and it not only make sense, but translate to its desired medium damn near PERFECTLY./

(She has a Spanish test tomorrow. We need to study )

Overall, Inside Out 2 isn’t COMPLETELY necessary in comparison to what the first movie was able to convey.

However, that doesn’t mean its story isn’t worth watching or that there aren’t parallels between Riley’s time at Hockey Camp and how everyone’s navigating the new emotions.

/It doesn’t take away from the experience of Inside Out 1, yet what’s added doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s so unique to the experience that it’ll be missed if it was never talked about./

But as you can imagine, there’s one common denominator about both of these films that both creators kinda realized is necessary in order for Inside Out 2 to even be considered up there with the 2015 original movie.

And that’s how to process Joy.

While Inside Out showed us that a lot of disassociation and depression can be allowed to build up the longer you mask aspects of yourself behind happiness in an attempt to appear okay...

Inside Out 2 shows that choosing to ignore aspects of yourself instead of accepting those flaws allows extremes in who you are as a person to define you.

/And out of all the emotions that STAY struggling to understand that Riley isn’t just a doll to play dress-up in this way, it’s Joy./

Joy being the first emotion that spawned with Riley’s consciousness is probably the reason for all of this...

/But everything she did over the course of Inside Out basically told us that she needed to learn that just because she was the first doesn’t mean she’s the ONLY./

And while the lesson of acknowledging the importance of every other emotion in relation to herself was learned, she evidently still needed a form of control of Riley’s trajectory because of how close she is with her.

/That’s why she made a land dump to repress all the non-faded out embarrassing and unwanted moments instead of allowing them to be part of her./

Every time Joy gives up a form of control over Riley’s life upon realizing that the grip she had on it was too tight in relation to everyone else's, she finds another aspect of it to scratch her itch while falling in line with the new collaborative way of doing the thing she previously had a hold over.

/And every time, she has to learn how to relinquish control and work not around, but WITH the other emotions. Regardless of how new they are./

Because of this, I think about if this is gonna be a consistent pattern if stories within this universe are gonna be milked like Disney wants.

/Like, eventually Joy is gonna run out of chances with the audience if it’s just gonna be her learning multiple versions of this same lesson, because it’s just gonna prove that she DOESN’T learn from her actions. She just understands why things need to happen this way, and conforms to it when she finds something else to claim as her new pet project that’ll get out of hand according to the narrative./

Maybe if Inside Out 2 wasn’t so focused on the “Not So Different” trope that had her and Anxiety in a chokehold and had one of the other emotions as the main focus, I wouldn’t be so hard on Joy here.

/Yes, the story would be a bit different if Joy wasn’t front and center, but it would also allow Joy a way to witness how she isn’t the only one this happens to while others get their time in the spotlight./

There are SO many situations I can think of involving the Puberty alarm that Anger, Disgust, and Embarrassment as a new extension of the situation could have easily taken center stage for in a way that still allowed Anxiety to be the antagonist.

/Not only does this show that the other emotions are capable of going through a sense of realization about how they’re all supposed to work together for Riley, but it doesn’t make us think that Joy is 100% stubborn./

N-not the CONCEPT of Joy, I mean the Inside Out CHARACTERIZATION of Joy.

If it’s always Joy learning the same lesson of constant variants, people are just gonna start believing that she’s incapable of growth; that her need to have a hold on Riley’s life in any way possible overtakes her ability to be a character and makes her boring.

/She needs to follow the same advice she gave Anxiety and actually let go of all facets of control she has or WILL have in Riley’s life, let ANOTHER emotion experience the trials and tribulations, and witness how much each of them equally matter in Riley’s life./

Unfortunately, as long as Amy Poehler’s salary per Inside Out movie remains so large that they have to replace Fear and Disgusts performers from Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling with Tony Hale and Liza Lapira, something tells me taking the spotlight off of Joy is gonna happen later rather than sooner.

Conclusion

Does this mean I think Inside Out 2 doesn’t work in comparison to the first film? Not at all.

While not COMPLETELY necessary, Inside Out 2 does a good job at adding to the world that was already firmly established in a way where nothing felt out of place

And while the delivery of the moral the movie was trying to convey didn’t hit me as hard as the first one, it doesn’t make it less important.

However, I feel that if we’re going to get more Inside Out from Disney and Pixar in the future, keeping focus on Joy and having her learn the same lesson over and over again is gonna eventually be this series’ downfall

Because people are going to get bored watching the same white woman constantly learn that not everything is about her.

“But Joy isn’t white, she’s Riley’s embodiment of Joy who just so happens to be voiced by a white woman” God damn it, you know EXACTLY what I mean, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

All this to say that I’m not trying to get you to like one movie over the other, but these are actual aspects and things to think about if people want these specific movies and the ones they spawn in the future to succeed.

I don’t want to feel like Inside Out 3, 4 or beyond aren’t worth watching because it’s just another story about Joy struggling with her control kink. I want to see her actually utilize her development while also see the other emotions struggle as they take center stage

Similar to how the original plot of Toy Story 3 was gonna focus on Buzz Lightyear being recalled back to China so we could meet HIS Jesse, Bullseye and Stinky Pete, y’know?

Because if there’s one thing that the Inside Out movies have successfully shown us, it’s that everyone can’t be happy all the time. No matter who’s playing her.

(Snaps) Right! Yes! Homework!

Write in the comment section below which Inside Out movie is your favorite

Or if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, let me know if there’s anything about the Inside Out movies you feel needs to change about them in order for them to properly thrive in the future. Y’know, other than what I just explained in this video.

Whichever one you wanna answer, feel free to let me know!

/Thank you to ALL of my patrons -- big and small -- for your financial support and making this possible! If you want to support the creation of the videos for this and the main channel, make sure you click the card at the end or the link in the description to join.

But until then this is Readus 201. Class dismissed./