I love Inside Out 2, like a lot of people who saw it opening weekend (and make no mistake, a lot of people saw Inside Out 2 opening weekend). I thought it was an amazing film that hit me on an emotional level, and it's likely going to go down as one of the best Pixar movies. As a professional writer who covers the entertainment industry, I also love that there’s finally a movie, the first one in a while, that it feels like everybody has seen and that we can all talk about. And yet. I’m finding myself feeling much more like the emotion in control of my own head is Sadness, perhaps with some backup from Anxiety, and not so much Joy.
While Inside Out 2 is as good as you’ve heard, there’s a part of me that’s a little upset by that. Yes, it’s a good thing for so many reasons, but there’s also a downside to Inside Out 2 doing so well, and it’s bumming me out.
Pixar Needed A Win, And I'm Glad It Got One
If Inside Out 2 had simply had a solid opening weekend at the box office that would have been news, but the movie is tearing things up. It’s setting records for Pixar openings and for animated movie openings in general. This is great news.
While every studio has had a rough time to one degree or another over the last few years, Pixar may have had the toughest time. Onward was released in early 2020, only to have its theatrical run cut short by movie theaters closing due to the global pandemic. Following that, the next three Pixar films, Soul, Luca and Turning Red, would all be released directly on Disney+ rather than in theaters, and without any sort of additional price tag, which Disney did with several live-action films.
At the time, there was a feeling that Pixar was being devalued and being given away for free because that’s what it was worth. The next two Pixar movies, Lightyear and Elemental, would have some of the worst domestic box office numbers ever for the studio. Elemental would have the worst opening weekend since the original Toy Story three decades earlier. Lightyear is the lowest-performing Pixar movie ever at the box office, other than Onward’s shortened run.
There was a question whether anybody cared about Pixar anymore. Maybe it was just the studio that was “just as good” to watch on Disney+ now, and that’s how people were going to handle Pixar movies from now on. We now know that’s not the case. Viewers will turn out in theaters to see Pixar movies, but the fact that they did turn out to see this one after skipping others has me upset.
Inside Out 2’s Success Is (Probably) Going To Teach Disney The Wrong Lesson
The six Pixar movies that preceded Inside Out 2 all have one thing in common that the new movie does not: they weren’t sequels. Even Lightyear, while having a connection to the Toy Story franchise, is clearly its own thing. So if you were to give only a surface-level review of the last several years of Pixar films, what you would see is that fans love Pixar sequels and have much less interest in anything new.
That isn’t exactly news. While many have lamented that all studios are focused on franchises to the exclusion of all else, there’s a very simple reason they do it: it works, and of course it does. We all are interested in more of a thing that we already knew we liked. It’s not rocket science.
One can argue that Inside Out 2 was more successful because it was a better movie, but that argument doesn’t hold. While I hate deferring to Rotten Tomatoes as an authority on this topic, you’ll find that while Inside Out 2 has a better critic and audience score than many Pixar films, the much-maligned Elemental and Lightyear have perfectly respectable scores that are on par with other Pixar projects that were financial successes.
But money is king, and that means that Disney is going to look at Inside Out 2 as a win and those other movies as failures. The lesson it will almost certainly learn is that we need to make more sequels. So get ready, because if you were excited to hear that Toy Story 5 was coming, it’s a safe bet a lot more announcements like that are on the way.
Inside Out Was An Original Idea Once, And It Was A Big Hit Too
But the thing that seems to get lost in the focus on franchises is that franchises have to start somewhere. There was a point in which every franchise was a new, untested idea. Inside Out was once a movie nobody had tried before, and it was both a critical success and a box office hit. It was so popular that it eventually spawned a sequel that looks poised to become even more successful.
At some point every franchise is born, and more importantly, at some point every franchise dies. You can’t keep making Inside Out movies forever. Nobody wants to see the movie where we are introduced to the new character "Riley’s Impending Sense of Mortality." Franchises end, and when they do, you need new franchises to take their place. And for that, you need new ideas.
I’m not saying Lightyear or Elemental should be pushed into becoming franchises if people don’t want them, though I would love to see the future evolution of Ember and Wade’s relationship. But right now, there are probably dozens of people at Pixar with their own ideas they would love to turn into movies who will have to put those ideas on hold because they are about to get dragged into a production meeting for Incredibles 3.
And I’m not against making Incredibles 3 on principle. It could be really good, and if it is, I’m all for it. I'm not against franchises, but I do wish that maybe it was a different movie that broke Pixar out of this slump.
