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“Monsters Inc” Movie Analysis
Adnan Kayyali
AUB
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Abstract
This essay aims to serve as a kind of amateur, somewhat subjective analysis of the movie
“Monsters Inc.”. It will take a look at some stereotypes shown in the movie, and make the
connection, between the movie and real life problems and issues, while briefly explaining as
much as possible, while also revealing a twist or two.
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“Monsters Inc.”. Analysis
What, in a time long ago, made me drop my jaw in awe, wander, and anticipation, now
almost brings tears to my eyes, especially since now, as a young adult, my feeling, and definition
of sad and happy are better tuned than they were when I was when I first saw the movie
“Monster Inc.” as a five year old boy. In other words, I actually know what’s going on now. And
I’m not sure that’s entirely a good thing.
The movie begins with a nice simulation in which a monster tries to scare a dummy
representing a child. This simulation is designed to train new recruits in the art of scaring, which
is soon after explained as the main source of electric power in the monster world…Yea, you
didn’t misread. The world of monsters is powered and kept alive by the screams of young
children… You’d think that this is a quote from a horror movie or something, but no, those are
just Disney and Pixar doing their thing.
So the lore of this weird world is explained pretty soon in the movie, showing it to be
almost exactly like our world aside from its residents. In the same way that one would go to the
office everyday, see coworkers and crunch numbers in our world, one would go and scare the life
out of children in the monster world to harness their screams for power. And the conflict is
directly hinted at. An energy crisis looms over the monster world as children are getting more
and more desensitized to fear due to the overconsumption of media and aren’t screaming as
much, and so scientists are working tirelessly to come up with new methods of scream
extraction. This is a fundamental part of the plot that will cause some trouble later.
During this, we are introduced to almost all the characters of the movie. Now you can say
that they are kind off stereotypes, but they do a good job in adding depth to their character, and
making them seem as more than just a few uninteresting, one-dimensional clowns doing nothing.
Well, at least with the two main characters, who are James P. Sullivan, and Mike Wazowski.
James is the macho man, the popular guy, and later, the father figure .That’s the depth I was
talking about. He is revaled to be the guy who is tough on the outside but soft on the inside. Not
exactly a rare depiction, but it was shown well in this movie, involving a child as his source of
weakness and love, instead of a significant other. He is the top ‘scarer’ in the company and a
celebrity among his peers, and also his boss’s favorite. Then we have Mike, “The best friend”,
the manager, and…basically the egoistic, selfish, needy, irresponsible, judgmental, materialistic
parasitic pest that feeds off of James’s fame and hard work. Along with these qualities come
some unnecessarily good ones, like being a charmer and a good negotiator and strategist. The
things that James lacks. Those two make the two best friends in the movie, and an interesting
pair they are.
Due to Mike’s irresponsibility, James ends up getting mixed up in a little conspiracy
involving his boss, and his nemesis, Randal. Another obvious stereotyped character. Randal is
the insecure bully. So desperate to reach the top and surpass James, who’s shadow he has been
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living under for a long time, that’s he resorts to inhumane methods of extracting screams from
children. By kidnapping them and attaching them to a cream machine. Perhaps this is made to
represent the cruelty found in factory farms in which animals have to suffer greatly before they
are killed for food or exploited for their products, and in which little baby pigs are castrated
without any pain killers in the most brutal ways imaginable. Maybe the creators thought that
replacing the animals with humans would make us think a little.
Some other characters are Mr Waternoose, the boss, and owner of the company, who is
dressed in classic attire for someone of his status, and speaks in the familiar condescending tone
we all hear in our superior’s voices when they know what we’re doing more than we do.
Celia, or as Mike calls her, “Smoochypoo”. You can clearly tell that he has affection for
her. She is the cute secretary, and mike’s date, girlfriend, complication, and the girl that is
opposed to mike’s heroism until she finds out that he is telling the truth about his misadventures,
so she helps him and James out with her secretary powers of broadcasting. I feel that this
character is heavily stereotyped.
Roz, the mailroom girl. She is the most heavily stereotyped character in this entire movie,
being the tech savvy, file keeping, paperwork organizing old lady who wears a lot of accessories,
and not to mention those all too famous glasses that just radiate the aura of the undesirability.
She is always nagging and reminding Mike to do his damn paperwork so she can do her job
properly. The thing is, she turns out to be an undercover agent working for the CDA, the monster
equivalent of the American DEA. That’s quite the redemption for Pixar.
And finally, the two most notable stereotypes are the losers. Two idiot monsters who live
to worship the ground that James walks on, and exist in this movie as a kind of occasional comic
relief. And that’s it for them.
Ok so the plot thickens when a human child later named “Boo” by James due to her
unique ability to scare the scarers escapes her world and causes all sorts of havoc in the monster
world. Upon almost returning her to her home, the pair find out that Randal has been planning to
kidnap the child to subject her to the cruelty of the scream machine, made to extract screams by
force. This is later demonstrated when James hooks up a monster working with Randal to the
machine while rescuing Boo. It truly is scary. And its not just Randal doing this. Mr Waternoose
is in on it too.”I’ll kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die, and ill silent anyone
who gets in my way!!”. A quote by Waternoose himself towards the end of the movie. This
clearly depicts modern corporate mentality, and reverses it to put us humans at the worse end of
it. How we are willing to go to monstrous lengths to get what we want.
But all is not lost, as Disney and Pixar are known for making a happy ending out of
everything. An alternative energy, ten times more powerful than screams had been discovered by
accident when Mike made Boo laugh, and all the power circuits went crazy with energy. So now
instead of scaring them to death and traumatizing the kids, they can make them laugh instead.
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Perhaps a metaphor for the use of clean energy, where fossil fuels represent screams and clean
energy represents laughter. There you go. Pixar strikes again.
There’s something amazing about watching a movie that you haven’t seen since your
childhood again as an adult. It’s a weird feeling when you see how differently you interpret it
and what it says about you and how much you’ve changed, and not changed a bit.