Why Inside Out 2 Is Probably Going To Suck

Inside Out was a pretty good movie. Not a masterpiece, but a very accessible way to talk about emotions and to encourage kids to think and talk about how they're feeling.

It's a pity that the sequel is probably going to be terrible.

To understand why, we need to talk about the original. Spoilers if you haven't already seen it.

The basic premise of the first film is that young Riley's emotions are controlled by 5 little brain-people: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger. One day, Sadness leaves, feeling unappreciated, and Joy goes to find her--leaving Disgust, Fear, and Anger to hold down the fort and try to simulate the other two emotions. They do a pretty poor job. As Joy and Sadness adventure around the brain, trying to get back to the emotional center, Riley, depressed after her family's move to San Francisco, runs away from home, using her allowance to buy a bus ticket back to her old hometown in Minnesota. Joy and Sadness get everything back online just in time for Riley to realize that she still has her family and running away won't fix anything. She returns home, and the emotions come to understand that it's okay for Riley's memories to have more than one emotion associated with them.

So that's the first movie. It's a pretty nice abstraction of how the mind works, in a way kids can understand. But the second movie starts with Riley turning 13, and anxiety showing up.

Anxiety is not a problem I have with Inside Out 2. Given Riley's personality in the first movie, and the emotional roller coaster of adolescence, Anxiety makes perfect sense. The problem is the rumored second newcomer: Depression.

See, depression in the first movie was pretty solidly set up as a disconnect from your inner Joy and Sadness. To have a Depression entity directly contradicts the first movie.

There's also the problem that Disney can't include the other obvious new feeling that happens when you're a teenager: lust. It's a PG movie, after all, and besides, looking into the sexual fantasies of a 13-year-old girl is really creepy. But other than asexual people, pretty much every 13-year-old experiences lust. It's the stereotypical age at which your peers of your preferred gender start looking really good to you. Combine that lust with the other life changes that happen during puberty, and you've got a recipe for lots of insecurity, embarrassment, and all the other emotional upheaval that's pretty much a normal part of being a teenager. The lack of lust is gonna be painfully obvious simply because this is a family movie and they can, at best, coyly hint at its existence.

But the biggest reason I don't have high hopes for Inside Out 2? Disney doesn't have a good track record with sequels. Lilo & Stitch 2, the Toy Story films, and the Return of Jafar were outliers in a sea of forgettable, hastily-churned-out garbage. I should know. One summer I watched a bunch of Disney sequels just out of curiosity, and they're just not good. A sequel coming out a year after the flop that was Elementals implies a general loss of quality in the output of a company that has been a household name for decades. It's an open secret that Disney's M.O. nowadays is less "make a great movie, and financial success is ensured" and more "make lots of money repackaging the classics, and make whatever seems to be marketable." Inside Out 2 feels like another step in the wrong direction.

It's frustrating seeing Disney fumble the ball lately. They refused to market Strange Worlds, a film with lots of characters of color; most of their films with Black protagonists have said protagonist outside of their own body for long periods of time, which is Not A Good Look; did I mention Elementals already?

So I don't have high hopes for Inside Out 2. Disney may come through and surprise me, but at this point (November 2023) I'm not very optimistic.