A Missed Opportunity of Inside Out 2
One character I wanted to see but didn't
Disney, as a company, has left a bad taste in my mouth of late, but, I’m a nostalgic millennial. So of course I wanted to see Inside Out 2. The original movie, released in 2015, was great, a lovely imagining about how our emotions ‘drive’ us:
If you’re unfamiliar, the animated film goes inside the head of a hockey-loving girl named Riley, who, just having moved from the midwest to San Francisco, struggles with her emotions. The upshot of the film is that Sadness matters — we can’t rely on Joy to push the other, less pleasant emotions away. Each emotion plays an important role.
In the sequel, Riley is now 13, getting ready to start high school, and is invited to attend a special, three day long, hockey skills camp with the high schoolers — gasp and squee!! The night before she leaves for camp, an alarm starts to go off in Headquarters (the control room in her mind), waking Joy, Anger, Sadness, Fear, and Disgust. 'PUBERTY’ the big red light reads as it beeps.
Joy tries to dispose of it, but for nought. Workers swarm Headquarters, make a mess of it all. They re-wire and enlarge the consul inside Riley’s head. We’re told ‘new guys’ are on their way. In the meantime, Riley wakes for camp, and the consul the emotions use is suddenly highly touchy. Anger gently presses a button and Riley explodes with rage; Sadness tries, and she bursts into tears. The whole puberty sequence from Headquarters in Riley’s mind is, in a word, brilliant.
Meanwhile, the ‘new guys’ show up — Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui. The rest of the story is driven by Anxiety, who gets a hold of the consul and does what you might expect. If nothing else, the film is a beautiful outline of how anxiety works, attempting to ‘help’ but, when in control, creating nothing short of disaster.
Meanwhile there’s expected Pixar fun, with some fun wordplay. We’re introduced to the ‘Stream of Consciousness,’ the ‘Sar-Chasm,’ and of course the emotions still work at ‘Headquarters.’
The new emotions are well characterized, in true Pixar fashion. Ennui runs the console via an app on his phone, reluctant to get up off the couch. Embarrassment hides in his hoodie, only his great nose poking out. Anxiety is equal parts frenetic and pushy.
A story can only pull so much weight in 90 minutes, and Inside Out 2 got a good many things right. Puberty often does feel like a disaster zone, everything off kilter. At one point one of the Emotions says ‘Nothing works right anymore!’, which is entirely accurate. Those new, more complicated emotions pop up with shocking intensity, right in time for changing bodies and high-stakes social situations.
While the upshot of Inside Out was that sadness matters, the upshot of Inside Out 2 is that emotions don’t get to decide who a person is. Each emotion gets control of the consul at different times, which allows for a balanced sense of self.
Ok.
Well and good, I’m certainly not opposed. Of course it’s more complicated than that, but for a kid’s film, yeah.
But I think they could have gone a step further, and there’s a character I wish we’d gotten to see.
Logic.1
Where is Logic? Does Logic exist at all in this universe?
Apparently not.
Developmentally, its appropriate that we’re driven by emotions as children, and somewhat through adolescence. This is when we’re learning to be a functioning person, after all.
But/And being a psychologically healthy person means learning that emotions don’t belong in the drivers seat at all sometimes.
Again, I understand that a story can only carry so much weight in 90 minutes, but the film was so close to getting to this point. It was in spitting distance. It’s unhealthy to be driven by Anxiety 100%. It’s unhealthy to be driven by Joy 100%. We need to be able to allow our emotions space to exist and do their thing — they all have a role to play.
But it’s not healthy to be driven by emotions all the time either. Say at work, or in some social situations, while driving, if you’re upset w/ a family member…
While we were walking back to our car after the movie, I heard a dad screaming at his (10ish year old) kid for not being safe in the parking lot. “You have to LOOK! Why aren’t you LOOKING?!! What’s the matter with YOU that you’re not PAYING ATTENTION?!” Yeah, safety, I get it. But the kid was safe, there weren’t really any cars coming or going. I couldn’t help but see Anger, egged on by Fear, in this dad’s head, altogether running the show.
The poor kid was mortified — he stammered out apologies, only to drown in another tsunami of yelling.
I’m sure that kid will pay better attention in the future to cars in the road, so objective achieved, I suppose.
And what if Logic were up there, informed by the Emotions, but not ruled by them. In my mind, Logic looks like Gandalf or a stereotypical professor in tweed — there is no middle ground, but your Logic may look quite different of course.
If that dad had Logic, it would have talked the emotions down until an appropriate time to process them — hey, Anger and Fear, let’s take a breath. Kiddo is safe, let’s stop yelling and make sure we keep practicing with him when we go out again.
I would have loved to have seen Logic introduced in Riley’s parents, or in the hockey coach’s head in Inside Out 2. Their art would have been way better than my imaginings, for one. But more importantly, our culture is over-run by emotionality right now.
Playing on emotions is a way to get more views on social media, a la rage bait. It’s also a good way to get more views in the media in general, a la fear mongering.
We’ve been told to ‘Follow our joy!’ or ‘Follow your bliss!’ or ‘Follow your passion!’ which for some folks works out great. But the unspoken, other side of the coin is to avoid anything that’s not your joy/bliss/passion. Many folks are unable to tolerate frustration or distress in situations that are otherwise safe, and need to be addressed. Like making a difficult call, or opening a piece of official mail, or simply being honest with a friend. These situations don’t feel great, but Logic (and Integrity) would tell us that we need to dive in and get on with it. Anxiety, Fear, Sadness — they get to ride along, but they don’t get to drive all of the time. And, by the way, neither does Joy.
Inside Out 2 was a good film, from my seat. I was entertained, had a few laughs, and appreciated the outline of anxiety for a generation of kids who are very definitely in it, so to speak. Mission accomplished.
Nevertheless, many adults, including nostalgic millennials, struggle to manage their emotions. And so too do their children, I opine. As a culture, we need to practice factoring Logic in as a leader of the team.
Intuition matters too, sometimes more than logic, IMO; that’s a whole other issue, and well beyond the scope of the film, and this piece.