Revisiting Monsters, Inc: Disney Pixar animated film was an allegory for a capitalist society, but with a beating heart

Pete Docter’s Monsters, Inc completes 20 years of release this week. The film still remains a bonafide tearjerker but with a wicked sense of humour

A villain becomes an unlikely father figure when he accidentally crosses paths with impossibly adorable children. While the premise might sound dangerously close to that of Despicable Me this also happens to be the core of Monsters, Inc, the Disney Pixar animated film which released in 2001.

Monsters, Inc is tailor-made for a PG-13 audience. The movie is populated with vibrantly coloured monsters that are purportedly scary, but elicit nothing but petting desires from you. So of course, the vegetable seller Tony, with a bright orange body and green stripes on his tentacles, mirrors the glossy pumpkins stacked inside green crates; and the scariest monster in Monstropolis invariably looks like a giant soft toy bear, with soft teal fur and purple polka dotted limbs. Even the main antagonist is visually delightful — he is a purple, eight-legged chameleon monster.

Much like children’s literature, Monsters, Inc employs metaphors and allusion to simplify larger, complex ideas. The film is possibly one of the most cheery analogies for the energy crisis that is our current reality. It is set in a parallel fictional world, where Monsters are employed to collect screams from children, which in turn, act as the fuel to run their cities and livelihoods. Most of the film takes place inside an energy plant named Monsters Incorporated, a gigantic structure right in the heart of Monstropolis. Their role in the lives of Monstropolis residents is explained through the advertisements blaring on every screen

“We’re part of your life. We power your car. We warm your home. We light your city. Everytime you turn something on, Monster’s Incorporated is there.”

Monsters Incorporation is a cosmos in itself. It has a separate training wing where monsters who want to upgrade as “scarers” are required to prove their worth in a simulated environment complete with animatronic puppets. After all, being a scarer is not just a professional achievement, it is also a social upgrade. Thus a culture of competition is bred in the scare floor, adorned by a gigantic led screen displaying the scores of the scarers.

Not just visually, even characteristically, the monsters in the film subvert the popular narrative. Barring Randall, none of the characters are vicious. Mr Waternoose, the corporate giant struggling to keep his company afloat in midst of an energy shortage, is driven by utter desperation. Even when he colludes with Randall in his plan to revolutionise the energy industry, which entails kidnapping children and forcibly extracting screams using vacuum pipes, he is motivated by the fear of losing the company, established by his predecessors. The other monsters consider scaring to be a job that sustains them, not necessarily one they derive pleasure out of.

Although, what makes Monsters, Inc a genuinely wholesome fare is its characters. None of them are fleshed out beyond their narrative requirement. Hell, one of the central characters of the film, Boo, talks only in garbles. Not much is known about Sully or his best friend and partner Mike Wazowski, either, beyond that they are a dream team, who often disagree on matters related to Boo, the two-year-old toddler, who accidentally lands up in the monster realm. But their repartee never graduates into serious arguments. Rather, Mike Wazowski’s quick quips lend the film its lightheartedness. Mike can be disappointed in his friend for being banished to the Himalayan mountains, but he never gives up on Sulley or his naive quest to get Boo home.

Monsters Inc only the fourth film from the Pixar stable, was also a technical masterpiece. Most notably, the scene involving the door warehouse. The doors are the closet doors during the day on the Earth, but become portals to Monstropolis at night. The iconic door vault scene, where Sulley and team chase down Boo’s door while dangerously leaping from one door to another, is a fine piece of technical achievement. Not only does the high-octane scene keep the audiences hooked to the scene, the masterful animation offers sneak peeks into many, many worlds. Each space is crafted with impeccable detail and precision, be it Sully and Mike’s comfortable apartment or the smoke-billowing Monsters Incorporation plant. While the warm colours of the house mirror Sully and Mike’s likeable personalities, the fireplace and the speakers have fangs, their door has eyes and the TV sports horns, foregrounding that this is not a generic living space occupied by humans. Further, all these items are later used to make Boo’s disguise while sneaking her to the office.

There is nothing that isn’t subversive in Monsters, Inc. Even the Abominable Snowman Sully and Mike come across when exiled to the Himalayas laments being called “abominable.”

"Abominable! Can you believe that? Do I look abominable to you? Why can't they call me the Adorable Snowman or... or the Agreeable Snowman, for cryin' out loud? I'm a nice guy." He even flavours his snow cone with lemons, because regular ones are too passe for the snow-dweller. It is also wickedly funny, a characteristic retained in both its prequel titled Monsters University (2013) and a television series/sequel titled Monsters at Work (2021).

Monsters, Inc was the right combination of smarts and a beating heart, that ensured that the audiences remain invested into the characters that really aren’t too complex or layered. It was the third highest-grossing film of 2001, and was easily one of the most entertaining animated films from Pixar — one that could give you a lump-in-your-throat and a sustained smile-on-your-face.

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