***editor’s note: the following contains spoilers for Inside Out 2***
Change is an inevitability that exists in everyone’s lives. As children, we are often lucky to be in one place for many years, having made many friends who you always play with, as well as go to the same school with and watch movies with, and those places become perfect utopias to us. At some point, however, everyone has to leave that utopia in search of a new one, maybe for a new job or to study in college or for familial reasons. There are many variables constantly in play when it comes to growing up, and how to deal with those situations in an emotional manner. Inevitably, this also leads to a more complex look at life, and grappling with new feelings that affect us towards others. In 2015, I was going through a similar sense of change when the first “Inside Out” hit theaters.
It was just before I was about to leave home for college, moving from one country to another. After spending my childhood in New Delhi in India, I was moving to the United States to live in New York and start a new life. Until that moment in time, I had lived my entire life with my family and known homes only with their presence constantly. In situations where I went on camps or trips through my school or sleepovers with friends, I wasn’t far from them and they were easy to reach. In this case, there was going to be a 7,000 mile difference and the only thing to reach them were phone calls time zones apart. While it is a blessing to have that technology in the 21st century, there is a massive difference between calling someone and actually being with them.
It will come as no surprise then, that much of Inside Out was incredibly moving. It is the first instance in my life I remember watching a movie in theaters and crying by the end, a sight that even surprised my parents. While many movies had dealt with emotions and our responses to things, Inside Out’s personification of those emotions hit like a dagger. It made the idea of the big move feel more palatable, and realize there was a way to come to terms with it and not lose myself in the process. It also made me feel much closer to my family and my own thoughts after. As such, it remains a rather special movie and among the finest Pixar outings to date. With the announcement of a sequel years later, the thought of taking that story forward filled me with both excitement and anxiety, as I couldn’t wait to explore more of Riley’s mind and revisit the emotions in there, but also hoping it would recapture some of that magic of the first movie.
Inside Out 2 comes close to the original movie in that respect, making for a more mature sequel with dazzling animation once again and dealing with some heavy themes. Where it most succeeds is in its exploration of an older Riley, particularly when it comes to dealing with anxiety and the barrage of new emotions in her mind as she hits puberty. While this is a theme Pixar has recently tackled with in 2022’s Turning Red, Inside Out 2 presents it in its own way, through a three-day hockey camp as the backdrop for many changes in Riley’s life. Personified magnificently with a terrific voice performance from Maya Hawke, once Anxiety appears among Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira), she takes over the console almost instantly, immediately commanding Riley’s decisions and actions, including alienating her best friends Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu) in favor of getting closer with the captain of the Firehawks, Valentina “Val” Ortiz (Lilimar) and becoming part of their team, becoming more aggressive in her plays and angrier over her performance, while constantly telling herself she isn’t good enough and wanting to be better.
Anxiety, as the emotion works in real life as well, overthinks every single scenario, presenting a range of possible outcomes that could happen if Riley doesn’t make specific decisions like getting kicked off the team and losing all her friends and working overtime to make sure only the best possibilities come into effect. This results in Riley working overtime as well, unable to sleep properly and constantly trying to one-up everyone around her, even waking up long before practice begins to get rounds in and keep taking laps every time she misses a goal. This also begins to tamper with Riley’s “Sense of Self”, which has been cultivated a certain way over the years and built around Riley being a good person, but when that is uprooted by Anxiety and she begins to create a new one with overloaded anxious thoughts, this changes to not being good enough and having less joy in her life.
Anxiety isn’t the only new emotion in Riley’s mind, with Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) rounding out the new framework of her personality, each contributing to the command Anxiety has over Riley with responses to situations that complement her pressured train of thought. For instance, when asked about her favorite band, she responds with “Get Up and Glow”, a band that is a favorite of hers as a child but one the Firehawks have since outgrown. To get in with the other members, Ennui comes in with a sarcastic response that mocks her love for the band, a reaction that surprises Bree and Grace who know for a fact that Riley loves the band and even went to their concert recently. Envy plays on Riley’s growing jealousy and want to be better, with wanting to reach a notebook Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) has that contains thoughts on each player and whether or not they will make the team, as well as dyeing her hair red like Val and the other Firehawks to fit in more and be like them.
If these experiences sound similar in any way, it may be because everyone has lived out a variation of this at some point while growing up. As we become more mature, the new emotions the mind has to wrestle with can often be overwhelming. It doesn’t help when the world becomes that much more overwhelming as well. We often find ourselves becoming so comfortable with one life over a long span of time that the idea of change is often sudden and the want to adapt to something new is immediately at a level beyond what we usually lead with. This is instantly noticeable when Anger, Sadness and Disgust try to help give answers to Riley’s mom (Diane Lane) regarding not being ready for camp, and each response is an overexaggerated version of a usual response, reactions that her mom’s emotions see coming from a mile away as Riley has now turned 13. As someone who has changed a few schools in life, Riley wanting to instantly fit in with the cool kids and Anxiety leading the charge to try and make that happen is a relatable feeling, but one that comes with its fair share of demerits, particularly when Anxiety begins to panic over how much her actions are affecting Riley’s Sense of Self.
This leads to a finale where Anxiety works so hard that it leads to Riley becoming so aggressive in her hockey play that she rams into Grace and knocks her off her feet, leading to a two-minute penalty which leads to an anxiety attack, with Anxiety causing a storm in Headquarters and none of the emotions being able to get through to her, marking the second time in the span of two weeks where a major blockbuster has a character deal with an anxiety attack in a rather realistic manner, the former being Bad Boys: Ride or Die with Mike Lowery (Will Smith) dealing with anxiety episodes throughout the movie. As we mature, anxiety can often overrun us, and much like Riley, every decision feels like a life-changing one, so any mistakes can’t be tolerated, or another possibility plays out that won’t be good for us. It is this feeling that leads to the movie’s most poignant line from Joy: “maybe that’s what being an adult is. Growing up means you feel less joy.”
As the movie showcases, growing up also means having a more complex Sense of Self, and not relegating it to just a handful of emotions and thoughts, but embracing both the perfections and imperfections of life and learning from each experience to be a better individual, and taking stock of every choice we make. One emotion does not get to decide who Riley is, as the Sense of Self tree later reveals. It is always changing, always emitting something new. Having anxious thoughts isn’t inherently a bad thing, but like any emotion, it’s best in moderation. A balanced mind is a healthier mind, and a more well-rounded one. As the movie comes to an end, it also hones in on the idea of how thinking too much about things that haven’t happened yet is pointless, as they are out of our control. What is important that no matter what happens, you love yourself for who you are.
(Watch my review of Inside Out 2 here)
*still courtesy of Disney/Pixar*
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