Inside Out (2015 film)

Inside Out (2015 film)
Inside Out is a 2015 American animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It was directed by Pete Docter from a screenplay co-written with Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley. The film stars the voices of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan. Inside Out follows the inner workings of the mind of a young girl named Riley, who adapts to her family's relocation, as five personified emotions administer her thoughts and actions.
Docter conceived Inside Out in October 2009 after observing changes in his daughter's personality as she grew older. It was subsequently greenlit and its story developed by Docter and Ronnie del Carmen, who consulted psychologists and neuroscientists in an effort to portray the mind with greater accuracy. Development lasted for five and a half years on an approximately $175million budget. The significant changes to the film's story and characters resulted in a delayed production schedule.
Inside Out debuted at the 68th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2015, and was released in the United States on June 19. It received acclaim for its craftsmanship, screenplay, subject matter, plot, and vocal performances (particularly those of Poehler, Smith, Kind, and Black). The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named Inside Out as one of the top ten films of 2015. It grossed $858.8million worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2015. The film was nominated for two awards at the 88th Academy Awards, winning Best Animated Feature, and received numerous other accolades. Philosophical journal Film and Philosophy has generally identified Inside Out as one of the best animated films ever made. A sequel, Inside Out 2, is scheduled for release on June 14, 2024.
Plot
Within the mind of a young girl named Riley are the basic emotions that control her actions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Her experiences become memories, stored as colored orbs, which are sent into long-term memory each night. The aspects of five most important "core memories" within her personality incorporate the form of five floating islands. Joy acts as the leader, and she tries to limit Sadness's influence; Joy sees purpose in Fear, Disgust, and Anger, but thinks Sadness makes everything worse.
At the age of 11, Riley moves from Minnesota to San Francisco for her father's new job. At first, she has poor experiences: the new house is cramped and old; her father hardly has any time for her due to him needing to set up his new job; a local pizza parlor only serves pizza topped with broccoli, which she dislikes; and the moving van with their belongings was misdirected to Texas and will not arrive for weeks. On Riley's first day at her new school, Sadness retroactively turns joyous memories sad, which causes Riley to cry in front of her class and creates a sad core memory. Joy tries to dispose of it by using a vacuum tube, but accidentally knocks the other core memories loose during a struggle with Sadness, disabling the personality islands. Joy, Sadness, and the core memories are sucked out of Headquarters.
In both Joy and Sadness's absences, Anger, Fear, and Disgust are forced to take control of Riley and try to make happy core memories, but the results are disastrous, distancing Riley from her parents, friends, and hobbies. Without the core memories, her personality islands gradually crumble, and fall into the "Memory Dump", where things fade to non-existence as they are forgotten. Finally, Anger resolves to run away to Minnesota, intending to restore Riley's happiness.
While navigating the vast long-term memory area, Joy and Sadness encounter Bing Bong, Riley's imaginary friend, who suggests riding the "train of thought" back to Headquarters. After several adventures and mishaps, the trio eventually catch the train; however, it halts when Riley falls asleep, then derails entirely with the collapse of another island. Afraid that all the core memories will become sad, Joy abandons Sadness and tries to ride a "recall tube" back to Headquarters. The ground below the tube collapses, breaking it and sending Joy and Bing Bong plunging into the Memory Dump.
After discovering a sad memory that turned happy when Riley's parents and friends comforted her, Joy understands Sadness's purpose of alerting others when Riley is emotionally overwhelmed and needs help. Joy and Bing Bong try to use Bing Bong's chant-fueled wagon rocket to escape the Memory Dump. They fail to fully ascend, due to their combined weight, until Bing Bong jumps out at the last moment and fades away.
Joy reunites with Sadness and they return to Headquarters, discovering that Anger's idea has disabled the console, putting Riley in depression as she boards a bus to Minnesota. To the surprise of the others, Joy hands control of the console to Sadness, who is able to reactivate it and prompt Riley to return to her parents. As Sadness re-installs the core memories, transforming them from happy to sad, Riley tearfully confesses to her parents that she misses her old life. Her parents comfort her and admit they also miss Minnesota. Joy and Sadness work the console together, creating a new core memory consisting of happiness and sadness; a new island forms, representing Riley's acceptance of her new life in San Francisco.
A year later, Riley, now at the age of 12, has adapted to her new home, made new friends, and returned to her old hobbies while acquiring a few new ones. Inside Headquarters, her emotions admire Riley's new personality islands, and are given a newly expanded console with room for them all to work together.
Voice cast
Production
Development
Development of Inside Out was greenlit in October 2009, after director Pete Docter noticed his daughter Elie becoming "more quiet and reserved" and began to wonder what was happening internally. Docter invited Ronnie del Carmen, who had previously worked as story supervisor on Finding Nemo (2003) and Up (2009), to come on as co-director, a role del Carmen accepted. They sought inspiration for the film from their own personal histories and experiences, and conferred with various psychologists and specialists (such as psychologist Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley), for greater accuracy. While designing Riley's mental landscape, they consulted neuroscientists and took cues from DNA strands and photographs of neuronal flashes. According to Keltner and Ekman, the film emphasized how emotions organize our thoughts and social lives and, especially the role of sadness in fostering connections.
A total of twenty-seven different emotions were considered for early versions of the film (such as irritation, envy, greed, gloom, despair, depression, love, schadenfreude, ennui, shame, embarrassment, and hope), but the number was later reduced for the sake of simplicity. Ekman supplied a list of seven emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, surprise, and happiness; Docter decided to remove surprise due to its similarity to fear, and also removed contempt. Happiness was renamed to Optimism and later Joy. Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter offered little input on the film due to his focus on restructuring Walt Disney Animation Studios; it was also the first Pixar film produced without involvement from co-founder and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died in 2011. The film spent five and a half years in development, with an approximately $175million budget. Ralph Eggleston, Pixar's production designer since 1992, stated that it was the hardest and longest film he had ever worked on. As a result, first-time directors were considered ineligible to work on the film.
Writing
In 2010, Docter and the filmmaking team met to discuss aspects about Inside Out, including its setting, rules, and reels. Docter then recruited a small story team to develop the film's plotline and design its characters within 12 months; their main challenge was to handle its multilayered technique. Del Carmen described his upbringing as a significant influence, which he preferred hockey's popularity in Minnesota. Though the film's script was deemed ambitious and ingenious, screenwriter Michael Arndt spent a year on it before leaving the project in early 2011; he was attributed with additional story material. Along with Docter, Josh Cooley and Meg LeFauve were credited as screenwriters for its rewrites.
To promote diverse input, half of the story team were women, at a time when the animation industry consisted largely of men. Although Inside Out focus was about a girl, research found that females age 11 to 17 were more attuned to expressions and emotions than younger girls. Docter decided that Riley was not a main character, but her role as a setting. He considered the lead emotion as female, since Riley had the same gender. Other emotions were assigned between male and female. Docter also discarded an initial idea about Riley falling into a deep depression. Creation of storyboards for Inside Out took two to three years, and included seven to eight screenings for Pixar's "brain trust" (a small group of creative leaders who oversee its development on all films).
The filmmakers were responsible for expressing the characters' personal traits, talents, and contrasts. Inside Out design team researched more of her personality's distinct directions, after Docter was concerned over Joy's displeasure. Designer Albert Lozano wanted Joy with tomboyish and "mischievous" characteristics. Amy Poehler helped the team to write Joy, illustrating a broad range of happiness after facing difficulties. With LeFauve's help, the team envisioned Joy as vulnerable and intangible because she was "unapologetically positive". From the outset, the idea persisted about Joy's potential to excessively manipulate youth, setting off Riley's "social storms".
In one instance, Riley was to have wanted the lead role as a turkey in a Thanksgiving Day pageant. Ultimately, Docter found that plot idea to be too unfamiliar, and sought something to replace it. Several drafts emerged, including: the characters cultivating ideas after falling to "Idea Fields"; and Bing Bong recruiting at a large, exiled entourage from Riley's childhood. Richard Kind later defined his character as "the fading of childhood" when Inside Out development had progressed. In October 2011, Diane Disney Miller convinced Docter to reduce Inside Out distractions and reprioritize the story. Docter determined that the concept of personality islands could integrate the mind world's geography and story.
In 2012, the film was put into production after several screenings and suggestions, and evaluated after three months. Editor Kevin Nolting said that seven versions of the film were created before the production began. The difficult part was to balance the film's tone, for example, how viewers could respond to Joy's cheerful nature while feeling negative about the mess that Joy manipulated in Riley. Producer Jonas Rivera credited Poehler for fleshing out these aspects of Joy's nature. Eggleston recommended that the film be set to take place in the mind rather than in the brain, as such a few scenes about the brain were dropped.
Pixar filmmakers held an evaluation screening of the film in July 2012. An early version of Inside Out focused on Joy and Fear getting lost together. Docter deemed this problematic and determined the idea about Joy had learned from Fear to develop her characterization, before deciding to integrate emotions and relationships within the film. Instead, Sadness replaced Fear to have a "much juicier" role. Docter's altercation between Joy and Sadness lacked the film's emotional ending. To address the issue, he changed a scene where Riley is separating from her friend in its subsequent portions. Islands of Friendship and Personality became Joy and Sadness's outings in the film to maintain its continuity.
Over the course of storyboarding, 27 sequences and 178,128 outlines were developed, with 127,781 remaining upon completion. According to Cooley, 10 plot rewrites of Inside Out and 10 unabridged scenes of Riley's mind were made. Initial storyboarding differentiated the importance of Riley's character arc than emotions, but Rivera considered the film's balance was "about 75 percent inside, 25 percent out". In early 2013, the filmmakers made seven to eight distinct openings for the film. Inside Out first completed scenes were shown at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June 2014. The brain trust eventually locked the picture and its story. Production of the film concluded in May 2015, after three years.
Casting
Inside Out principal characters were cast in August 2013. Voice recording began that year and ended in 2014. Casting focused on actors that have personas identical to the emotions they voiced. As Inside Out contained several veterans of Saturday Night Live (SNL), the film's team spent a week at that program for research on a live television sequence.
Phyllis Smith was hired as the first of the emotions' cast, followed by Poehler as the last. They had three voice recording sessions each. Smith was initially concerned about her attempt to voice a role in an animated film. Once Smith got a call for traveling to Pixar's headquarters in Emeryville, California, Rivera chose her after watching a lunch scene in Bad Teacher (2011). He contacted Docter and remarked, "I think we found our Sadness." The conclusion of Smith's first recording session saw her natural voice.
Docter's perfect choice for Bing Bong was Kind. Because of this, he attempted to convey the same "sort of innocence" of his previous Pixar roles. Describing what attracted him to the role, Docter told Kind about his character to act instrumentally for Joy's characterization. Kind modeled Bing Bong's personality and appearance after Oliver Hardy, Jimmy Durante, and John Candy, especially his performance in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987).
Bill Hader and the filmmakers visited the set of SNL in New York City, where his immediate casting as Fear was assumed until his stay ended. He contacted Poehler that his role was secret, before reaffirming his involvement in Inside Out. In preparation, Hader practiced "almost every emotion" and his screaming voice across all recording sessions. Fear was modeled on both actor Don Knotts and the Mr. Bean (1990–1995) character Mr. Bean, since they have wide eyes. Docter described Fear as "the kind of guy who could bring sophistication and then flip on a dime".
Mindy Kaling went through six recording sessions to voice Disgust within four hours, before being cast for her role. She said that it sounded "really beautiful" when the story was pitched to herself. Docter exemplified Lewis Black for Anger, and he was cast after the filmmakers kept him in mind as expected, having realized Black's voice. To voice Riley, the filmmakers cast Kaitlyn Dias, having described her performance as "touching" and adapted its "heartbreaking honesty". According to Rivera, Dias's casting was "perfect" following her involvement to initially voice in a minor capacity.
Design
Eggleston was tasked with outlining both mind and real worlds through design briefs. The mind world incorporated "soft surfaces", increased volume of "saturated colors" and "contrast light", and translucency; while the real one opposed these aspects. Their design faithfully reflected Pixar films Up and Toy Story 3 (2010), the romantic drama One from the Heart (1982), David Hockney's theatrical productions, and the intended 1950s Broadway musicals. Supervising animator Victor Navone tightened the design's aspects, which was emphasized by freeform surface modelling. Around 300 different designs of Headquarters were developed. In envisaging how the mind's interior could be depicted, the filmmakers concentrated on the word "electrochemical" and was considered for various options using electricity.
Character designs underwent several revisions before they were finalized. Simple shapes were initially designed for them included Anger as a brick, Joy as a star, Sadness as a tear, and Fear as a nerve. Sadness's appearance was eventually changed to that of Debbie Downer. Lozano planned an concept which Sadness wore pajamas to highlight her depression. Both Disgust and Anger's approaches were respectively based on April Ludgate and Hades from Hercules (1997). To avoid similarities to Tinker Bell, a green dress was added to Joy, and her hair color changed to blue. After Pixar presented potential designs of Riley to the audience, Lozano recognized the character looked like Elie.
Animation
Animation of Inside Out took a year and a half. About 48 animators (including supervisors Shawn Krause and Navone, and director Jamie Roe), and 350 artists (35 of them lighting–led by cinematographer Kim White–and 10 layout) and technicians were involved in the production of the film. Two animation teams were assembled: one for the abstract sequence and another involving crowd simulation for the character groupings. They utilized novel technology to locate every part of the human body.
Docter imagined that with emotions for characters, they could "push the level of caricature" to both design and "style of movement" to degrees. To this end, they emulated the styles of animators Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. Docter informed Krause and Navone to push the graphic caricature of each character rather than sticking to the rigid behavior of each RenderMan model. This required an artist to draw over characters in Inside Out during dailies, using a Wacom Cintiq. The team spent over three years on enhancing the dinnertime scene, the first one to do so. Sketches resembled the emotions were superior by the filmmakers, despite the rules broke within such boundaries. After the characters were brought to finalized forms, they were proposed for 3D models using desktop computers. The filmmakers studied dailies and understand animation until Docter gave the film's finalized shots for their approval on lighting and rendering.
Inside Out made increased use of an advanced sketching tool, which animators performed rapid sculpting on silhouettes, in altering the characters' appearances within them and evaluating a "fine-tuning" cloth stimulation. Through the simulation department, the motion of the characters' hair and their garments were added. Eggleston's production design arrived, moving forward for added placements that included their original inspiration for lighting Joy. Pixar co-founder Edwin Catmull felt the characters' attributes have a lesser extent of humanoid forms, brighter colors, and strange shapes due to their possession of force fields. All aspects of Inside Out were eventually merged to a single image, having an animation spread across 1,600 shots. Each scene took three weeks to create three seconds of frame rate, and 33 hours to render.
The transition of Joy as an "animatable character" from a "complete abstract" were handled by both animation teams. Eggleston's diagram was made of pastels shaped Joy, having her increased illumination and making her Pixar's crucial character. Instead of being solid, Joy's effervescence was derived from pinwheels, Champagne, and sparklers. Lozano thought that Joy looked like Audrey Hepburn. For Joy to become brightened, the RenderMan team turned real light from a geometry, and Docter suggested to design her with "sprite-like and golden" modifications. These effects function dependably due to Joy's typical type. Over 750 shots were made using artistic performance and lighting cinematography. The filmmakers worked for eight months on Joy's aura, but encountered difficulties related to time and budget. Lasseter requested that it be applied for each emotion instead. Eggleston described this technique, "You could hear the core technical staff just hitting the ground, the budget falling through the roof." Docter and his six-designer team spent approximately 18 months finalizing Joy's look. Overall, the process on making Joy ran for three years.
Cinematography
Director of photography Patrick Lin focused on emphasizing Inside Out cinematography. It created a visual language from unique camera styles to film the mind and real worlds, allowing the connection between the film's story and Riley's characterization. Lin elaborated that these worlds can polarize themselves. The mind world's layout and cinematography was influenced by Casablanca (1942). Pixar researched films within the Hollywood's golden age for set constructions. They performed master moving shots in combining them into a single scene, the longest of which were 48 seconds or 1,200 frames.
The real world had problems created through lens distortion and out-of-focus shots. Even so, directorial changes countered the camera's complex usage. Two types of camera lenses (Arri/ZeissUltra Prime and Cooke S4), with distinct camera movements and predetermined paths, were used for both worlds. An inherent mechanical procedure using a dolly, track, crane, and boom was used in the mind one; and biological cameras like zoom, Steadicam, and hand-held in the real one. Lin's crew supervised Riley's arc as these cameras were applied in the film across three acts: first was Steadicam, followed by two were hand-held.
Usage of worldbuilding "scale progressions" ensured characterizations and Riley and Joy's arcs. Staging was used for Inside Out story, while framing for its theme. One of the film's parts was described as earliest and reserved, and had closeups for adults through maturity, especially for Joy and Riley. The cameras were created by their crew have attached sensors and were "rough" and "physical"; these were improved in Inside Out after using them in Pixar's short film The Blue Umbrella (2013). For projecting Inside Out environment, they used humans to surround it for the development and assembly of the film's scenes. Layout supported Inside Out virtual scenes, making them blocked and animated.
Music and sound design
Michael Giacchino served as composer for Inside Out. He began planning in January 2015, before concluding that May. While in the music session, Docter felt its score "bittersweet" and "nostalgic" after he "grew up playing the violin and bass". Giacchino wanted to create something more emotionally monumental for Inside Outs score, when compared to his score from Up. The producers first met with Giacchino to discuss the film's concept and screen it for him. In response, he composed an eight-minute suite of music, unconnected to the film, based on his emotions viewing it. Rivera remarked that as both Giacchino and Docter were musicians, and they discussed the film in terms of story and character. Docter took a four-year discussion where his piano sessions considered forgetfulness, and a chewing gum advertising jingle was disturbing. In accordance with its creative preference, a progressive soundscape was made by sound designer Ren Klyce, who was joined by Rivera. Audio mixing was done to harmonize "dense" sounds for the film's beginning scene. The introduction of Joy used a single sound.
Release
Marketing
Marketing Inside Out was considered difficult, despite executives at Disney and Pixar's enthusiasm for the film. Writing for The Washington Post, Kristen Page-Kirby described this as "absolutely screwed". Disney's marketing strategy entailed an active social media campaign, a worldwide publicity tour, and the creation of five colorful character posters. Kind wound up not taking part in Inside Out marketing as the producers decided to keep Bing Bong a secret. As a result, the character was excluded from the film's promotion to focus on its emotions. Docter considered Kind's decision as "smart", recognizing that Bing Bong was a "surprise to the audience". In the run-up to its release, the film was test screened for children, since executives were worried about its appeal to younger viewers. Disney Infinity 3.0 added a platformer-type Inside Out playset featuring all five emotions as playable characters. A mobile Puzzle Bobble-style game, Inside Out: Thought Bubbles, was released.
Box office
The 95-minute Inside Out debuted out of competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2015, followed by a premiere on June 8 at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Its event at Cannes saw the film received an eight-minute standing ovation. Inside Out was also released in Dolby Vision, making it one of the earliest films to adopt the format. In theaters, it was accompanied by a short film, Lava (2014).
Inside Out was initially scheduled for release on May 30, 2014, but was later pushed back to June 19, 2015. During its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, Inside Out grossed $90.4 million across 3,946 theaters (3,100 of which were in 3D), debuting at number two behind Jurassic World ($106.6million). This included $3.7million grossed from Thursday night previews. The weekend total figure gave Inside Out the first Pixar film not to debut at number one, the biggest number-two debut of all time, the largest opening weekend for any original film, and represented Pixar's second-biggest opening after Toy Story 3. Inside Out successful opening was attributed to its Cannes premiere, CinemaCon, and Fathom Events screenings; favorable critical reception and word-of-mouth; and its release over Father's Day weekend. It primarily drew a female audience, and approximately 71 percent of the viewers were families. The film grossed $52.1million in its second weekend (a reduction of 42percent) and $29.3million in its third. By the end of its run on December 10, 2015, Inside Out had grossed a total of $356.9million in the U.S. and Canada as the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year. In July 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic closing most theaters worldwide and limiting what films played, Inside Out returned to 442 theaters (mostly drive-ins) and grossed $340,000.
Outside the U.S. and Canada, Inside Out grossed $40.3million during its opening weekend in 37 markets. Its top-grossing markets were China at $11.7million, the United Kingdom at $11.5million, Mexico at $8.6million, Russia at $7.6million, Italy at $7.4million, Germany at $7.1million, and South Korea at $5.2million. Inside Out was the first Pixar film to gross over one billion rubles in Russia. The film grossed a further $501.9million, with its highest grosses coming from the United Kingdom ($59.4million), Japan ($33million), Germany ($31.6million), Mexico ($31.1million), South Korea ($30.9million), France ($30.1million), Italy ($27.1million), Venezuela ($25.4million), and Australia ($24.2million). This made it the seventh-highest-grossing film outside the U.S. and Canada, and the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2015 with a total gross of $858.8million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $279.51million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it sixth on their list of 2015's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".
Reception
Critical response
Inside Out received critical acclaim. It has an approval rating of based on professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of . The consensus reads; "Inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving, Inside Out is another outstanding addition to the Pixar library of modern animated classics." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Inside Out a score of 94 out of 100 based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+-to-F scale. Inside Out was listed on many critics' top ten lists in 2015, ranking fourth. Before its release, fans and critics were concerned by a perceived overdependence on sequels on the part of Pixar, which was only exacerbated by the announcement of Toy Story 4 (2019), and their films declining in quality. The New York Times attributed this to DreamWorks Animation's financial struggles.
Critics praised Inside Out craftsmanship and Docter's direction, describing it as a return to form for Pixar. Peter Debruge (Variety), Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times), and Todd McCarthy (The Hollywood Reporter) praised the film. Debruge and Turan described it as Pixar's best, calling it "sophisticated" and "audacious". Turan and Richard Brody (The New Yorker) cited the film's engaging visuals, its message about the value of emotions, and the depiction of Riley's imagination; Debruge and Anthony Lane (The New Yorker) praised its originality. Vulture David Edelstein suggested them that the film made a "new pop-culture touchstone". Despite these overall reviews, The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw and Slant Magazine writer Christopher Gray assessed the film as slightly inferior to Pixar's best.
The scriptwriting, plot, and subject matter were sources of praise. Forbes Scott Mendelson thought that its script supported its themes, whereas Leigh Singer of IGN conveyed the film's tropes: child devotion, teamwork, and confused chases. Singer expressed the "tried-and-tested" journey had an unprecedented "licence to go". In contrast, Rene Rodriguez, writing for the Miami Herald, felt the story skipped from the beginning to the end and characters inside Riley's head having thin goals. Ann Hornaday (The Washington Post) and A. O. Scott (The New York Times) appreciated its entertaining subject matter. The Hindu Udhav Naig saw the film as promoting mental health, but panned the film's misinterpretation of brain functions.
Reviews for the actors' performances were very positive in the media, with their work described as "wonderful" and "excellent". Edelstein commended Poehler's acting, indicating that she had "supernatural exuberance but the semi-tonal quavers of doubt that keep that [...] from being cloying or cartoonish." Magnett called Anger the "most perfect" one, with a "sense of humor and genuine care".
Accolades
At the 88th Academy Awards, Inside Out received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay and won Best Animated Feature. The film's other nominations include fourteen Annie Awards (winning ten), two British Academy Film Awards (winning one), three Critics' Choice Movie Awards (winning one), and a Golden Globe Award (which it won). It was named one of the ten best films of 2015 by the National Board of Review (where it also won Best Animated Film) and the American Film Institute.
Post-release
Home media
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Inside Out for digital download on October 13, 2015, and on Blu-ray and DVD on November 3. Physical copies contain an audio commentary, behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, and short films Riley's First Date? and Lava. This was the best-selling home release of November and the number-five rental during its release week. Blu-ray accounted for 57 percent of its sales. By the end of 2015, the physical release had grossed about $97.8million. A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray version was released in 2019.
Thematic analysis
A central theme of Inside Out is the consequences and portrayal of emotions and memories. Those depicted in the film are "honest" and "generous"; their goal is maintaining Riley's life. Natasha Moore of the Australian ABC News detailed the film's theme: "[If] Riley's carefree life gets more complicated, [...] Joy's attempts to deliver uninterrupted happiness become increasingly neurotic." Nicole Markotic argued that the film explores the relationship between "the many and the one", demonstrating that people have "composite" personalities. The different components of one person's personality are vital for that person's "emotional and psychological balance". Depression and sadness are distinct in the film, and this distinction is meant to "[offer] individuals strategies to avoid suppressing crucial feelings". Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, Hannah Marcarian and Paul O. Wilkinson agree that this validation of different emotions helps people express themselves.
Ruth Bettelheim of USA Today wrote that human responses to physical and social environments evolved over millions of years, and have not yet been fully understood, as shown by the film not including Riley's bodily sensation and their possible effect on mental states. Primatologist Louise Barrett thought the film showed disconnection between characters who are not relating to each other, or to their own emotions; but moments of personal harmony lead to positive interpersonal connections. According to USA Todays Jamie Altman, the film shows that major environmental changes can be "difficult, but not impossible, to overcome", recommending it to college students experiencing homesickness or sadness.
Lawsuits
Three lawsuits followed Inside Out release. Pediatrician Denise Daniels sued Disney and Pixar in 2017, claiming the film's personified emotions infringed on her pitch for a television series The Moodsters. Two similar suits were followed in 2018: author Carla J. Masterson sued Disney for infringing her books What’s on the Other Side of the Rainbow? and The Secret of the Golden Mirror, and another was brought in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, by a Canadian student Damon Pourshian, who had made a film titled Inside Out. Pourshian's suit was later green-lit by an Ontario court in 2021. The outcomes of these lawsuits were unknown, while Daniels's one was rejected.
Legacy
Retrospective assessments
Inside Out is generally held as one of the best animated films ever made by Film and Philosophy, a philosophical journal. Some publications, such as IndieWire and The A.V. Club, listed Inside Out among the best films of the 2010s. In the 2010s, a poll of 177 film critics by the BBC in 2016 listed Inside Out as the 41st-best film of the 21st century, and The New York Times placed the film seventh on its own list. Both Empire and The Independent respectively named it 18th- and 41st-best in 2020. The film's screenplay was listed number twenty-nine on the Writers Guild of America's "101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (So Far)" in 2021.
Cultural impact
Google started a Made with Code event for Inside Out in 2015, named "Inside HQ", to encourage children, especially girls, to study programming. Worldwide, it was among the top entertainment Google Searches of 2015. The film has been referenced in the television series The Simpsons. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Inside Out was one of the 35 films recommended people watch by The Independent.
Inside Out sparked various Internet meme reactions. Joy and Disgust similarizing the Philippine supercouple nicknamed AlDub was posted on social media in 2015. Riley's mother, alongside maternal characters from other Pixar films, was shown in a buttocks-themed "Dump-Truck" meme. Core memories featured in the film became a trend on video-sharing service TikTok, which TheBeauLife cited it as an inspiration for the "canon event" meme in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023).
Future
Docter was germinating ideas for an Inside Out sequel while the original film's nominations were unveiled at the 88th Academy Awards in January 2016. Disney began the development with the D23 Expo announcement in 2022. Kelsey Mann took over as the sequel's director and implemented Docter's "five to 27 emotions" idea. Inside Out will be followed by Inside Out 2, scheduled for release on June 14, 2024. A television series is in development as of 2023.
Notes
References
Citations
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