Monsters Versus Aliens

***Monsters vs. Aliens*** is a film produced by Dreamworks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was released on March 27, 2009 in both 3-D and standard formats. It is the 16th film produced by Dreamworks Animation. It is the studio's 1st film to be directly produced in a stereoscopic format, rather than being converted to 3D.

## Plot

In outer space, a planet explodes, sending an asteroid hurling towards earth. Meanwhile, in Modesto, CA, a woman named Susan Murphy is hours away from marrying a weatherman named Derek Dietl. Before the ceremony, both of them discuss where to go for their honeymoon, either Paris or Fresno. **As Derek goes inside the church, Susan's all alone and sees the meteor heading straight towards her. She manages to avoid getting crush, but she's been exposed to radiation. As she prepares to take her vows, Susan glows green, her brown hair becomes white and she grows to a height of 49ft. Moments later, the US army sedates and apprehend her.** When she wakes up, Susan discovers herself in a room and wearing a jumpsuit. Next, she meets Dr. Cockroach, B.O.B, The Missing Link, Insectosaurus and General Monger. The General explains she's in Area 5?, a high security military prison for Monsters and she's been renamed to Ginormica. Although General Monger sympathies with Susan's pleas, he explains that for everyone's safety, she must stay. Despite this, Susan refuses to capitulate and subjects herself to experiments by Dr. Cockroach to shrink her. **Some days later, an alien spaceship arrives not far from Earth, commanded by an alien called Gallaxhar, who's on the hunt for an element called Quantonium. He sends a 350ft alien probe to locate and retrieve the source. After a failed 1st encounter with President Hathaway, it goes on a rampage. Because of its immense size and defenses, the army fails to destroy it. Then, out of the blue, General Monger comes up with a plan: in exchange for their help in destroying the robot, Susan and the monsters would get their freedom.** General Monger takes the monsters to the nearest city in the probe's path, San Francisco. As soon as the probe spotted Susan, she becomes separated from the rest of the group as the probe chases after her. The monsters reunite at the Golden Gate Bridge, where the army's evacuating civilians. During the confrontation, Dr. Cockroach crawls inside to sabotage it, Insectosaurus is hypnotized, Link is rendered unconscious and Susan uses her strength to free herself from its claw. Finally, the big probe is destroyed, along with most of the Golden Gate Bridge. After witnessing the probe's blunder, Gallaxhar decides the only alternative is to retrieve the Quantonium in person. **Now that the monsters have been granted their freedom, General Monger flies the group to Modesto. While Susan goes off to find Derek, the monsters interact with Susan's family. Unfortunately, the monsters scare off all the humans at the party and at Derek's Tv studio, he breaks up with Susan because he's unwilling to live in her shadow. The monsters reunited at an abandoned gas station, where Susan realizes that her life had gotten better after her growth and rallies her friends to embrace themselves.** All of a sudden, Gallaxhar's ship arrives, hovering above them, he had found the source of the Quantonium, Susan herself and he immediately starts to beam her onboard. Insectosaurus secures a silk line to Susan in an attempt to save her, but the spaceship fires a beam at him and Insectosaurus fell down, seemingly dead. When Susan wakes up, she's dressed in a jumpsuit and she's locked in a cage. With Insectosaurus unconscious, B.O.B. comes up with the idea to use jetpacks to reach the spaceship. **After escaping and chasing Gallaxhar across his ship, he drains the Quantonium from her, causing her to shrink. As he uses the Quantonium to clone an army of himself, Gallaxhar elaborates that he destroyed his home world as part of his plan to invade Earth. As Susan is taken away, she is rescued by the monsters, they fight the clone army and make their way to the ship's power core, where Dr.Cockroach activates the self-destruct sequence and aborts the invasion.** But as they make their way out, the door leading out closes, trapping all but Susan. Despite the monsters' plea to save herself, Susan instead hurries to find Gallaxhar as he and his army scramble into escape pods. Despite her persuasion, the gloating rogue elaborates he cannot cancel the self-destruct and taunts her by addressing her using her normal name. **Susan takes a laser gun and fires it at the Quantonium orb above, on top of her and declaring 'The name's Ginormica'. As the ship's self-destruct sequence nearly finished, the monsters said their final farewells and just as a massive piece of machinery fell on top of them, they were saved by Ginormica.** The monsters made it outside the ship, but with no rescue plane in sight and the ship on the verge of exploding, they jump off. Suddenly, they land on top of Insectosaurus, now transformed into a gigantic butterfly monster with General Monger at the helm. The team flies off just in times as the ship explodes, killing Gallaxhar in the process. When they return to Modesto, they are welcomed by a chorus of cheers. **Just then, Derek arrives with a cameraman, eager to do an interview with Susan. Instead, she picks him up, rejects him and tosses him into B.O.B.'s body. Suddenly, General Monger receives word of a new threat, a giant snail monster called Escargantua slowly heading for Paris. Once again, Susan rallies the monsters to answer the call and they climb aboard Insectosaurus, who flies off into the distance.** In a mid-credits scene, President Hathaway, pleased with General Monger's work promotes him to President's senior security staff. But Hathaway's attempt to celebrate with coffee ends with him pushing the wrong button.

## Voice cast

* Reese Witherspoon as Susan Murphy/Ginormica, the main protagonist.
* Seth Rogan as B.O.B., the deuteragonist.
* Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach, the tritagonist.
* Will Arnett as The Missing Link, the secondary tritagonist.
* Conrad Vernon as Insectosaurus / Butterflysaurus
* Kiefer Sutherland as General Monger
* Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar, the main antagonist.
* Stephen Colbert as President Hathaway
* Paul Rudd as Derek Dietl, the secondary antagonist.
* Julie White as Wendy Murphy
* Jeffrey Tambor as Carl Murphy
* Amy Poehler as Computer
* Ed Helms as News Reporter
* Renée Zellweger as Katie
* John Krasinski as Cuthbert

## Crew

* Directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon
* Screenplay by Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky, Rob Letterman, Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger and Conrad Vernon
* Music by Henry Jackman

## Box Office

On its opening weekend, the film opened #1 grossing $58.2 million in 4,104 theaters. Of that total, the film grossed an estimated $5.2 million in theaters becoming the third highest-grossing IMAX debut behind *The Dark Knight* and *Watchmen*.

## Trivia

* This is the 2nd Dreamworks monster-based movie. The 1st was Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
* The film makes several references or parodies to the Universal Monsters franchise. Ironically, both Dreamworks and Universal Studios are owned by Comcast.