Inside Out 2

[Disney's Divinity]

Oh, interesting, Shi's been brought in on this one. I admit she and Ferrera are the most interesting things about it then.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Oh, interesting, Shi's been brought in on this one. I admit she and Ferrera are the most interesting things about it then.

Er… actually, Zoe Saldana took over for America Ferrera as Olga, and they changed Olga from Elio’s mom to his aunt.

[Pokenonbinary]

Oh, interesting, Shi's been brought in on this one. I admit she and Ferrera are the most interesting things about it then.

Er… actually, Zoe Saldana took over for America Ferrera as Olga, and they changed Olga from Elio’s mom to his aunt.

Oh wow they changed the movie a lot then, changing from mom to aunt a character is not a small change to the script

BTW I think Hoppers has more commercial success than Elio, it can be like Ratatouille in style and be super mainstream

I mean Turning Red was very succesful in the markets where it released in cinemas (more than the other Pixar movies from the covid era) so if the movie had a normal release window it would have made like 700M WW (in my opinion)

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Er… actually, Zoe Saldana took over for America Ferrera as Olga, and they changed Olga from Elio’s mom to his aunt.

Oh wow they changed the movie a lot then, changing from mom to aunt a character is not a small change to the script

BTW I think Hoppers has more commercial success than Elio, it can be like Ratatouille in style and be super mainstream

I mean Turning Red was very succesful in the markets where it released in cinemas (more than the other Pixar movies from the covid era) so if the movie had a normal release window it would have made like 700M WW (in my opinion)

It’s not that a big a change since the majority of the movie looks more or less how the old teaser was, just more epic and more adventurous and emotion-driven.

Also, I feel like both can be hits since Shi’s Turning Red had critical acclaim and because Hoppers is in that Zootopia position to be a huge hit.

[PatchofBlue]

Finally checked the movie out today. And ... it was about what I expected. Neither particularly inspired nor really embarrassing.

The story itself was kind of limp. Like, there were obviously stakes and a conflict, but I found myself more interested in some of the fun new set pieces for this film than the actual questions it was exploring. I think the highpoint for me was the gang using the Balloon Floats to try flying back to headquarters and then getting caught in the brainstorm. I also liked that that the HQ trio from the first movie got to DO things this time around, like letting Anger find his toolbelt friend. They managed to give most everyone new TOYS to play with, yet I still wouldn't really call it a character-driven piece.

The question I had right when promotion really started was what on earth they were building toward. What was the revelation going to be this time around? The trailers all showcased Anxiety moving in and ruining everything for Joy and company, and I figured that would lead to one of two outcomes: either we're going to have to "defeat" Anxiety somehow, or Joy and Anxiety are going to have to learn how to coexist. The former solution probably would have explained why we didn't see these auxiliary emotions in anyone else back in the first movie, but I didn't think that it would send a useful message about what how we responsibly deal with unpleasant emotions. The latter scenario is more or less how the first film resolved with Joy learning how to make room for Sadness. I thought it worked well there, but I had no idea how they would pull off that some trick a second time and make it feel fresh.

(If I'm being totally honest, I don't think that Joy and Sadness learning to work together was THAT groundbreaking relative to the real-world conversations about having complex emotional experiences, but humanizing negative emotions felt like a relatively new feature of children's entertainment. I also think that the point was well-articulated within the film itself, so I still think it works within the framework of the Pixar canon and the framework of the specific film.)

In the end, it felt like they tried to walk both roads. Like, I'd say they leaned more toward the second option, but Sadness never became a borderline dictator like Anxiety did here, so there was still an element of needing to defeat Anxiety that felt weird to me.

Anxiety as a character also wasn't nearly as accessible or endearing to me as Sadness was. Like, she never steered off into full-on villainy for me, but there were fences in place that kept her tethered that had nothing to do with the work the storytellers were putting in: there was no way they were going to tell kids that Anxiety was a capital B BAAAAD emotion. What I was missing was some real sense of connection between Anxiety and Riley, the little peek that let us know she had Riley's best interest at heart, even if her methods were a little extreme. Without it, Anxiety was just this little wreck who was ruining everything, and when things spiral out of control toward the end, you're just kind of sitting there like ... "Well, what did you expect?"

The solution at the very end also wasn't earned to me. Saving the day by exhuming all those awkward memories felt very unearned and tangential to this specific narrative. This whole, "We can't control who Riley is," schtick felt kinda left field. I may need to review the film again a little more carefully to check my math again, but I wasn't watching this thinking, "Wow! All the time, this was about Joy and company learning not to curtail Riley's awkwardness." It was honestly kind of a record-scratch moment when they played that card like it was this ace that had actually been hiding in plain sight the whole time.

Looking back, the only instance I can recall where that was an active part of them fixing the problem was when they were locked up toward the beginning and had the cartoon character from Riley's favorite show get them out. But that struck me less as a moment of growth and more of a "we will literally take any exit we can find" kind of deal. And I remember something about Riley lying about her favorite music band, but that still feels like a weak connection. Like, even now I'm trying to remember who learned what lesson from that and how that built to which conclusion. I also can't really say this was about Joy learning how to appreciate these new awkward emotions since they spent so little time together and weren't really put in any positions where they had to co-pilot Riley until the very end. Tenuous is the word I keep coming back to.

This is not at all how it was in the first movie where Joy spends basically the whole movie gradually learning to appreciate Sadness' unique skillsets and perspectives. You had scenes like Bing-Bong crying debilitatingly where Joy is just astounded as Sadness knows exactly what to say to get him back in order, or Sadness having the idea to wake Riley up by giving her a nightmare ... this was a consistent thread back in that first movie, and it led to a satisfying resolution. Here, it's like they got to the 1 hr 20 min mark and realized that they needed some kind of takehome message if they were going to hit their target market, and just kinda spun something that sounded timely and had some roundabout connection to things that had happened in the film.

This wasn't actively transgressive like TS4 or overly juvenile like FD. I'd personally rank alongside I2 as a sort of "people were begging for a sequel--any sequel--to the first movie, and so that's what we gave them," ordeal. I can imagine that other people might see something in that I don't or develop a context for it that I don't possess, and I can live with that, this is just how it all landed for me.

[Mooky]

Finally watched this and thought it was pretty good. I like the expanded world-building and the story was solid. The animation was top-notch. I do echo PatchofBlue's sentiments that Anxiety needed a few more scenes to flesh her out and avoid her being so much villain-coded, as some of her actions are inexcusable.

My main complaint is that the other three new emotions don't really have much of their own identity and seem to be there just to do Anxiety's bidding, especially Envy (whose extent of being envious is... giving compliments?). I think I would have preferred a storyline where each of the new emotions was an off-shoot of the existing one brought on by puberty, and how they too struggle to reconcile their older "basic" self with a new, more complex emotion (i.e. fear - anxiety, sadness - ennui, anger - frustration, etc.) But I'm not hating on the story as it is; as I said, I thought it was solid.

I loved the use of different types of animation for different characters in the Memory Vault – something I felt a movie like Wreck-It Ralph would have benefitted from. Better late than never, I guess. Lance Slashblade had some of the best gags.

The continuity error with the first movie was kind of clumsily addressed, but on the bright side it wasn't completely ignored.

I also used this opportunity to watch Dream Productions before IO2. I think it's an interesting concept and open to different interpretations (I wanted to see a nightmare directed by Gigi!), but the mockumentary style is overplayed and that made the whole show somewhat tedious. I think I would have liked it better as a straightforward movie.

[Sotiris]

Riley's Feelings For Val In Inside Out 2 Clarified By Pixar Sequel Co-Writer
https://screenrant.com/inside-out-2-ril ... clarified/

[PatchofBlue]

Yeah, I wouldn't have naturally described her feelings for Val as "romantic" in any way, even if they hadn't like "de-queered the lighting" or whatever cuts they reportedly made. Having a sort of hero-worship for a person a few years ahead of you in school really just draws from a totally different pool of emotion. Audiences chose a really weird battleground for whether or not Riley is LGBT.

[Sotiris]

A Chinese animated movie has surpassed Inside Out 2 at the global box office.

‘Ne Zha 2’ Becomes Highest-Grossing Animated Movie Ever, Tops $1.7B
https://deadline.com/2025/02/ne-zha-2-b ... 236296068/

How China’s ‘Ne Zha 2’ Beat ‘Inside Out 2’ to Become the Highest-Grossing Animated Film in History
https://variety.com/2025/film/box-offic ... 236318940/

[DisneyFan09]

Inside Out 2 was the most profitable movie of 2024.
https://deadline.com/2025/05/inside-out ... 236379921/