With the middling success of Cars 2, Brave and Monsters University, Pixar has been stuck in a bit of a rut over the past few years. Luckily, the animation studio’s upcoming slate looks primed to deliver the same kind of inventive, exhilarating family adventures that put Pixar on the map in the first place. And none of them look more promising than 2015’s Inside Out, which travels inside the mind of a young girl.
We’ve gotten bits and pieces of information about Inside Out over the past few months, but director Peter Docter (Up) actually gave attendees of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival an extended look at the film yesterday. According to Docter, like Up, Inside Out starts out with a montage of a young girl named Riley in her early years, showing color-coded and anthropomorphized emotions appearing based on corresponding events. One observer sent the following description to Pixar Post.com:
Joy is her first emotion. Joy seems happy on her own, but then sadness appears. When Riley is being fed broccoli, Disgust appears. When her father threatens no dessert without eating her broccoli, Anger makes an appearance. Fear is introduced when she looks at a cable on the floor cautiously and then steps over. We also see the emotions watching her first important memory appear. Memories can be called up for Riley to recall on a sort of projection in Headquarters.
That falls in line with what we already knew about Inside Out. At the festival, Docter said that Looney Tunes artists Chuck Jones and Tex Avery inspired the film’s animation style. Additionally, Docter admitted that his own daughter, Ellie, was the inspiration for protagonist Riley. However, most of the action takes place inside the girl’s brain, where various emotions fight for control of her mind. As per Pixar Post:
The headquarters is understandably, high-tech but they rest of the human mind is very wacky with different personalities that are represented by small towns (such as “Fantasy Land”). All memories are stored in globes representing the color of their corresponding emotion. Each evening, the memory globes are routed into long term memory which is where Riley’s personality forms.
The movie really takes off when protagonist Riley and her parents make the move from a sleepy town to the big city of San Francisco, and on Riley’s first day of school, Joy and Sadness get into a fight and fall out into the far reaches of Riley’s mind.
I couldn’t be more excited to see Pixar venture into bolder territory with Inside Out. I wasn’t a fan of Cars 2, Brave or even Monsters University, so an original story could be just what I need to get back on track with Pixar.
Inside Out arrives June 19th, 2015.
Published: Jun 11, 2014 09:25 am