An Ode To Joy
Inside Out is a delightful original animation, straight out of Disney’s Pixar Animation studios. The film follows the life of Riley, and, more specifically, the emotions inside her head. You see, in this world emotions are personified through different characters adopting that specific emotion. Joy is the main protagonist, and she’s joined by Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, which make up the bulk of Riley’s emotional make-up.
Each Emotion take it in turns to control a terminal at Headquarters, which in turn power Riley’s memories. They’re mostly happy but the really important Memories are stored in the central console, aptly called Core Memories. Each one came from a super important time in Riley’s life, including when she first scored a goal in Ice Hockey.
These Core Memories power a different aspect of Riley’s personality, like Hockey Island, Goofball Island and even Friendship Island. These “Islands of Personality” make Riley the unique soul that she is.
Welcome to Riley’s World
Fast forward to Riley being 11 and everything changes. Riley and her family pack up and move across to San Francisco from the Midwest. There’s actually a really nice bit of foreshadowing here with Fear reading the paper, the words “Future Is Shaky” perfectly demonstrating Riley’s rollercoaster ride to come.
San Francisco is not the utopia they were hoping for and even worse, Sadness starts to dominate HQ. She touches one of the Core Memories, turning it sad. Sadness believes that she’s losing control, when in reality, she’s becoming way more dominant in this story, given Riley’s tumultuous state of mind at being uprooted from everything she held dear.
Joy continues to dominate the discussion here, determined to push Riley into a euphoric state. That night, while picking a dream for Riley, it’s interesting to watch the Memories in the background. They’re all of Fear, Disgust and Anger. In fact, there’s not a single one for Sadness or Joy.
Pixar’s Clever Visual Motifs
It’s a lovely visual motif that continues for a while, and plays out as a fascinating depiction of how colour dominates the way Pixar have crafted this movie. The next day this continues too, both in Headquarters and the real world. While Joy is over the top and jubilant, the colours inside HQ are dominated by those three colours – Fear, Disgust and Anger.
When Riley starts school, this display of colour can be seen through Riley isolated, and being the only one wearing yellow. Interestingly, this also hides a t-shirt underneath sporting those three distinct colours – purple, red and green.
Anyway, a new Core memory is created by Sadness at school and it causes the Headquarters to go haywire. Every island turns off, Joy and Sadness rush to try and fix the Core Memories, and end up sucked out of HQ. The only ones left to take over are Fear, Disgust and Anger. They’re now in charge.
Sadness & Joy’s Journey
Joy and Sadness find themselves way down in Long Term Memory. With no Personality Islands or Core Memories, they need to make it back before it’s too late. As for Riley, she’s struggling to be “herself”, with her Mum and Dad coming to blows with her at the dinner table.
Through some back and forth that sees Dad turn to “Defcon 2”, Riley is forced into her room, but it’s interesting to note the dominant personalities in the HQ for both Mum and Dad. For Mum, it’s Sadness while for Dad, it’s Anger. This will play a big part in the final moments at the end of this movie.
Goofball Island tumbles away without Joy in HQ, causing Sadness and Joy to quicken their pace to get back to Headquarters. They work their way through Long Term Memory, learning how Memories are trashed and with some thrown up to HQ to wind up Riley.
Hello, BingBong
On their way, Joy and Sadness run into BingBong. This is Riley’s imaginary friend and he brings Joy and Sadness along through a shortcut into Imagination Land. The goal is to get a train back to Headquarters but time is of the essence. Hockey Island looks close to crumbling apart as Riley messes up try-outs.
When BingBong loses his Rocket, thrown into the trash and knocked off the edge into the dump, our imaginary friend has an existential crisis. Sadness dominates his emotion here, and Joy’s attempts to be silly don’t work. In fact, it’s Sadness who manages to get through to him.
The pair connect together, reminiscing on BingBong’s best times. Joy, inevitably, doesn’t understand how Sadness managed to do this but she slowly starts to understand the cathartic power that grief. It’s here where the movie actually foreshadows the end scene in the movie too, which goes with the moments involving Mum and Dad I mentioned earlier on here, which helps to make that moment all the more powerful as a result.
How do Riley & Sadness Get Back?
When Riley falls asleep, everything shuts down, meaning Joy and Sadness are stuck on the train right next to Dream Production. After a little detour through the world of dreams, Riley wakes up and the gang return to the train once more.
Meanwhile, Fear, Disgust and Anger concoct a plan to bust out of San Francisco and run away. The other Islands starts to tumble apart and this plan causes the train to fall off track and tumble down to the dump. With no Core Memories and everything look hopeless, Sadness and Joy head through Family Island as their last refuge to try and save Riley, whose plan to run away could destroy everything.
One could look at this as a way of reinforcing the film’s central themes, which center around the importance of family and also how, when everything else falls apart, family is the one “Island” of refuge you can fall back to before it’s too late. Whether intentional or not, it’s still a neat inclusion all the same.
Goodbye, BingBong
Elsewhere, Joy and BingBong fall all the way down into the forgotten depths as the train careers off track. The other memories start to disappear, while Joy experiences sadness for herself for the first time. One of the Core Memories she touches turns blue, and she sees for herself the power of grief and how an emotion that started as sad, soon turned to joy. It’s here, right at this moment, where she realizes just how important sadness actually is to Riley’s wellbeing.
BingBong and Joy both find the earlier discarded Rocket and use the power of imagination to make it back… but there’s a problem. BingBong doesn’t make it. In fact, BingBong disappears completely, with Riley’s imaginary friend lost forever.
Joy and Sadness find innovative ways back to HQ, and they both work to fix Riley’s emotional core before it’s too late. Joy steps back, like a true leader, and encourages Sadness to take the reigns. Sadness manages to power on the terminal again and everything is back in harmony once more.
More Themes?
This is another neat inclusion too, the idea that a true leader can see the error of their ways, step back and allow others to take control, allowing them to lead without coddling or micromanaging them into a secluded circle. Again, it’s not one of the dominant themes in this movie, but the parallels to a toxic or harmonious workplace is another clever inclusion from Pixar. Anyway, I digress!
Riley rushes back home and when she steps through the door, her Mum and Dad are there to greet her. What follows is one of the best moments in this movie and, dare I say, the most emotional segment from any Pixar film bar perhaps Toy Story 3.
The dialogue that ensues from here is so well-crafted and perfectly encapsulates grief, and how cathartic it can be to have a good cry and just let loose. The team over at Pixar deserve a lot of credit for this because it’s incredibly powerful and moving. This is only compounded by Joy handing over the Core Memories to Sadness, allowing the complex web of emotions to envelop Riley and demonstrate that Sadness itself isn’t bad. It shouldn’t be feared or loathed but instead embraced.
This is something that reinforces those dominant Emotions we saw Mum and Sad with earlier in the movie too; the complex emotions they have and how they too have mixed feelings about San Francisco.
How Does Inside Out End?
When a new Core Memory is created, depicting both Joy and Sadness together, it starts a chain reaction which powers all the Islands back on again and Riley is back up to scratch once more.
With more Islands, and Complex Emotions, there’s a brand new console too. Lots more buttons are here, including one that says “Puberty”. For now, we cut to Riley over at Ice Hockey try-outs. But hey, Riley is 12 now… what could happen? Either way, that should get you up to scratch ready for Inside Out 2 coming this June.
Are you excited for Inside Out 2? What’s been your favorite moment of this movie? Let us know in the comments below!