Monsters, Inc. (2001)
A Pixar original story by Pete Docter.
Intro (“Monsters, Inc.”). In a world inhabited by monsters, the city of Monstropolis harnesses the screams of human children for energy. 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 work is considered dangerous, as human children are believed to be toxic and capable of killing a monster through physical contact. Energy production is declining because children are becoming less afraid, and the company's CEO, Henry J. Waternoose III, is determined to prevent the company's collapse.
One evening after work, James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, a top-ranking scarer who works on Scare Floor F, discovers that an active door has been left in the station of Randall Boggs, his rival. He inspects the door and accidentally lets a young 2 year old human girl into the factory. Frightened, Sulley unsuccessfully attempts to return the girl, who escapes into Monstropolis, interrupting Mike Wazowski, Sulley's best friend and assistant, on a date with Celia, his snake-haired girlfriend and the receptionist of Monsters Inc., at a sushi restaurant called Harryhausen. Chaos erupts when other monsters see the girl, but Sulley and Mike escape with her before the Child Detection Agency (CDA) arrives and quarantines the restaurant. Forced to keep the girl hidden in their apartment for the night, Sulley soon realizes that the girl is not toxic and her laughter supplies even more energy than screams.
The next day, Sulley and Mike disguise the girl as a monster and take her to the factory. While Mike seeks out her door (a white door with pink flowers on it), Sulley grows attached to her and nicknames her "Boo". Randall, waiting in ambush for the girl, captures Mike by accident and reveals his plan to kidnap children and harvest their screams using his new invention, the scream extractor. Sulley rescues Mike and they head to the training room to report Randall to Mr. Waternoose. There, he forces Sulley to give a scare demonstration to the new trainees, which frightens Boo and makes Sulley realize how wrong scaring children is. Boo reveals herself and Mike tells Waternoose about Randall's plan. However, he reveals he is on Randall's side, kidnaps Boo and uses a door to exile Mike and Sulley to the Himalayas where they meet Yeti, the Abominable Snowman, a former Monsters, Inc. employee who was banished (Loch Ness and Bigfoot were also banished to their respective locations). Sulley heads to a nearby village to find a door and get back to the factory, but Mike initially refuses to go with him.
Sulley saves Boo from the scream extractor, and Randall proceeds to attack him. Mike returns to reconcile with Sulley and exposes Randall, who pursues them and Boo into the enormous door storage vault; Randall manages to catch up, but is defeated by Boo. The trio then hurl Randall through a door to the Everglades, which they then destroy, leaving Randall permanently trapped in the human world. When Mike and Sulley locate Boo's door, Waternoose, accompanied by the CDA, brings it down to the scare floor to arrest Mike and Sulley. Mike distracts the CDA while Sulley and Boo escape, leading Waternoose into the training room, where he reveals his conspiracy to kidnap as many children as necessary to keep the company afloat. Mike records the conversation and reveals it to the CDA, and Waternoose is arrested. Roz, the dispatch manager for Scare Floor F, reveals herself as the CDA's undercover director known as Number 1, and orders Sulley to send Boo home, and after Sulley sadly says goodbye to Boo, the door is shredded.
Afterwards, Sulley retools the company's power generation method to harvest children's laughter instead of screams, as laughter is ten times more powerful. With the energy crisis solved, the factory is now focused on making children laugh to collect energy; Mike becomes the company's top comedian, and Sulley is named the new CEO. Mike surprises Sulley by revealing he rebuilt Boo's shredded door. Sulley enters the door and smiles as Boo says “Kitty!" (“If I Didn’t Have You”).
TRIVIA
Technology
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, 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.
Pixar also set up a Simulation department and created a new fur simulation program called Fizt (short for "physics tool”) which 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". 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. 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. Fizt applied the same system to Boo's clothes as to Sulley's fur. To solve the problem of cloth-to-cloth collisions, Pixar developed an algorithm they called "global intersection analysis" to handle the problem.
Visual Style
To help the animators with Sulley and other large monsters, Pixar arranged for Rodger Kram, a UC Berkeley expert on the locomotion of heavy mammals, to lecture on the subject.
Monstropolis was designed based on the following principles: (1) Monsters have been around for as long as there have been frightened humans and the city should reflect this long history. (2) Monsters come in all shapes. Doors, telephones, and lockers must be usable by two-foot-tall monsters with tentacles as well as eleven-foot monsters with claws. (3) Most monsters are very heavy. The city would be built with strong, durable materials like brick, stone, and steel.
To successfully create a believable world in which monsters live, work, dine, and date, each individual prop and element of architecture had to be part of the whole approach for Monstropolis. The world needed to echo the human world and yet be monster specific. Brick buildings reinforced with steel, like those from the 1900s, felt like they could support monsters who weighed as much as 800 pounds. Household appliances ran on scream energy instead of electricity—so everything like the TV, stereo, and lighting hooked up to conduits that suggested a supply source similar to natural gas.
The factory took its shape inspired by images of post-World War II America and the dawn of the baby boom. The filmmakers decided Monsters, Inc. would have expanded heavily during this golden age of children to frighten. Then with the advent of violent films, television, and video games, the expansion would have stopped, leaving the Monsters, Inc. factory with its vintage assembly line and architectural design.
Easter Egg(s)
In Boo’s room, there’s a doll of Jessie from Toy Story, Nemo from Finding Nemo.
Deleted Scene(s)
Unused concepts seen in a deleted scene includes a scream refinery.
A 2021 Pixar series Monsters At Work follows the events of Monsters, Inc. and follows a recent Scare Major graduate who gets hired at Monsters, Inc. as well as Mike and Sulley as they run Monsters, Inc.
Attraction(s)
Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek (Tokyo Disneyland)
Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor (Magic Kingdom Disney World)