Post by lizardgirl on Jul 15, 2013 15:35:53 GMT -5
I saw MU yesterday and ended up writing a review of it (which sort of turns into a ramble about the characters halfway through...So it's more like an 'analysis' rather than a review, I guess). I posted it on Tumblr but thought I might as well put it up here too- feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts. Be warned though: it's very long, and very rambley.
"So, I finally saw MU yesterday.
I went with a couple of uni friends who really have no idea how much the original (and Randall) means to me so I found myself trying to keep my emotions in check…I would’ve gone with closer friends, but everyone’s left uni for the summer and since i’m stuck here working, my debating friends were the only people I could get to come. To be fair, they both enjoyed the film immensely. Even before watching MU, one of them was saying how MI was his favourite animated film growing up and how keen he was to see the prequel. They both found it funny and charming and we all felt the reflection of our own time at university (though they’re only going into their second year, so they’ve got plenty more fun university times to come).
A quick note on the Blue Umbrella first: very sweet, very sincere, a little cheesy, yes, but beautiful on the whole. I really loved how they used sound to such effect as well, and as someone who loves rainy days and is fed up of this incessantly warm weather we’re having in England at the moment, it made me long even more for a good burst of rain.
Anyway, MU. I’ll say now that my main qualm was that there was something just not quite right with the pacing, like the way the different acts didn’t really flow into each other…Maybe it’s just because it was my first viewing, but yeah, it just seemed a bit off. I can’t really put my finger on it.
Aside from that, though, I really enjoyed the film. It was SO funny, so much funnier than I expected (and much funnier than the original, in my opinion) and I loved the college environment that was created. One of the main reasons I want to go and see it again is so I can really take some time to appreciate the beauty of the scenery and the design and so on, though there were moments when it just stood out to me so much, such as the incredible School of Scaring, which was architecturally amazing inside and outside.
The characters, too, were very endearing. I didn’t fall totally in love with any of the new guys from Oozma Kappa, though they were a lovely bunch. In a way, I felt it was a shame that we didn’t get much of a chance to know them as individuals beyond a few stereotypical traits. In fact, in general I thought that character development of the minor characters was sacrificed for an unyielding focus on Mike (and partially on Sulley), which is totally understandable; this was Mike’s story, after all. I say it’s a shame nevertheless, though, because these guys had great potential- I wanted to see more conflict between Terry and Terri, I wanted to see more craziness from Art, and so on. I can imagine there were a lot of concepts and ideas for these characters that got dropped in the final cut.
As for the ROR guys, again, I felt like there could’ve been more. (Though in reality, there probably couldn’t have been, considering that focus on Mike.) Johnny was cool, suave, everything I expected him to be, but I didn’t get much out of him as a character beyond that. There’s a hint that he’s desperate to win not just for the sake of it, but because of the pressure of his family’s legacy (the same sort of stuff Sulley has to deal with) but, again, not much is said of him.
Nope, it’s all about Mike. And I’m glad Pixar had the idea to develop him as a character in and of himself, because he was just the sidekick who didn’t ‘get it’ in MI. This time, we get to see his motivations, his determination, we get to appreciate what a hard worker he is, and you do get the feeling that he deserves his ultimate success. He’s a good guy who worked his way to the top and he should be proud of that.
However…I didn’t totally LIKE him. I didn’t find myself warming up to him as much as I thought I would- as much as I hoped I would. Admittedly, I wasn’t keen on the character as he was in MI, but I hoped that seeing him grow into the person he became to be would help me understand his sometimes arrogant and boastful nature. I’m not saying he’s a bad person or anything in MI, but he’s certainly not the kind of guy I’d want to spend time with.
And yet, even with the knowledge of why he was so determined to be a Scarer, even knowing that his classmates always wrote him off, and he was determined to prove them wrong, to prove everyone wrong…I just didn’t totally feel it. His desire to feel special was understandable, definitely. His desire to be recognised, sure. He seems to have been able to take all of the bad things everyone says about him, and say “nope, that’s their problem, not mine. I KNOW I’m amazing, I KNOW I’m great, and I’m going to show them!"
It’s all an illusion, of course, but the fact that he manages to build that illusion in the first place is nothing short of a miracle. He must’ve had the most amazing, supportive, and stupid parents ever (though to be fair, we do see his mother in MI, and she seems…Yeah, well, she fits the bill). I was reminded of all of these X Factor style programmes where you get individuals who have no talent whatsoever going up on stage and getting ripped apart- but why do they go up on stage in the first place? Because their parents are in the background, supporting their unachievable fantasy.
So maybe one of the morals is, “be honest with yourself", because the reason Mike was so hurt by his realisation that he was not a good Scarer was because the illusion had dropped. And suddenly he didn’t have the chance to be special in the way he wanted.
I don’t know, I guess as someone who tends to approach things from the other end of the spectrum- I usually say, “no, I can’t do it" even when I often can- I find it difficult to empathise with someone who always says, “yes, I can do it", even when they can’t. I just find the latter approach almost big-headed, but in Mike’s defence, it was a mechanism that allowed him to protect himself, it was a mechanism that stopped everything that everyone else was saying from hurting. I just can’t relate to it as well as the other mechanism, which also helps you form a barrier, but in a different way.
And now we come to Randy. Because if Mike is a “I CAN do this!" sort of guy, Randy is a “I probably can’t…" They developed different and contrasting mechanisms from the same problem: rejection and exclusion. So it’s ironic that they don’t end up as good friends in the future.
What’s even more ironic is that as the illusion of positivity falls away from Mike, as he begins to realise that he DOES have limits, Randall starts building up an illusion. He spends most of the film internalising all of his feelings, taking everything personally- someone doesn’t want to be friends with him, it’s his fault, someone doesn’t think he’s going to be a good Scarer, then they’re right and he’s wrong, someone tells him to take off his glasses because he’ll scare better, and he doesn’t even question it, just goes ahead and does as he’s told.
Whilst Mike externalises everything ("those kids at school tell me I’m rubbish at something, but I know I’m good- they’re the ones with the problem!), Randall internalises everything ("those kids at school are right, I’m the one with the problem").
And yet there’s a switch. Mike starts to internalise things, starts to look at himself as the illusion falls away.
And Randall? He begins to externalise. That moment in the Scare Games, when it all goes wrong? He could blame himself entirely- as he usually would have done. He could be totally down on himself about it. But he decides not to do that, he decides to blame someone else: Sulley.
That’s all he does in MI, he blames Sulley for everything- that damned Sullivan, beating me on the Scare Leader board, that damned Sullivan, ruining my chances with Waternoose, that damned Sullivan, messing up my project!
Because blaming someone else for everything that happens is much easier than realising that YOU’RE the problem. By attributing his downfall to Sulley, Randall finds an (unhealthy) mechanism by which he is able to start feeling a bit better about himself. It’s why we see him getting a bit more richardy in MI, talking about those big numbers he’s going to rack up- it’s all an illusion, he’s trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to convince Mike and Sulley. Mike’s illusion is long gone, he doesn’t need it anymore because he has learned to accept and love himself and has found success through doing so. Randall, however, leans on his illusion, relies on it to keep him going. Yes, course I’m amazing, yes, this project is going to garner me recognition and respect from EVERYONE in this factory! Even Sullivan will look up to me…
Because if you hate yourself so much, you have two options: continue to hate yourself and turn into a ball of depression, or hate someone else. Blame them for your failures, blame them for everything that goes wrong, and hence feel better about yourself. I can imagine, when Sulley and Mike keep winning awards and being in the paper for every little thing they do, that Randall gets peed off. And when Randall struggles to make friends at MI (yes, conjecture, but I think it’s likely), and when he sees Sulley and Mike becoming the most popular new workers, he blames them for his lack of popularity. He blames them for everything.
And he blames them and blames them and blames them, for years. And then when they’re the ones who interfere with his biggest plan, his final, craziest attempt at getting that respect that he wanted all along (because, unlike Mike and Sulley, Randall never shows that he cares THAT much for Scaring- he only cares for it if it’s going to earn him respect, but he doesn’t do it for the sake of the beauty of the thing, or that he enjoys it particularly) then he snaps.
So, what started as a review of the film ended up being me rambling about my Randall theories. (And yes, of course these are all theories- I don’t claim that any of this is true for certain, just my interpretation of things.)
And having seen MU, I can totally see why so many people are saying “he was an ass all along!" Because he doesn’t come across particularly well, not at all. He doesn’t come across badly, as such- it is emphasised that anything he does ‘against’ Mike and Sulley (which isn’t much at all, in fact it’s pretty much only that soft toy incident) is stuff initiated by Johnny, and you get the impression that Randall would rather stay out of conflict and rivalry if possible. But he doesn’t come across WELL- he doesn’t stay loyal to Mike and he very much follows the crowd.
I did question why his and Mike’s friendship disappeared so quickly, considering it’s implied they spend at least three months in that dorm room together. Admittedly we only ever see Randall helping Mike with his dream, and not the other way round- we never see Mike attempt to help Randall make friends, for example, and we never see him really recognise just how insecure and worried Randall is.
That’s probably what appealed to Randall concerning ROR; I can imagine Johnny picking up on that insecurity, as well as Randall’s potential for being a pretty useful ROR member, and bigging him up, helping him to start externalising things more. I also feel that Randall did have to ‘prove’ himself a fair bit in order to get into ROR, so although his “don’t mess this up for me, Mike" line seems a bit mean at the time, it does hint at something more.
Mike’s biggest crime (and Sulley’s, too) is just being a bit oblivious to how Randall’s feeling. They both (Sulley especially) treat him like he’s invisible, and so the second anyone bothered showing him any recognition (i.e. Johnny), Randall couldn’t help but lap it up. Because again, it’s Mike asking Randall for a favour, not the other way around, and again, it’s Mike wanting other people to do stuff for him so that HE can get back onto the Scare programme and succeed, not so that THEY can succeed. I guess that’s another reason why I wasn’t totally keen on Mike in MU- initially, he uses OK, he actively looks down on them, which is pretty funny considering how everyone’s always looked down on him.
But, again in his defence, he learns from his mistakes, he learns to value these people as people and not just as tools for success, and in a roundabout way he learns about true friendship. Randall, however, as per usual, doesn’t get the chance to go through that, and in his association with ROR just gets screwed over a bit- they pretend to care about him enough to lure him in, but he’s really no more than a novelty to them (like that scene where they laugh at him doing his “thing") and when he messes up, he gets a bollocking, even more so than one of the other RORs who also messed up…So they basically make it pretty clear to him that they were using him.
And again, instead of internalising all of that, instead of going “I’m a bit crap", he takes that experience of being used, he takes the embarrassment and humiliation, and he blames Sulley. He unfairly blames Sulley, yes, because Sulley doesn’t do much wrong to him aside from treating him as a bit of a nonentity, but that and Mike’s inevitable ranting about how annoying Sulley is in their first few months of being freshmen is enough for Randall to focus his hatred on him. He’s an easy target.
Anyway, I should stop rambling now. In short, I did enjoy the film. It was great, very heartfelt and funny. I very much enjoyed the whole segment with Mike and Sulley in the human world, which was unexpected and yet fitted in nicely. I think I like Sulley more than I used to (though I never actually disliked him, just felt pretty neutral about him, though I do like what a softy he is). I like that Sulley opened up to Mike, and I like that he really grew throughout the course of MU. He became much more endearing by the end of it, for sure.
Mike…Mike I’m not so sure about. I’m always going to be inherently biased, but even taking the most unbiased perspective I can, I still felt that there was something quite selfish about him before that illusion fell. However, he too grew through his experiences and it was great to see him develop so much as a character.
MU certainly puts the events of MI in a different light, to some extent anyway. It’s going to be odd watching MI again, watching the interactions between Mike, Sulley and Randall with the knowledge of some of what came before. I think, if anything, I now empathise with Randall more than ever- in fact, I never really empathised with him before, more just sympathised, because although I’ve always felt for his predicament, I’ve never experienced anything like that myself, and I have always found his actions in MI pretty full on. But knowing that he felt so invisible before MI, knowing that, in many ways, he did try and be friends with Mike, but that again he perhaps felt a bit ignored by him, or at least the friendship wasn’t reciprocated as wholly as he might’ve liked…
It makes MI much more sad, almost. Because now it’s not just two coworkers against another coworker, with neither party understanding each other. My impression before of their relationships in MI was very much that they didn’t know each other: Mike and Sulley just saw Randall as this git from work who was a bit of a douche and was mean to everyone for no reason (and they never really bothered to find out why that was, because their lives were so happy and great, that why wouldn’t everyone feel happy and great like them?) And that Randall saw the two of them as the personification of everything he hated about Monsters, Inc. in general, everything he hated about the corporate culture (see that shaking head of his in the advert? “What a load of bollocks" is what he’s thinking right then, as the rest of them shout out “We scare because we care!"), everything he hated about how damned cheerful everyone was all the time. I never pretended to know truly why he was so unhappy, beyond his frustration at always being second best and perhaps feeling a bit invisible at times. And he never really understood Mike and Sulley, he just saw them as being a bit douchebaggy, and an appropriate and easy focus for his hatred and miserable-ness.
What MU says is that, in fact, although Sulley never really knew Randall as more than that (he doesn’t get to know him in MU at all, really, and again is totally oblivious to anything he did wrong to Randall, as well as being totally oblivious as to why he might be unhappy in MI), Mike did know Randall. Mike KNEW that Randall wasn’t always so unhappy and angry and miserable, and yet it appears that Mike didn’t question why he’s like that. Again, oblivious.
To be fair, Randall’s metamorphosis is gradual, and we do see a hint of it in MU. It seems like the moment Randall chose to go with ROR, Mike wrote him off (or they both wrote each other off, really) but the fact that Mike didn’t seem particularly upset at Randy’s rejection (in fact, he only asked Randy because he happened to spot him- it’s not like Randy was the first name that came to mind when he wanted to ask someone for help, even though he spent three months sharing a room with the guy) and that makes me wonder how close their friendship ever was. It’s pretty ambiguous, to say the least. It’s obvious that Randy cared at first, but perhaps gave up after half a dozen attempts of trying to get Mike out and about to socialise? Who knows.
Anyway, back to the point: Mike KNEW. I just…I almost liked him more when he just saw Randall as the ‘grumpy coworker’. The fact that Randall was something more, once upon a time…I don’t know. I just find it a bit depressing.
So the moral of the story is, yes, sometimes things don’t work out, so be flexible and willing to change paths, because it’s amazing how things work out in unexpected ways, even if it’s not what you originally planned. That’s what Mike’s story tells us, anyway. And Sulley’s moral, Sulley’s moral is that relying on family precedent or other people’s expectations of you isn’t enough, and that if you want to succeed, you do have to try hard. We also learn that being honest about how you feel is definitely a good thing, as demonstrated by that scene in the Human World- and in fact, being honest can form a strong friendship indeed. And we learn that it’s okay to be okay, it’s okay to not be regarded as ‘special’ by everyone, as long as you’re happy within yourself.
And the final moral of the story? That sometimes, how you treat people can come back to bite you in the ass. That sometimes, people can be hurt by your actions, even if you didn’t intend to hurt them. That sometimes, you just have to pay attention.
"So, I finally saw MU yesterday.
I went with a couple of uni friends who really have no idea how much the original (and Randall) means to me so I found myself trying to keep my emotions in check…I would’ve gone with closer friends, but everyone’s left uni for the summer and since i’m stuck here working, my debating friends were the only people I could get to come. To be fair, they both enjoyed the film immensely. Even before watching MU, one of them was saying how MI was his favourite animated film growing up and how keen he was to see the prequel. They both found it funny and charming and we all felt the reflection of our own time at university (though they’re only going into their second year, so they’ve got plenty more fun university times to come).
A quick note on the Blue Umbrella first: very sweet, very sincere, a little cheesy, yes, but beautiful on the whole. I really loved how they used sound to such effect as well, and as someone who loves rainy days and is fed up of this incessantly warm weather we’re having in England at the moment, it made me long even more for a good burst of rain.
Anyway, MU. I’ll say now that my main qualm was that there was something just not quite right with the pacing, like the way the different acts didn’t really flow into each other…Maybe it’s just because it was my first viewing, but yeah, it just seemed a bit off. I can’t really put my finger on it.
Aside from that, though, I really enjoyed the film. It was SO funny, so much funnier than I expected (and much funnier than the original, in my opinion) and I loved the college environment that was created. One of the main reasons I want to go and see it again is so I can really take some time to appreciate the beauty of the scenery and the design and so on, though there were moments when it just stood out to me so much, such as the incredible School of Scaring, which was architecturally amazing inside and outside.
The characters, too, were very endearing. I didn’t fall totally in love with any of the new guys from Oozma Kappa, though they were a lovely bunch. In a way, I felt it was a shame that we didn’t get much of a chance to know them as individuals beyond a few stereotypical traits. In fact, in general I thought that character development of the minor characters was sacrificed for an unyielding focus on Mike (and partially on Sulley), which is totally understandable; this was Mike’s story, after all. I say it’s a shame nevertheless, though, because these guys had great potential- I wanted to see more conflict between Terry and Terri, I wanted to see more craziness from Art, and so on. I can imagine there were a lot of concepts and ideas for these characters that got dropped in the final cut.
As for the ROR guys, again, I felt like there could’ve been more. (Though in reality, there probably couldn’t have been, considering that focus on Mike.) Johnny was cool, suave, everything I expected him to be, but I didn’t get much out of him as a character beyond that. There’s a hint that he’s desperate to win not just for the sake of it, but because of the pressure of his family’s legacy (the same sort of stuff Sulley has to deal with) but, again, not much is said of him.
Nope, it’s all about Mike. And I’m glad Pixar had the idea to develop him as a character in and of himself, because he was just the sidekick who didn’t ‘get it’ in MI. This time, we get to see his motivations, his determination, we get to appreciate what a hard worker he is, and you do get the feeling that he deserves his ultimate success. He’s a good guy who worked his way to the top and he should be proud of that.
However…I didn’t totally LIKE him. I didn’t find myself warming up to him as much as I thought I would- as much as I hoped I would. Admittedly, I wasn’t keen on the character as he was in MI, but I hoped that seeing him grow into the person he became to be would help me understand his sometimes arrogant and boastful nature. I’m not saying he’s a bad person or anything in MI, but he’s certainly not the kind of guy I’d want to spend time with.
And yet, even with the knowledge of why he was so determined to be a Scarer, even knowing that his classmates always wrote him off, and he was determined to prove them wrong, to prove everyone wrong…I just didn’t totally feel it. His desire to feel special was understandable, definitely. His desire to be recognised, sure. He seems to have been able to take all of the bad things everyone says about him, and say “nope, that’s their problem, not mine. I KNOW I’m amazing, I KNOW I’m great, and I’m going to show them!"
It’s all an illusion, of course, but the fact that he manages to build that illusion in the first place is nothing short of a miracle. He must’ve had the most amazing, supportive, and stupid parents ever (though to be fair, we do see his mother in MI, and she seems…Yeah, well, she fits the bill). I was reminded of all of these X Factor style programmes where you get individuals who have no talent whatsoever going up on stage and getting ripped apart- but why do they go up on stage in the first place? Because their parents are in the background, supporting their unachievable fantasy.
So maybe one of the morals is, “be honest with yourself", because the reason Mike was so hurt by his realisation that he was not a good Scarer was because the illusion had dropped. And suddenly he didn’t have the chance to be special in the way he wanted.
I don’t know, I guess as someone who tends to approach things from the other end of the spectrum- I usually say, “no, I can’t do it" even when I often can- I find it difficult to empathise with someone who always says, “yes, I can do it", even when they can’t. I just find the latter approach almost big-headed, but in Mike’s defence, it was a mechanism that allowed him to protect himself, it was a mechanism that stopped everything that everyone else was saying from hurting. I just can’t relate to it as well as the other mechanism, which also helps you form a barrier, but in a different way.
And now we come to Randy. Because if Mike is a “I CAN do this!" sort of guy, Randy is a “I probably can’t…" They developed different and contrasting mechanisms from the same problem: rejection and exclusion. So it’s ironic that they don’t end up as good friends in the future.
What’s even more ironic is that as the illusion of positivity falls away from Mike, as he begins to realise that he DOES have limits, Randall starts building up an illusion. He spends most of the film internalising all of his feelings, taking everything personally- someone doesn’t want to be friends with him, it’s his fault, someone doesn’t think he’s going to be a good Scarer, then they’re right and he’s wrong, someone tells him to take off his glasses because he’ll scare better, and he doesn’t even question it, just goes ahead and does as he’s told.
Whilst Mike externalises everything ("those kids at school tell me I’m rubbish at something, but I know I’m good- they’re the ones with the problem!), Randall internalises everything ("those kids at school are right, I’m the one with the problem").
And yet there’s a switch. Mike starts to internalise things, starts to look at himself as the illusion falls away.
And Randall? He begins to externalise. That moment in the Scare Games, when it all goes wrong? He could blame himself entirely- as he usually would have done. He could be totally down on himself about it. But he decides not to do that, he decides to blame someone else: Sulley.
That’s all he does in MI, he blames Sulley for everything- that damned Sullivan, beating me on the Scare Leader board, that damned Sullivan, ruining my chances with Waternoose, that damned Sullivan, messing up my project!
Because blaming someone else for everything that happens is much easier than realising that YOU’RE the problem. By attributing his downfall to Sulley, Randall finds an (unhealthy) mechanism by which he is able to start feeling a bit better about himself. It’s why we see him getting a bit more richardy in MI, talking about those big numbers he’s going to rack up- it’s all an illusion, he’s trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to convince Mike and Sulley. Mike’s illusion is long gone, he doesn’t need it anymore because he has learned to accept and love himself and has found success through doing so. Randall, however, leans on his illusion, relies on it to keep him going. Yes, course I’m amazing, yes, this project is going to garner me recognition and respect from EVERYONE in this factory! Even Sullivan will look up to me…
Because if you hate yourself so much, you have two options: continue to hate yourself and turn into a ball of depression, or hate someone else. Blame them for your failures, blame them for everything that goes wrong, and hence feel better about yourself. I can imagine, when Sulley and Mike keep winning awards and being in the paper for every little thing they do, that Randall gets peed off. And when Randall struggles to make friends at MI (yes, conjecture, but I think it’s likely), and when he sees Sulley and Mike becoming the most popular new workers, he blames them for his lack of popularity. He blames them for everything.
And he blames them and blames them and blames them, for years. And then when they’re the ones who interfere with his biggest plan, his final, craziest attempt at getting that respect that he wanted all along (because, unlike Mike and Sulley, Randall never shows that he cares THAT much for Scaring- he only cares for it if it’s going to earn him respect, but he doesn’t do it for the sake of the beauty of the thing, or that he enjoys it particularly) then he snaps.
So, what started as a review of the film ended up being me rambling about my Randall theories. (And yes, of course these are all theories- I don’t claim that any of this is true for certain, just my interpretation of things.)
And having seen MU, I can totally see why so many people are saying “he was an ass all along!" Because he doesn’t come across particularly well, not at all. He doesn’t come across badly, as such- it is emphasised that anything he does ‘against’ Mike and Sulley (which isn’t much at all, in fact it’s pretty much only that soft toy incident) is stuff initiated by Johnny, and you get the impression that Randall would rather stay out of conflict and rivalry if possible. But he doesn’t come across WELL- he doesn’t stay loyal to Mike and he very much follows the crowd.
I did question why his and Mike’s friendship disappeared so quickly, considering it’s implied they spend at least three months in that dorm room together. Admittedly we only ever see Randall helping Mike with his dream, and not the other way round- we never see Mike attempt to help Randall make friends, for example, and we never see him really recognise just how insecure and worried Randall is.
That’s probably what appealed to Randall concerning ROR; I can imagine Johnny picking up on that insecurity, as well as Randall’s potential for being a pretty useful ROR member, and bigging him up, helping him to start externalising things more. I also feel that Randall did have to ‘prove’ himself a fair bit in order to get into ROR, so although his “don’t mess this up for me, Mike" line seems a bit mean at the time, it does hint at something more.
Mike’s biggest crime (and Sulley’s, too) is just being a bit oblivious to how Randall’s feeling. They both (Sulley especially) treat him like he’s invisible, and so the second anyone bothered showing him any recognition (i.e. Johnny), Randall couldn’t help but lap it up. Because again, it’s Mike asking Randall for a favour, not the other way around, and again, it’s Mike wanting other people to do stuff for him so that HE can get back onto the Scare programme and succeed, not so that THEY can succeed. I guess that’s another reason why I wasn’t totally keen on Mike in MU- initially, he uses OK, he actively looks down on them, which is pretty funny considering how everyone’s always looked down on him.
But, again in his defence, he learns from his mistakes, he learns to value these people as people and not just as tools for success, and in a roundabout way he learns about true friendship. Randall, however, as per usual, doesn’t get the chance to go through that, and in his association with ROR just gets screwed over a bit- they pretend to care about him enough to lure him in, but he’s really no more than a novelty to them (like that scene where they laugh at him doing his “thing") and when he messes up, he gets a bollocking, even more so than one of the other RORs who also messed up…So they basically make it pretty clear to him that they were using him.
And again, instead of internalising all of that, instead of going “I’m a bit crap", he takes that experience of being used, he takes the embarrassment and humiliation, and he blames Sulley. He unfairly blames Sulley, yes, because Sulley doesn’t do much wrong to him aside from treating him as a bit of a nonentity, but that and Mike’s inevitable ranting about how annoying Sulley is in their first few months of being freshmen is enough for Randall to focus his hatred on him. He’s an easy target.
Anyway, I should stop rambling now. In short, I did enjoy the film. It was great, very heartfelt and funny. I very much enjoyed the whole segment with Mike and Sulley in the human world, which was unexpected and yet fitted in nicely. I think I like Sulley more than I used to (though I never actually disliked him, just felt pretty neutral about him, though I do like what a softy he is). I like that Sulley opened up to Mike, and I like that he really grew throughout the course of MU. He became much more endearing by the end of it, for sure.
Mike…Mike I’m not so sure about. I’m always going to be inherently biased, but even taking the most unbiased perspective I can, I still felt that there was something quite selfish about him before that illusion fell. However, he too grew through his experiences and it was great to see him develop so much as a character.
MU certainly puts the events of MI in a different light, to some extent anyway. It’s going to be odd watching MI again, watching the interactions between Mike, Sulley and Randall with the knowledge of some of what came before. I think, if anything, I now empathise with Randall more than ever- in fact, I never really empathised with him before, more just sympathised, because although I’ve always felt for his predicament, I’ve never experienced anything like that myself, and I have always found his actions in MI pretty full on. But knowing that he felt so invisible before MI, knowing that, in many ways, he did try and be friends with Mike, but that again he perhaps felt a bit ignored by him, or at least the friendship wasn’t reciprocated as wholly as he might’ve liked…
It makes MI much more sad, almost. Because now it’s not just two coworkers against another coworker, with neither party understanding each other. My impression before of their relationships in MI was very much that they didn’t know each other: Mike and Sulley just saw Randall as this git from work who was a bit of a douche and was mean to everyone for no reason (and they never really bothered to find out why that was, because their lives were so happy and great, that why wouldn’t everyone feel happy and great like them?) And that Randall saw the two of them as the personification of everything he hated about Monsters, Inc. in general, everything he hated about the corporate culture (see that shaking head of his in the advert? “What a load of bollocks" is what he’s thinking right then, as the rest of them shout out “We scare because we care!"), everything he hated about how damned cheerful everyone was all the time. I never pretended to know truly why he was so unhappy, beyond his frustration at always being second best and perhaps feeling a bit invisible at times. And he never really understood Mike and Sulley, he just saw them as being a bit douchebaggy, and an appropriate and easy focus for his hatred and miserable-ness.
What MU says is that, in fact, although Sulley never really knew Randall as more than that (he doesn’t get to know him in MU at all, really, and again is totally oblivious to anything he did wrong to Randall, as well as being totally oblivious as to why he might be unhappy in MI), Mike did know Randall. Mike KNEW that Randall wasn’t always so unhappy and angry and miserable, and yet it appears that Mike didn’t question why he’s like that. Again, oblivious.
To be fair, Randall’s metamorphosis is gradual, and we do see a hint of it in MU. It seems like the moment Randall chose to go with ROR, Mike wrote him off (or they both wrote each other off, really) but the fact that Mike didn’t seem particularly upset at Randy’s rejection (in fact, he only asked Randy because he happened to spot him- it’s not like Randy was the first name that came to mind when he wanted to ask someone for help, even though he spent three months sharing a room with the guy) and that makes me wonder how close their friendship ever was. It’s pretty ambiguous, to say the least. It’s obvious that Randy cared at first, but perhaps gave up after half a dozen attempts of trying to get Mike out and about to socialise? Who knows.
Anyway, back to the point: Mike KNEW. I just…I almost liked him more when he just saw Randall as the ‘grumpy coworker’. The fact that Randall was something more, once upon a time…I don’t know. I just find it a bit depressing.
So the moral of the story is, yes, sometimes things don’t work out, so be flexible and willing to change paths, because it’s amazing how things work out in unexpected ways, even if it’s not what you originally planned. That’s what Mike’s story tells us, anyway. And Sulley’s moral, Sulley’s moral is that relying on family precedent or other people’s expectations of you isn’t enough, and that if you want to succeed, you do have to try hard. We also learn that being honest about how you feel is definitely a good thing, as demonstrated by that scene in the Human World- and in fact, being honest can form a strong friendship indeed. And we learn that it’s okay to be okay, it’s okay to not be regarded as ‘special’ by everyone, as long as you’re happy within yourself.
And the final moral of the story? That sometimes, how you treat people can come back to bite you in the ass. That sometimes, people can be hurt by your actions, even if you didn’t intend to hurt them. That sometimes, you just have to pay attention.
