My Final Thoughts on Monsters University

In my first review of Monsters University, even though I was able to tell you my thoughts on the film, I wanted to refrain from revealing any spoilers, so I couldn’t go into much detail when stating my thoughts. Now that the film has been released on Blu-Ray and DVD, I feel that now would be a good time to just spill out all my thoughts on the film without needing to refrain from spoilers and not feel bad about not doing so.

Monsters University is a brilliant film. I honestly cannot find anything wrong with it. It is just as good as the original film and for a prequel, that is a massive achievement. Prequels are extremely difficult to pull off because, of course, you know how it’s going to end. In this film’s case, even though we know Mike and Sulley will end up being friends, HOW they ended up becoming friends is not only unpredictable, but also really interesting, captivating and heartwarming.

Mike tries his best to become a scarer, whereas Sulley is lazy and has everything handed to him. Sulley’s family is made up of famous scarers and has a big history of scaring and does not realize the big expectations he has to live up to.

The idea of having Mike dream of being a scarer just to find out that he is not scary and have that dream crushed is extremely powerful and upsetting. We get to know Mike since his childhood at the beginning of the film and we have connected with Mike and want him to succeed, so seeing this happen is really sad. Despite us knowing that Mike isn’t even a scarer in the original film, but instead Sulley’s helper, it still hits you pretty hard when you see Mike get kicked out.

In many animated films (and even live action films), there always seems to be this theme of being able to do anything if you really believe you can. This film does the exact opposite and instead tells it like it is. That is a really risky message that even live action films are scared to pull off.

All of the characters, new and old, are extremely likable. There are so many amazing characters with such interesting stories, especially the members of Oozma Kappa. We have Don Carlton, an adult student who used to be working in Sales. I find his story really heartwarming and unique and shows how you can never be too old to learn new things. We also have Scott “Squishy” Squibbles, a boy who still lives with his mother. He has a really fun personality and always sneaks up on Mike from behind and unintentionally scares him, a technique which he takes advantage of in the final Scare Games competition (which I will be talking about soon). He also really looks up to Sulley as a role model, which I think is really beautiful.

Next up are Terry and Terry. They are conjoined twins and have completely different personalities. One of them is a dance major and is very energetic, the other one is more calm. Seeing them fight together is extremely funny, especially since they are connected to one body. Next up is probably my favorite of the bunch, Art. He is so funny! Every sentence he says just makes me burst into laughter. The way he walks and the look he makes on his face and the weird things he can do, it’s all so perfect! He is also really mysterious. This is perfectly captured when he says, “I can’t go back to jail!” No one really knows his backstory and that’s what makes Art such a great character.

Another amazing new character is Dean Hardscrabble. She is very self-contained and is really creepy because of that. You never know when she is going to just snap, and when Mike and Sulley destroyed her record breaking scream canister, I pretty much feared for their lives. Yes, I know, it’s a prequel, but she is such a creepy character and you do not know what she could do next, and when her most prized possession got destroyed, I kind of feared what will happen next.

One returning character who I felt had a story that was handled really well is Randall Boggs. A lot of people thought that he did not have enough screen time, but I thought his amount of screen time was perfect and he was not an overused or underused character. I liked how Sulley unintentionally ruined Randall’s scare during the final Scare Game competition, which truly started the rivalry between the two. I also liked how it built up from Mike and Randall being friends, to Mike telling Randall to take off his glasses (hence the reason why he squints all the time), to the times where both Mike and Sulley unintentionally embarrass Randall. I felt that his character arc was perfectly handled.

What I found was very inventive in this film was the idea of The Scare Games. The first one, with the stinging glow urchins was quite possibly one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen in a Pixar film. The competition in the library with the 50 foot librarian was also up there as one of the funniest scenes I have seen in a Pixar film. Each of the Scare Game competitions was different, unique and fun, and they all built up to the final competition, where the surprises do not seem to stop.

During the final Scare Game competition, Mike did the winning scare… Or so he thought. It turned out that Sulley tampered with Mike’s difficulty level on the scare simulator and made it the easiest level. This was a truly brilliant scene. I was not expecting it at all! I thought the movie was about to end and then this happened! Talk about surprises. At this point in the scene, Squishy looks at Sulley heart broken, since his role model has pretty much betrayed him and the entire fraternity. This brings us to the remarkable third act of the film.

Mike wants to prove that he is scary, so he actually breaks into the door lab and enters a door into the human world. Given the angles and shots in the first couple minutes in this scene, it looks like it’s just any other kid’s bedroom. That is not where Mike is at all. It turns out that he is in a camp filled with kids who don’t find him scary! This is yet another massive reveal. But the surprises don’t end there! Sulley enters the human world as well to look for Mike! But the surprises don’t end there either! Dean Hardscrabble turns off the power for the door leading to the human world, leaving Mike and Sulley trapped! The stakes were constantly being raised in this scene.

During the third act, there is an extremely heartwarming scene where Sulley tells Mike that even though he tries to be scary, he is constantly terrified inside. He also says that he can tell this to Mike because they are now friends. This is a really heartwarming scene and it builds up to the amazing scaring scene, where they get enough scream energy to not only power the door back into the monster world, but have the door and all the scream canisters in the door lab explode! They even do what seems to be impossible. They surprise Dean Hardscrabble!

There is also a really inspiring scene where Mike, Sulley and the other members of Oozma Kappa go on a “field trip” to Monsters Inc. And by field trip, I mean Oozma Kappa breaks into Monsters Inc. and peek through the window to the scare floor and see scarers in action. There is a really inspiring quote that Mike says about how all of the monsters on the scare floor use their differences to their advantage. That one quote is a really inspiring one that really got to me. There is also a really fun and intense chase scene soon after when the security sees that they broke in.

I love the ending of this movie. The scene where Mike and Sulley were saying goodbye to Oozma Kappa was really heartwarming and I got to admit, it brought a tear to my eye, especially when Don Carlton gives them his business card with “Sales” crossed out and instead has “Scare Student” written over it. Then after when Mike tells them that they are the scariest bunch of monsters he has ever met, that pretty much left me in tears. This film has a ton of heart in it.

I find it brilliant how Mike and Sulley ended up getting expelled from the university at the end of the movie and how they build up their status in Monsters Inc. and go from working in the mail room, to Sulley being a scarer and Mike being his assistant. I felt that the fact that they ended up getting expelled was a really interesting move the filmmakers made and, as I have mentioned before, it helps build a theme that many filmmakers are scared to put in their films.

The voice acting is amazing. Billy Crystal as Mike and John Goodman as Sulley perfectly fit the characters and bring them to life. All of the other actors bring the rest of the characters, such as the members of Oozma Kappa and Dean Hardscrabble to life as well. All of the actors fit the traits of the characters they are playing perfectly. The physical traits, movements and designs of the characters perfectly fit their character traits as well. For example, Sulley is a lazy character, so he has a bit of a hunched back and he walks in this really lazy and laid back way. The voice acting and character designs all fit perfectly.

Pixar likes to raise the bar in storytelling, but they also raise the bar in animation. In this case, the animation is amazing. Pixar always raises the bar in both storytelling and animation, and this is the first full length Pixar film that used something called Global Illumination, which makes the lighting and animation more photo-realistic. The first time Pixar used Global Illumination was in The Blue Umbrella, a short film which was shown before Monsters University. It is obvious that Pixar doesn’t like to make things look too photo-realistic and you can see that Pixar didn’t make Monsters University look too realistic. After all, making the film look like live action would kind of ruin the purpose of making the film animated. During the production of Finding Nemo, the animation looked too realistic, so they made it so that it won’t look as realistic. There is an interesting bonus feature talking about this on the Finding Nemo Blu-Ray and DVD which you should look into if you’re interested.

Anyways, the animation in Monsters University is really vivid and beautiful and the setting makes sense given the fact that it takes place in the monster world. If there was a university for monsters, it would most likely look the same as it does in this film. Also, the character designs are remarkable. Each monster looks different and unique, including the background monsters.

Overall, Monsters University is a masterpiece. It is just as good as any other Pixar film and there is not one aspect of the film that is bad. Everything about the film is perfect!

What do you think of Monsters University? Do you think it's as good as Pixar's other films? Comment below!