The moment where Sully scares Boo and looks up at himself in the monitor is my favorite scene. He sees how terrifying he looks and realizes he didn't just traumatize Boo, all monsters have been traumatizing children in general. It's slightly hinted at that even if Sully didn't find out about how powerful laughs are, he wouldn't have went back to the scaring job anyway.
I know, inferior sequel, but the scene is referenced in the Season 1 finale of Monsters at Work. When the main character is wondering about whether monsters should go back to using scream power instead of laugh power (which is one of the central themes of the series; sudden change), Sully brings up scaring boo. Since I feel like I can't really explain my point well, here's the direct quote from the show: (Main character poses the idea of switching back to scare power, the pride that Sully will feel if he were to be top scarer again) Sully: "I never told you about what had happened with Boo... the fear in her eyes when she was scared. I... I didn't like what I saw... what I saw in me..." Sorry for this long comment, just thought I'd point it out
@@shcdemolisher It's not bad, though I will admit I haven't seen Season 2 (though I do know of the plot twists and am not sharing them here). The main focus of the show is around Tyler, who graduates from Monsters University with a degree in scaring to join Monster's Inc at the very end of the first film, when the place shifts from scare power to laugh power.
I remember watching that scene in the theaters with my parents as a kid. I thought that when my dad was watching Sully finally understand the trauma he was doing to kids, he too would also have a similar realization about beating me over bad grades in school. He didn't... 😢
1:28, ironically enough, his failures in the simulator would have extracted quite a lot of scream energy because a kid would laugh at that kind of slapstick.
The movie's ending actually confirms that very thing. There's a shot of him working on what used to be the scare floor, exiting a door with jacks all over his ass, implying that he was using what didn't work for him before to his advantage.
@@opo3628 Stuart had already responded to that comment saying the same thing you did, and more politely at that. There's no need to point the exact same thing out again. It was still a fair observation to make, because it's a reminder that the monsters could have had the answer to their problem at the beginning of the movie without even realizing it.
Yeah, but Sulley's reluctance was more due to there being bigger problems to worry about. He went along with it to get it out of the way so he could make his point. If he realised that it would upset Boo, he almost certainly wouldn't have done it.
I always wondered if the idea that children were "toxic" was made up by the scream industry to keep monsters from interacting with children and realizing that what they were doing was wrong, but that the idea snowballed and became "fact" due to generations of reinforcement.
That’s how I took it. I figured it was to try and protect the children from monsters taking it too far but also to protect the monster world from being discovered.
fleas and ticks and other nasty bugs when living conditions were not as good. living conditions in the human world improve and it is not such a big problem.
Yeah, I watched a theorist one eternity ago who thought that toxicity was either a lie to make their quest seem noble, or a truth that had lost its meaning (the monsters scared kids during the black plague)
man,,, i wish this was true, because i remember in monsters university (that movie spinoff of this one) they put kids toys all over the ground and it was actually toxic to them (swelling, bumps, etcetera)
Monsters Inc. has a lot of metaphors to parenting. That scene of Boo being terrified of Sully hits totally different after you grow up and have to take care of a younger family member, and you just lose your patience with them for whatever reason. If you just shout at them, you will soon realize just how cowardly you are being by trying to scare something so weak and small compared to you. That shame Sullivan feels is just perfectly portrayed. And so, there is the other option of educating children: positive reinforcement. Making them enjoy the good moments instead of being afraid of bad ones, something that is proven to be the most effective for long term mental health. So Waternoose and the other monsters are the outdated 'scared straight approach'. Meanwhile Sully and Mike are the positive reinforcement approach, which is much more recent.
Positive reinforcement is the absolute best way to instill good or even just wanted behavior (IE behavior in which the parent desires, say a kid being quiet when it's nap time. It's not illegal or wrong for them to shout and scream happily, but it is exhausting and also might interfere with others due to how loud it is) Also, redirection instead of punishment "No to cookies before dinner, but yes to an apple or healthier alternative" is very common advice given to pet owners too, since communication on a more complex level isn't possible. Sometimes kids will still be butts about it, but usually an alternative is better than a no. Especially in younger years. They can learn no in many other ways and situations. Fear is the worst way to rule. Because the moment someone learns that they don't need to be scared or anger takes over the fear, it's gone. A parent should want to be respected and loved and have their kid listen to them (most of the time. It's healthy for kids to question, heck, adults too) because they actually trust that they know what's best. Not because they will be hurt if they do not. A parent should also show respect and love back to their kid and encourage conversation and even presenting their arguments to things. Communication is a very under taught skill that many adults don't know how to do. I sure didn't. I learned it overtime from every source but my parents.
Yep. When my daughter was around 4 I remember a specific time I lost my patience and yelled at her. The look on her face gutted me and she burst into tears. I apologized to her and said “i was wrong to do that. Even grown ups make mistakes.” I wanted her to hear that. That adults aren’t infallible and they need to say sorry just as much as kids.
@@ladygaladriel44 i wish my mom apologized to me or maybe she did but she didnt understand that i didn't know why she was yelling at me she was just scary and mean and angry
Can you imagine being a kid before the Laugh floor though? Like going to bed every night, knowing that something is gonna come in via your closet and making you scream and cry until your parents come in and reassure you that it was a nightmare… but it’s one that keeps on coming back and you just have to live with that trauma of being roared/ screamed at until you scream loud enough cause who’s gonna believe you?!
@@technopoptart im not even a kid anymore but i can't help being paranoid about things hiding in the dark be it oversized spiders that don't exist, or remor from fran bow (who has haunted me ever since i first saw him)
The mental and emotional damage implications. Like, sure, overtime you'd sorta forget, but there is a well known phenomenon in abuse circles, the body keeps score. That much adrenaline rush, paranoia and later gas lighting as it's only certain kids who would be susceptible, would definitely damage a person. Even if they don't recall why later in life. Their nervous system sure does. As does locked away memories. To which the adults in trying to be helpful would assure them that there is no monster. The more I think about it, the more messed up it gets. Not to mention, had they actually gone through with the plan to kidnap kids, that would have sent the human world into fear and paranoia too. I always thought the scream extractor was a very subtle way to say that they'd milk the kid for all they have and that they'd probably die of energy loss. That or become like cows in a small factory. The implications of the extractor are even darker than the traumatization and whatever effect that has on kids as they grow up.
Honestly, building on children's laughter vs. screaming is a really good metaphor: For generations, children were seen as "property". Their suffering was often even a need: From child workers to child brides. In modern times, we learned that treating children as individuals is overall way better: Untraumatized, loved adults work better, help society better, have better health...overall just better quality of life. Our society runs quiet literally better on children's laughter. Not screams
Agreed. Especially when you realize that good things usually happen whenever Boo laughs in the monster world; from getting the authorities off of the heroes' trail to powering the many doors, Boo being made to laugh typically results in the protagonists benefiting directly in some way. It adds to the message that keeping children healthy and happy is just plain preferable from both a basic moral standpoint AND a purely pragmatic standpoint. And it builds on Waternoose's and Randall's evil because they can't even comprehend that much.
This. Just this. It's frustrating for people, especially those in power to ask why the world is the way it is when we don't treat children well. In fact, the sheer amount of adults I've met later in life who have abuse stories as kids or teens in various "flavors" is just... it explains why the world is the way it is. And even in meeting lovely people who acknowledge the abuse they incurred and are always working to heal from it, there are many who don't heal, many who don't even realize they were abused. Abuse is common (especially because it doesn't have to be a black eye or a someone saying they "fell down") and people think it's not which allows it to perpetuate more. Children are the beginnings of the adult they become. How you're treated as a child matters. You don't magically overcome laws of physics, genetics and environmental impact when you hit 18, like both law and society seem to treat it.
Have you noticed how at the end of the film that the canisters used to contain energy are far bigger? James did say laughter is ten times more powerful than scream. My theory is because of that it’s also far more unstable as we saw when Boo first laughs in the film as it ended up overloading an entire town block’s worth of apartments and caused them all to short circuit resulting in a massive power outage. The regular energy containers simply wouldn’t cut it as they’d most likely explode shortly after reaching max capacity and there for they switched to a much larger model in order to safely store and distribute said energy.
Yup, glad someone else noticed that detail! Normal scream canisters are about a little smaller than Mike, while the ending laugh canisters are almost double that. The best part is that the characters never even mention the new size; it's just a subtle design choice to let people know that the monsters' society has already moved on to a better power source that needs a bigger container to (as proven by Boo's laughter earlier). It's just like the unspoken difference between Anakin Skywalker's robot hand and his son Luke's hand in Star Wars.
I remember there was an analysis of monster’s inc about how it felt to be a parent back then. And as someone who was slightly older than boo (I always thought boo was 2 or 3, I was 4 or 5). I can tell you, it fits like a glove. I was very young when the movie came out and back then, The WAY adults talk about raising kids sounded like a way to train a dog but without rewards. No dinner until you finish you revision, you can’t help them or they’ll take advantage of you, don’t go for them if they cry, that’ll spoil them, don’t apologize for being clearly in the wrong in fact don’t apologize, cause you’re NOT SUPPOSED to be in the wrong YOU ARE THE ADULT if they THINK you might be wrong they won’t listen to you again, it was all about keeping themselves as the ones in charge rather doing what was best for the kid. No playfulness no rewards cause they might take advantage or put less effort onto things. Not to mention they use to describe kids as manipulative, egoistic, rabbid, rebellious, ungrateful and uncaring, Toxic in a way. And the way that kids will talk about their parents, they’ll complain and avoid saying anything to them, we’d often ask why the adults in tv were so much nicer and easy to talk to, they were monsters, but for the grown ups, it was a job. I think this is why I noticed my dad slightly nicer after the monitor scene, rewatching it is essentially a father so focus on his work and so much pressure that he unwillingly lashes out at their kid and gets to reflect on their job and their actions, how it affects their kid and is breaking their relationship, and after that he only uses scares and scaring as a way to protect them, which is what is supposed to do in the first place. Parents scold or call you out (or are supposed to) so that you learn boundaries for them to be good lovely people cause you love them, and you want the best for them and “loving isn’t always getting what you want but it is always getting what you need” and sometimes you need a hug or a joke or someone to talk to more than a beating
@@facundomontivero2299 That's the hardest part, how are parents supposed to know that their unique individual kid will take their kindness seriously; and not become spoiled? I can't speak for anyone but my own experience with 2 tods, but it feels near-impossible to teach kids the crucial difference between fulfilling their needs, and their wants. Children conflate the two, thus the whole "I want it! It's mine!" type of child.
@@facundomontivero2299well, most spoiled kids are the result of their parents giving them everything they want and never saying now, not the result of simply giving them love. It's the result of giving them every material thing they want, rather than giving them the love they need.
@@facundomontivero2299 yeah but 'don't abuse your kids' isn't an extreme - spoiling happens when you never say no, when you excuse things even as they grow up and ought to know better. Even then I don't really think its the inverse of abusive parenting either if you get what I mean?
0:29, I suspect the thought process was “the cliché is saying they’re more afraid of you then you are of them. What if we literalized that to an absurd extreme. What if even the monster under the bed were more scared of the kids than any kid is of the monster.” I reckon that they worked backwards from that idea and it led to the monsters trying to scare children while being scared of them
It's scary looking back at Randall and Waternoose's plan, not only are they planning to kidnap and basically torture human children, but it's very possible that they'd be killing them too. The scream extractor nearly took out an adult monster when no one was supervising it, imagine what it could do to a human child, like 3-5 years old, if a monster used it on one and simply left the machine unattended or if the machine couldnt be turned off properly.
2 quotes could help to easily summarise this: "Desperate times call for desperate measures." "You were so preoccupied whether or not you could you didn't stop to think when you should."
Easily readable as a metaphor for the wanton destruction of natural resources and the human cost in our own world. What happens when you run out of kids? Short term profits over long term sustainability is evil as ever.
@@JuulietPod Exactly, and it doesn't matter to him because (assumingly) he won't be alive during the time when that happens. He can overtake and destroy their world without living to know the consequences
That thought came to me. I scream extractor is more than psychologically traumatic. The kids probably wouldn’t last long. But also the effects that mass kidnappings would have on the human world in general. It would be awful.
7:00 as a little kid, I always just assumed it was some high tech dome to keep the danger inside. Looking at it now, that’s exactly what it looks like, a high energy barrier to contain the outbreak and child.
same, i saw it as mimicking the little metal dome they put over the sock in the 2319 scene, just on a much bigger scale, and because the small metal dome had an explosion under it, i knew the monsters in the big energy dome were likely having a terrible evening
My interpretation was some alien kinda technology that was so horrible of an outcome. Compared to a basic old explosion it was funnier because you’d expect an explosion but nope
People are scared of the ramifications, plus corporate incompetence would lead to alot of poor nuclear disposal, as long as we ensure strict safety regulations, and disposal, we could make nuclear energy work, this still isn't to completely cut off the use of gas, but to better our energy output.
More of less it was how pop culture like the simpson portrayed nuclear energy as this world ending energy and becuase of events like chernobyl made the public fear nuclear energy @Tregarz
That scene shows how most Pixar movies today lack Intensity. The older films really had intense climax that leaves the audiences on the edge of their seats. You never see it that much in Pixar anymore.
I feel like the end is also kind of a call to action for parents. Child abuse has been a rampant thing throughout history, and still is rampant to this very day. And not just under commonly demonized groups, such as those from third-world countries, extremely religious parents, or single parents; pretty much every group of people you can think of has had many parents within it who have engaged in child abuse. The ending is very "convenient," but for me that's exactly the point. Treating kids with kindness and respect, learning about how kids act and the science behind their growth, spending time to teach them "why" things are instead of "how" things are, and being patient with their outlashes is a _very convenient alternative_ to screaming at them or hitting them and then not having to deal with them, yet a lot of people don't bother. People would rather frown upon convenience, because there _has to_ be some type of difficult drawback that comes with it. You _have to_ be rough with them, or else they'll end up weak, disobedient, and unprepared, right? If it were so easy, we'd have figured it out thousands of years ago! Yet we see that "convenience" played straight time and time again, through countless media depictions and real world examples, and... somehow it works?
@@assassin8636 basically people thought that raising your kid in a healthy manner, such as not yelling at them all the time, such as being patient with them and letting things go easy with them, would : 1. be not good enough for them and make them turn out to be very weak, unable to do anything in life and make them unable to have the skills necessary to live in society. 2. too easy. if raising a whole human being didn't require yelling, beating, roughening them up until they shut up, then... wouldnt that be too easy of a solution? shouldn't you swallow your kindness and be a GOOD ROUGH MAN and make your kid know that the only way to survive is good behavior and strength? should someone go the easy route and sometimes LET your kid have what they want? which, both are very wrong trains of thought. you SHOULD treat your kids well, and you SHOULD let them have what they want. you should be gentle but firm. don't hit them with a brick, duh, but obviously don't let a temper tantrum that's unnecessary go without SOME sort of conversation and/or punishment (the punishment obviously not being a brick either, but rather being grounded or restricted from others until they have calmed down, in which case the real punishment is the lecture they'll get that's moreso not for actively fighting back against them but rather to teach them a lesson. aka, telling your kid what they did was wrong.) if this is too long for you then, uh. TL;DR people sometimes think abuse is the way to go with raising kids, when really, you can just be a decent parent and politely tell them what to do, and only use extreme measures with extreme scenarios. but people sometimes think that the good parenting is just the easy way out, TOO convenient.
@@I-Duno_TFCS3762yeah I see your point, and it goes beyond parenting too! Teaching in general requires positive reinforcement to let the learner know they are doing well, AND stay motivated. It’s the exact reason why favored teachers are often layed back and more down to earth. Everyone likes positive affirmation.
You know what the problem is? It is NOT that convenient. It isn't, because it isn't easy at all. You have to put a lot of effort to be kind, caring, listening parent. It's much easier to just scream, yell and beat. You don't know what is going to happen in a long term, but everything works great in a short term. THAT is why not so many people figured out that "convenient" way of raising kids.
You know what the problem is? It is NOT that convenient. It isn't, because it isn't easy at all. You have to put a lot of effort to be kind, caring, listening parent. It's much easier to just scream, yell and beat. You don't know what is going to happen in a long term, but everything works great in a short term. THAT is why not so many people figured out that "convenient" way.
This is the first time I've ever seen a very young child in media be discussed as a character, let alone as a full human being who has rights and deserves compassion. It's very interesting to see.
Agreed. Even as a kid I figured it was some crazy "decontaimination forcefield" tech, which still works for the joke of showing just how extremely seriously the monsters treat a child breach. That and it's more unique than a generic nuke explosion and gives a bit more worldbuilding of how monsters are THAT scared of human children that they developed such technology just for such a situation
And it makes sense for a world with portal technology and sound based fuel canisters to have that kind of sci-fi level tech especially in the government still not entirely sure how they got the portals working before scream power did they just use their own?
I always assumed they blew up the place and used the force field to contain the explosion. Like how they used the metal dome to contain the sock blowing up.
It's too bad you didn't talk about Monsters at Work during this, I think it does a great job both recontextualizing and supporting this view. It's shown that being funny is very much harder than being scary, and that jokes get old much faster than scares, forcing the jokesters to constantly come up with new material. I wouldn't be surprised if someone did try laughter power back in the day, only to find that it was unsustainable at that time due to not having enough imagination to be funny.
There’s a theory out there about why the monsters have this fear of kids, since we don’t know when they started scaring kids the theory suggests that at some point in the past they came in contact with kids that were sick with a deadly illness like the black plague, the white death, or something that isn’t quite as deadly to us but more so for the monsters
That's actually a really good theory! After all, urban legends, stereotypes, etc. start with something at least slightly true and then over time build up to borderline nonsense.
that's actually plausible. monsters probably first came into contact with human children at their worst moments health-wise so a health scare spread throughout the monster world.
I also like to imagine that some kids fought back. Like. Some kids live/d during war. Or in harsh areas. The monsters are shown to not just run in and scream -but build impact: Open doors. Rattle the windows. Brush the curtains... like that just spells regular intruder. So some kids -or their siblings - probably did some damage to monsters too.
@@leroyjenkins1249 Randall's ending is literally that, he was thrown through a door that leads into a hillbilly trailer. "Mama, another gator got into the house!" "Another gator? Gimme that shovel! Come 'ere!" *Clanking noises*
My parents took me to this movie while I was still potty training. According to reliable eyewitness sources, I was fine until the scene where Sully thinks Boo went down the toilet. I screamed “NOOOO! NOT THE TOOOILEEET!!!” And had to be escorted off the premises. Allegedly, potty training progress backslid…
As a kid I felt that the sushi restaurant being 'under-the-domed' was very much on brand for the CDA since earlier in the movie they put a mini dome over the 'toxic' sock that was on George, blew up the sock and ultrasanitised George - and then later we see that Celia was ultrawashed like George which confirms to us what happened to anyone/anything that got stuck inside the dome. The whole forcefield dome quarantine thing was very clearly the work of the CDA whereas a building exploding may have been less clear to a child. I think the forcefield dome also demonstrates just how powerful/much of a threat the CDA is for our characters.
As a kid i never thought about any moral implications of the monsters scaring the kids. because they are. well monsters. since as a kid that's what you expect monster's to do is scare kids. and the idea of seeing that put into a work factory setting was intresting and funny
"maybe we shouldnt be abusing kids to power our society + hey guys, turns out there was a way more efficient fuel sourxe thaf doesn't involve -fossil fuels- child abuse"
I wish people would realize that politics matter, especially because a lot of it is discourse on social conduct which affects literally everyone. Let alone that we all vote on technical/mechanical aspects of how our world is run. In reality everyone SHOULD be massively political and discourse should be more discussion than fights. That and everyone should be marginally educated on what they vote on and I'm speaking as much to myself as anyone else. I shouldn't be telling Boeing how to design their airplanes if I don't even understand aerodynamics, let alone engineering or meteorology. Let alone suggesting social conduct if I don't get human psychology or sociology. But since there is no such criteria, it should at least be discussions, not about winning.
@@vixxcelacea2778 you are assuming that entertainment is suited to educate the public on politics. Don't get me wrong, it can absoultely work if done right, as for example in the Star Wars Prequel trilogy. But most of the time you are going to get blatant strawmans instead of the real deal, simply because the ability to make good entertainment is seldom found in people with a deep understanding of different political sides.
Many movies back then had political messages/undertones. But back then many people either didn't realize it because they were too young, or were ok with it because people were less radicalized back then and wouldn't scream "wokeness propaganda!!!!" everytime movies had remotely political messages, or even on non-political movies for having black or strong female main characters.
Because if a kid says they saw a monster, people chuckle, if an adult says they saw a monster they get put on an involuntary psych hold lol. If all the screamers are locked up in a mental hospital they can’t keep scaring them.
it would probably be Because of the aftermath, The ones running the scream production do know at least the minimum about the real world. If they started scaring adults constantly they would try to find out why all of a suden Everyone seems to have the same nigthmares, If its a kid is more likely they would just think they had a normal nigthmare.
From what I remember from the DVD commentary, the opening scene lacked the monster being scared by the robo-kid, it was essentially just showed monster on the job, but the team realized it made the monsters unsympathetic and that's how it transformed into the subversive slapstick freakout. Which goes to show that even the experts don't get it right on the first draft. Heck, the original movie pitch as a whole was VERY different, in terms of tone, to what we got.
As far as the audience being sympathetic to the monsters despite what they're doing, I think a relevant aspect of that is the fact that most audience members know that being scared of the monster in your closet/under your bed is just a natural part of childhood... at least, it is in our world, where there are no real monsters. The moral implications are different when there's an active attempt to elicit fear, of course, but since they're levereging the real life idea, it's easy to not notice the difference when they're throwing all these other tricks at you. And even for an audience member that's still young enough to believe that there are monsters in their closet, they're probably just relieved to see that the monsters don't actually want to eat them or anything.
i personally think the laughter bit is a really good metaphor for how study after study has shown that giving workers better breaks, better pay, shorter days, and chairs to rest in will increase productivity- and yet corporations continue to force people to work too long hours, pay well below a livable wage, discourage breaks, and force you to stand for hours on end. if we actually put basic regulations to care for the working man our economy and world would all be better.
its criminal how people can be forced to work in ways that give them injuries that subsequently make them less able to hold down a job these bosses are the worst tyrant kings and its like living in the matrix where no one else can see it
Imagine being between the two phases? One night you get screamed at and scared by a monster, a bit later you see one and instead of scaring you that make you laugh? The whiplash
I remember Kingdom hearts 3 when they visit the monster Inc world like talk about the screaming in the laughter. When Sully and Mike meet Sora and the gang they Tell them that this place used to be a factory where they scared children. And quickly changed and said do they no longer do that and they make kids laugh seeing Sora Donald and goofy's reaction to the scaring children. I believe Randall also mentions it's not so much as the screams or the laughter. It's just the raw emotion that the kids give from both. (But then again that's Kingdom hearts version and I can't really say how well it fits with the actual movies)
Waternoose plan is very flawed if you take a better look at it. The scream vacuum machine while goofy looking is quite dangerous. Because it's suction will literally suck the air out of a person lungs killing them in the process thus they'll be replaced with another. Then another. So alongside kidnapping children there's also murder on a mass scale. And don't forget the adults. While yes we barely see any. (Except the police officers in monsters inc) if let's say. A thousand children went missing those adults will do very desperate things. And probably go as far enter the monsters world with the intent of getting their kid back. Or rip and tear until it's done. So Waternoose would not only kill children BUT ENDANGER HIS ENTIRE RACE TO EXTINCTION! Glad he got arrested and put behind bars forever.
Oh yeah, that puts his stupidity and desperation to a whole other level. Granted, there’s no guarantee for how twisted a person might be when they get desperate, but that just makes it so much worse that Waternoose even came up with that idea in the first place when he saw his company was failing. At that point, the horror is just too much to bear..
@@dafilmqueen556 let's say if he did win. Yes the business is booming with life and energy is infinite across the cities. Until. *humans* they're angry. More monsterous then the monsters themselves, the humans bring upon incomprehensible horrors slaughtering everything in sight. "Why? Why!?" The monsters thought to themselves. "What have we done to deserve this?!" And It'll be all Waternooses fault.
I imagine their plan for inplementarion is sucking, then break. Then sucking, then break. Still causes mid-term lung damage and eventual death, but at least sleztracts much more (and is even less humane) per child
I've heard of the theory that laughs surpassed screams for children because the modern world has less to be afraid of for children. Laughs became more powerful because the quality of life for children generally improved.
Also because monsters gradually became more accepted as an idea in the modern world. You have "Where the Wild Things Are," "Sesame Street," "My Neighbor Totoro," "Nightmare Before Christmas," etc. all showing...if not outright cute, then certainly relatable monsters. "That's our job, but we're not mean."
12:30 However, I do believe that it would've made the message more powerful if the laughter wasn't as efficient as screams. That would've required the monsters to make at least some sacrifice for the sake of decency and sustainability. Lower their standard of living a bit, give up some excessive commodities. It could've been reinforced by them being a bit overly indulgent on the power usage in the beginning of the movie, and more thrifty - in the end. Because reducing consumption is the only viable solution for such issues in the real life, and the way the morally right decision also turned out to be more profitable does look a bit like a cop-out.
but that's also unrealistic, machines are better than slaves, nuclear and renewables are better than fossil fuels, plant only agriculture is way better than animal agriculture, socialism is better than capitalism, being good conveniently is also just better for you and the planet.
That is definitely a more contemporary theme. That's almost too clever, given all these layers under exposition. A person could always analyze how a movie could be better. It stinks because morality is still taught in terms of reward. You are rewarded for good behavior. Let's admit, it IS a Pixar film 😂
@@jamesboulger8705 It sucks morality is taught as reward, my only defense here is that it is true for the energy crisis or animal agriculture, just don't abuse animals is better for the planet. though there are cases where the moral thing is harder, like in many parts of the fight against ableism.
Shoutouts to Kingdom Hearts 3 (which iirc was made semi canon? idk but it's a continuation nonetheless) for taking it a step further by heavily, HEAVILY implying that some of the monsters DIDN'T switch to the more friendly laugh-based energy and continued the abuse that they'd been doing in secret. Enough Scream Energy was collected between the end of Monsters Inc and KH3 that Vanitas (evil dark guy who weaponizes negative emotions) was able to turn a piece of mere scrap metal into a sentient blob of pure scream (the game claims that it was all surplus scream and nothing more but the way they bring focus on it during the game leads me to believe some of it WASN'T surplus).
One thing I’ve always wondered is that if the only source of electricity is from the screams of children. And the only way to get to the human world is through a door that requires electricity. Then how did the monsters get to the human world in the first place?
@@stuartbarron7117 Maybe the monster world is older than ours. Maybe they ran out of coal/oil, and had to find a new source. That is when screams where found.
The logsitics of why child screams/laughs creates energy is interesting. Not in a writing way but scientifically. Maybe the common frequencies in their noises has a unique effect in the Monster world's atmosphere. It's basically bluetooth. Monsters turn on wifi and their modem just starts screaming
Laughter from this angle sounds very erratic and more multi-pitched. Where as screams sound a bit more steady and contained, but no less powerful due to how loud they can be.
It's probably the emotional energy, even when 4 I got that it's not the audio, you can't just play the same tape of a scream, it's the person behind it.
I view the fear surrounding children in Monsters Inc to be an effort to be ethical with the children. Totally uncanonically, I think that it kind of went like this: a monster or group of monsters figured out the energy thing, then thought "how do I keep monsters just scaring the children instead of completely tormenting or hurting the children?" and decided to spread rumors that humans were dangerous to try to prevent excessive exploitation. It seems clear that Waternoose and Roz both know that children aren't toxic.
I think laughter being more powerful works when compared to real life. Think about, renewable energy is limitless, by definition. Plant-focused diets have real advantages over crowding billions of animals in factory farms, including efficiency. A four day work week actually helps worker productivity compared to working everybody as much as possible. From my perspective, it's very common for the more ethical solution to be just objectively BETTER in concrete ways then the unethical one. But it's corporate greed and ingrained practice that keep the more unethical way of doing things around. It's not just issues of systemic abuse where we see this. The QUERTY keyboard is not the most efficient keyboard, but switching to something else would require society re-learning typing all over again so that's not gonna change. The convenience isn't in laughter being better, it's society easily switching over to it.
Ngl as a little kid this movie’s opening scene downright terrified me and I couldn’t connect well with the monsters reasons entirely especially after hearing kids scream in terror at work.
Something that doesn’t get talked about enough is the _response_ of the CDA is *literally* “Security Theater”, predicting the real-life, post-9/11 operations of the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security.
6:20 I live in japan, and am japanese, so I'm personally glad they showed respect by changing the scene. I'm usally one not for censorship? But I think since this is a family movie primarily aimed at kids they made the right call to alter the scene. I could definitely tell you firsthand that an giant fireball like that is highly insensitive and may even offend an large family audience, whether US or Japan. Ratings would of obviously dropped from controversy if they did nothing.
I mean during that time yeah but you shouldn’t argue that the fireball is sensitive because it’s a kids movie, but because it was made in 2001. Also, why would it be sensitive for you?? You can’t possibly be talking about Hiroshima & Nagasaki, that was literally 56 years ago, the fireball scene was released in NOVEMBER 2001, 9/11 was in SEPTEMBER 2001.
I wonder, not relevant to monsters inc (at first), but how many people first saw the clones in the Star wars prequels and went "This is fucked, your producing child soldiers on mass to fight a war", I wonder how many people on their first watch of a movie had the ability to see something from the start is a lot uglier then it is initially presented as?
Clones were produced by eugenist aliens with the financial support of a religious sect closely tied with the government. Them being "child soldiers" is not even the start
I remember already thinking this when I watched the movie for the first time how messed up and evil this is to bring millions of humans into existence that have no individuality, no freedom, locked up in a water planet city, just to force them to become soldiers. And I wondered how Obi-Wan didn't say anything against this when he saw this.
I always thought that the shift to laughter energy was there to provide a metaphor to help parents talk to their kids who are scared of monsters when going to bed. Like, when a child is scared of the monster in the closet, a parent can say “Remember in the movie that the monsters don’t want to scare kids anymore? They just want to make you laugh? So if a monster *does* show up, just laugh.” (Also, the whole “monsters are scared of kids touching them” is another tactic for parents who can say “If the monsters want to scare you, try to scare them back. If you try to touch them, they’ll get scared and go away.”)
Watching this video made me notice for the first time that the energy cannisters are bigger when they start using laughter, literally showing that its the better alternative
A cool sequel idea maybe? Boo is an ostracized teenager because she still talks to her monster and has more monster “trauma” than other kids. Resolving with her deciding she doesn’t care what others think
@ monsters Inc is about monsters thinking kids ate toxic but in reality they are not. So… here’s a innocent question… HOW DID THEY KNEW THE KIDS WERE TOXIC YET THEY ARENT.
Much like animal t--ting. It's technically is abuse to animals, but few question. I unfortunately have nightmares from the things I've heard about, and not just the psychical stuff they do, but things like blocking various receptors linked to mood, preventing them from experiencing joy, pleasure, etc sometimes for their entire lives. Doing so would be unethical to do to humans. Plus, look at how children are treated in our society. Emotional abuse is rampant, yet no one dares to question or try to stop it.
I don’t know how it took me until I watched this video to realize how truly fucked up Waternoose’s plan was,just look at how Fungus,a fully grown monster looked after he got his scream energy sucked,now imagine a kid in that situation,they would eventually kill every children in the human world since there’s no way they would’ve been able to survive that.
I wonder if the monsters think humans are born insanely toxic, and slowly become less and less poisonous as they get older until around 19 they aren’t poisonous at all.
Now that I come to think of it, the resolution of the conflict in Monsters Inc. resembles the ending of Metropolis: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart."
Learning that laughter not only is mentally better for children and all monsters who aren’t considered scary but it’s also 10x better then screams like it’s kinda sad their whole society was built of fear and who was the scariest to the point they started having biases on what makes a monster scary , shown in monsters university. But I really think it’s sad how no one ever thought maybe they can get different emotions to get different levels of enegry I mean screams were ok but we seen simply that they were having a scream shortage so it couldnT have been that great
funny enough, and depressing, this is the same for veganism, it takes 10x the food minimum to get the same calouries worth of murdered sentient then to have plant based meals.
I'm pretty sure the real reason why we don't see the kids being scared in that scare floor scene is simply because humans were so hard and expensive to animate at the time, so the animators needed to cut corners.
Regardless of why that is, it’s still effective at portraying the apathetic viewpoint of the monsters regarding the children. After all, Jaws is a great example of how you can have production problems but still turn out something great if you’re able to use it sparingly. Less is more, they say. So even for not being able to animate humans, it still works to the story’s advantage..
@dafilmqueen556 Yes. And it just demonstrates all the more how brilliant Pixar's creative team was at the time, that they found such clever shortcuts around the technology's limitations in ways that also best told the story.
This kind of reminds me of a point from a Philosophy Tube video I watched WAYYY back. There are bullshit jobs, or jobs that really don't add to this world. My takeaway from that video is that it's important to find jobs that can and give you purpose. It may go against the status quo, but it is what it is. I think it was relatively recent that we invented the origami cardboard stuffing that is used inside packaging. Did it take so long because a lot of us got complacent with what we already had? Probably. But human beings want to learn. To make. To, again, add something to this world.
There is a scene from the sequel show where that despite monsters still being on the fence about laughter, they do agree that the whole scream extractor thing was too far say we may be monsters, but we’re not monsters
The names "james" and "mike" (micheal) are both bible/historical names, insinuating that there is a monster Bible, insinuating that there is a monster Jesus
this is such a good video being curious and taking the time to understand someone else'a pov can help you to see how what you do effects other people, him seing himself from her pov really showed him how he was effecting the kids! i love how they made kids laugh at the end to me it reminds me of child abuse and children being left out and how it was for so long, its still going on alot but more people are realizing children remember things and they have feelings too
This movie hits different as an adult. At the age of eight I could hold back my tears at the theatre, but as an adult they just flow like a river. 😢 Sully's moment of realisation is heartbreaking and I never want to put my future child through that situation! These movies aren't "just" for kids! ❤
There's a parallel you can make between Scream vs Laugh energy, and most forms of power generation vs Nuclear energy. Everyone in the monster world relies on and knows Scream energy as their main source of power. They're afraid to really venture deeper into other options and seek different perspectives, despite Laughter being far more powerful and reliable, while being less harmful and destructive. Similar to Nuclear power in real life, when compared to almost every other power source, people seem to be afraid of it and not understand it's potential. When it truly is safe and very clean, while being the most powerful and generating the most power out of any other source.
It's not that people don't understand nuclear energy's potential, it's that people fear it's destructive potential when something goes wrong with it and human error, the Chernobyl NPP destruction really didn't help with peoples confidence when it comes to nuclear power. And no it's not truly safe.
@@darmok3420 Chernobyl was operated by people who didn't know how to run a nuclear plant, and was destined to melt down. Modern reactors are nearly impossible to melt down, and even if they do, they are designed to melt down in a way that greatly limits the destructive potential, and is even easy to clean up, allowing the same reactor to continue running after fixing the damage. There will never be another chernobyl accident.
5:48 as someone who grew up with cartoons and that slapstick humor I thought that was really funny but yeah due to what had just happened it was for the best they reanimated it
7:24 there’s a theory that Jack-Jack from the Incredibles can teleport into the Monster dimension, so those witnesses might have actually not been making those up as a result of panic.
I think this movie works incredibly well as both an allegory for the current energy crisis that humans are facing, as well as the animal agriculture industry. The world we live in has very clear solutions to the ethical and environmental problems with both, and yet, people's inability to break out of their long-held worldviews prevents us from building a world that causes less harm to others, while being even more beneficial to humans.
I like how the movie also show that when one form of generating energy is shown to be immoral and harmfull they actually stop using it! Instead of admitting it's bad but just continuing anyway. And when they find a cleaner and more efficient way they actually use that! Instead of creating propaganda to imply that this new power is actually worse.
I feel like there's parallels to how we treat animals in the real world in this. We let animals suffer in factory farms for our own consumption and have no second thoughts about it. But perhaps there's a better way, a way we can consume meat without the needless suffering.
Also think about what happens when a child isn't scared anymore. The monsters instantly cut the child off by shredding the door, mainly because a child that isn't paralysed with fear will try to touch the monster or investigate the closet. It's out of safety concerns and is seen as a loss. If it seemed like an act of kindness that once a child isn't afraid anymore they're left alone, it wasn't - it was pragmatic not to bother farming a resource once it got too old and/or too brave, and the monsters were having issues because too many kids becoming brave early.
i alwqyas interpreted the Monsters Inc screams vs laughs as an arguement of fossil fuels vs renewable and nuclear power. one actively harms the environment in extraction and power generation, and the other one doesnt (when managed correctly and responsibly).
Dang, if only the real world had a power source that was exponentially more efficient, environmentally friendly and renewable in comparison to fossil fuels, if a bit needlessly stigmatized. But life just isn't that conven- Thorium
You know, I realized the monsters and humanity could work together to produce renewable energy by making comedy shows and spooky events (basically what universal studios horror nights does). I don’t understand why they need children for energy when you can get a whole room of people to laugh
So I disagree that the bubble shield replacing the fireball is only just good enough. Remember we saw them bolting a cover down over the sock to keep debris from travelling, so that is what the energy shield in calling back to.
At 11:39 I feel like the change also really works from a business ethics perspective. Beyond laughter being more potent and efficient there are many more issues that switching to it solves. How much money was the company spending everytime the CDA had to be called and an entire team of agents with helicopters had to come to lockdown and decon the building? How much money was it costing them to constantly produce doors when kids stopped getting scared? How much money were they having to pay out to employees like George if they need to go on leave or if they decide to sue the company? Despite what some like Randall and Waternoose might think running a more ethical and sustainable business results in a more profitable business in reduction of incidence and less resource turnover. It just doesn't always look as nice on a weekly finance report.
Replace monsters with ppl and kids with animals. Have fun with dual morals of modern humanity. Then switch places of original pair or new pair - have even more fun revisiting this videos points or original movie. Man, i love this dilemmas
Excellent video analysis! This movie was great as a kid/teen, and it feels even more mature when you look back as an adult. I also like your Frasier DVD.
dude i hate it when video essays literally just summarise the movie i thought this was gonna be a full breakdown of the allegory of how corporations exploit and abuse workers for profit
Excellent analysis! You exposed another layer of meaning that I had completely missed until now. I look forward to watching more of your videos; they’re really well put-together.
*DING DING DING* and that's just The Tip of the Iceberg! (Capitalized for a reason!! But heed the warning...you need a very strong stomach to get through all three parts!)
@@SPAnComCat I'll be the first to admit that Capitalism isn't perfect but it's better than Communism, Socialism & Fascism, Capitalism works at the very least despite not being the best.
@@AbrasiousProductions The Reason you're Thinking like this is Pretty Understandable, I used to be a Very Jaded Cynic where I Think it is more Easier to Imagine the End of the World than the End of Capitalism [Capitalist Realism], but when I Looked for Better Alternatives I Realise that the Reason why "Socialism/ Communism Failed" is because of State Counter-Revolution by Opportunists who want Power and Control over People, this is the State should be Abolished in Favour of an Anarchist/Libertarian Socialist/Social Anarchist [Anarcho-Communist/Bookchinite] Alternative, and Honestly Fascism and Capitalism have been Historically Linked due to Capitalist Crisis after the Fallout of WWI and The Great Depression and so on and so Forth, and the USA is Plunging into Fascism because of the Crisis Inflicted by the Ineptitude and Incompetence of Bourgeois States during the Pandemic Crisis that set the Seeds of NeoLiberal Capitalist Decay into 21st Century Fascism, or at Least in my Political Opinion. [This is just my Political Opinion, don't Delete it or Silence my Opinion, I'm just Informing People, Remember; Ignorance is the Capitalist State's Greatest Weapon.] [ [Important 40 Minute EDIT]: [I do not Intend to Violate TH-cam Guidelines] ]
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The moment where Sully scares Boo and looks up at himself in the monitor is my favorite scene. He sees how terrifying he looks and realizes he didn't just traumatize Boo, all monsters have been traumatizing children in general.
It's slightly hinted at that even if Sully didn't find out about how powerful laughs are, he wouldn't have went back to the scaring job anyway.
I know, inferior sequel, but the scene is referenced in the Season 1 finale of Monsters at Work. When the main character is wondering about whether monsters should go back to using scream power instead of laugh power (which is one of the central themes of the series; sudden change), Sully brings up scaring boo. Since I feel like I can't really explain my point well, here's the direct quote from the show:
(Main character poses the idea of switching back to scare power, the pride that Sully will feel if he were to be top scarer again)
Sully: "I never told you about what had happened with Boo... the fear in her eyes when she was scared. I... I didn't like what I saw... what I saw in me..."
Sorry for this long comment, just thought I'd point it out
@@danksydephil3983 I need to watch that show.
@@shcdemolisher It's not bad, though I will admit I haven't seen Season 2 (though I do know of the plot twists and am not sharing them here). The main focus of the show is around Tyler, who graduates from Monsters University with a degree in scaring to join Monster's Inc at the very end of the first film, when the place shifts from scare power to laugh power.
I remember watching that scene in the theaters with my parents as a kid. I thought that when my dad was watching Sully finally understand the trauma he was doing to kids, he too would also have a similar realization about beating me over bad grades in school.
He didn't... 😢
@@UndertakerU2bersome will never understand the impact they have on the lives of others
1:28, ironically enough, his failures in the simulator would have extracted quite a lot of scream energy because a kid would laugh at that kind of slapstick.
The movie's ending actually confirms that very thing. There's a shot of him working on what used to be the scare floor, exiting a door with jacks all over his ass, implying that he was using what didn't work for him before to his advantage.
Umm...he uses that exact same trick to extract laughter energy at the very end of the movie.
Oh yeah, ain't that funny?
Ah, well, it is, that's the point lol
@@opo3628 Stuart had already responded to that comment saying the same thing you did, and more politely at that. There's no need to point the exact same thing out again. It was still a fair observation to make, because it's a reminder that the monsters could have had the answer to their problem at the beginning of the movie without even realizing it.
Ngl, that sound the ball makes when it bounced in the face still makes me smile to this day
To be fair, Sulley tried to stop Waternoose from going through with the scare simulation, but Waternoose kept cutting him off.
Yeah, but Sulley's reluctance was more due to there being bigger problems to worry about. He went along with it to get it out of the way so he could make his point. If he realised that it would upset Boo, he almost certainly wouldn't have done it.
@@stuartbarron7117yup and when he saw boo’s scared face he was heartbroken
Fun fact! You can't tye water to a tree but it can still suffocate you!
@@stuartbarron7117yea you both are half right half wrong, sulley is “casual about it” but he also “didnt want to do it, regardless of the motive”
@stuartbarron7117 he still tried to stop him. He was desperate for help. So your argument seems like you want to blame Sully.
I always wondered if the idea that children were "toxic" was made up by the scream industry to keep monsters from interacting with children and realizing that what they were doing was wrong, but that the idea snowballed and became "fact" due to generations of reinforcement.
That’s how I took it. I figured it was to try and protect the children from monsters taking it too far but also to protect the monster world from being discovered.
fleas and ticks and other nasty bugs when living conditions were not as good. living conditions in the human world improve and it is not such a big problem.
Yeah, I watched a theorist one eternity ago who thought that toxicity was either a lie to make their quest seem noble, or a truth that had lost its meaning (the monsters scared kids during the black plague)
@Giosuke_Giogashikata The theory I saw said it was the yellow fever
man,,, i wish this was true, because i remember in monsters university (that movie spinoff of this one) they put kids toys all over the ground and it was actually toxic to them (swelling, bumps, etcetera)
Monsters Inc. has a lot of metaphors to parenting. That scene of Boo being terrified of Sully hits totally different after you grow up and have to take care of a younger family member, and you just lose your patience with them for whatever reason. If you just shout at them, you will soon realize just how cowardly you are being by trying to scare something so weak and small compared to you. That shame Sullivan feels is just perfectly portrayed.
And so, there is the other option of educating children: positive reinforcement. Making them enjoy the good moments instead of being afraid of bad ones, something that is proven to be the most effective for long term mental health.
So Waternoose and the other monsters are the outdated 'scared straight approach'. Meanwhile Sully and Mike are the positive reinforcement approach, which is much more recent.
Positive reinforcement is the absolute best way to instill good or even just wanted behavior (IE behavior in which the parent desires, say a kid being quiet when it's nap time. It's not illegal or wrong for them to shout and scream happily, but it is exhausting and also might interfere with others due to how loud it is)
Also, redirection instead of punishment "No to cookies before dinner, but yes to an apple or healthier alternative" is very common advice given to pet owners too, since communication on a more complex level isn't possible.
Sometimes kids will still be butts about it, but usually an alternative is better than a no. Especially in younger years. They can learn no in many other ways and situations.
Fear is the worst way to rule. Because the moment someone learns that they don't need to be scared or anger takes over the fear, it's gone. A parent should want to be respected and loved and have their kid listen to them (most of the time. It's healthy for kids to question, heck, adults too) because they actually trust that they know what's best. Not because they will be hurt if they do not. A parent should also show respect and love back to their kid and encourage conversation and even presenting their arguments to things. Communication is a very under taught skill that many adults don't know how to do.
I sure didn't. I learned it overtime from every source but my parents.
🔥
Yep. When my daughter was around 4 I remember a specific time I lost my patience and yelled at her. The look on her face gutted me and she burst into tears.
I apologized to her and said “i was wrong to do that. Even grown ups make mistakes.” I wanted her to hear that. That adults aren’t infallible and they need to say sorry just as much as kids.
@@ladygaladriel44 i wish my mom apologized to me or maybe she did but she didnt understand that i didn't know why she was yelling at me she was just scary and mean and angry
Can you imagine being a kid before the Laugh floor though?
Like going to bed every night, knowing that something is gonna come in via your closet and making you scream and cry until your parents come in and reassure you that it was a nightmare… but it’s one that keeps on coming back and you just have to live with that trauma of being roared/ screamed at until you scream loud enough cause who’s gonna believe you?!
a lot of kids can. monsters are as real as unbridled anxiety lets them be
@@technopoptart im not even a kid anymore but i can't help being paranoid about things hiding in the dark
be it oversized spiders that don't exist, or remor from fran bow (who has haunted me ever since i first saw him)
simple. just don't have a closet
The mental and emotional damage implications. Like, sure, overtime you'd sorta forget, but there is a well known phenomenon in abuse circles, the body keeps score. That much adrenaline rush, paranoia and later gas lighting as it's only certain kids who would be susceptible, would definitely damage a person. Even if they don't recall why later in life. Their nervous system sure does. As does locked away memories. To which the adults in trying to be helpful would assure them that there is no monster. The more I think about it, the more messed up it gets.
Not to mention, had they actually gone through with the plan to kidnap kids, that would have sent the human world into fear and paranoia too.
I always thought the scream extractor was a very subtle way to say that they'd milk the kid for all they have and that they'd probably die of energy loss. That or become like cows in a small factory. The implications of the extractor are even darker than the traumatization and whatever effect that has on kids as they grow up.
Keep the closet door open
Honestly, building on children's laughter vs. screaming is a really good metaphor: For generations, children were seen as "property". Their suffering was often even a need: From child workers to child brides. In modern times, we learned that treating children as individuals is overall way better: Untraumatized, loved adults work better, help society better, have better health...overall just better quality of life.
Our society runs quiet literally better on children's laughter. Not screams
Unfortunately; we are Regressing because of the "Parents' "Rights"" Movement in the USA...
Agreed. Especially when you realize that good things usually happen whenever Boo laughs in the monster world; from getting the authorities off of the heroes' trail to powering the many doors, Boo being made to laugh typically results in the protagonists benefiting directly in some way. It adds to the message that keeping children healthy and happy is just plain preferable from both a basic moral standpoint AND a purely pragmatic standpoint. And it builds on Waternoose's and Randall's evil because they can't even comprehend that much.
@@mrreyes5004 Now that I Think about it, that is Unintentionally Genius!
This. Just this. It's frustrating for people, especially those in power to ask why the world is the way it is when we don't treat children well. In fact, the sheer amount of adults I've met later in life who have abuse stories as kids or teens in various "flavors" is just... it explains why the world is the way it is. And even in meeting lovely people who acknowledge the abuse they incurred and are always working to heal from it, there are many who don't heal, many who don't even realize they were abused.
Abuse is common (especially because it doesn't have to be a black eye or a someone saying they "fell down") and people think it's not which allows it to perpetuate more.
Children are the beginnings of the adult they become. How you're treated as a child matters. You don't magically overcome laws of physics, genetics and environmental impact when you hit 18, like both law and society seem to treat it.
@@vixxcelacea2778 I Know, it's Hypocritical of those Adult Supremacists!
Have you noticed how at the end of the film that the canisters used to contain energy are far bigger?
James did say laughter is ten times more powerful than scream.
My theory is because of that it’s also far more unstable as we saw when Boo first laughs in the film as it ended up overloading an entire town block’s worth of apartments and caused them all to short circuit resulting in a massive power outage.
The regular energy containers simply wouldn’t cut it as they’d most likely explode shortly after reaching max capacity and there for they switched to a much larger model in order to safely store and distribute said energy.
Maybe it's a commentary on how positivity is stronger than negativity. Or how joy is stronger than fear.
and if you watched Monsters at Work, Tylor and Cutter were responsible for that concept.
As it turns out, bigger canisters are what's needed.
I never knew that
Yup, glad someone else noticed that detail! Normal scream canisters are about a little smaller than Mike, while the ending laugh canisters are almost double that. The best part is that the characters never even mention the new size; it's just a subtle design choice to let people know that the monsters' society has already moved on to a better power source that needs a bigger container to (as proven by Boo's laughter earlier). It's just like the unspoken difference between Anakin Skywalker's robot hand and his son Luke's hand in Star Wars.
“What was that?”
“I have no idea. But it would be *really great.* if it didn’t do it again.”
I remember there was an analysis of monster’s inc about how it felt to be a parent back then. And as someone who was slightly older than boo (I always thought boo was 2 or 3, I was 4 or 5). I can tell you, it fits like a glove.
I was very young when the movie came out and back then, The WAY adults talk about raising kids sounded like a way to train a dog but without rewards. No dinner until you finish you revision, you can’t help them or they’ll take advantage of you, don’t go for them if they cry, that’ll spoil them, don’t apologize for being clearly in the wrong in fact don’t apologize, cause you’re NOT SUPPOSED to be in the wrong YOU ARE THE ADULT if they THINK you might be wrong they won’t listen to you again, it was all about keeping themselves as the ones in charge rather doing what was best for the kid. No playfulness no rewards cause they might take advantage or put less effort onto things. Not to mention they use to describe kids as manipulative, egoistic, rabbid, rebellious, ungrateful and uncaring, Toxic in a way. And the way that kids will talk about their parents, they’ll complain and avoid saying anything to them, we’d often ask why the adults in tv were so much nicer and easy to talk to, they were monsters, but for the grown ups, it was a job.
I think this is why I noticed my dad slightly nicer after the monitor scene, rewatching it is essentially a father so focus on his work and so much pressure that he unwillingly lashes out at their kid and gets to reflect on their job and their actions, how it affects their kid and is breaking their relationship, and after that he only uses scares and scaring as a way to protect them, which is what is supposed to do in the first place. Parents scold or call you out (or are supposed to) so that you learn boundaries for them to be good lovely people cause you love them, and you want the best for them and “loving isn’t always getting what you want but it is always getting what you need” and sometimes you need a hug or a joke or someone to talk to more than a beating
Wow that hits close to home haha, i was always "manipulative" for crying when my father screamed and slammed/destroyed stuff in a fit of rage
I have seen some ridiculously spoilt children though.
There has to be a balance. Leaning too much into either extreme will mess your kids up.
@@facundomontivero2299 That's the hardest part, how are parents supposed to know that their unique individual kid will take their kindness seriously; and not become spoiled?
I can't speak for anyone but my own experience with 2 tods, but it feels near-impossible to teach kids the crucial difference between fulfilling their needs, and their wants. Children conflate the two, thus the whole "I want it! It's mine!" type of child.
@@facundomontivero2299well, most spoiled kids are the result of their parents giving them everything they want and never saying now, not the result of simply giving them love. It's the result of giving them every material thing they want, rather than giving them the love they need.
@@facundomontivero2299 yeah but 'don't abuse your kids' isn't an extreme - spoiling happens when you never say no, when you excuse things even as they grow up and ought to know better. Even then I don't really think its the inverse of abusive parenting either if you get what I mean?
i can't believe it.... mike wazowski is in a video thumbnail!!!!
lol
The camera loves him!
hes a natural
0:29, I suspect the thought process was “the cliché is saying they’re more afraid of you then you are of them. What if we literalized that to an absurd extreme. What if even the monster under the bed were more scared of the kids than any kid is of the monster.” I reckon that they worked backwards from that idea and it led to the monsters trying to scare children while being scared of them
I think that's sort of touched on in the DVD bonus features, which are at least in the original DVD release.
Old Pixar was a beast when it came to creativity so I would believe it
It's scary looking back at Randall and Waternoose's plan, not only are they planning to kidnap and basically torture human children, but it's very possible that they'd be killing them too. The scream extractor nearly took out an adult monster when no one was supervising it, imagine what it could do to a human child, like 3-5 years old, if a monster used it on one and simply left the machine unattended or if the machine couldnt be turned off properly.
2 quotes could help to easily summarise this:
"Desperate times call for desperate measures."
"You were so preoccupied whether or not you could you didn't stop to think when you should."
Also add it could lead to investigation and they could have a war with a whole planet.
Easily readable as a metaphor for the wanton destruction of natural resources and the human cost in our own world.
What happens when you run out of kids? Short term profits over long term sustainability is evil as ever.
@@JuulietPod Exactly, and it doesn't matter to him because (assumingly) he won't be alive during the time when that happens. He can overtake and destroy their world without living to know the consequences
That thought came to me. I scream extractor is more than psychologically traumatic. The kids probably wouldn’t last long. But also the effects that mass kidnappings would have on the human world in general. It would be awful.
7:00 as a little kid, I always just assumed it was some high tech dome to keep the danger inside.
Looking at it now, that’s exactly what it looks like, a high energy barrier to contain the outbreak and child.
same, i saw it as mimicking the little metal dome they put over the sock in the 2319 scene, just on a much bigger scale, and because the small metal dome had an explosion under it, i knew the monsters in the big energy dome were likely having a terrible evening
I saw it as electrical sterilization. As in, everyone in that was in for a shocking time.
My interpretation was some alien kinda technology that was so horrible of an outcome. Compared to a basic old explosion it was funnier because you’d expect an explosion but nope
It always remind me of a quaratined area, same idea though
"Why do Monsters have a convenient solution for energy crisis, this is bad writing!"
Nuclear energy irl:
Curse you politics!
People are scared of the ramifications, plus corporate incompetence would lead to alot of poor nuclear disposal, as long as we ensure strict safety regulations, and disposal, we could make nuclear energy work, this still isn't to completely cut off the use of gas, but to better our energy output.
@@Jacy-dx6dx what
@@DavidAbdullerimov politics are one of the main reasons we don't have nuclear energy. Then again politics are the reason behind a lot of things.
More of less it was how pop culture like the simpson portrayed nuclear energy as this world ending energy and becuase of events like chernobyl made the public fear nuclear energy @Tregarz
The ending where Mr. Waternoose chased Sully and Boo down the hall and then tried to break into the fake room scared me as a kid.
DON'T GO IN THAT ROOM
GRAAAGGHHHH
That scene shows how most Pixar movies today lack Intensity. The older films really had intense climax that leaves the audiences on the edge of their seats. You never see it that much in Pixar anymore.
the 2319 scene traumatized me for years lmao
Fun fact: W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet, and S is the 19th letter. That means “23-19” actually stands for WS, or white sock
Dang, that is good!
thats so silly i love it
Interesting
Wazowski
Sully
In Spanish the code is 33-12 😢 treinta y tres doce sounds better than veintitrés diecinueve
I feel like the end is also kind of a call to action for parents. Child abuse has been a rampant thing throughout history, and still is rampant to this very day. And not just under commonly demonized groups, such as those from third-world countries, extremely religious parents, or single parents; pretty much every group of people you can think of has had many parents within it who have engaged in child abuse.
The ending is very "convenient," but for me that's exactly the point. Treating kids with kindness and respect, learning about how kids act and the science behind their growth, spending time to teach them "why" things are instead of "how" things are, and being patient with their outlashes is a _very convenient alternative_ to screaming at them or hitting them and then not having to deal with them, yet a lot of people don't bother. People would rather frown upon convenience, because there _has to_ be some type of difficult drawback that comes with it. You _have to_ be rough with them, or else they'll end up weak, disobedient, and unprepared, right? If it were so easy, we'd have figured it out thousands of years ago!
Yet we see that "convenience" played straight time and time again, through countless media depictions and real world examples, and... somehow it works?
I'm not getting your convenience point. Are you saying people don't like it if kids are treated, right?
@@assassin8636 basically people thought that raising your kid in a healthy manner, such as not yelling at them all the time, such as being patient with them and letting things go easy with them, would : 1. be not good enough for them and make them turn out to be very weak, unable to do anything in life and make them unable to have the skills necessary to live in society.
2. too easy. if raising a whole human being didn't require yelling, beating, roughening them up until they shut up, then... wouldnt that be too easy of a solution? shouldn't you swallow your kindness and be a GOOD ROUGH MAN and make your kid know that the only way to survive is good behavior and strength? should someone go the easy route and sometimes LET your kid have what they want?
which, both are very wrong trains of thought. you SHOULD treat your kids well, and you SHOULD let them have what they want. you should be gentle but firm. don't hit them with a brick, duh, but obviously don't let a temper tantrum that's unnecessary go without SOME sort of conversation and/or punishment (the punishment obviously not being a brick either, but rather being grounded or restricted from others until they have calmed down, in which case the real punishment is the lecture they'll get that's moreso not for actively fighting back against them but rather to teach them a lesson. aka, telling your kid what they did was wrong.)
if this is too long for you then, uh. TL;DR people sometimes think abuse is the way to go with raising kids, when really, you can just be a decent parent and politely tell them what to do, and only use extreme measures with extreme scenarios. but people sometimes think that the good parenting is just the easy way out, TOO convenient.
@@I-Duno_TFCS3762yeah I see your point, and it goes beyond parenting too! Teaching in general requires positive reinforcement to let the learner know they are doing well, AND stay motivated. It’s the exact reason why favored teachers are often layed back and more down to earth. Everyone likes positive affirmation.
You know what the problem is? It is NOT that convenient. It isn't, because it isn't easy at all. You have to put a lot of effort to be kind, caring, listening parent. It's much easier to just scream, yell and beat. You don't know what is going to happen in a long term, but everything works great in a short term. THAT is why not so many people figured out that "convenient" way of raising kids.
You know what the problem is? It is NOT that convenient. It isn't, because it isn't easy at all. You have to put a lot of effort to be kind, caring, listening parent. It's much easier to just scream, yell and beat. You don't know what is going to happen in a long term, but everything works great in a short term. THAT is why not so many people figured out that "convenient" way.
This is the first time I've ever seen a very young child in media be discussed as a character, let alone as a full human being who has rights and deserves compassion. It's very interesting to see.
Yeah you know that's really odd considering the target audience of most animated movies
I actually liked the mysterious green dome edit better. It really sells the monster world idea with the CDA having some unseen MiB style technology.
Agreed. Even as a kid I figured it was some crazy "decontaimination forcefield" tech, which still works for the joke of showing just how extremely seriously the monsters treat a child breach. That and it's more unique than a generic nuke explosion and gives a bit more worldbuilding of how monsters are THAT scared of human children that they developed such technology just for such a situation
And it makes sense for a world with portal technology and sound based fuel canisters to have that kind of sci-fi level tech especially in the government still not entirely sure how they got the portals working before scream power did they just use their own?
I always assumed they blew up the place and used the force field to contain the explosion. Like how they used the metal dome to contain the sock blowing up.
@@Neevkl_7 most likely, I suppose.
@@Inventorcoyote They probably used an alternative source of energy before they discovered children scream is more effective and cheaper.
It's too bad you didn't talk about Monsters at Work during this, I think it does a great job both recontextualizing and supporting this view. It's shown that being funny is very much harder than being scary, and that jokes get old much faster than scares, forcing the jokesters to constantly come up with new material. I wouldn't be surprised if someone did try laughter power back in the day, only to find that it was unsustainable at that time due to not having enough imagination to be funny.
yeah, monsters at work is really good and I highly recommend it to any fan of Monsters Inc.
There’s a theory out there about why the monsters have this fear of kids, since we don’t know when they started scaring kids the theory suggests that at some point in the past they came in contact with kids that were sick with a deadly illness like the black plague, the white death, or something that isn’t quite as deadly to us but more so for the monsters
That's actually a really good theory! After all, urban legends, stereotypes, etc. start with something at least slightly true and then over time build up to borderline nonsense.
that's actually plausible. monsters probably first came into contact with human children at their worst moments health-wise so a health scare spread throughout the monster world.
And yet they kept going into their environment where the disease spread
I also like to imagine that some kids fought back. Like. Some kids live/d during war. Or in harsh areas. The monsters are shown to not just run in and scream -but build impact: Open doors. Rattle the windows. Brush the curtains...
like that just spells regular intruder. So some kids -or their siblings - probably did some damage to monsters too.
@@leroyjenkins1249 Randall's ending is literally that, he was thrown through a door that leads into a hillbilly trailer.
"Mama, another gator got into the house!" "Another gator? Gimme that shovel! Come 'ere!" *Clanking noises*
My parents took me to this movie while I was still potty training. According to reliable eyewitness sources, I was fine until the scene where Sully thinks Boo went down the toilet. I screamed “NOOOO! NOT THE TOOOILEEET!!!” And had to be escorted off the premises. Allegedly, potty training progress backslid…
That is both hilarious & terrifying.
I had the same exact thought during Covid
As a kid I felt that the sushi restaurant being 'under-the-domed' was very much on brand for the CDA since earlier in the movie they put a mini dome over the 'toxic' sock that was on George, blew up the sock and ultrasanitised George - and then later we see that Celia was ultrawashed like George which confirms to us what happened to anyone/anything that got stuck inside the dome. The whole forcefield dome quarantine thing was very clearly the work of the CDA whereas a building exploding may have been less clear to a child. I think the forcefield dome also demonstrates just how powerful/much of a threat the CDA is for our characters.
As a kid i never thought about any moral implications of the monsters scaring the kids. because they are. well monsters. since as a kid that's what you expect monster's to do is scare kids. and the idea of seeing that put into a work factory setting was intresting and funny
Come to think of it…HOW THE CRAP DID BOO’S PARENTS NOT NOTICE SHE WAS MISSING OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS?!
Either they were or some time dilation stuff
monster time probably works different! also, how do we know that’s NOT the case!
Who's to say they didn't? We don't even know what they look like. Or if she even has any. She could be an orphan living with grandma for all we know.
there's no evidence they didn't, we only ever see boos perspective out of any human.
The second movie disproves that
Being a prequel as well
Okay now this is epic.
Also I was legit named after Sulley, so this movie has always had a place in my heart.
holy shit thats so cool!! sullivan is a great name tbh
"Why can't movies go back to not being political?!"
Waternoose: "Hold my kidnapping scandal"
Or rather, “Dude, you’re taking kids movies too seriously for your own mental health! Enjoy the escapism!”
"maybe we shouldnt be abusing kids to power our society + hey guys, turns out there was a way more efficient fuel sourxe thaf doesn't involve -fossil fuels- child abuse"
I wish people would realize that politics matter, especially because a lot of it is discourse on social conduct which affects literally everyone. Let alone that we all vote on technical/mechanical aspects of how our world is run.
In reality everyone SHOULD be massively political and discourse should be more discussion than fights. That and everyone should be marginally educated on what they vote on and I'm speaking as much to myself as anyone else. I shouldn't be telling Boeing how to design their airplanes if I don't even understand aerodynamics, let alone engineering or meteorology. Let alone suggesting social conduct if I don't get human psychology or sociology.
But since there is no such criteria, it should at least be discussions, not about winning.
@@vixxcelacea2778 you are assuming that entertainment is suited to educate the public on politics. Don't get me wrong, it can absoultely work if done right, as for example in the Star Wars Prequel trilogy. But most of the time you are going to get blatant strawmans instead of the real deal, simply because the ability to make good entertainment is seldom found in people with a deep understanding of different political sides.
Many movies back then had political messages/undertones. But back then many people either didn't realize it because they were too young, or were ok with it because people were less radicalized back then and wouldn't scream "wokeness propaganda!!!!" everytime movies had remotely political messages, or even on non-political movies for having black or strong female main characters.
The scream e extractor, sounds like a good name for a roller coaster.
It makes sense in that context
I'd ride it
TOMBOYJESSIE EVILLIOUS CHRONICLES IN MY PIXAR VIDEO??!! @@tomboyjessie1352
Screen projector
My question, why only limit themselves to kids? I'm almost 30 and if a monster showed up in my closet I'd be scared sh*tless.
They have guns and other weapons
@@GrimmyQso did those others that Sulley and Mike scared at University
Because if a kid says they saw a monster, people chuckle, if an adult says they saw a monster they get put on an involuntary psych hold lol. If all the screamers are locked up in a mental hospital they can’t keep scaring them.
it would probably be Because of the aftermath, The ones running the scream production do know at least the minimum about the real world. If they started scaring adults constantly they would try to find out why all of a suden Everyone seems to have the same nigthmares, If its a kid is more likely they would just think they had a normal nigthmare.
I assume it's a pitch/frequency thing.
From what I remember from the DVD commentary, the opening scene lacked the monster being scared by the robo-kid, it was essentially just showed monster on the job, but the team realized it made the monsters unsympathetic and that's how it transformed into the subversive slapstick freakout. Which goes to show that even the experts don't get it right on the first draft. Heck, the original movie pitch as a whole was VERY different, in terms of tone, to what we got.
As far as the audience being sympathetic to the monsters despite what they're doing, I think a relevant aspect of that is the fact that most audience members know that being scared of the monster in your closet/under your bed is just a natural part of childhood... at least, it is in our world, where there are no real monsters. The moral implications are different when there's an active attempt to elicit fear, of course, but since they're levereging the real life idea, it's easy to not notice the difference when they're throwing all these other tricks at you. And even for an audience member that's still young enough to believe that there are monsters in their closet, they're probably just relieved to see that the monsters don't actually want to eat them or anything.
i personally think the laughter bit is a really good metaphor for how study after study has shown that giving workers better breaks, better pay, shorter days, and chairs to rest in will increase productivity- and yet corporations continue to force people to work too long hours, pay well below a livable wage, discourage breaks, and force you to stand for hours on end. if we actually put basic regulations to care for the working man our economy and world would all be better.
its criminal how people can be forced to work in ways that give them injuries that subsequently make them less able to hold down a job
these bosses are the worst tyrant kings and its like living in the matrix where no one else can see it
That ending is too wholesome I almost cry every time.
Imagine being between the two phases? One night you get screamed at and scared by a monster, a bit later you see one and instead of scaring you that make you laugh? The whiplash
I remember Kingdom hearts 3 when they visit the monster Inc world like talk about the screaming in the laughter. When Sully and Mike meet Sora and the gang they Tell them that this place used to be a factory where they scared children. And quickly changed and said do they no longer do that and they make kids laugh seeing Sora Donald and goofy's reaction to the scaring children. I believe Randall also mentions it's not so much as the screams or the laughter. It's just the raw emotion that the kids give from both. (But then again that's Kingdom hearts version and I can't really say how well it fits with the actual movies)
the raw emotion thing is supported in monsters at work.
@polocatfan Ah Thank you
@@polocatfan Ok, now I'm almost considering Disney+ just so I can watch Monsters at Work!
Waternoose plan is very flawed if you take a better look at it.
The scream vacuum machine while goofy looking is quite dangerous. Because it's suction will literally suck the air out of a person lungs killing them in the process thus they'll be replaced with another. Then another. So alongside kidnapping children there's also murder on a mass scale.
And don't forget the adults. While yes we barely see any. (Except the police officers in monsters inc) if let's say. A thousand children went missing those adults will do very desperate things. And probably go as far enter the monsters world with the intent of getting their kid back. Or rip and tear until it's done.
So Waternoose would not only kill children BUT ENDANGER HIS ENTIRE RACE TO EXTINCTION! Glad he got arrested and put behind bars forever.
Oh yeah, that puts his stupidity and desperation to a whole other level. Granted, there’s no guarantee for how twisted a person might be when they get desperate, but that just makes it so much worse that Waternoose even came up with that idea in the first place when he saw his company was failing. At that point, the horror is just too much to bear..
@@dafilmqueen556 let's say if he did win. Yes the business is booming with life and energy is infinite across the cities.
Until. *humans* they're angry. More monsterous then the monsters themselves, the humans bring upon incomprehensible horrors slaughtering everything in sight.
"Why? Why!?" The monsters thought to themselves. "What have we done to deserve this?!"
And It'll be all Waternooses fault.
I imagine their plan for inplementarion is sucking, then break. Then sucking, then break. Still causes mid-term lung damage and eventual death, but at least sleztracts much more (and is even less humane) per child
As always, the real villain... Is capitalism
I've heard of the theory that laughs surpassed screams for children because the modern world has less to be afraid of for children. Laughs became more powerful because the quality of life for children generally improved.
Also because monsters gradually became more accepted as an idea in the modern world. You have "Where the Wild Things Are," "Sesame Street," "My Neighbor Totoro," "Nightmare Before Christmas," etc. all showing...if not outright cute, then certainly relatable monsters. "That's our job, but we're not mean."
12:30 However, I do believe that it would've made the message more powerful if the laughter wasn't as efficient as screams. That would've required the monsters to make at least some sacrifice for the sake of decency and sustainability. Lower their standard of living a bit, give up some excessive commodities. It could've been reinforced by them being a bit overly indulgent on the power usage in the beginning of the movie, and more thrifty - in the end. Because reducing consumption is the only viable solution for such issues in the real life, and the way the morally right decision also turned out to be more profitable does look a bit like a cop-out.
but that's also unrealistic, machines are better than slaves, nuclear and renewables are better than fossil fuels, plant only agriculture is way better than animal agriculture, socialism is better than capitalism, being good conveniently is also just better for you and the planet.
That is definitely a more contemporary theme. That's almost too clever, given all these layers under exposition. A person could always analyze how a movie could be better.
It stinks because morality is still taught in terms of reward. You are rewarded for good behavior. Let's admit, it IS a Pixar film 😂
@@jamesboulger8705 It sucks morality is taught as reward, my only defense here is that it is true for the energy crisis or animal agriculture, just don't abuse animals is better for the planet. though there are cases where the moral thing is harder, like in many parts of the fight against ableism.
I wish kids media was still this deep :(
It's not even deep this guy is just overcompkicating an old kids movie
"Kitty!" Right in the feels. Every time.
In real world, we use kid labor and terribly paid hard workers. Because such is life. I can see nice metaphor there.
Shoutouts to Kingdom Hearts 3 (which iirc was made semi canon? idk but it's a continuation nonetheless) for taking it a step further by heavily, HEAVILY implying that some of the monsters DIDN'T switch to the more friendly laugh-based energy and continued the abuse that they'd been doing in secret. Enough Scream Energy was collected between the end of Monsters Inc and KH3 that Vanitas (evil dark guy who weaponizes negative emotions) was able to turn a piece of mere scrap metal into a sentient blob of pure scream (the game claims that it was all surplus scream and nothing more but the way they bring focus on it during the game leads me to believe some of it WASN'T surplus).
One thing I’ve always wondered is that if the only source of electricity is from the screams of children. And the only way to get to the human world is through a door that requires electricity. Then how did the monsters get to the human world in the first place?
Presumably there was another form of electricity that the monster world previously used until it got phased out in favour of screams.
@@stuartbarron7117 I would love to see a video about how they convert screams into electrical energy
@@stuartbarron7117 Maybe the monster world is older than ours. Maybe they ran out of coal/oil, and had to find a new source. That is when screams where found.
@@saphiriathebluedragonknight375the Pixar theory, the Pixar theory were finally going to see it clearly
Wouldn’t they Use Nuclear just like we do If we used up Our oil and Coal and Gas?
The logsitics of why child screams/laughs creates energy is interesting. Not in a writing way but scientifically. Maybe the common frequencies in their noises has a unique effect in the Monster world's atmosphere. It's basically bluetooth. Monsters turn on wifi and their modem just starts screaming
Interesting Theory.
Laughter from this angle sounds very erratic and more multi-pitched. Where as screams sound a bit more steady and contained, but no less powerful due to how loud they can be.
@@vixxcelacea2778 That Reminds me of a Video from The Film Theorists.
It's probably the emotional energy, even when 4 I got that it's not the audio, you can't just play the same tape of a scream, it's the person behind it.
Also Mr. Waternoose is a great twist villain it was hinted from the part when James and he has a conversation after the CDA showed up.
I view the fear surrounding children in Monsters Inc to be an effort to be ethical with the children.
Totally uncanonically, I think that it kind of went like this: a monster or group of monsters figured out the energy thing, then thought "how do I keep monsters just scaring the children instead of completely tormenting or hurting the children?" and decided to spread rumors that humans were dangerous to try to prevent excessive exploitation.
It seems clear that Waternoose and Roz both know that children aren't toxic.
I think laughter being more powerful works when compared to real life. Think about, renewable energy is limitless, by definition. Plant-focused diets have real advantages over crowding billions of animals in factory farms, including efficiency. A four day work week actually helps worker productivity compared to working everybody as much as possible. From my perspective, it's very common for the more ethical solution to be just objectively BETTER in concrete ways then the unethical one. But it's corporate greed and ingrained practice that keep the more unethical way of doing things around.
It's not just issues of systemic abuse where we see this. The QUERTY keyboard is not the most efficient keyboard, but switching to something else would require society re-learning typing all over again so that's not gonna change.
The convenience isn't in laughter being better, it's society easily switching over to it.
Based and vegan pilled. also I do want a devorak keyboard. would help with my arthritis.
Ngl as a little kid this movie’s opening scene downright terrified me and I couldn’t connect well with the monsters reasons entirely especially after hearing kids scream in terror at work.
So much I never got out of this movie as a kid that I understand much better now as an adult.
Ngl, that ending scene of the movie still has me in tears to this day. It's such a good ending!
i cannot believe the original version with the explosion was a straight up raccoon city moment 😭😭😭 thats so funny actually
Something that doesn’t get talked about enough is the _response_ of the CDA is *literally* “Security Theater”, predicting the real-life, post-9/11 operations of the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security.
6:20 I live in japan, and am japanese, so I'm personally glad they showed respect by changing the scene. I'm usally one not for censorship? But I think since this is a family movie primarily aimed at kids they made the right call to alter the scene. I could definitely tell you firsthand that an giant fireball like that is highly insensitive and may even offend an large family audience, whether US or Japan. Ratings would of obviously dropped from controversy if they did nothing.
I mean during that time yeah but you shouldn’t argue that the fireball is sensitive because it’s a kids movie, but because it was made in 2001. Also, why would it be sensitive for you?? You can’t possibly be talking about Hiroshima & Nagasaki, that was literally 56 years ago, the fireball scene was released in NOVEMBER 2001, 9/11 was in SEPTEMBER 2001.
To clarify it was 56 years ago IN 2001, now it’s been 79 years since it happened
@@insaneyogurt4993 My grandfather died in one of those nuclear explosions, I advise you to watch your tongue and show proper respect.
@@insaneyogurt4993 I believe it’s more because it’s a sensitive topic in japan, like referencing the nazis ever even in our times.
I wonder, not relevant to monsters inc (at first), but how many people first saw the clones in the Star wars prequels and went "This is fucked, your producing child soldiers on mass to fight a war", I wonder how many people on their first watch of a movie had the ability to see something from the start is a lot uglier then it is initially presented as?
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
The phrase is "en masse", and honestly that's why I supported the CIS and their war robots.
Clones were produced by eugenist aliens with the financial support of a religious sect closely tied with the government. Them being "child soldiers" is not even the start
I remember already thinking this when I watched the movie for the first time how messed up and evil this is to bring millions of humans into existence that have no individuality, no freedom, locked up in a water planet city, just to force them to become soldiers. And I wondered how Obi-Wan didn't say anything against this when he saw this.
I always thought that the shift to laughter energy was there to provide a metaphor to help parents talk to their kids who are scared of monsters when going to bed. Like, when a child is scared of the monster in the closet, a parent can say “Remember in the movie that the monsters don’t want to scare kids anymore? They just want to make you laugh? So if a monster *does* show up, just laugh.” (Also, the whole “monsters are scared of kids touching them” is another tactic for parents who can say “If the monsters want to scare you, try to scare them back. If you try to touch them, they’ll get scared and go away.”)
This movie & Toy Story were & still are iconic
Agreed.
What about WALL-E?
That was pretty iconic too!
Watching this video made me notice for the first time that the energy cannisters are bigger when they start using laughter, literally showing that its the better alternative
Dang it, that last shot of sully looking through boo's door always makes me burst into tears 😢
I also see screams vs. laughter as a vague analogue for fossil vs. renewable energy, despite the latter in real life having significant downsides
On the other hand, fossil does have key downsides like peak oil
This metaphore is continued in the animated series Monsters at Work.
A cool sequel idea maybe? Boo is an ostracized teenager because she still talks to her monster and has more monster “trauma” than other kids. Resolving with her deciding she doesn’t care what others think
Boo is either a robot or a super, because no regular human kid can eat URANIUM, and among other toxic stuff in the monster cereal she eats.
Nah. She’s just a toddler
anyone can eat uranium, she'll just regret it in 20 years, also where does it say it has uranium? that's a good fuel source.
0:10 i think meant to say "their undying love to each other."
Now thinking about. In terms of memes. Monsters Inc is the bee movie of Pixar.
Do not
In terms of aviation . . .
Which is weird, because one of them has a better story.
@ monsters Inc is about monsters thinking kids ate toxic but in reality they are not. So… here’s a innocent question…
HOW DID THEY KNEW THE KIDS WERE TOXIC YET THEY ARENT.
@@millo7295their is no
Much like animal t--ting. It's technically is abuse to animals, but few question. I unfortunately have nightmares from the things I've heard about, and not just the psychical stuff they do, but things like blocking various receptors linked to mood, preventing them from experiencing joy, pleasure, etc sometimes for their entire lives. Doing so would be unethical to do to humans.
Plus, look at how children are treated in our society. Emotional abuse is rampant, yet no one dares to question or try to stop it.
We need youth liberation and animal liberation they are the same fight.
I don’t know how it took me until I watched this video to realize how truly fucked up Waternoose’s plan was,just look at how Fungus,a fully grown monster looked after he got his scream energy sucked,now imagine a kid in that situation,they would eventually kill every children in the human world since there’s no way they would’ve been able to survive that.
6:50 I always thought that what happened here was what probably would happen with 'large scale decontamination' like an anti-bacterial emp.
I wonder if the monsters think humans are born insanely toxic, and slowly become less and less poisonous as they get older until around 19 they aren’t poisonous at all.
Now that I come to think of it, the resolution of the conflict in Monsters Inc. resembles the ending of Metropolis: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart."
Learning that laughter not only is mentally better for children and all monsters who aren’t considered scary but it’s also 10x better then screams like it’s kinda sad their whole society was built of fear and who was the scariest to the point they started having biases on what makes a monster scary , shown in monsters university. But I really think it’s sad how no one ever thought maybe they can get different emotions to get different levels of enegry I mean screams were ok but we seen simply that they were having a scream shortage so it couldnT have been that great
funny enough, and depressing, this is the same for veganism, it takes 10x the food minimum to get the same calouries worth of murdered sentient then to have plant based meals.
They kept the explosion in the british release X3
Did they?
thats interesting if true because I am almost certain Ive seen both versions as a child
I'm pretty sure the real reason why we don't see the kids being scared in that scare floor scene is simply because humans were so hard and expensive to animate at the time, so the animators needed to cut corners.
Regardless of why that is, it’s still effective at portraying the apathetic viewpoint of the monsters regarding the children. After all, Jaws is a great example of how you can have production problems but still turn out something great if you’re able to use it sparingly. Less is more, they say. So even for not being able to animate humans, it still works to the story’s advantage..
@dafilmqueen556 Yes. And it just demonstrates all the more how brilliant Pixar's creative team was at the time, that they found such clever shortcuts around the technology's limitations in ways that also best told the story.
This kind of reminds me of a point from a Philosophy Tube video I watched WAYYY back. There are bullshit jobs, or jobs that really don't add to this world. My takeaway from that video is that it's important to find jobs that can and give you purpose. It may go against the status quo, but it is what it is.
I think it was relatively recent that we invented the origami cardboard stuffing that is used inside packaging. Did it take so long because a lot of us got complacent with what we already had? Probably. But human beings want to learn. To make. To, again, add something to this world.
There is a scene from the sequel show where that despite monsters still being on the fence about laughter, they do agree that the whole scream extractor thing was too far say we may be monsters, but we’re not monsters
The names "james" and "mike" (micheal) are both bible/historical names, insinuating that there is a monster Bible, insinuating that there is a monster Jesus
insinuating that there is a monster Rome
@@ssesssusman9417implying there is a monster Greece
cars 2 shows a car pope, implying car catholicism, in turn implying car jesus.
does that also insinuate there was also a monster spanish revolution
I like to think monster Jesus had 6 arms, and that's why in the monster world the Three Bar Cross is the most common and accurate lol
this is such a good video being curious and taking the time to understand someone else'a pov can help you to see how what you do effects other people, him seing himself from her pov really showed him how he was effecting the kids! i love how they made kids laugh at the end to me it reminds me of child abuse and children being left out and how it was for so long, its still going on alot but more people are realizing children remember things and they have feelings too
Hate to say it but this thumbnail made me go for a sec, "Oh god what is happening between Mike and Sulley" 😧
This movie hits different as an adult. At the age of eight I could hold back my tears at the theatre, but as an adult they just flow like a river. 😢 Sully's moment of realisation is heartbreaking and I never want to put my future child through that situation! These movies aren't "just" for kids! ❤
There's a parallel you can make between Scream vs Laugh energy, and most forms of power generation vs Nuclear energy. Everyone in the monster world relies on and knows Scream energy as their main source of power. They're afraid to really venture deeper into other options and seek different perspectives, despite Laughter being far more powerful and reliable, while being less harmful and destructive. Similar to Nuclear power in real life, when compared to almost every other power source, people seem to be afraid of it and not understand it's potential. When it truly is safe and very clean, while being the most powerful and generating the most power out of any other source.
It's not that people don't understand nuclear energy's potential, it's that people fear it's destructive potential when something goes wrong with it and human error, the Chernobyl NPP destruction really didn't help with peoples confidence when it comes to nuclear power. And no it's not truly safe.
@@darmok3420 Chernobyl was operated by people who didn't know how to run a nuclear plant, and was destined to melt down. Modern reactors are nearly impossible to melt down, and even if they do, they are designed to melt down in a way that greatly limits the destructive potential, and is even easy to clean up, allowing the same reactor to continue running after fixing the damage. There will never be another chernobyl accident.
5:48 as someone who grew up with cartoons and that slapstick humor I thought that was really funny but yeah due to what had just happened it was for the best they reanimated it
7:24 there’s a theory that Jack-Jack from the Incredibles can teleport into the Monster dimension, so those witnesses might have actually not been making those up as a result of panic.
I think this movie works incredibly well as both an allegory for the current energy crisis that humans are facing, as well as the animal agriculture industry. The world we live in has very clear solutions to the ethical and environmental problems with both, and yet, people's inability to break out of their long-held worldviews prevents us from building a world that causes less harm to others, while being even more beneficial to humans.
exactly!
I like how the movie also show that when one form of generating energy is shown to be immoral and harmfull they actually stop using it! Instead of admitting it's bad but just continuing anyway. And when they find a cleaner and more efficient way they actually use that! Instead of creating propaganda to imply that this new power is actually worse.
Also Sully seeing Himself Scaring Boo and The Robot kid also became a Homage in Monsters at Work
I feel like there's parallels to how we treat animals in the real world in this. We let animals suffer in factory farms for our own consumption and have no second thoughts about it. But perhaps there's a better way, a way we can consume meat without the needless suffering.
Also think about what happens when a child isn't scared anymore. The monsters instantly cut the child off by shredding the door, mainly because a child that isn't paralysed with fear will try to touch the monster or investigate the closet. It's out of safety concerns and is seen as a loss. If it seemed like an act of kindness that once a child isn't afraid anymore they're left alone, it wasn't - it was pragmatic not to bother farming a resource once it got too old and/or too brave, and the monsters were having issues because too many kids becoming brave early.
i alwqyas interpreted the Monsters Inc screams vs laughs as an arguement of fossil fuels vs renewable and nuclear power. one actively harms the environment in extraction and power generation, and the other one doesnt (when managed correctly and responsibly).
Dang, if only the real world had a power source that was exponentially more efficient, environmentally friendly and renewable in comparison to fossil fuels, if a bit needlessly stigmatized. But life just isn't that conven- Thorium
You know, I realized the monsters and humanity could work together to produce renewable energy by making comedy shows and spooky events (basically what universal studios horror nights does). I don’t understand why they need children for energy when you can get a whole room of people to laugh
So I disagree that the bubble shield replacing the fireball is only just good enough. Remember we saw them bolting a cover down over the sock to keep debris from travelling, so that is what the energy shield in calling back to.
I was born after 2001, but I swear I remember the explosion more than the force field
At 11:39 I feel like the change also really works from a business ethics perspective. Beyond laughter being more potent and efficient there are many more issues that switching to it solves.
How much money was the company spending everytime the CDA had to be called and an entire team of agents with helicopters had to come to lockdown and decon the building? How much money was it costing them to constantly produce doors when kids stopped getting scared? How much money were they having to pay out to employees like George if they need to go on leave or if they decide to sue the company?
Despite what some like Randall and Waternoose might think running a more ethical and sustainable business results in a more profitable business in reduction of incidence and less resource turnover. It just doesn't always look as nice on a weekly finance report.
6:58- 7:01 either way mikes facial expression is priceless
Replace monsters with ppl and kids with animals. Have fun with dual morals of modern humanity.
Then switch places of original pair or new pair - have even more fun revisiting this videos points or original movie.
Man, i love this dilemmas
Excellent video analysis! This movie was great as a kid/teen, and it feels even more mature when you look back as an adult.
I also like your Frasier DVD.
dude i hate it when video essays literally just summarise the movie i thought this was gonna be a full breakdown of the allegory of how corporations exploit and abuse workers for profit
No clue how you don’t have more subs. Great vid
Your support is appreciated.
This was the first movie I ever saw in theaters.
Good video! I thought this video had atleast 20k views. I hope people find this channel!
It still could reach 20K. It probably won't but you never know.
Excellent analysis! You exposed another layer of meaning that I had completely missed until now. I look forward to watching more of your videos; they’re really well put-together.
more accurately, this exposed the entertainment industry, harvesting screams? kidnapping children?... this is no coincidence, this film was a warning.
*DING DING DING* and that's just The Tip of the Iceberg!
(Capitalized for a reason!! But heed the warning...you need a very strong stomach to get through all three parts!)
oh my god 😭😂
I Thought it was about the Horrors of Capitalism.
@@SPAnComCat I'll be the first to admit that Capitalism isn't perfect but it's better than Communism, Socialism & Fascism, Capitalism works at the very least despite not being the best.
@@AbrasiousProductions The Reason you're Thinking like this is Pretty Understandable, I used to be a Very Jaded Cynic where I Think it is more Easier to Imagine the End of the World than the End of Capitalism [Capitalist Realism], but when I Looked for Better Alternatives I Realise that the Reason why "Socialism/ Communism Failed" is because of State Counter-Revolution by Opportunists who want Power and Control over People, this is the State should be Abolished in Favour of an Anarchist/Libertarian Socialist/Social Anarchist [Anarcho-Communist/Bookchinite] Alternative, and Honestly Fascism and Capitalism have been Historically Linked due to Capitalist Crisis after the Fallout of WWI and The Great Depression and so on and so Forth, and the USA is Plunging into Fascism because of the Crisis Inflicted by the Ineptitude and Incompetence of Bourgeois States during the Pandemic Crisis that set the Seeds of NeoLiberal Capitalist Decay into 21st Century Fascism, or at Least in my Political Opinion.
[This is just my Political Opinion, don't Delete it or Silence my Opinion, I'm just Informing People, Remember; Ignorance is the Capitalist State's Greatest Weapon.]
[ [Important 40 Minute EDIT]: [I do not Intend to Violate TH-cam Guidelines] ]