How INSIDE OUT 2 Made Emotions Feel So Real
By Movieguide® Contributor
INSIDE OUT 2 was a huge success thanks to its relatable emotions and sweet story of 13-year-old Riley navigating all the changes that come with growing up.
Pixar enlisted doctors and psychologists to ensure they conveyed the emotions properly.
“I’ve taught a human emotion course for 30 years at Berkeley — it’s my pride and joy,” Dr. Dacher Keltner told TIME. “In the early days before podcasts, we’d do recordings of the course, and Pete Docter saw one. One day, he called me out of the blue and said, ‘Hey man, I’m thinking about making a movie about emotions. Come on down.’ It went so well that he called me again for INSIDE OUT 2, and here we go again.”
Despite Dr. Keltner’s extensive knowledge of human emotions, he still thought creating an emotion-based film for children would pose a challenge.
“It was very hard for me to imagine how INSIDE OUT would possibly represent the technical complexities of the brain, and I didn’t really,” he admitted. “I just do the science and answer their questions. Pete’s first question for me for INSIDE OUT was: How many emotions are there?”
For those who don’t know, humans experience 20 different emotions.
If there ever is an INSIDE OUT 3, Dr. Keltner foresees Riley overcoming some even more difficult emotions.
“If Riley’s 15 or 16, oh man, that’s serious,” he said. “She’d be moving out of her peer group and into society, hopefully to do something good. So I’d bring in the moral emotions, Indignation of course, but also Awe, Desire, and Compassion. I’ve taught young women for 33 years and can tell you they are so, so hard on themselves. They’re hard on their emotional lives, like, I shouldn’t feel this or I’m bad for feeling that way. That’s just not true. As long as you’re not hurting people, I tend to think all emotions are good. That’s the whole point of this film.”
INSIDE OUT 2 was a massive hit and made it into the top 10 animated films of all time. Movieguide® reported:
INSIDE OUT 2 just hit some major box office milestones, scoring a Top 10 spot on the all-time animated movies list as it hit the $800 million mark.
The movie took home $799.7 million at the global box office, making it the No. 10 animated movie of all time, passing MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU, FINDING NEMO and SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
“Worldwide, it’s a matter of when, not if, INSIDE OUT 2 passes the $1B mark,” Deadline reported. “The Kelsey Mann-directed juggernaut already is well on its way to surpassing the first INSIDE OUT’s $859M global.”
Part of Movieguide®’s review reads:
INSIDE OUT 2 is a marvelous, family-friendly animated movie. The movie is delightful, funny, inventive, and heartwarming. It has many positive messages. For example, it promotes “the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10c) and doing the right thing, controlling your emotions and not letting anxieties overcome your decision making. INSIDE OUT 2 also promotes kindness, friendship, repentance, and forgiveness. MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger children for scenes of peril and a large scary-looking but nonthreatening character. Unlike other recent animated movies, INSIDE OUT 2 doesn’t have any woke or politically correct content.
