Monsters University

I did.

I don't think there was a single female scarer in the first one. What a shame.

@Dr Starky: I'm not sure, the commercial in the first film showed Sully being excited for a character called 'Betty'. They didn't show if Betty was a scarer or scream-fueler though.

Someone calculated from the calendar shots we got that the movie takes place in 1987-1988.

I was wondering about the year if the 90's where when the revolution of power came around, IE the original movie came out.

I also wondered about how the society works that values scaring (and in a sense, generating power) so much to the expectation of anything else.

edited 24th Jun '13 2:22:38 PM by phoenixdaughterAM

The filmmakers said it's about a decade wide gap between MU and MI and dates on the paperwork in the first film put Monsters Inc around 2000/2001.

Which remembers me that they really had love for detail in this one, even that score board on the Scarer floor was analog and the dummies where wooden, they really went to lengths to make this look like a prequel from a technological standpoint.

It is a bit of Fridge Horror, because all the college kids we liked so much are now obsolete. Keep surprising people indeed.

edited 24th Jun '13 3:29:02 PM by nairoxev

Just came back from the film, it's a real tearjerker at points but a great film nontheless. Maybe it's me being a big fan of Mike and going through similar phases. Also felt really bad for Randal. Wonderful character development for Sully. Was really pleased to see Hardscrabble not be a villain but kind of disappointed there wasn't a conspiracy like in the first film, but that doesn't mean it's a bad film. Having Watternoose not speak at all was a good decision(even though I'm saddened that Kelsy Grammer didn't have a speaking point at all).

Even poor Butt-Monkey George Sanderson gets a Buttmonkey moment like I expected.

Loved the Incest joke. Though the thing that seemed kind of making me feel like a awful person had to be thinking the alma mater sounding like "Every Sperm is Sacred".

The Blue Umbrella seemed like something out of Uncanny Valley. Also seemed like a more Oriental animated short(despite the setting taking place in someplace in America/England/Canada/*shrug*(place with English language). It's just in the direction of details and filming that makes me feel that way.

edited 24th Jun '13 6:18:33 PM by minespatch

The Uncanny Valley is good when it's not being used on characters. The faces on the umbrellas were good enough.

I'm talking about uncanny valley on everything else. The Umbrellas had cartoony faces, but everything else... Just kinda creeped me out.

I was even thinking the other day, How one day she picks up a paper, sees the news about Sully switching Monsters, Inc. over from scare to laughter, and saying to herself "Not really what I had in mind."

edited 24th Jun '13 7:38:51 PM by TheSpaceJawa

Just realized that the switch to laugh power would make the entire scaring major obsolete... but at least laughs give ten times as much power, so perhaps it's not too bad of a tradeoff. Still, Dean Hardscrabble is going have quite a challenge trying to teach laughing techniques, if she's still there by then.

edited 24th Jun '13 7:43:21 PM by Tuckerscreator

It's going to be much more difficult a transition then you think. As revolutionary an energy source laughter is, scaring is like the bedrock of Monster culture and its going to be tough to change that in the face of progress. Said conflict would make for a pretty good Monsters Inc 2 and you don't even need Boo.

I don't think it'll be nearly as problematic as you think, what with the energy crisis that was an underlying plot point throughout the course of the first movie.

When they're able to get laughter easier and it's 10 times as powerful, and what makes kids laugh doesn't go out of style nearly as easily as what makes them scared, it seems to me that you're overestimating the difficulty of switching from one to the other.

Besides, there's not even any indication that the infurstructure needs any changes to make it work, either. Everything that worked with scream at least seems to work exactly the same as being powered by laugh.

edited 24th Jun '13 8:38:35 PM by TheSpaceJawa

It's not about infrastructure beyond larger canisters, it's about culture and pride and all of that shit. And for every monster that could adapt to comedy, there's plenty of monsters who can't be funny or only know how to be scary. Hell, going off the Pixar ideas of Monster history on the old DVD, scream energy is basically a practical purpose for scaring humans which has been something they've been doing since the dawn of humanity.

Also, if they hadn't basically already done that plot in Cars 2 already, I could easily see something like other scream energy companies trying to discredit or hinder laughter in some fashion.

I'm talking about the world shifting from scream to laugh, not the scarers themselves.

I'm sure there will be plenty of monsters who will have to find a brand new line of work because of the shift from scream to laugh, but as seen from how many people they're able to get to work as 'laughers' and that folks like Mike can make their quote on the first run of the day, I can't imagine that the new power industry will have much trouble being able to keep up a steady source of power regardless of how many former scarers are no longer able to do their job.

And when the monster world no longer has to worry about a power shortage and with laughter in more than ample supply, I think any efforts to hold back and keep using scream are going to seriously have their work cut out for them. Especially if you think about how much of the population of the monster world probably has no connection to the former scream industry beyond simply using it as a power supply.

In the short, the umbrellas have cartoony faces, but other than the other inanimate things that appear to have mouths and eyes, no human faces are seen! I honestly don't see where this uncanny valley thing is coming from.

From beyond the canny valley?

I guess it's just Paranoia Fuel. The backgrounds in the Blue Umbrella look very realistic and almost look like they belong in a actual photo. That's how pretty good the animation was.

edited 25th Jun '13 10:56:59 AM by minespatch

The backgrounds really do look like a real life environment. They DO NOT match the trees on the street Mike and Sulley walk to work on in the first film!

For a while, until things started to have eyes on them, I wasn't sure if it was another trailer for a live action movie or the short.

Just got back from watching this. I thought it was very good. Based on the general tone of reviews, I expected it would be a fairly typical plot, with the novelty value coming just from the fact that it starred monsters. Instead, Pixar once again showed their talent for going beyond the typical themes and morals of a kids' movie. A lot of the plot was (well-done) regular themes about people with different personalities overcoming animosity to become friends, and about an underdog 'sports' team. But the ending rose above that. First, with the underdogs only winning because Sully cheated. Secondly, because despite unfailing hard work and determination, Mike just wasn't good at his chosen profession - at least not the front-line scaring job he was thinking of. And thirdly - and what really raised the level of the movie, in my opinion, actions have consequences. There are reams of movies where the protagonist(s) screws up and then makes up for it/is given a pass because of one spectacular act. (For the most prominent recent example, BOTH of the new Star Trek films, with both ending with Kirk getting a high position despite showing no indications of having the attitude, skillset, or maturity for the job.) That's what I was expecting here after the summer-camp sequence. Instead, they completely subverted it with Mike and Sully still getting expelled. Then Hardscrabble came out to meet them and I was disappointed, thinking "Oh, she's going to let them back in now, they're going along with the cliché," and instead they subverted it again. So you end up with a message of "Yes, you can achieve your dreams, but screwing up has consequences, and achieving those dreams can take a lot of time and hard work." I like our protagonists being working-class heroes.

If not for people already liking Sully because of Monsters Inc, I think it would be easy to dislike him in this one given that both Mike initially being failed in the class and Mike's later expulsion were essentially Sully's fault. The cheating in particular makes him really unsympathetic as a character. The scene where Sullivan said he had been a jerk and Mike said "Well, so was I" didn't quite ring true to me because, honestly, Mike was doing his best with the team despite being overbearing and having too little faith in their abilities (a very easy thing to do at university when you feel that you're the most intelligent/hard-working/qualified person on a group project and that the others are pulling you down) in contrast to Sully's arrogant-slacker attitude. But showing that people who genuinely are jerks can mature and improve is another good theme.

In short, while I would prefer that Pixar get creative again and put out something that's not a sequel, this was yet another Pixar movie with considerably more depth and originality than your typical animated film. And it was a lot of fun, in the bargain.

EDIT: Oh, a couple more things. I really enjoyed the scene at the summer camp with Mike going horror-movie-director; it managed to be a brief homage to another genre while showing off Mike's skills at the same time.

There's one minor inconsistency - at least in terms of feel - with Monsters Inc: it doesn't seem like someone who was a straight-A student and consistently worked his way up through the ranks like Mike did would have such an aversion to paperwork. If you're the kind of person who memorizes your textbooks and perfects sorting mail, you're going to be good at dealing with paperwork. Maybe he was just busy, or so excited at having his dream job he just preferred to let it slide.

Dean Hardscrabble was awesomely designed. Seriously, a dragon centipede?! Coolest thing ever. And I liked that they made her female, given that basically all the cast was male and her being female had nothing to do with her character.

edited 4th Sep '13 3:11:54 PM by WarriorEowyn

As for the inconsistency, remember that he was going out with Celia that night, and to a supposedly VERY hard-to-get in restaurant. I think that justifies it.

Oh, and MU is AWESOME. Definitely tops the first.

edited 25th Jun '13 4:23:10 PM by Oswald1901

Exactly. You expressed everything about why I love this movie so much. I'm SO GLAD this film stuck with the theme of horror, that they're not only college students this time (I'm also glad it didn't become a cliche sports movie with the football field, like the trailer made it out to be) but MONSTERS created in the MINDS OF LITTLE KIDS who are MEANT TO SCARE! Mike very inadvertently introduced horror movies to the child audience in my theater! And that is a GREAT way to get kids to confront their own fears by examining what goes on behind what makes something so scary. The grays and darks in the camp scenes were exactly the kind of surprises and twists that the film needed and kids should appreciate depressing or shocking moments like that. They went through a whole movie relating and understanding two swell chums and noticed that not everything that scares you is set to harm you, like the first film did.

edited 25th Jun '13 4:32:50 PM by Shota

After Being a grade A student and not having success with it and instead figuring out that years of raw hard work like mail and janitorial deeds worked out much better, he probably became more a hands-on guy and less of a paperwork guy.