Inside Out (2015 film)

Inside Out is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen, with a screenplay written by Docter, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley, adapted from a story by Docter and del Carmen. The film is set in the mind of a young girl named Riley Andersen (Kaitlyn Dias), where five personified emotions—Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling)—try to lead her through life as she and her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) adjust to their new surroundings after moving from Minnesota to San Francisco.

Docter first began developing Inside Out in 2010, after noticing changes in his daughter's personality as she grew older. The film's producers consulted numerous psychologists including Dacher Keltner from the University of California, Berkeley, who helped revise the story by emphasizing the neuropsychological findings that human emotions affect interpersonal relationships and can be significantly moderated by them.

After premiering at the 68th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2015, Inside Out was released in North America on June 19, 2015, accompanied by the short film Lava. The film was praised for its concept, screenplay, subject matter, Michael Giacchino's musical score, and the vocal performances (particularly those of Poehler, Smith, Black, and Richard Kind). The film grossed $90.4 million in its first weekend, making it the highest opening for an original title at the time, accumulating over $857 million in worldwide box office revenue in 2015, making it the seventh highest-grossing film of 2015. The film received several awards, including a BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, Critics' Choice Award, Annie Award, Satellite Award, and Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Plot
Riley Andersen is born in Minnesota. Within her mind's Headquarters, five personifications of her basic emotions — Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger — come to life and influence her actions via a control console. As she grows up, her experiences become memories, stored in colored orbs, which are sent into long-term memory each night. Her five most important "core memories" (all happy ones) are housed in a hub; each powers an aspect of her personality which takes the form of floating islands. Joy acts as a de facto leader, and since she and the other emotions do not understand Sadness' purpose, she tries to keep Sadness away from the console.

At the age of 11, Riley and her parents move to San Francisco for her father's new business. Riley has poor first experiences: the new house is cramped and old, the moving van with their belongings is misdirected, and her father is under stress from his business. When Sadness begins touching Riley's happy memories, turning them sad, Joy tries to guard them by isolating her. On Riley's first day at her new school, Sadness accidentally causes Riley to cry in front of her class, creating a sad core memory. Joy, panicking, tries to dispose of it, but accidentally knocks the other core memories loose during a struggle with Sadness, deactivating the personality islands. Joy, Sadness, and the core memories are sucked out of Headquarters and taken to the maze-like storage area of long-term memory.

Anger, Fear, and Disgust try to maintain Riley's happiness in Joy's absence with disastrous results, distancing her from her parents, friends, and hobbies. As a result, her personality islands gradually crumble and fall, one by one, into the "Memory Dump", an abyss where memories are forgotten. Finally, Anger inserts an idea into the console, prompting Riley to run away to Minnesota.

While navigating through the long-term memory region, Joy and Sadness encounter Bing Bong, Riley's childhood imaginary friend, who suggests riding the train of thought back to Headquarters. En route to the train station, Bing Bong tearfully watches his rainbow wagon rocket being thrown into the memory dump along with other unused childish artifacts. The three eventually catch the train, but it halts when Riley falls asleep, then derails entirely when "Honesty Island" collapses due to Riley's theft of her mother's credit card. In desperation, Joy abandons Sadness and tries to ride a "recall tube" back to Headquarters, but the ground below the tube collapses, breaking it and plunging Joy and Bing Bong into the Memory Dump.

At the bottom of the abyss, Joy begins to lose hope and breaks into tears, but then discovers a sad memory of an ice hockey game that turned happy when Riley's parents and friends comforted her. Joy finally realizes Sadness's purpose: to induce empathy in others, prompting them to reach out to Riley when she is emotionally overwhelmed and needs help. Joy and Bing Bong try to use the wagon rocket to escape the Memory Dump. After several tries, Bing Bong, who is already fading away, jumps out to allow Joy to escape and is forgotten.

Joy reunites with a despondent Sadness and takes them to Headquarters, only to discover that Anger's idea has disabled the console, rendering Riley apathetic. To the surprise of the others, Joy hands control of the console to Sadness, who is able to extract the idea, reactivating the console and prompting Riley to return home. As Sadness re-installs the core memories, turning them sad, Riley arrives home to her parents and tearfully confesses that she misses Minnesota and her old life. Her parents comfort her and admit they, too, miss Minnesota as much as she does. Joy and Sadness work the console together, creating a new amalgamated bitter-sweet core memory in Riley's Headquarters; a new island forms, representing Riley's acceptance of her new life in San Francisco.

A year later at the age of 12, Riley has adapted to her new home, made new friends, and returned to her old hobbies while adopting a few new ones. Inside the Headquarters, her emotions all work together on a newly expanded console with room for them all.

Cast
• Amy Poehler as Joy

• Phyllis Smith as Sadness

• Richard Kind as Bing Bong

• Lewis Black as Anger

• Bill Hader as Fear

• Mindy Kaling as Disgust

• Kaitlyn Dias as Riley Andersen

• Diane Lane as Riley's Mother

• Kyle MacLachlan as Riley's Father

• Paula Poundstone as Forgetter Paula

• Bobby Moynihan as Forgetter Bobby

• Paula Pell as Dream Director, Mother's Anger, Teacher's Disgust and Teacher's Sadness

• Dave Goelz as Subconscious Guard Frank

• Frank Oz as Subconscious Guard Dave

• Josh Cooley as Jangles the Clown

• Flea as Mind Worker Cop Jake

• John Ratzenberger as Fritz

• Carlos Alazraqui as Father's Fear and Brazilian Helicopter Pilot

• Nick Pitera and Andrea Datzman as TripleDent Gum singers

• Lori Alan as Mother's Sadness

• Peter Sagal as Clown's Joy

• Rashida Jones as Cool Girl's emotions

Several of the filmmakers also contributed some voice acting, including director Pete Docter as Father's Anger, and co-writer Ronnie del Carmen as one of the abstract thought mind workers.

Development
As a child, director Pete Docter relocated with his family to Denmark when his father moved to study the music of Carl Nielsen. While his sisters had an easy time adjusting to the new surroundings, Docter felt he was judged constantly by peers. While other kids were interested in sports, Docter sat alone drawing, a hobby that eventually led him to animation. His social anxiety ended by high school.

In late 2009, Docter noticed his pre-teen daughter, Elie, exhibiting similar shyness. "She started getting more quiet and reserved, and that, frankly, triggered a lot of my own insecurities and fears," he said. He imagined what happens in the human mind when emotions set in. The idea to depict it through animation excited Docter, who felt it the ideal form to portray "strong, opinionated, caricatured personalities." He began researching information about the mind, alongside Jonas Rivera, a producer, and Ronnie del Carmen, a secondary director. They consulted Paul Ekman, a well-known psychologist who studies emotions, and Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Ekman had early in his career identified six core emotions—anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy, and surprise. Docter found surprise and fear to be too similar, which left him with five emotions to build characters around. Other emotions considered for inclusion during the development process were schadenfreude, ennui, pride, and hope. Keltner focused on sadness being an emotion that strengthens relationships. Both emphasized how emotions organize social lives and the structuring of interpersonal interactions.

The smash success of Docter's 2009 film Up encouraged those at Pixar to allow Docter to create another film with a more sophisticated story. Inside Out is the first Pixar film without input from co-founder and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died in 2011. In addition, the film did not have as much input from chief creative officer John Lasseter, who was focused on restructuring Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank at the time of its production. Executives at Disney and Pixar were positive at the proposal of making Inside Out, but acknowledged it would be difficult to market.

Soundtrack
Michael Giacchino composed the film's score; this was his fifth collaboration with Pixar and his second collaboration with Docter after Up. The producers first met with Giacchino to explain 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 noted that while both Giacchino and Docter were musicians, they discussed the film in terms of story and character.

Walt Disney Records released the soundtrack on June 16, 2015.


 * Track listing

Release
Inside Out was first announced in August 2011 at the D23 Expo. In December 2012, Bleeding Cool reported the title of the film would be The Inside Out, while ComingSoon.net reported it would be Inside Out the following February. In April 2013, Disney officially announced the title on Twitter as Inside Out, during CinemaCon. Prior to its release, the film underwent a test screening for children, due to concerns from executives that it would be too complex for younger audiences—a fear quelled when the audience reacted positively to the picture.

The film premiered on May 18, 2015, at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, in an out-of-competition screening. In the United States, it premiered on June 8, 2015, at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, and received a wide theatrical release starting on June 19, 2015, in 2D, 3D, and select IMAX 3D theatres. It was the first animated movie to be released in Dolby Vision format in Dolby Cinema and the second for Disney following Tomorrowland. Also notable was the fact that it was one of two feature films (the other being The Good Dinosaur) released by Pixar in the same calendar year, a first for the company.

A short animated film, titled Lava, accompanied Inside Out during its theatrical release. This musical love story was directed by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren. The story was inspired by the isolated beauty of tropical islands and the explosive allure of ocean volcanoes, and takes place over millions of years.

On June 18, 2015, Skype added faces of the five "emotions" of the film as emoticons available for use in its IM service for the next three months, later leaving them as standard.

Home media
Inside Out was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD on November 3, 2015, while a digital release was released on October 13, 2015. The Pixar's theatrical short, Lava, was included. A short film set in the world of Inside Out, titled Riley's First Date?, and directed by Josh Cooley, the head of story on the film, was included exclusively in the Blu-ray and the digital release.

Video games
An Inside Out play set featuring all five emotions as playable characters was made available for Disney Infinity 3.0.

A mobile game, Inside Out: Thought Bubbles, was released on June 18, 2015, by Disney Mobile Games on Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, Windows Store, and Windows Phone Store. Playing as Riley's emotions, players have to match and sort memory bubbles through 485 levels inspired by the film's locations.

Box office
Inside Out grossed $356.5 million in the USA & Canada and $501.1 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $857.6 million against a budget of $175 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $279.51 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film.

Worldwide, it is the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2015 (placing second among animated films behind only Minions), the fourth-highest-grossing Pixar film, and the thirteenth-highest-grossing animated film of all time.

United States and Canada
Inside Out opened across 3,946 theaters in the United States and Canada, of which 3,100 showed the film in 3D. It grossed $3.7 million during its Thursday night showings. This was a record among Pixar films that had Thursday night showings, but behind Toy Story 3's $4 million midnight showing. The film then earned $34.3 million on its opening day, which is the third largest opening day for a Pixar film behind Toy Story 3 ($41.1 million) and Finding Dory ($54.7 million). It ended its opening weekend in second place with $90.4 million, behind the second-weekend gross of dinosaur thriller Jurassic World ($106.6 million). Although it was Pixar's first film not to debut at No. 1, its opening-weekend gross was still the biggest for a Pixar original film (breaking The Incredibles record), the studio's third-biggest of all time (behind Finding Dory and Toy Story 3), the biggest weekend debut for a film that did not debut at No. 1 (breaking The Day After Tomorrows record), and the top opening for any original film, live-action or otherwise, not based on sourced material, eclipsing the $77 million debut of Avatar (overtaken by The Secret Life of Pets). The film's successful opening has been attributed to its Cannes premiere, CinemaCon press screening, its critical reception (particularly the 98% Rotten Tomatoes score), good word-of-mouth, Father's Day weekend, and a successful Tuesday-night Fathom screening. In its second weekend, the film fell by 42% to $52.3 million and still held the second spot behind Jurassic World; the rest of the week saw it slightly ahead of the latter. Inside Out reached the No. 1 spot at the box office in its third weekend with $29.8 million. Overall, IMAX contributed 10% or $36 million of its total North American revenue.

It ended up grossing a total of $356.5 million and became the third-highest-grossing Pixar film (behind Finding Dory and Toy Story 3), the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2015, the ninth-highest-grossing animated film of all time (the highest of 2015), and the 35th-highest-grossing film of all time.

Other countries
Outside the US and Canada, the film earned an estimated $40.3 million on its opening weekend from 37 countries, which is 42% of the entire international market. Its largest openings were recorded in China ($11.7 million); the UK, Ireland and Malta ($11.4 million); Mexico ($8.6 million), Russia and the CIS ($7.6 million), Italy ($7.4 million), Germany ($7.1 million), and South Korea ($5.1 million). In total earnings, its largest markets outside the U.S. and Canada are the United Kingdom ($58.1 million), South Korea ($31.7 million), and Mexico ($31 million). It became the highest-grossing Disney animated or Pixar film of all time in Mexico (ahead of Frozen), the Philippines (ahead of Big Hero 6), India, and Ukraine and in Russia, it is the second-highest-grossing Disney or Pixar film and the first Pixar film to exceed one billion rubles.

Critical response
Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 98%, based on 340 reviews, with a rating average of 8.9/10, which,, makes it the highest-rated animated film of all time. The website's critical consensus reads, "Inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving, Inside Out is another outstanding addition to the Pixar library of modern animated classics." The film also topped the site's Top 100 Animation Movies list and occupies the third-highest position of a film released in the 21st century on the Top 100 Movies of All Time list at number 8. On Metacritic the film has a score of 94 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim." In CinemaScore polls, cinema audiences gave Inside Out an average score of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Prior to its release, there was concern among the general public that Pixar films were declining in quality, with an over-reliance on sequels. Likewise, DreamWorks Animation was beginning to flounder in the early 2010s as several films performed below expectations at the box office, leading to speculation that the "genre" of computer animation was "in a funk." Inside Out has been hailed as a return to form for Pixar by numerous film critics.



Following an advance screening at CinemaCon on April 22, 2015, the film was well received by audiences. Praise was aimed for its smart storyline, although some wondered whether the concept was too complicated for young audiences and to attract family crowds. After premiering at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the film attracted praise from film critics. Peter Debruge of Variety was effusive, calling it the studio's "greatest idea" and "a stunningly original concept that […] promises to forever change the way people think about the way people think." The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips called it the studio's best since Up (also directed by Docter), a "consistently inventive and a heartening corrective to recent, stockholder-driven inferiorities." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter deemed it an "audacious concept" that stands among the most "conceptually trippy films" for family audiences. "With its quite literally cerebral bent, I think Inside Out might have some trouble fully connecting with younger kids, but grown-ups are likely to shed more than a few tears," remarked Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw felt it "buoyant and sweet-natured," though slightly inferior to Pixar's best. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club, while overall positive on the film, said it "trades the wordless gracefulness and sense of discovery of the animation studio's best work for explanatory voice-over and nonstop exposition," also arguing that the Pixar animators could have been more visually adventurous to match the conceptual ambition.

Kristopher Tapley of HitFix called it as "one of the best films of the 21st century." A. O. Scott of The New York Times deemed the film "an absolute delight," reserving particular praise for its "defense of sorrow, an argument for the necessity of melancholy dressed in the bright colors of entertainment." The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday considered it "that rare movie that transcends its role as pure entertainment to become something genuinely cathartic, even therapeutic, giving children a symbolic language with which to manage their unruliest emotions." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times found it "bold, gorgeous, sweet, funny, [and] sometimes heartbreakingly sad," deeming it one of the best films of the year. Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawathy extolled it as "transcendent and touching […] so smart and psychologically clever." Time's Mary Pols felt it a "nearly hallucinogenic, entirely beautiful" work that "defies the conventions of family movies." Christopher Orr of The Atlantic urged readers to view the picture, calling it "Pixar once again at the top of its game, telling the kind of thoughtful, moving meta-story it's hard to imagine being produced anywhere else." Wai Chee Dimock in the Los Angeles Review of Books compared the film to the work of neuroscientists Antonio Damasio, Dacher Keltner, and Oliver Sacks. Betsy Bozdech of Common Sense Media gave the movie 5 stars, stating that "'Inside Out' is creative, clever, heartfelt, and beautifully animated."

Recognition and accolades
Inside Out received fifteen Best Picture, twenty-one Best Original Screenplay, and forty Best Animated Feature nominations from over 50 different organizations and associations. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 88th Academy Awards held in 2016. It received ten out of fourteen Annie Awards at the 43rd Annie Awards, including Outstanding Achievement in Directing in an Animated Feature Production for Docter, Outstanding Achievement in Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production for Smith and Best Animated Feature. The American Film Institute selected Inside Out as one of the Top Ten Films of the Year.

The film received the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards. It received three Critics' Choice Movie Award nominations including the win for Best Animated Feature. The New York Film Critics Circle awarded Inside Out for Best Animated Film and it was named Film of the Year by National Board of Review with also winning Best Animated Film. The film was runner-up for Best Animated Film at Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards and at San Diego Film Critics Society Awards. It received four nominations from Satellite Awards including Best Original Screenplay, Best Animated or Mixed Media Feature, and Best Original Score. It took the Satellite Award for Best Animated or Mixed Media Feature. The film won the award for Best Animated Film at the 69th British Academy Film Awards in London, England, and was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay (losing to Spotlight). The film also received a Robert Award for Best American Film nomination and a David di Donatello for Best Foreign Film nomination, the Danish and Italian equivalent of the Academy Awards, respectively.

In 2016, the film was ranked at number 41 on BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century list, a poll of 177 film critics from around the world. It was also named the seventh "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by The New York Times.

Future plans
On June 24, 2015, when asked if there are plans for a possible sequel, Pete Docter replied, "There's no sequel idea from me at this point," adding, "Never say never." On January 14, 2016, Docter stated that a sequel is possible, and that he and Pixar will explore ideas, saying: "We'll see if anything turns up. To me it's not as simple as: 'We liked it, so let's make another one.' What happens is you design these characters not so much looks-wise but as they are as characters and people for a story. So we'll explore it and see what happens." In a July 2016 interview, Pixar president Jim Morris said that while demand for a sequel is high, the company has committed its resources to several original movie concepts from June 7, 2019, onward, and that no sequels to any of Pixar's other films, including Inside Out, were being contemplated at this time.

Lawsuit
On June 20, 2017, Denise Daniels, a child psychologist from Minnesota, filed a lawsuit against Disney and Pixar for breach of contract. Daniels had been working on a creative project, The Moodsters, with a theme very similar to Inside Out and had discussed prospects of a TV production with Disney and Pixar executives, including with the film's eventual director Pete Docter. Daniels claims that she presented in detail her idea for five color-coded characters representing happiness, sadness, anger, love and fear, who would live in an abstract world within a child. The discussions were held between 2006 and 2009, and Daniels argued that they carried an implied contract for her to be compensated if the ideas were used by Disney. On January 31, 2018, her suit was dismissed by judge Philip Gutierrez, who ruled that since Daniels had released materials related to the project publicly at the time of the conversations, there were no grounds for an implied contract between Disney and Daniels.