Pixar Pint #14: Monsters University

MU ain't played nobody Pawwwwwwl!

, and

Jul 02, 2022

Welcome back to Pixar Pints, our summer-long journey through all 25 Pixar films in release order.

Have you ever heard of Circle Seven Animation? If not, I don’t blame you; they never released a single movie. A quick backstory: before Disney acquired Pixar, they were merely Pixar’s distributor. It began with a three-film deal, which was soon extended to seven films, through which Pixar retained most creative control on their films while Disney distributed them for a hefty fee. The deal also gave Disney the rights to create any sequels based on these films, but allowed Pixar the right to refuse to make them.

During production of the last two of these films (The Incredibles and Cars), talks between Pixar and Disney to further extend the deal reached an impasse. Oversimplifying to save time, Disney wanted more control and Pixar said no, so they began to search for other distributors. We all know what ended up happening: Disney caved, bought Pixar outright, and gave them creative control over basically all of Disney animation. But while the deal was still in jeopardy, in an attempt to give themselves more leverage over Pixar, Disney founded another animation studio whose sole purpose was to create sequels to Pixar properties that Disney owned.

Which brings us back to Circle Seven Animation, the studio in question. In 2005, while Pixar was producing Cars and beginning work on titles they thought would be distributed by someone other than Disney, Circle Seven began production on sequels to three of their properties: Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and — you guessed it — Monsters, Inc. These movies all currently exist, of course — Pixar would go on to produce sequels (or prequels) to each of its first seven movies except A Bug’s Life — but they all had vastly different scripts. Circle Seven’s Toy Story 3 was going to be about Buzz Lightyear getting recalled, their Finding Nemo 2 was going to be about Nemo meeting a long-lost brother…and that leaves Monsters, Inc.

Disney originally wanted a sequel, not a prequel, in which Mike and Sulley try to revisit Boo in the human world, but find that her family has moved and subsequently get stuck in the human world and lost. It was to be titled Monsters, Inc. 2: Lost in Scaradise. What did we get instead?

Let’s get into it.

Monsters University quick facts

Release date: June 21, 2013 | Director: Dan Scanlon | Music: Randy Newman featuring the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps

Starring: Billy Crystal (Mike), John Goodman (Sulley), Steve Buscemi (Randall), Helen Mirren (Hardscrabble), Joel Murray (Don)

John Ratzenberger as: Abominable Snowman (again)

Budget: $200 million | Box office: $743.6 million

Academy Awards: None!

Eli

This is the first time I had seen this movie.

Aesthetic: 8/10 | Character design is top notch again. Hardscrabble looks just as intimidating as she acts, Worthington screams "snotty frat douche", and the Oozma Kappa gang are all well varied in looks and personality. The set design was mostly good. It automatically looked way better than Monsters, Inc. because a) it's 2013, not 2001, and b) Monsters, Inc.'s set design sucked. The biggest problem for me was the campus sets; sometimes they made me nostalgic for undergrad and sometimes all I could think was "this is a boomer movie studio executive's idea of the modern college experience".

Animation: 9/10 | Where Monsters, Inc. was mostly a fur simulation exhibition, this film goes above and beyond in making every monster the exact type of creepy they're meant to be. Some of the mouth movements randomly looked pretty stiff (Hardscrabble comes to mind), but I can't tell whether it was intentional.

Story: 6/10 | This is somehow among both Pixar's most jumbled stories and its most formulaic. You can tell so many things about what this movie is going to be from the moment Mike steps foot on campus. It was obvious that Randall was going to be his roommate. It was obvious that he and Sulley were going to start the movie as rivals and end as best friends once they realized they complemented each other perfectly. It was obvious that Oozma Kappa was going to win the Scare Games. It just took multiple storylines beginning and ending and intertwining for that to be the result. For what the story is, it's fine. It's a good, G-rated time. It shows the audience that sometimes you might not be meant to do a certain thing no matter how hard you try, but that doesn't make you worth less as a person. The stakes just felt lower to me because I knew how almost everything was going to unfold.

Characters: 7/10 | Most of the new additions to the cast are fairly one-note, which...fine. At least they're not offensive stereotypes. Where this movie shines is in its portrayals of Mike and Sulley. Mike came from nothing, had to scratch and claw his way to everything in life, and still came up short; Sulley was born on third base with nobody out and still couldn't score. Both characters failed at first because, for as talented as they were, they were still unable to look past their own egos and insecurities. It wasn't until they pooled their talents together and made themselves a part of something bigger that they thrived. I love this dynamic, as it's something that I aspire to in interpersonal relationships on a daily basis, and I think this film did an excellent job showcasing it. On an unrelated note: why did half of Oozma Kappa sound like they're from International Falls? Lmao.

Acting: 7/10 | Billy Crystal is the star of the show, just as he was in Monsters, Inc., and everyone else ranges from decent to great; it's standard Pixar fare. John Goodman is a good actor but he just doesn't sound like a college freshman at all and is clearly playing Sulley like the adult he was in the first film, which loses points from me given how big he is to the movie. Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, and John Krasinski were all in this movie and I didn't recognize any of them until the credits, which feels like it should be impossible?

Music: 8/10 | Another movie where the end credits song blew pretty much everything else out of the water, though here that's a higher bar, because I mostly liked this score. It's gotta be the college sports fan in me, but I'm a sucker for fight songs. Even fictional ones.

Final score: 7/10 | In pretty much every regard, this film is just a touch below the standard of quality Pixar led us to expect during its golden age. It is the dictionary definition of "good, not great".

Leah

Aesthetic: 9/10 | The character designs in this movie were so good. Each monster had so much personality. Hardscrabble was appropriately terrifying, Oozma Kappa were loveable dorks, and the Greek council presidents were my favorite designs in the movie. MU's campus was a fun setting. I really liked the look of the camp too.

Animation: 9/10 | Pixar is great at animation; more news at 11.

Story: 7/10 | This was the movie that made me realize how formulaic Disney-Pixar movies are. There a few elements of the story were a little unbelievable to me (like the way final exams worked), and parts of the story did seem ridiculous, but I can appreciate a story about learning to work with your limitations and learning how to find success in different ways than you might have expected.

Characters: 7/10 Dean Hardscrabble is terrible at her job, but I 100% believed her as an academic. Universities are full of power-trippy people like her. Mike and Sulley were a fun duo here, going from enemies to best friends. The contrast between them made the movie more fun and interesting.

Acting: 8/10 | Lots of fun moments in this movie; I thought the cast did a great job.

Music: 9/10 | I love marching band music. I also want to point out that this movie got the Blue Devils (of Drum Corp International fame) to do some of the soundtrack, which is really cool and adds some authenticity to this movie. I thought the tracks complemented the movie well, and it was a total bop.

Final score: 8/10 | It's a little ridiculous, but the aesthetic and the music pull it up for me. I also think it's a good message for a kid's movie.

Maddy

Aesthetic: 9/10 | This is when Pixar really started to hit a stride in really pretty-looking movies. The monster designs are great once again.

Animation: 8/10 | Same as above, but for animation.

Story: 6/10 | At its surface level, it is a fine film with nothing really amazing about it. But as a 21 year old neurodivergent college student, Mike’s arc in this movie really hits closer to home than I expected. Mike is born "not scary", hindering his chance of becoming a scarer. He is constantly told over and over again that he can’t achieve his dream. He has no support system so he can only rely on himself to make his dream a reality, and he has to work harder than any typical person. It hits hard because that was me, and so many other neurodivergent kids, going through the public school system. We relate to Mike here because his story is like ours. When Mike says, “I did everything right. I wanted it more than anyone. And I thought…I though if I wanted it enough...” I genuinely felt like crying a little. The amount of times I’ve thought this myself is too high to count. A lot of movies tend to pull a "your disability makes you special" card when dealing with these topics and it never sits right with me. It doesn’t feel special when my disability holds me back from basic human interaction or doing what I want to do. Monsters University shows Mike fail. He doesn’t get to be a scarer, but that doesn’t make him any less of a person. It’s a good message for everyone, but for me, it reminds me that my disability doesn’t stop me and I’m good enough.

Characters: 7/10 | Everyone is fine on their own merit, but I don’t have much else to say here that I didn’t already say in the Story section.

Acting: 9/10 | John Goodman and Billy Crystal. That is all.

Music: 7/10 | I can’t say no to the pep band music.

Final score: 46/60 or 7/10 | For as much of a personal tangent as I went on, this is still just a very ok/fine movie as a whole, but it has a lot more meaning to me now than it did in 2013.

David

Aesthetic: I love the varied designs of the monsters - something I think I mentioned last time, but 12 years on it carries so well, which is great. Though a lot of them are somewhat giveaways for a character's alignment - you can kinda tell who the villains are just from the off - I think it works. It's also important to remember that this is, at the end of the day, a kid's movie, and so getting on them for more oblique references is maybe a little unfair.

Animation: The company continues to stand out in the field - though this wasn't the same technological marvel that Monster's, Inc. was, it's still a really beautifully animated film. No complaints.

Story: Much like the aesthetic - it's a little played out, a little obvious. Nothing about this story was really surprising in any sense, and I sort of wish they had been bold enough to deviate from that formula a bit more. I appreciated that we got to see this sort of prequel to a movie I really enjoyed, but... yeah. Left feeling a little whelmed here.

Characters: Why did Oozma Kappa sound like one of my family get-togethers? Goofy-ass accents kind of took me out of the immersion, if only momentarily, but that's okay. Still got a kick out of it. Mike and Sulley excel in their roles, Dean Hardscrabble is an academic played perfectly, and everyone else fills out the rest exactly as you'd expect they would.

Acting: It's fine. For such a star-studded cast, I think in retrospect I'm maybe a little let down, but it's Pixar - they don't really ever do a bad job.

Music: I just don't really recall much from this. It's solid, and I love the marching band influences, but outside of that I don't really feel like much of the score really pulls its weight.

Final score: 6/10 | Solid, but at this point, I think I'm realizing that I've come to expect more from Pixar.