The sequel to the 2015 animated hit gives us all the feels.
Pixar Animation Studios has taken audiences from the toybox (Toy Story) to the Great Barrier Reef (Finding Nemo) and from the kitchens of Paris (Ratatouille) to the mystical Land of the Dead (Coco). Pixar has also brought audiences to what might be the most mysterious place of all: the human psyche. In 2015, Pixar invited viewers on an odyssey of the mind with Inside Out. Nine years later, our favourite emotions from the movie have returned — with some new ones in tow.
Inside Out 2 takes place two years after the events of the first movie. Thirteen-year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman) is selected to join an intensive ice hockey camp at the high school she is about to enter. She struggles to maintain her close friendships with Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) while trying to fit in with the members of the Firehawks, the high school hockey team.
Inside Headquarters, the ‘control room’ in Riley’s brain, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) work in harmony. With Riley undergoing puberty, Headquarters undergoes an unexpected renovation with the arrival of new emotions. These include Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). The newcomers upend the five main emotions’ operation as chaos ensues. Joy and company must wrest control of Headquarters back from Anxiety and her crew as Riley undergoes a tumultuous time at the hockey camp.
The first Inside Out received glowing reviews, winning the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2016. As such, director Kelsey Mann, taking over from Pete Docter, has big shoes to fill. “There’s a lot of pressure that comes along with it, obviously,” Mann tells Variety. “I’m making a movie about anxiety for a reason.”
Mann tells A.frame: “The films we do at Pixar, whether originals or sequels, we just try to make really great movies.” He recalls how he thought Toy Story 2 wouldn’t be as good as the original, but it ended up being “awesome too”. The studio’s recent films, including Turning Red, Elemental, and Lightyear, have their fans but were not the surefire successes that many earlier Pixar productions were. Inside Out 2 serves as much to restore slightly shaken faith in the brand as it does to continue the story of Riley and the emotions in her head.
By personifying different emotions, Inside Out helped audiences of all ages better understand their own feelings and thought processes. It also sparked many conversations between parents and children about one’s emotional wellbeing. Inside Out 2 continues in that direction, further emphasising mental health via the introduction of Anxiety.
“I actually saw the drawing of Anxiety while I was in the audition process, and I just thought, ‘I have to play this part,’” Hawke says in a promotional interview on Disney’s official site. She adds that it was “incredibly rewarding” to see the result and that the animators incorporated some of the hand gestures she made while recording her lines into the Anxiety character. “In my own life, I have some anxiety,” Hawke tells USA Today. “It’s not debilitating but like a normal amount.”
Mann says that of the new characters, Anxiety took the longest to get right. Initial concept art depicted Anxiety as a Godzilla-like monster who changes size. Anxiety has quickly become a fan-favourite, with audiences loving her as much as they are annoyed with her. Anxiety is an antagonist but not a villain per se. Just as the first movie did with Sadness, Inside Out 2 endeavours to show that emotions that are normally perceived as negative are useful and healthy in the right contexts. There are ways to manage and regulate our emotions, but it’s also okay that they overwhelm us sometimes.
Hawke describes Inside Out 2 as “a force for good” and “a double rainbow”. She adds that the movie “takes so many tough emotions that everyone experiences, not just teenagers, and actualises those emotions in a way that makes them feel less alienating or stressful.”
Inside Out 2’s resonant themes, engaging characters, and appeal to audiences young and old have earned it enormous success at the box office. Taking in US$1.65 billion worldwide, it is the highest-grossing movie of 2024 at the time of writing and is also the highest-grossing animated movie ever made (unadjusted for inflation). And deservedly so — this is a trip that will, as people like to say, give you all the feels.
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Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as headquarters is disrupted by something entirely unexpected: new Emotions!...
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