9 Incredible Action Sequences From Non-Action Movies

The Door Hangar – Monsters, Inc.

Pixar Animation Studios has created some of the most inventive story universes in the history of animation. Arguably, their 2001 comedy, Monsters, Inc., has the most fully realized one. The concept seems like a crazy one to describe. For those who have forgotten, screams collected by the scariest monsters is the power source of a monster-inhabited realm, and they collect these frights by entering various bedroom doors, which serve as portals into the human world.

However, the film only realizes its scope near the end, when Mike and Sulley try to find Boo’s bedroom door from a collection of millions in a door hangar. Beginning with a roller-coaster-like drop – one expects this could eventually spawn a thrill ride at a Disney theme park – the colorful partners in scaring try to move around the hangar by opening one door, entering the human world and then finding another door that leads back out to the same hangar.

The sequence has terrific momentum and more than a few death-defying jumps, but it also has the breaks for comic relief. When the characters enter an unusual setting, they have little time to orient themselves with the foreign aspects of the human world. They have to keep plugging forward. The scene was probably the most complex scene that the studio had completed until that point. It behaves like a larger version of the climactic airport sequence from their previous film, Toy Story 2.

Consider how much of Monsters, Inc. is a chase sequence, as Mike and Sulley try to keep their cover and not expose Boo’s human identity to the world. It makes sense that the action-packed climax is a wild chase through multiple parallel universes. It is a thrillingly executed sequence that gets its big moments from the sparkling wit of the screenplay rather than big, booming effects; or, just the way one would expect from Pixar.