PIXAR @25: Monsters Inc. "The world behind the closet door"

"What we didn't know, is that we scare them."

What comes out from our closets might not be scary monsters after all.

Pixar reawakened another amusing and childish belief with its wordwide box office hit film Monsters Inc. (2001, directed by Pete Docter and David Silverman), and made us all laugh at the memory when we'd actually believed monsters would emerge from our closets and scare the helll out of us.

Just as we'd imagined, the movie portrayed that eerie atmosphere,the dark bedroom, the closet door twitching, as we trembled in fear and hid in our blankets. That hideous, blood-curdling monster would complete our ghoulish nightmare, and as we watched the movie, we'd realized at one point how we must've overdone our monster sketches.

With Pixar's ever-creative portrayal of a feature film and its exceptional story twists, we learned two new things: for monsters, scaring kids was nothing personal--they're only doing their job to "collect screams" and fuel the Monster World with its power.

"We scare because we care." So out came the most menacing--but rather cuddly--monster in town: James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (John Goodman), ready to break records and beat his nemesis Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi) with the help of his one-eyed friend Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). And from Monsters Inc.'s "doorshelf" out came the pink flowery door, the door that would change his life forever.

Now the rhetorical question would be, "Who got scared?" What-we-didn't-know number two: we "toxic" kids actually scare our monsters in return.  He who scares was now scared he would get germs from us.

The story came to an impossible but touching monster-kid relationship. And as we toured the breathtaking world behind our closets, we discovered the good side of such misunderstood creatures we'd deemed our worst nightmares, and realized that monsters aren't so different from us after all--as they can also gain a change of heart.

The scene when Sulley was playing hide-and-seek with the brave two-year-old kid Boo (Mary Gibbs)  in the bathroom always give me the chills, thinking if I could ever play hide-and-seek with the beast hiding in my closet.

What do we know? We might meet our personal monsters one day, and change their lives just as they've changed ours.

MONSTERS INC. Fact Sheet

1. The movie's inspiration came from director Pete Docter, who, as a child, knew there were scary monsters in his closet.

2. Sulley's body animation (with over two million computer-animated hairs) was no easy task, Pixar animated. The technical team had created a Render Man DSO (Dynamically Stimulated Object) propriety program for Sulley's hairs.

3. Kids must've really loved Monsters Inc., as it soared past the $524M mark in worldwide box office receipts and even surpassed Disney's Lion King in 2002.

4. Monsters Inc. won the Oscars Award for Best Original Song ("If I Didn't  Have You") and nominated for Best Animated Feature Film, Best Original Score and Best Sound Editing.

His dreams behind the cowboy suit

Sometimes you have to analyze the nature of others to analyze yours.


A mob boss and a shrink. One engaged in mafia schemes, the other in ginko biloba and ibuprofen overdoses. Without a doubt, both had completely different worlds, but actually shared the same story of loss: the death of their fathers--their heroes.

The comic movie Analyze That (2002, directed by Harold Ramis) seriously confused me whether my tears were brought by crying over Paul Vitti's (Robert De Niro) tragic story, or by laughing off my seat on how he comically hugged his therapist Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal) while crying, looking like 10-year-old kids who just lost their teddy bears. This is the very first movie I watched which taught me how to analyze deeper, that the conflict in any story is not about the entrance of villains, but about their own stuggles with their identities because after all, bad guys never wanted to be one.

Convicted mob boss Paul Vitti (De Niro) itched to get out of Sing Sing Prison, with the Rigazzi mafia trying to kill him. He ended up with a brilliant plan involving West Side Story songs, a catatonic behavior and his therapist Ben Sobel (Crystal). He got his runaway ticket and stayed in Ben's house for everyday therapy.


Paul's story reflect on the Nature vs. Nurture principle. When he was a kid he'd wanted to be a cowboy because his father, also a mob boss, bought him the whole outfit and even made him ride a pony. But then when he was 12 he saw his father murdered right in front of him. All his father's dreams for him as a hero, and not as a mob boss like him, had vanished, with Paul joining the mob since then.

Ben, on the other hand, was freshly grieving for his father and struggled to "reform" the mob boss. As he was "staring into a big hole that he can't fill up", he realized the "assignment" wasn't really a burden; but an eye-opener showing  the effects and implications after one loses a father.


The movie did not only entertain because of its smart and hilarious lines, but also taught a lesson that bad guys, once upon a time, got their own heroes and dreams, too.

"There's a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we're half way there.
Hold my hand and I'll take you there
Somehow,
Someday,
Somewhere!"

Thank you to my mentor, Ms. Josephine Bonsol, for teaching me how to analyze that.