I agree that audience reaction is a reasonable measure of a director’s success in communicating his intended message (and it should go without saying that you’re entitled to your opinion). But I think what Hentor and Skywatcher are trying to get at is that Docter’s point was perfectly clear to them while watching the film (as it was to me). Their citations were not for the purpose of explaining the movie in retrospect, as you imply, but rather were provided as evidence that the message they took away from the film was the one intended by the filmmakers.
Also, to respond to one of your earlier points - getting an audience to infer something is, generally speaking, *better *than explaining it to them directly (e.g. by expository dialogue). I mean, the film already has quite of bit of exposition, most of which is superbly and naturalistically woven into the script. But it verges on the border of too much… and fortunately, the writers went juuuuust far enough with the exposition to establish the rules of the world without it becoming overbearing. The fact that Docter doesn’t beat you over the head with certain aspects of the universe that aren’t terribly important for comprehending the underlying themes, like the exact nature of the interaction between the emotions and Riley’s exterior, is a plus, not a negative.
It’s clear from the text of the movie that the emotions aren’t just mere bystanders to Riley’s moment-to-moment activity. However, it’s also clear that they don’t control her every move like a giant robot (to borrow Docter’s analogy). The point of “canonical truth” lies somewhere in the middle. Does it matter exactly where? I would argue that it does not. The emotion characters in the film are ultimately metaphorical, anyway. What matters is that we understand that Joy represents Riley’s capacity for and drive towards happiness, and that while she’s represented as an independent being, ultimately, she is every bit as much a part of Riley as Riley’s hands and feet. To object to the film as teaching Joy a lesson, rather than Riley, is to fundamentally miss its basic premise. Teaching Joy a lesson equals teaching Riley a lesson. They are one and the same.
And again, this is all in the text of the film.
No, Sadness doesn’t take control of the board - Joy and the others are at the board watching the big screen, and Sadness is behind them. What causes Riley’s emotional shift is Sadness touching the hockey memory, shifting it from yellow to blue. The moment Joy notices what Sadness is doing, she flips out and pushes Sadness away from the memory immediately. And it’s actually that action of Joy’s that incites the main plot of the movie.
And Riley starts out chipper because she is telling the class who she is by relating things in the present tense about her life in Minnesota. As she is doing so, she realizes that those things are in the past, things she does not have anymore, and her core memories become tinged with sadness (to the extent that Joy doesn’t at that point prevent it).
The fact that it happens contemporaneously with Sadness fumbling with the memories is pretty clever.
It’s quite well done, and perfectly evident in the film itself.
Great little movie. This coming from somebody who swore a couple of years ago that he was done with animated movies (because I thought I’d simply out-grown them. Finally!) My wife and I went and watched it last weekend. I read somewhere that it’s Disney/Pixar’s best movie since Wall-E. Personally, I rate it WAAAAAAY above Wall-E. Matter of fact I couldn’t get through Wall-E. I thought it was stupid. My wife did get through it but thought it was depressing. I’m pretty sure she liked Inside Out a LOT more. If it means anything to you we recommend that you go see it if you haven’t already.
A minor inside joke I noticed in the cast list. The two guys guarding the gate to the subconscious (the guys who argued over their hats) were named Frank and Dave. And they were played by Muppet veterans Frank Oz and Dave Goelz. But apparently as a joke, Frank Oz played Dave the Guard and Dave Goelz played Frank the Guard.
Having gone through a similar move probably helped. Docter drew upon his own childhood experience: moving from Minnesota to Denmark for a year while he was in fifth grade.
My mildly autistic puberty stricken daughter had to “go to the bathroom” a few times during the movie. I think it struck a little to close to home for her to handle at times.
My opinion is probably not even valid at this point but for what it’s worth I think Wall-E is criminally underrated in the Pixar-verse and it’s my favorite of all of them.
I would need to see this again to see where it ranks for me, although from an emotional standpoint (seriously pun not intended but damn if I can’t think of a better word for it) this movie is waaaayyyy at the top.
Why do you think WALL-E is underrated? It’s #64 on the IMDb top 250 (and that’s all movies of all kinds over all times). It’s rated #4 in the below Indiewire rating of all Pixar films. I don’t know of any significant rating system in which it’s not near the top:
I went to see it because my daughter wanted to. I was interested because the premise was neat and I really wanted to see Lewis Black playing “Anger” and unable to swear. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it was weird to be trying to pry apart is this a coming of age or mental illness metaphor while watching sparkly animation. Nobody saw me cry, so that obviously never happened, and I would have sat through anything ever filmed, however awful, and not demanded my money back had it included the final scenes inside other characters’ heads. The cat alone would have been worth the price of admission.
I thought it was Joy’s attempt to reject the new “core memory” created by that (of crying in class) that triggers the main plot. All of the other core memories that existed up until then are coloured by Joy.
I was sorta wondering what Island that core memory would have made …
That’s true, although it’s the re-colorization of the hockey memory as blue (and the realization that the blue color is permanent) that leads Joy to panic when the blue core memory shows up.
Given that Joy and Sadness return the blue crying-in-class core memory to Headquarters at the end of the film, I suspect that one of the myriad islands we see after the flash-forward is that core memory. We may have to wait until someone gets some screenshots from the Blu Ray before we can pick out which one, though.
I’d also be generally interested in comparing the new islands with the core memory colors we see at the end - there’s at least one that’s a mix of green and red, with no yellow or blue at all.
Yeah, I was annoyed that they didn’t show the new Islands in more detail (I guess that annoyance is a good thing, showing I was invested in the movie! ).
The ending sequence was just brilliant, I though. My favorite line was something like "puberty button? What’s that? Oh, it’s probably not important … "
I had high expectations going in and the film just about met them; it was easily Pixar’s best since Toy Story 3 and one of their best ever.
I am also glad the film is doing well at the box-office; 90 million in the US opening weekend. I hope this encourages Pixar to continue taking risks in their future projects.
).