Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, Inc.
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Pete Docter
Screenplay by	Andrew Stanton Daniel Gerson
Story by	Pete Docter Jill Culton Jeff Pidgeon Ralph Eggleston
Produced by	Darla K. Anderson
Starring	John Goodman Billy Crystal Steve Buscemi James Coburn Jennifer Tilly Mary Gibbs
Edited by	Robert Grahamjones Jim Stewart
Music by	Randy Newman
Production companies	Walt Disney Pictures Pixar Animation Studios
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Release date	October 28, 2001 (2001-10-28) (El Capitan Theatre) November 2, 2001 (2001-11-02) (United States)
Running time	92 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$115 million[1]
Box office	$577.4 million[1]

Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated^[2] monster comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Mary Gibbs and Jennifer Tilly, the film was directed by Pete Docter in his directorial debut, and executive produced by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton. The film centers on two monsters—James P. "Sulley" Sullivan and his one-eyed partner and best friend Mike Wazowski—who are employed at the titular energy-producing factory Monsters, Inc., which generates power by scaring human children. However, the monster world believes that the children are toxic, and when one sneaks into the factory, that child dubbed Boo must be returned home before it is too late.

Docter began developing the film in 1996, and wrote the story with Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon and Ralph Eggleston. Stanton wrote the screenplay with screenwriter Daniel Gerson. The characters went through many incarnations over the film's five-year production process. The technical team and animators found new ways to simulate fur and cloth realistically for the film. Randy Newman, who composed the music for Pixar's three prior films, returned to compose for its fourth.

Upon its release on November 2, 2001, Monsters, Inc. received critical acclaim and was a commercial success,^[3] grossing over $577 million worldwide to become the third highest-grossing film of 2001.^[1] The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "If I Didn't Have You" and was nominated for the first Best Animated Feature, but lost to DreamWorks' Shrek, and was also nominated for Best Original Score and Best Sound Editing. Monsters, Inc. saw a 3D re-release in theaters on December 19, 2012. A prequel titled Monsters University, which was directed by Dan Scanlon, was released on June 21, 2013. A television series/midquel titled Monsters at Work premiered on Disney+ on July 7, 2021.

Plot[]

In a world inhabited by monsters, the city of Monstropolis is powered by energy from the screams of human children. At the Monsters, Incorporated factory, skilled monsters employed as "scarers" venture into the human world to scare children and harvest their screams, through doors that activate portals to children's bedroom closets. The field is considered dangerous, as human children are believed to be toxic. Energy production is falling because children are becoming less easily scared, and the company's CEO, Henry J. Waternoose III, is determined to find a solution to the problem.

One evening after work, scarer James P. "Sulley" Sullivan discovers that someone has left an active door on the scare floor. As he inspects the door, a small toddler girl enters the factory. Sulley gets scared and tries to return her but ultimately fails when his chief rival and coworker, Randall Boggs, sends the door back into the factory's door storage vault. Sulley takes the girl out of the factory in a duffel bag and interrupts his assistant and best friend, Mike Wazowski's date with his receptionist girlfriend, Celia Mae, at a sushi restaurant. Chaos erupts when the girl gets loose. Sulley and Mike manage to escape with the girl before the Child Detection Agency (CDA) arrives and quarantines the restaurant, and they are forced to keep the kid hidden in their apartment for the night until a plan can be made. Sulley soon realizes that the kid isn't toxic, her laughter is able to cause a massive power surge more powerful than screams could bring, and Randall is her designated scarer. Sulley grows attached to her and nicknames her "Boo", while Mike is anxious to get rid of her so the company can get back with its fixing.

The duo smuggles Boo back into the factory disguised as a baby monster and attempts to send her home, but Randall, who had been waiting in ambush for her, kidnaps Mike by mistake. He straps Mike to the Scream Extractor, a large vacuum-like machine capable of forcefully extracting screams from kidnapped human children, solving the monster world's energy crisis. Before Randall can test the machine on Mike, Sulley saves him and the pair try to report to Waternoose about Randall's plan, but Waternoose tells Sulley to demonstrate his scaring methods in the company's simulator room. In so doing that, Sulley unknowingly scares Boo and discovers that children actually cry when the monsters scare them. Boo inadvertently exposes herself in front of Waternoose, who turns out to be in league with Randall, and exiles Mike and Sulley to the Himalayas while keeping Boo with him. The two are taken in by a friendly yeti, who tells them about a nearby village, which Sulley realizes he can use to return to the monster world. Sulley prepares to return, but Mike refuses to go with him, blaming Sulley's stubbornness for their situation.

Sulley returns to the factory and saves Boo from the Scream Extractor, disabling the machine in the process, but is attacked by Randall. Mike returns to reconcile with Sulley and inadvertently helps him overpower Randall. With Randall in pursuit, Mike, Sulley, and Boo escape into the door vault. Mike invokes Boo's laughter, which causes all the doors to activate at once, allowing them to freely pass in and out of the human world as they attempt to escape. Randall eventually catches up to them and attempts to kill Sulley, but Boo isn't willing to see Sulley get hurt and attacks Randall, enabling Sulley to catch him. Sulley and Mike trap Randall in the human world, where two hillbilly residents at a trailer park mistake him for an alligator and batter him with shovels, and they subsequently throw the door to the ground, destroying it.

Mike and Sulley locate Boo's door, but Waternoose, accompanied by the CDA, brings the door down to the scare floor. Mike distracts the CDA while Sulley and Boo escape with her door. They lead Waternoose into the simulation room where he reveals his plans of salvaging the company by kidnapping children to Sulley, and Mike records the conversation, exposing him to the agents. As Waternoose is arrested by the CDA, he reprimands Sulley for destroying the company and worsening the energy crisis. The scare floor administrator Roz reveals herself to be the head of the CDA working undercover to find Waternoose. She thanks Mike and Sulley for their help and allows Sulley to return Boo home, but has the door demolished to prevent any monsters from making further contact with her. Sulley snatches a shredded timber fragment as a memento and, inspired by his experiences with Boo, concocts a plan to retool the company's power generation method to harvest children's laughter instead of screams, as laughter is shown to be "ten times more potent."

With the energy crisis solved, Mike becomes a comedian, and Sulley is named the new CEO of Monsters, Incorporated. A month and a half later, the factory is now wholly focused on its staff bringing joy to children in order to collect energy. Mike takes Sulley aside, revealing he has rebuilt Boo's door, though it isn't functioning. Sulley inserts his fragment, enters, and joyfully reunites with Boo, who still recognizes him.

Voice cast[]

• John Goodman as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, a huge, furry blue bear-like monster with horns, a tail, and purple spots. Even though he excels at scaring children, he is a gentle giant by nature. At the film's beginning, he has been the "Best Scarer" at Monsters, Inc. for several months running.
• Billy Crystal as Michael "Mike" Wazowski, a short, round green monster with a single big eyeball and skinny limbs who is Sulley's station runner and coach on the scare floor. The two are close friends and roommates. He is charming and generally the more organized of the two, but is prone to neurotics and his ego sometimes leads him astray. He is dating Celia Mae, who calls him "Googly-Bear".
• Mary Gibbs as Boo, a two-year-old^[4][5][6] human toddler girl who is unafraid of any monster except Randall, the scarer assigned to her door. She believes Sulley is a large cat and refers to him as "Kitty". In the film, one of Boo's drawings is covered with the name "Mary". The book based on the film gives Boo's "real" name as Mary Gibbs, the name of her voice actress, who is also the daughter of one of the film's story artists, Rob.^[7]
• Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs, a purple, eight-legged lizard-like monster with a chameleon-like ability to change his skin color and blend in completely with his surroundings. He is a snide and preening character who makes himself a rival to Sulley and Mike in the scream collection.
• James Coburn as Henry J. Waternoose III, a spider-like monster with five eyes and a crab-like lower body. He is the CEO of Monsters, Inc., a job passed down through his family for three generations. He acts as a mentor to Sulley, holding great faith in him as a scarer.
• Jennifer Tilly as Celia Mae, a pink monster with one eye and tentacle-like legs. She is the receptionist for Monsters, Inc. and Mike's girlfriend.
• Bob Peterson as Roz, a snail-like monster with a raspy voice who administrates for Scare Floor F where Sulley, Mike, and Randall work.
• John Ratzenberger as Yeti^[8] a.k.a. The Abominable Snowman,^[9] a furry white monster who was banished to the Himalayas. He was inspired by the Abominable Snowman from the 1964 Rankin/Bass animated special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.^[10]
• Frank Oz as Jeff Fungus, Randall's red-skinned, three-eyed, beleaguered sidekick.
• Daniel Gerson as Needleman and Smitty, two goofy monsters with cracking voices who work as janitors and operate the Door Shredder when required.
• Steve Susskind as Jerry Slugworth, a red, seven-fingered monster who manages Scare Floor F and is a good friend of Waternoose.
• Bonnie Hunt as Ms. Flint, a female monster who trains new monsters to scare children.
• Jeff Pidgeon as Thaddeus "Phlegm" Bile, a dinosaur-like monster who is a trainee scarer for Monsters, Inc.
• Sam Black as George Sanderson, a chubby, orange-furred monster with a sole horn on top of his head. In a running gag throughout the film, he repeatedly makes contact with objects from the human world, such as a sock adhering to his fur via static cling. These incidents result in CDA agents tackling George, shaving him bald, and sterilizing him. He is good friends with Pete "Claws" Ward.
• Laraine Newman as Ms. Nesbit, the Monsters, Inc. day-care teacher. Her name was later mentioned in the Laugh Factory comic.

Production[]

Development[]

When production began in earnest on Monsters, Inc. in 2000, Pixar relocated to a larger building in Emeryville, California.

The idea for Monsters, Inc., along with ideas that would eventually become A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E was conceived in a lunch in 1994 attended by John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft during the near completion of Toy Story.^[11] One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a film about monsters. "When we were making Toy Story", Docter said, "everybody came up to me and said 'Hey, I totally believed that my toys came to life when I left the room.' So when Disney asked us to do some more films, I wanted to tap into a childlike notion that was similar to that. I knew monsters were coming out of my closet when I was a kid. So I said, 'Hey, let's do a film about monsters.'"^[12]

Docter began work on the film that was to become Monsters, Inc. in 1996 while others focused on A Bug's Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999). Its code name was Hidden City, named for Docter's favorite restaurant in Point Richmond.^[13] By early-February 1997, Docter had drafted a treatment together with Harley Jessup, Jill Culton, and Jeff Pidgeon that bore some resemblance to the final film. Docter pitched the story to Disney with some initial artwork on February 4 that year. He and his story team left with some suggestions in hand and returned to pitch a refined version of the story on May 30. At this pitch meeting, longtime Disney animator Joe Grant – whose work stretched back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) – suggested the title Monsters, Inc., a play on the title of a gangster film Murder, Inc.,^[14] which stuck.^[15] The film marks the first Pixar feature to not be directed by Lasseter instead being helmed by Docter, as well as Lee Unkrich and David Silverman who served as co-directors.^[16] The early test of Monsters Inc was released on October 11, 1998.

Writing[]

The storyline took on many forms during production.^[17] Docter's original idea featured a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters that he drew in a book as a child coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had, and conquering those fears caused the monsters to eventually disappear.^[18]

After Docter scrapped the initial concept of a 30-year-old terrified of monsters, he decided on a buddy story between a monster and a child titled simply Monsters, in which the monster character of Sulley (known at this stage as Johnson) was an up-and-comer at his workplace, where the company's purpose was to scare children. Sulley's eventual sidekick, Mike Wazowski, had not yet been added.^[17][19]

Between 1996 and 2000, the lead monster and child went through radical changes as the story evolved. As the story continued to develop, the child varied in age and gender. Ultimately, the story team decided that a girl would be the best counterpart for a furry, 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) co-star.^[17] After a girl was settled upon, the character continued to undergo changes, at one point being from Ireland and at another time being an African-American character.^[15] Originally, the character of the little girl, known as Mary, became a fearless seven-year-old who has been toughened by years of teasing and pranks from four older brothers.^[15] In stark contrast, Johnson is nervous about the possibility of losing his job after the boss at Monsters, Inc. announces a downsizing is on the way. He feels envious because another scarer, Ned (who later became Randall), is the company's top performer.^[15] Through various drafts, Johnson's occupation went back-and-forth from being a scarer and from working in another area of the company such as a janitor or a refinery worker, until his final incarnation as the best scarer at Monsters, Inc.^[15] Throughout development, Pixar worried that having a main character whose main goal was to scare children would alienate audiences and make them not empathize with him. Docter would later describe that the team "bent over backwards trying to create a story that still had monsters" while still attempting to solve the problem.^[16] A key moment came when the team decided "Okay, he's the BEST scarer there. He's the star quarterback" with Docter noting that before that moment "design after design, we really didn't know what he was about."^[16] Disney noted to Pixar early on that they did not want the character to "look like a guy in a suit".^[16] To this end, Johnson was originally planned to have tentacles for feet; however, this caused many problems in early animation tests. The idea was later largely rejected, as it was thought that audiences would be distracted by the tentacles.^[20] Mary's age also differed from draft to draft until the writers settled on the age of 3. "We found that the younger she was, the more dependent she was on Sulley", Docter said.^[12]

Eventually, Johnson was renamed Sullivan. Sullivan was also planned to wear glasses throughout the film. However, the creators found it a dangerous idea because the eyes were a perfectly readable and clear way of expressing a character's personality; thus, this idea was also rejected.^[20]

The idea of a monster buddy for the lead monster emerged at an April 6, 1998 "story summit" in Burbank with employees from Disney and Pixar. A term coined by Lasseter, a "story summit" was a crash exercise that would yield a finished story in only two days.^[21] Such a character, the group agreed, would give the lead monster someone to talk to about his predicament. Development artist Ricky Nierva drew a concept sketch of a rounded, one-eyed monster as a concept for the character, and everyone was generally receptive to it.^[12] Docter named the character Mike for the father of his friend Frank Oz, a director and Muppet performer.^[15] Jeff Pidgeon and Jason Katz story-boarded a test in which Mike helps Sulley choose a tie for work, and Mike Wazowski soon became a vital character in the film.^[12] Originally, Mike had no arms and had to use his legs as appendages; however, due to some technical difficulties, arms were soon added to him.^[12]

Screenwriter Daniel Gerson joined Pixar in 1999 and worked on the film with the filmmakers on a daily basis for almost two years. He considered it his first experience in writing a feature film. He explained, "I would sit with Pete [Docter] and David Silverman and we would talk about a scene and they would tell me what they were looking for. I would make some suggestions and then go off and write the sequence. We'd get together again and review it and then hand it off to a story artist. Here's where the collaborative process really kicked in. The board artist was not beholden to my work and could take liberties here and there. Sometimes, I would suggest an idea about making the joke work better visually. Once the scene moved on to animation, the animators would plus the material even further."^[17]

Docter has cited the 1973 film Paper Moon as inspiration for the concept of someone experiencing getting stuck with a kid who turns out to be the real expert, and he credits Lasseter for coming up with the “laughter is ten times more powerful than fear” concept.^[22]

Casting[]

Bill Murray was considered for the voice role of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan. He screen tested for the role and was interested, but when Pete Docter was unable to make contact with him, he took it as a "no".^[23][24] The voice role of Sulley went to John Goodman, the longtime co-star of the comedy series Roseanne and a regular in the films of the Coen brothers. Goodman interpreted the character to himself as the monster equivalent of a National Football League player. "He's like a seasoned lineman in the tenth year of his career," he said at the time. "He is totally dedicated and a total pro."^[25] Billy Crystal, having regretted turning down the part of Buzz Lightyear years prior, accepted that of Mike Wazowski, Sulley's one-eyed best friend and scare assistant.^[26][27]

Animation[]

The "door vault" scene is one of the film's most elaborate sets.

In November 2000, early in the production of Monsters, Inc., Pixar packed up and moved for the second time since its Lucasfilm Ltd. years.^[25] The company's approximately 500 employees had become spread among three buildings, separated by a busy highway. The company moved from Point Richmond to a much bigger campus in Emeryville, co-designed by Lasseter and Steve Jobs.^[25]

In production, the film differed from earlier Pixar features, as every main character in this movie had its own lead animator – John Kahrs on Sulley, Andrew Gordon on Mike, and Dave DeVan on Boo.^[28] Kahrs found that the "bearlike quality" of Goodman's voice provided an exceptionally good fit with the character. He faced a difficult challenge, however, in dealing with Sulley's sheer mass; traditionally, animators conveyed a figure's heaviness by giving it a slower, more belabored movement, but Kahrs was concerned that such an approach to a central character would give the film a "sluggish" feel.^[28] Like Goodman, Kahrs came to think of Sulley as a football player, one whose athleticism enabled him to move quickly in spite of his size. To help the animators with Sulley and other large monsters, Pixar arranged for Rodger Kram, a University of California, Berkeley expert on the locomotion of heavy mammals, to lecture on the subject.^[28]

Adding to Sulley's lifelike appearance was an intense effort by the technical team to refine the rendering of fur. Other production houses had tackled realistic fur, most notably Rhythm & Hues in its 1993 polar bear commercials for Coca-Cola and in its talking animals' faces in the 1995 film Babe.^[28] This film, however, required fur on a much larger scale. From the standpoint of Pixar's engineers, the quest for fur posed several significant challenges; one was to figure out how to animate a large number of hairs – 2,320,413 of them on Sulley – in a reasonably efficient way,^[28] and another was to make sure that the hairs cast shadows on other ones. Without self-shadowing, either fur or hair takes on an unrealistic flat-colored look (e.g., in Toy Story, the hair on Andy's toddler sister, as seen in that movie's opening sequence, is hair without self-shadowing).^[28]

The first fur test allowed Sulley to run an obstacle course. Results were not satisfactory, as such objects caught and stretched out the fur due to the extreme amount of motion. Another similar test was also unsuccessful, because, this time, the fur went through the objects.^[20]

Pixar then set up a Simulation department and created a new fur simulation program called Fizt (short for "physics tool").^[29] After a shot with Sulley in it had been animated, this department took the data for that shot and added Sulley's fur. Fizt allowed the fur to react in a more natural way. Every time when Sulley had to move, his fur (automatically) reacted to his movements, thus taking the effects of wind and gravity into account as well. The Fizt program also controlled the movement of Boo's clothes, which provided another "breakthrough".^[29] The deceptively simple-sounding task of animating cloth was also a challenge to animate thanks to those hundreds of creases and wrinkles that automatically occurred in the clothing when the wearer moved.^[30] Also, this meant they had to solve the complex problem of how to keep cloth untangled – in other words, to keep it from passing through itself when parts of it intersect.^[31] Fizt applied the same system to Boo's clothes as to Sulley's fur. First of all, Boo was animated shirtless; the Simulation department then used Fizt to apply the shirt over Boo's body, and every time she moved, her clothes also reacted to her movements in a more natural manner.

To solve the problem of cloth-to-cloth collisions, Michael Kass, Pixar's senior scientist, was joined on Monsters, Inc. by David Baraff and Andrew Witkin and developed an algorithm they called "global intersection analysis" to handle the problem. The complexity of the shots in the film, including elaborate sets such as the door vault, required more computing power to render than any of Pixar's earlier efforts combined. The render farm in place for Monsters, Inc. was made up of 3500 Sun Microsystems processors, compared with 1400 for Toy Story 2 and only 200 for Toy Story, both built on Sun's own RISC-based SPARC processor architecture.^[31]

The scene in which the Harryhausen's restaurant was decontaminated was originally going to feature the restaurant being blown up. Due to the September 11 attacks, the explosion was replaced by a plasma dome.^[32]

Release[]

Theatrical[]

The film premiered on October 28, 2001, at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California.^[33] It was theatrically released on November 2, 2001 in the United States, in Australia on December 26, 2001, and in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2002.^[34] The theatrical release was accompanied by the Pixar short animated film For the Birds.^[35]

As with A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, a montage of "outtakes" and a performance of a play based on a line from the film were made and included in the end credits of the film starting on December 7, 2001.^[36]

After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King,^[37] Disney and Pixar re-released Monsters, Inc. in 3D on December 19, 2012.^[38]

Home media[]

Monsters, Inc. was released on VHS and DVD on September 17, 2002.^[39][40] Both releases are THX certified and feature the animated shorts Mike's New Car and For the Birds. The DVD release gives the viewer the option of viewing the film either in widescreen (1.85:1 aspect ratio) or fullscreen (family-friendly 1.33:1 aspect ratio without pan and scan). On the second disc, there are a variety of bonus features, including the animated shorts, outtakes with the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From or So Help Me! music video, Peek-A-Boo: Boo's Door Game, deleted scenes and more.^[41] The film was then released on Blu-ray on November 10, 2009,^[42] and on Blu-ray 3D on February 19, 2013.^[43] Monsters, Inc. was released on 4K Blu-ray on March 3, 2020.^[44]

Reception[]

Box office[]

Monsters, Inc. ranked number one at the box office on its opening weekend, grossing $62,577,067 in North America alone. The film had a small drop-off of 27.2% over its second weekend, earning another $45,551,028. In its third weekend, the film experienced a larger decline of 50.1%, placing itself in the second position just after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In its fourth weekend, however, there was an increase of 5.9%, making $24,055,001 that weekend for a combined $528 million. As of May 2013, it is the eighth-biggest fourth weekend ever for a film.^[45][46]

The film made $289,916,256 in North America, and $287,509,478 in other territories, for a worldwide $577,425,734.^[1] The film is Pixar's ninth highest-grossing film worldwide and sixth in North America.^[47] For a time, the film surpassed Aladdin as the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, only behind 1994's The Lion King.^[31]

In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Malta, it earned £37,264,502 ($53,335,579), marking the sixth highest-grossing animated film of all time in the country and the thirty-second highest-grossing film of all time.^[48] In Japan, although earning $4,471,902 during its opening and ranking second behind The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the weekend, it moved to first place on subsequent weekends due to exceptionally small decreases or even increases and dominated for six weeks at the box office. It finally reached $74,437,612, standing as 2001's third highest-grossing film and the third largest U.S. animated feature of all time in the country behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo.^[49]

Critical response[]

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 96% based on 197 reviews, with an average score of 8.00/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Clever, funny, and delightful to look at, Monsters, Inc. delivers another resounding example of how Pixar elevated the bar for modern all-ages animation."^[50] Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[51] Audiences polled by CinemaScore, gave the film a rare "A+" grade, becoming the second Pixar film to gain an "A+" grade, after Toy Story 2.^[52][53]

Charles Taylor of Salon magazine stated, "[i]t's agreeable and often funny, and adults who take their kids to see it might be surprised to find themselves having a pretty good time."^[54] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times gave it a positive review, praising the film's usage of "creative energy", saying "There hasn't been a film in years to use creative energy as efficiently as Monsters, Inc."^[55] Although Mike Clark of USA Today thought the comedy was sometimes "more frenetic than inspired and viewer emotions are rarely touched to any notable degree", he also viewed the film as "visually inventive as its Pixar predecessors".^[56]

ReelViews film critic James Berardinelli gave the film 31⁄2 stars out of 4 and wrote that the film was "one of those rare family films that parents can enjoy (rather than endure) along with their kids".^[57] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "cheerful, high-energy fun, and like the other Pixar movies, has a running supply of gags and references aimed at grownups".^[58] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" grade and praised the its animation, stating "Everything from Pixar Animation Studios – the snazzy, cutting-edge computer animation outfit – looks really, really terrific and unspools with a liberated, heppest-moms-and-dads-on-the-block iconoclasm."^[59]

Accolades[]

Monsters, Inc. won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Randy Newman, after fifteen previous nominations, for "If I Didn't Have You").^[60] It was one of the first animated films to be nominated for Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek).^[60] It was also nominated for Best Original Score (lost to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) and Best Sound Editing (lost to Pearl Harbor).^[60] At the Kid's Choice Awards in 2002, it was nominated for "Favorite Voice in an Animated Movie" for Billy Crystal (who lost to Eddie Murphy in Shrek).^[60]

Music[]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[61]
Empire	[62]
Filmtracks.com	[63]
Movie Wave	[64]
Soundtrack.net	[65]

Monsters Inc. was Randy Newman's fourth feature film collaboration with Pixar. The end credits song "If I Didn't Have You" was sung by John Goodman and Billy Crystal.^[17]

The album was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.^[60] The score lost both these awards to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, but after sixteen nominations, the song "If I Didn't Have You" finally won Newman his first Academy Award for Best Original Song.^[60] It also won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.^[60]

Track listing[]

All tracks are written by Randy Newman.

Chart positions[]

Lawsuits[]

A drawing of a character for Stanley Mouse's "Excuse My Dust", a film that he had tried to sell to Hollywood in 1998^[67]

Shortly before the film's release, Pixar was sued by children's songwriter Lori Madrid of Wyoming, stating that the company had stolen her ideas from her 1997 poem "There's a Boy in My Closet".

Madrid mailed her poem to six publishers in October 1999, notably Chronicle Books, before turning it into a local stage musical in August 2001. After seeing the trailer for Monsters, Inc., Madrid concluded that Chronicle Books had passed her work to Pixar and that the film was based on her work.^[68] In October 2001, she filed the suit against Chronicle Books, Pixar, and Disney in a federal court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her lawyer asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, that would forbid Pixar and Disney from releasing the film while the suit was pending.

In a hearing on November 1, 2001, the day before the film's scheduled release, the judge refused to issue the injunction. On June 26, 2002, he ruled that the film had nothing in common with the poem.^[69]

In November 2002, Stanley Mouse filed a lawsuit in which he alleged that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on drawings of Excuse My Dust, a film that he had tried to sell to Hollywood in 1998.^[70] The lawsuit also stated that a story artist from Pixar visited Mouse in 2000 and discussed Mouse's work with him.^[70] A Disney spokeswoman responded, saying that the characters in Monsters, Inc. were "developed independently by the Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures creative teams, and do not infringe on anyone's copyrights".^[67] The case was ultimately settled under undisclosed terms.^{[71][unreliable source]}

Prequel[]

A prequel, titled Monsters University, was released on June 21, 2013. John Goodman, Billy Crystal, and Steve Buscemi reprised their roles of Sulley, Mike, and Randall, while Dan Scanlon directed the film. The prequel's plot focuses on Sulley and Mike's studies at Monsters University, where they start off as rivals but soon become best friends.

Other media[]

An animated short, Mike's New Car, was made by Pixar in 2002 in which the two main characters have assorted misadventures with a car Mike has just bought. This film was not screened in theaters, but is included with all home video releases of Monsters, Inc., and on Pixar's Dedicated Shorts DVD.^[72] In August 2002, a manga version of Monsters, Inc. was made by Hiromi Yamafuji and distributed in Kodansha's Comic Bon Bon magazine in Japan; the manga was published in English by Tokyopop until it went out of print.^[73] A series of video games, including a multi-platform video game were created based on the film. The video games included Monsters, Inc., Monsters, Inc. Scream Team and Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena.^[74] A game titled Monsters, Inc. Run was released on the App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad on December 13, 2012.^[75]

Feld Entertainment toured a Monsters, Inc. edition of their Walt Disney's World on Ice skating tour from 2003 to 2007.^[76] Monsters, Inc. has inspired three attractions at Disney theme parks around the world. In 2006 Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened at Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California.^[77] In 2007, Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor opened at Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, replacing The Timekeeper. The show is improvisational in nature, and features the opportunity for Guests to interact with the monster comedians and submit jokes of their own via text message.^[78] In 2009 Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek opened at Tokyo Disney Resort's Tokyo Disneyland in Chiba, Japan.^[79]

In 2009, Boom! Studios produced a Monsters Inc. comic book mini-series that ran for four issues. The storyline takes place after the movie and focuses on Sulley and Mike's daily struggles to operate Monsters Inc. on its new laughter-focused company policy. At the same time, their work is impeded by the revenge schemes of Randall and Waternoose, as well as a human child (indirectly revealed to be Sid Phillips from the Toy Story franchise) who has hijacked the company's closet door technology to commit a string of toy thefts throughout the human world.^[80]

A world based on the film made its debut appearance in the Kingdom Hearts series in Kingdom Hearts III,^[81][82] making it the second Disney-Pixar movie featured in the series after Toy Story.^[83][84] The world takes place after the events of the first film.

Television series[]

In November 2017, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke about plans to develop a television series spin-off of Monsters, Inc. among other properties owned by the company.^[85][86][87] By November of the following year the series was confirmed for Disney+, and will reportedly continue the story of the previous films.^[88] On April 9, 2019, it was announced that Goodman, Crystal, and Tilly would return as Mike, Sulley, and Celia, respectively for the series. In addition, Ratzenberger will not only return as Yeti, but will also voice a new character, Bernard, and Peterson will not only voice Roz, but Roz's twin sister, Roze. Additional cast members will include Ben Feldman as mechanic monster Tylor Tuskmon, Kelly Marie Tran as Tylor's friend Val Little (later replaced by Mindy Kaling), Henry Winkler as the new boss Fritz, Lucas Neff as Duncan, a plumber, Alanna Ubach as Cutter, Stephen Stanton as Needleman and Smitty (replacing Gerson), and Aisha Tyler as Tylor's mother Millie. The series was released on Disney+ on July 7, 2021.^[89][90] The first season takes place the day after Waternoose is arrested and ends with the epilogue of the film.

See also[]

• List of animated feature films
• List of computer-animated films

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Price, David (2008). The Pixar Touch. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26575-3.

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Monsters, Inc..

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Monsters, Inc.

• Official website
• Pixar website
• Monsters, Inc. at AllMovie
• Monsters, Inc. (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Monsters, Inc. at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Monsters, Inc. at IMDb
• Monsters, Inc. at the TCM Movie Database