Post by pitbulllady on Dec 11, 2013 18:44:46 GMT -5
I always had Mike at the top of my list of 'most annoying characters in all of fiction'. So I was very puzzled when I first heard about MU, when all the books said he was a hard-working A grade student. It seemed like he'd had a personality transplant between MI and MU, with him getting less intelligent and mature as he got older. (Sulley being a lazy teenager then growing up made sense.)
The shift in perspective explains that. MU is told from Mike's POV, and Mike is rather a unreliable narrator, so of course he'd exaggerate his own bravery and intelligence.
Thanks for explaining that.
"Mike is rather an unreliable narrator" might just be one of the greatest understatements of this millennium! Mike is absolutely perfect in his own opinion of himself. He can do no wrong, none whatsoever. EVERYONE else screws up, makes mistakes, has character or personality flaws...but not HIM, oh, no! Mike starts out that way in MU and he's still like that in MI, absolutely believing in his own perfection, which is why he had such a hard time dealing with that reality slapping him in the face in MU. Note that he quickly snapped out of that funk, though, got over it fast, once he realized that by teaming up with Sulley, he could STILL live out his dream/fantasy. But to Mike, everyone else was just wrong and he was right all along. Even as a little kid, there were signs that things weren't quite right, mentally, with Mike. He's disrespectful of authority figures like the teacher, when he calls her by her first name, when he disobeys orders not to "go over the line", for instance. I can understand completely why the other kids, even his own COUSIN, didn't want to partner with him; they were sick and tired of hearing him go on and on about how wonderful and amazing he was. Later, on the bus to MU, you can see how relieved everyone was when Mike got off at the university, and I can imagine them having to listen to him rattle on incessantly about how great he was and how he was going to be the the best Scarer the world had ever known, interspersed with his advice to THEM about things that weren't any of his business or which he had no real knowledge of, as we see him doing when he gets off the bus. Imagine being subjected to that for who-knows-how-many hours! Mike actually sees himself as the main one responsible for the success of Sulley as a Scarer later on at MI.
That difference in perception, though, could also in part explain why RANDALL seems so different from MU to MI. Mike has little opinion of Randall one way or the other. Randall was just someone he met at college, nothing more. Mike would have easily forgotten Randall entirely had they not wound up working next to each other on the Scare Floor, and indeed, I still have to wonder if Mike actually connects Randall with MU at all. To Sulley, though, Randall is simply horrible, since he wanted to use Boo as a test subject for the Scream Extractor and his anger was directed at Sulley in particular. I'd long thought that the real "beef" was between Randall and MIKE, since it seemed that Randall was targeting Mike initially, with that locker room prank, and Mike seemed to be the one who had the most issues with Randall, tormenting him with his second-place status, but then, MIKE was the one willing to trust Randall to "make this all go away" and solve the problem with "It"(Boo), while Sulley was the one who figured that Randall was up to no good insofar as Boo was concerned. Sulley saw Randall from the POV of a parent trying to protect a child, even if that child wasn't his.
Now, we need to get RANDALL'S perspective, to make things fair!
pitbulllady