Monsters, Inc.

Em: 00:01:36

Hi, everyone. Happy New year. I'm Em and welcome to Verbal Diorama, Episode 327, Monsters, Inc.

This is the podcast that's all about the history and legacy of movies, you know, and movies you don't. That didn't file her paperwork last night and pretty much never files her paperwork, if I'm being completely honest. Welcome to Verbal Diorama.

It is now: 2026

Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast.

so happy to have you here in: 2026

Even when I do take regular breaks, which I've tried to do more in recent years, I really struggle because I genuinely always want to come back and I always want to work and I always want to try and put out episodes and Christmas was brilliant and it was a lot of fun.

omething that I've done since: 2020

So this is the sixth annual animation season and I am a huge fan of animated movies and it's something that I think that more podcasts should actually talk about. Animated Movies Animation Season is a celebration of animation in all forms.

Traditional 2D, hand drawn, stop motion, CGI mix of all the above, I featured some of the greatest animation studios of all time. Of Elbow Diorama.

In the past I featured Laika, Aardman, Disney Dreamworks, Pixar Studio Ghibli, Sony Cartoon Saloon, even the studios that no longer exist, like Fox Don Bluth Studios, all have been featured on this podcast multiple times in the past. Animation is not just for children. Animation is not a genre. It is the perfect art form.

It is capable of depicting anything and anyone without the limitations of live action cinema. This is why Animation Season remains so important to me and to this podcast.

To highlight incredible animated films that you may love or you may have discounted for whatever reason. But in my opinion, you shouldn't because you're missing out on some incredible storytelling.

And that's why I love to do this every January and February. And this year I'm off to say there are some absolute doozies in the animation season schedule. Movies that I get aasked. When am I doing an episode for it?

Cult favourites, Oscar nominees, Potential Oscar nominees, Oscar winners and movies that I think deserve a little bit more love.

t episode of Animation Season: 2026

es since Toy story debuted in: 1995

movie, Monsters Inc. Which in: 2026

Here's the trailer for Monsters, Inc.

The city of Monstropolis centres around the city's main power company, Monsters Incorporated.

The top scarer at the company is the lovable and confident James P. Sullivan, better known as Sully, and his best friend and scaring assistant, the wisecracking Mike Wazowski.

They discover what happens when the real world interacts with theirs in the form of a three year old girl called Boo, who accidentally sneaks into the monster world. And according to everyone, children are toxic to monsters. It's up to Sully and Mike to send Boo back before anybody finds out.

But they end up uncovering a sinister conspiracy within the company to kidnap and elicit more scares from children. Let's, as always, run through the cast.

We have John Goodman as James P. Sully Sullivan, Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski, Mary Gibbs as Boo, Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs, James Coburn as Henry J. Waternoose, Jennifer Tilly as Celia May, Bob Peterson as Roz, and John Ratzenberger as The Yeti Monsters Inc. Has a screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson, story by Pete Docter, Jill Poulton, Geoff Pidgeon and Ralph Eggleston was directed by Pete Docter and co directed by David Silverman and Lee Unkrich.

For as long as children have believed that their toys could come to life when they leave the room, they've also been afraid of the monster in their closet or under their bed. It's hard to remember a time when we didn't have Pixar movies.

onest, if you were born after: 1995

Monsters Inc. Was Pixar's fourth movie, which again seems like one of those facts that can't possibly be true. And it was originally conceived even before Toy Story was released.

Now I don't need to tell you what a huge shift in the animation industry Toy Story was I already have in episode 50 of this podcast. It would have been easy to write Toy Story off as Pixar's lightning in a bottle, the success of which is something they could never replicate again.

And yet the creative leads at Pixar weren't resting on their laurels even during Toy Story's production.

s episodes about a meeting in: 1994

Conceived during that lunch were early stage talks for A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo and Wall E, some of the cream of the crop that Pixar would ever release, as well as Monsters, Inc. It wasn't called that at the time, but the idea was fixed in the whole Monsters in a Child's Closet.

The first three Pixar movies had a story co written and directed by John Lasseter, and taking on the mantle of directing the fourth feature would have been a daunting task for anyone. John Lasseter had proven Toy Story wasn't just a fluke that Pixar could become successful, that this was the little animation studio that could.

would end up leaving Pixar in: 2018

But in that original: 1994

He would go on to direct Up Inside out and Soul, but he was given the task of directing Pixar's fourth feature, what would become Monsters, Inc. He would also direct the English dub of my favourite studio Ghibli movie. How Smoothing Castle.

Originally, the concept for Monsters Inc. Was just called Monsters, and the original pitch for the movie was a slightly different idea. It still focused on monsters in your closet.

It was about an accountant in his 30s who hated his job and was frightened by monsters who came to life inspired by drawings he made as a child.

The intriguing thing to Pete Docter was the idea that as kids we have these unnamed unconscious fears and we create monsters as a way to make them tangible. Dr. And the team began thinking, if monsters represent fears, what then are the monsters themselves afraid of?

Now the obvious answer was children, our own fears being afraid of us. The monsters aren't monsters in their world. They're just regular people.

They have jobs, they form relationships, they talk about the weather, what they saw on the TV last night. Scaring kids is just their job.

tarted working on Monsters in: 1996

Pete Doctor has routinely involved his ideas of parenting and children into his movies. Inside Out's main inspiration for the character of Riley was Doctor's then preteen daughter.

But as the doctors were bringing their infant son home from the hospital, the horror of a tiny human counting on a huge in comparison human to take care of. It started to get him thinking about Monsters.

Pete Docter would work all day and he would come home to his son doing new things and hated the fact that he wasn't there for any of his milestones. He would say in an interview with Indiewire.

Quote, it was that struggle between the sort of duty of work and then the love of a kid that really kind of became the heart of what Monsters was about, unquote.

The idea for the movie wasn't solely doctors, and he's always refused the full credit, saying that he developed the idea with story artist Jeff Pidgeon. And production designer Harley Jessup.

And as they developed their ideas, they would take them to John Lasseter, who would advise them on how to make the script stronger. And monsters evolved many times from that original pitch.

It went from an accountant in their 30s to a reality show where monsters scare kids for fun, to monsters whose job it was to scare kids. But it would still look different to the finished product. There was no Sully, but a clumsy monster called Johnson.

Johnson was actually more like the character that Mike Wazowski would become. Kind of timid and inspired by the real scary monsters at his work. Instead of Randall, there was Ned, and he was the top scarer at the company.

Johnson wasn't respected and is threatened with being fired. The character that would become Boo varied in age and gender over time, but in the script developer period is named Mary.

And she's older, aged around seven years old. And she ends up scaring Johnson rather than the other way around.

She follows him into the monster world, disguises herself as a monster and stays with Johnson and helps him scare other children. When Ned finds out about her, he calls the authorities who arrest Johnson, and she helps him escape by bringing him into the real world.

Docter Would cite the: 1973

Through various drafts, Johnson went from being a janitor to a scarab to his final incarnation. He was the star of the company and the best scarab.

Mary went from being a seven year old to a three year old because the younger she was, the more she would depend on the older monster character Johnson became. Sully, the character of Ned morphed into Randall Boggs, who became less of a top tier monster and more of a second banana to Sully.

Earlier drafts had him dress in nice suits and kiss up to Waternoose. And the mantra for Pixar in these early days was Do I care? Do I care? Do I care? You had to care about these monsters despite them being monsters.

And that was always going to be a tough thing to navigate for Tod's story in A Bug's Life. These movies were rooted very much in the real world, whereas Monsters Inc. Would be based on its own monsterverse.

And anything could go in that world, which was ripe for all sorts of storytelling.

In May: 1997

In the early: 1900

Once Stanton had established the foundation for the film through several screenplay drafts, he turned his attention to his next project, Finding Nemo, and Dan Gerson stepped in to write subsequent versions of the screenplay.

Gerson joined Pixar in: 1999

Along with co director Lee Unkrich, another future big name for Pixar, each of the three directors bought different strengths. Silver had worked on the story and wrote gags. He helped develop the personalities of the characters and added a great deal to the film's humour.

Unkrich oversaw the editing, staging and cinematography, basically doing the same role that he had on Toy Story 2. Throughout first iterations of the screenplay, there was a Sully character and a Boo character, but there was no Mike Wazowski.

until a story summit in April: 1998

Originally, they just wanted him to have legs and use his legs to do everything. But through the process, they found that a lot of expressions count on the asymmetry of facial expressions.

And with this character only having one eye, they struggled to get him to emote without arms and hands. So they ended up giving him arms and hands. He started out orange until John Lasseter said that he looked like an actual orange with arms and legs.

When it came to designing Sully, then Disney Feature Animation president Tom Schumacher advised the team to not make him look like a guy in a suit. Godzilla might disagree, and so would the person who'd have to play the character at Disneyland. Probably so.

They originally went with tentacles and multiple eyes, but that became aesthetically challenging. Designing a monster with tentacles was one thing, but animating it would be another.

The studio even created a tentacle package in case they were going to animate a character with lots of arms or legs. But it would have been impossible for a main character within the production schedule they had planned.

Instead of the challenge of animating tentacles, they went with the challenge of animating a two legged character with fur, with the tentacle package used on background characters instead.

Then, about a decade into the future, when Pixar were animating the character of Hank in Finding Dory, everyone would cite Monsters Inc. As trailblazing in experiments with tentacles. Many test models were built of both Sully and Mike.

When Sully was Johnson, he was a brown short haired monster with horns and the aforementioned green tentacles. They collected all kinds of fur samples from llamas, yaks, sheep, goats and bear to keep him playful.

They went with a matted medium length fur to make him look like a big lovable bear.

After reviewing versions of Sully that looked like fruit, striped gum colours, a leopard and a giraffe, he would become a blue green monster with purple dots and two legs, no tentacles.

Ricky Nierva was the lead character designer for Sully, and when they agreed on the design of the character, they then had to move on to creating that much fur. But before we talk about the fur, they had to cast the movie.

And Pete Docter's first choice for Sully was wasn't John Goodman, but actually Bill Murray. Murray auditioned, screen tested and went through the whole process right up until Docter Couldn't even get hold of him.

Because Bill Murray is notoriously difficult to get hold of.

With Murray not responding to requests to get in touch, they moved on and offered it to John Goodman, who understood the character immediately as the star quarterback of Scaring for Mike. Pete Docter went to Billy Crystal, who'd regretted turning down the role of Buzz Lightyear the Toy Story.

And he was delighted to be asked and accepted pretty much on the spot. Because if Pixar come calling for a voice role, you say yes, unless you're Bill Murray. This movie would be very different with Bill Murray as Sully.

And this is another buddy pairing, similar to the buddy pairing that they had in Toy Story. And for Toy Story, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen recorded their lines separately, which was the norm for animated movies.

But Monsters Inc. John Goodman and Billy Crystal not only recorded their lines together, they would improv together, leading to some off the cuff conversations, such as the locker room chat about Underhand. That was all improvised between the pair. Whereas Woody and Buzz had just met in Toy story. We meet Sully and Mike as longtime best friends.

And Goodman and Crystal's rapport really sells it. One of the issues with aging down Boo was casting someone age appropriate.

Boo was a challenging character on so many levels because she needed to feel authentic. This wasn't going to be a Rugrats situation where grown adults are playing babies.

Rob Gibbs had started working at Pixar as a story artist on Toy Story 2 and was working on Monsters Inc. And they needed a little girl to come in so the artist could sketch an age appropriate child and to use her for scratch dialogue. Dialogue that's recorded before the actor comes in. And Rob had a two year old daughter called Mary.

Mary often came into the Pixar offices while her father worked, so she knew everyone and was very comfortable in their presence. Many of the recordings captured of Mary are completely organic, just recordings of of a little girl having fun.

Not that it was easy to record a two year old. They don't tend to sit still. Mary's recordings were so good that she was cast as Boo in the early production of Monsters, Inc.

In November: 2000

One of the big problems that they had on Monsters Inc. Was making the fur move realistically. Solly is an 8 foot tall horned monster with a 700 pound body covered in blue green fur.

Having animators animate his fur by hand would have been an impossible task. Developing hair simulation software that can control hair movement was the answer.

otably rhythm and hues in its: 1993

Sully would have 2,320,413 individual hairs on his body and they had to make sure that the hairs cast shadows on other ones and that the hairs reacted correctly to lighting. A program called Deep Shadowing was created to help achieve the effect.

They also developed a new system for fog, smoke, steam and other atmospheric shading effects. Even variations in snow were physically impossible to achieve. Before Monsters, Inc.

The scene where Sully crashes out in the snow was one of the most technologically advanced scenes in the movie because it involved fur reacting to wind and snow. They also created over a million individual snowflakes. So how did they Create the fur for Sully.

Well, they started with creating a ball of fur, and then they ran simulations with that fur, reacting to certain movements. They made the fur wet and slimy. They braided it. The animators grew so attached to the fur ball that they made monsters with it.

Most obviously one of the other monsters on the scare floor who is a furball with tentacles. So they're basically just taking all of the unused stuff and just adding it to make other monsters.

They would run multiple simulations of the fur on different scenarios to see how it moved and interacted with other things. So they test Sully walking, running, jumping, scratching and clapping, and test the weight of the fur.

Solly also ran an obstacle course, but the first time he ran it, the fur would glitch, stretch, and catch on objects.

Instead of animating each hair one by one, Pixar computer scientists created a program called Fizt, short for Physics Tool, which would automate the movement of Sully's hairs based on what's happening in any given scene. Pixar would later use the same system to simulate realistic fur on animal characters like Remy the rat in Ratatouille and Doug the dog in Up.

Fizt would create how hair moves with a character's movements, or how hairs collectively respond to forces like gravity, wind, or snow. Pixar would use Fizt on its future movies to give realistic movements to everything from human flesh fabrics, water to octopus tentacles.

It took about two years to write the cloth simulation software used in Monsters, Inc. The challenge was trying to make a physical simulation work in a cartoon world.

Blue's T shirt had to respond to the body moving underneath and it not be distracting in any way. They had to consider the density and weight of the fabric, how gravity affects it, and how quickly the folds pull out.

When her body stops moving, the shirt had to stop moving as well. Going from Toy Story's plastic bodies to a bug's life's exoskeletons. Monsters, Inc. Was the first time Pixar had flexible bodies to work with.

Every main character in the movie had its own lead animator. John Cars on Sully, Andrew Gordon on Mike, and Dave Divan on Boo.

And this was the first time in Pixar's history that each character had a lead animator.

Later iterations of Sully also had him wearing a pair of black glasses, but these were removed because Pixar wanted his eyes to be readable and and it was felt glasses took away from that.

To design Monstropolis, the production team of Harley Jessup and Bob Pauley went to local Factories, refineries, assembly plants, blimp hangers, and other industrial sites that could inspire their designs.

Adjacent to the old Pixar studios in Point Richmond was a Chevron refinery, and that provided good research with its maze of pipes and structures for transporting gas.

At John Lasseter's urging, the production designers took a field trip to Pittsburgh to observe firsthand what an older company town built around factories might look like. Inspiration for the individual workstations on the stair floor came from classic bowling alley designs. They envisioned the Monsters Inc.

Factory as a 60s era Modernist building and the surrounding city having buildings of over 100 years old and slightly run down buildings struggling to survive an energy shortage.

As children become less susceptible to scares, they came up with a logic that the Scarers would source a door, pull the door off the track, look it into a station, and now it would become a portal to the real world where they would go in to pull a screen out of a room, and the screen would be collected in metal canisters. The door vault would contain over 5.7 million individual doors that would run on monorail tracks. Fizt also came in here.

With the software generating millions of unique doors and the realistic movement of doors on tracks. They mixed and matched 26 colours, 12 styles and eight wood colours with various doorknobs and decals.

Jessup worked closely with art director Tia Kratter to define the colour palette and shading textures for the characters and the sets.

Dominique Louis, who also served as art director on the film, did lighting studies and beautiful pastel drawings to help define the overall ambiance of the film. Fundamentally, they wanted the Monsters to be the most colourful things in Monstropolis. So the city was coloured somewhat muted.

The brighter colours were saved for the characters themselves, so they would really stand out. And the city itself has some fun additions and puns, like Tony's grocery spelled G R O S S E R Y rather than G R O C E R Y.

As well as the restaurant Harryhausen's, named of course, in homage to Ray Harryhausen. The scene in which the Harryhausen's restaurant was decontaminated was originally going to feature the restaurant being blown up.

And this scene was animated and finished. But then 911 happened and the animation was quickly redone and the explosion was replaced by a plasma dome to avoid upsetting viewers.

One of the major new technical innovations of Monsters, Inc. Was the creation of a new department to keep track of all of the elements that go into creating a shot, appropriately called the shots department. This area was under the supervision of simulation and effects supervisor Galen Sussman.

A team of seven sequence supervisors and 16 shot supervisors worked on her team to assemble and render every shot in the film. Galen Sussman was the person responsible for saving Toy Story 2.

tually laid off from Pixar in: 2023

It's a similar world to our own, but caters to monsters, both tiny, large, slimy and furry, but environmentally close to our own. Monsters can travel to our world and still breathe our air.

For example, Boo can run riot through the Monstropolis city centre, but there's still toilets to relieve herself. This is a world of showing, not telling. There's no room for exposition. You understand the scare floor and how it all works immediately.

D animation of the: 1950

In movies like Sleeping Beauty, the title sequence intentionally pays homage to the work of graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass Bass.

obligatory KEANU reference of: 2026

Now, if you're new here and you don't know what that's it, what this is, this is a part of the podcast where I try and link every movie that I feature with Keanu Reeves for no reason other than he is the best of men and continues to be the best of men.

I can't really link him to Pixar unless I go the Toy Story 4 route, which to be honest, I've done a few times, so I feel like I can't really do that anymore. But both Keanu and John Goodman have appeared in Waiting for Godot.

Keanu recently on Broadway in: 2025

composed the score, a mix of: 1940

for Monsters, Inc. In October: 2000

mperor's New Grief DVD in May: 2001

October: 2001

drid wrote the short story in: 1999

Madrid believed Chronicle Books forwarded it to Pixar, who then used it to come up with Monsters, Inc. Madrid requested a preliminary injunction to block the release of the film until the court case was complete.

st of November: 2001

Both Doctor and Cult took the stand and doctor explained that Madrid's book had no impact on the Monsters, Inc. Story or film development and how the development of the film had begun years before Madrid wrote her story.

November: 2001

It opened at number one at the box office, stayed at number one for two weeks before being dethroned by Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, or Sorcerer's Stone. It would stay in the top 10 for 10 weeks.

illion. That was surpassed in: 2007

reintroduced them for Elio in: 2025

Monsters Inc's blooper reel includes the reveal of the renowned company play by the Monsters Inc. Company players.

Put that thing back where it came from Also help me on its 115 million dollar budget, Monsters Ink would gross 255.9 million dollars domestically and 272.9 million dollars internationally for a total worldwide gross of 528.8 million dollars.

ird highest grossing movie of: 2001

It has a rating of 96% with a consensus reading Clever, funny and delightful to look at, Monsters Inc. Delivers another resounding example of how Pixar elevated the bar for modern all ages animation.

It was nominated for four Academy Awards Best Animated Feature, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound Editing. As I mentioned it would win Best Original Song. It lost Best Animated Feature the inaugural award to Shrek.

I still think this is better than Shrek, only marginally, but I think the animation holds up so much better. It would be nominated for and win the BAFTA for the BAFTA Children's Award for Best Feature Film.

June: 2013

John Goodman, Billy Crystal and Steve Buscemi reprise their roles of Sully, Mike and Randall, Dan Scanlon directed Monsters University and the prequel plot focuses on Sully and Mike's studies at Monsters University, where they start off as rivals but soon become friends.

In: 2017

Pixar did not produce the series, it was instead produced by Disney Television Animation. Its first season debuted on Disney plus and its second on the Disney Channel. There were plans for a direct theatrical sequel to Monsters Inc.

Which would have been called Monsters Inc. Two Lost in Scaradise.

The film would have focused on Mike and Sully visiting the human world to give Boo a birthday present, only to find that she had moved after getting trapped in the human world. Mike and Sully would split up after disagreeing on what to do.

It ultimately never happened, not because Pixar thought the idea was bad, but because Pixar wasn't even involved. Let me explain.

elease animated movies in the: 1990

At the end of: 1999

After those seven films up to and including Cars were completed, Pixar said they would not renew their agreement with Disney and so Disney created its own animation division called Circle 7 Animation.

purchase of Pixar in January: 2006

t Disney animation studios in: 2007

Circle 7 Animation had several Pixar sequels planned in various stages of development at the time, including Monsters Inc. 2, Lost in Scaradise, Finding Nemo 2 and the Circle 7 version of Toy Story 3.

Those movies were all cancelled following Circle 7's closure, and the idea for Monsters Inc. 2 Lost in Scaradise would eventually morph into Monsters University and become prequel. So Monsters Inc. Was released and was a big success.

the story, but no, because in: 2002

in his cartoons going back to: 1963

Dust to Hollywood studios in: 1998

mplaint dating from the early: 1960

A Disney spokeswoman responded saying that the characters in Monsters Inc. Were developed independently by the Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures creator teams and do not infringe on anyone's copyrights.

It seems strange now that in: 2026

Their fourth movie being a buddy movie just like Toy Story and Toy Story 2 might not have whetted too many appetites, but early Pixar proved that their concepts and imaginations were second to none. And Monsters Inc. Really is no exception. The power of fear really is the key to this movie.

Yes, it's gorgeous, the voice acting is great and it's incredibly well conceived and executed. But fear powers everything. Fear powers the city of Monstropolis. Quite literally, fear powers the levels of screams a monster can elicit from a child.

The scarier the monster, the bigger the screams. A fear the monsters have against coming into contact with human children. Fear of the unknown. What could be behind that door?

What was that noise I heard downstairs? But like most movies made by Pixar, it translates to both a child and adult audience.

For adults, it's the fear of letting your children go of their child growing up. The fear of disappointing your child, overcoming your fears is the grander theme of this movie.

And this just perfectly segues into the relationship between Sully and Boo, which is the emotional core of the movie. Sully is afraid at first she's a foreign object in his world and society deems her toxic. But he grows to care for her and they become inseparable.

Boo brings out a gentleness in Sully he he never saw in himself before her. To her he is not a monster, he's Kitty.

When he has to demonstrate his scare ability and inadvertently frightens Boo, he finally shows her his true form, sees what he's doing to her, and therefore every single child he's ever scared, and he's ashamed at what he's become. Boo makes him want to be better. It also brings to mind that many of us don't question the status quo.

The monsters are told children are toxic and they have a whole agency, the Child Detection Agency, to find and disinfect child exposure. In reality, they're just overreacting to socks, but they're told it, so they believe it.

They're told the only way to power their world is through fear, so they just believe it, even though they're also told there's a scammer shortage.

Sully and Mike literally risk everything to expose the corruption in the company, knowing that it's shutting down means no power and no jobs for the countless workers who rely on this factory remaining open. But to be honest, when the options are exposing the scheme or letting innocent children be kidnapped and tortured, it seems pretty clean cut.

But the levels of fear mongering the Monstropolis News reporting a child breach, showing interviews with residents among whom conspiracy theories and fake news are already in circulation. The segment concludes with a creature who says in my professional opinion, it is now the time to panic.

That this movie came out just after 911 is remarkably prophetic.

Either that or COVID 19 Pete Docter, like pretty much all of us, grew up on Disney movies and the Muppets, and now he's made a movie, many in fact, that the next generations grew upon. It must be very weird, but also comforting to know that you've inspired the next generation's love as something wholly unique.

It must be very gratifying, but also, like most of the best movies aimed at a family market, Monsters Inc. Takes something that could actually be quite dark and brightens it.

Not so much that the darkness disappears, but if you look closely, the dark themes are then our childhood fears were fuelling capitalism in Monstropolis. Basically, they cleverly designed the monsters to not look too monstrous, lest children wouldn't want to watch it.

It makes them friendly and funny when they're not working, and we don't really see too much of them actually scaring for kids to actually be afraid. And kids watching will be laughing, which as we know is much more potent than screams anyway.

Of course, there are still some ethical questions about generating power and revenue through the unpaid labour of children at night while they should be asleep. But then, Monsters Incorporated is hardly an ethical workplace. In the mere six years since Toy Story, Monsters Inc.

Represents a huge leap in storytelling, world building and animation. The colours and textures are vibrant. The world is way bigger than anything Pixar had attempted before.

Even the vast corridors of Monsters Incorporated feel twisty and winding and lit with fluorescent lamps and that huge foyer with a tiny reception desk, the roller coaster of all the doors moving together, it all still looks so great. As a technological achievement, Monsters, Inc. Shines.

And as an emotional achievement, Monsters, Inc. Shines that maybe we shouldn't judge a book by its cover. That we shouldn't fear otherness. That maybe we should prioritize joy and laughter.

And maybe grown ups could learn a thing or two about conquering their fears. Because while laughter is more powerful than fear, Sully can never see Boo again. And her door ends up in the wood chipper.

And once the company starts to harness laughter and all the monsters become comedians, Sully carries a splinter of wood with him to remind him of that little girl that changed his life. And that final scene where Sully finally gets to reunite with Boo and she gleefully yells out kitty. Sully's smile says it all. Less fear, more love.

If it works to make the monsters more human, it might make us humans less monstrous. Thank you for listening. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Monsters, Inc. And thank you for your continued support of this podcast.

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So the next episode animation season continues and you came at a bad time but you just crossed the line. You want to get wild? Okay, I'll show you wild. Knocking you out like a lullaby. Hear that podcast ringing in your mind.

movie came out of nowhere in: 2025

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