Monsters University: More than a Soul-less Prequel
I walked into this movie against my will, expecting one of the many soul-less pre/sequels that the children's movie industry has been coming up with of late. Instead, I found commercials (not just the usual previews) and a movie that managed to surprise me, in a good way.
[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]
I must admit, I enjoyed Monsters University. I can't say I loved it, but it was worth the two hours I would've spent watching more episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series (I'm in the middle of trying to make my way through the franchise in order) - not that I haven't been enjoying watching Star Trek, that's been a lot of fun, but more on that another time. To briefly sum up, Monsters University is about Mike and Sully - though mainly Mike - from Monsters Inc. taking their first steps towards becoming scarers by going to college. Sully is naturally scary (just look at him), but not much for studying, while Mike is motivated and spends all his time studying, but just isn't scary. They both end up getting in trouble with the dean, and long story short, have to get a ragtag bunch of losers in shape for a scaring competition that will either win them all back into the scaring school, or get Mike expelled.
Mike and Sully begin as enemies, though of course, they're best friends by the end of the movie. In an interesting twist, that unfortunately didn't go much of anywhere, Mike was initially room mates and fast friends with Randall, a major villain from the original movie. Randall quickly betrays Mike for more popular company and that's the end of his importance. It would have been cool if his friendship with Mike had been developed a bit more so that it actually meant something when he betrays Mike in the middle, but it's not a particularly major detail.
The bits that really surprised me are where the spoilers come in. There's this huge scaring competition that's Mike and Sully's only chance back into the scaring school. It's the last challenge, and they're tied with your typical team of popular kids. Each member of the team has to go into a simulation and scare a random kid. The others on our protagonist's team have done pretty consistently, while the other team has had it's ups and downs. It's down to the last man - Mike - and of course, the two teams are tied. The guy from the other team nails it. Mike goes in, sneaks around, and manages to scare the kid, though it doesn't seem that scary, but he must have done something right because he gets a perfect score. They've won, the crowd goes wild. It's a bit suspicious, but there's so much going on that the audience easily forgets about it.
It turns out, Sully tampered with the simulator. Mike just isn't scary and Sully was worried about it, so he tampered with the simulator so that Mike got a perfect score. It doesn't seem like much of a twist with the foreshadowing pointed out, but the way it was done, it felt a little off, but more in the "maybe the animators weren't doing their job right" way than the foreshadowing way. How it played out, that it was tampered with felt like a real "Ooooooooooooh" moment, just like it was supposed to.
From there, the movie only gets better. Up until that point it was a pretty predictable ragtag group of underdogs led by warring know-it-alls, but from the point Mike finds out the simulator was tampered with, the story goes off in a completely different direction, that makes it all the more interesting.
Mike, to test his skills, goes into a test-door and ends up at a sleep-away camp. Sully follows him in and after running from the police, they return to the door to find that it's been turned off. At Mike's suggestion, they try and get enough screams to open the door from that end. They do this by scaring the police officers who go into the room to investigate, using a lot of theatrics and noise, ending in an appearance from Sully, it works and they manage to get back through as the door explodes. They were both expelled previously when Sully admitted to cheating on the scare competition and this doesn't help their case, even though they did something no one else had done before.
What really made this work wasn't the time in the real world, which though cool, I found less interesting, from an analytical point of view, than the fact that even though they did something so extraordinary that the dean of the school was surprised, they weren't let back in. Instead they become scarers by working their way up through the ranks of Monsters Inc. And that was what really showed me it wasn't just a soul-less prequel. It did something unexpected. It showed the characters facing the consequences of their actions and succeeding despite it. And it worked.
Parts of the school were undoubtedly cliched, especially the various side characters, and there could have been more Randall, but as a whole, Monsters University was a good movie and well worth watching.
[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]
I must admit, I enjoyed Monsters University. I can't say I loved it, but it was worth the two hours I would've spent watching more episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series (I'm in the middle of trying to make my way through the franchise in order) - not that I haven't been enjoying watching Star Trek, that's been a lot of fun, but more on that another time. To briefly sum up, Monsters University is about Mike and Sully - though mainly Mike - from Monsters Inc. taking their first steps towards becoming scarers by going to college. Sully is naturally scary (just look at him), but not much for studying, while Mike is motivated and spends all his time studying, but just isn't scary. They both end up getting in trouble with the dean, and long story short, have to get a ragtag bunch of losers in shape for a scaring competition that will either win them all back into the scaring school, or get Mike expelled.
Mike and Sully begin as enemies, though of course, they're best friends by the end of the movie. In an interesting twist, that unfortunately didn't go much of anywhere, Mike was initially room mates and fast friends with Randall, a major villain from the original movie. Randall quickly betrays Mike for more popular company and that's the end of his importance. It would have been cool if his friendship with Mike had been developed a bit more so that it actually meant something when he betrays Mike in the middle, but it's not a particularly major detail.
The bits that really surprised me are where the spoilers come in. There's this huge scaring competition that's Mike and Sully's only chance back into the scaring school. It's the last challenge, and they're tied with your typical team of popular kids. Each member of the team has to go into a simulation and scare a random kid. The others on our protagonist's team have done pretty consistently, while the other team has had it's ups and downs. It's down to the last man - Mike - and of course, the two teams are tied. The guy from the other team nails it. Mike goes in, sneaks around, and manages to scare the kid, though it doesn't seem that scary, but he must have done something right because he gets a perfect score. They've won, the crowd goes wild. It's a bit suspicious, but there's so much going on that the audience easily forgets about it.
It turns out, Sully tampered with the simulator. Mike just isn't scary and Sully was worried about it, so he tampered with the simulator so that Mike got a perfect score. It doesn't seem like much of a twist with the foreshadowing pointed out, but the way it was done, it felt a little off, but more in the "maybe the animators weren't doing their job right" way than the foreshadowing way. How it played out, that it was tampered with felt like a real "Ooooooooooooh" moment, just like it was supposed to.
From there, the movie only gets better. Up until that point it was a pretty predictable ragtag group of underdogs led by warring know-it-alls, but from the point Mike finds out the simulator was tampered with, the story goes off in a completely different direction, that makes it all the more interesting.
Mike, to test his skills, goes into a test-door and ends up at a sleep-away camp. Sully follows him in and after running from the police, they return to the door to find that it's been turned off. At Mike's suggestion, they try and get enough screams to open the door from that end. They do this by scaring the police officers who go into the room to investigate, using a lot of theatrics and noise, ending in an appearance from Sully, it works and they manage to get back through as the door explodes. They were both expelled previously when Sully admitted to cheating on the scare competition and this doesn't help their case, even though they did something no one else had done before.
What really made this work wasn't the time in the real world, which though cool, I found less interesting, from an analytical point of view, than the fact that even though they did something so extraordinary that the dean of the school was surprised, they weren't let back in. Instead they become scarers by working their way up through the ranks of Monsters Inc. And that was what really showed me it wasn't just a soul-less prequel. It did something unexpected. It showed the characters facing the consequences of their actions and succeeding despite it. And it worked.
Parts of the school were undoubtedly cliched, especially the various side characters, and there could have been more Randall, but as a whole, Monsters University was a good movie and well worth watching.