Inside Out 2 » J-Movies

Inside Out 2 is a 2024 American animated coming-of-age film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The sequel to Inside Out (2015), it was directed by Kelsey Mann (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Mark Nielsen, from a screenplay written by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein, and a story conceived by Mann and LeFauve. Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan reprise their roles from the first film, with Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira, Ayo Edebiri, Lilimar, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Adèle Exarchopoulos, and Paul Walter Hauser joining the cast. The film tells the story of Riley’s emotions as they find themselves joined by new emotions that want to take over Riley’s head.

First announced in September 2022 during the D23 Expo, Inside Out 2 features Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter‘s “five to 27 emotions” idea from the first film that Mann pitched during its production to utilize “truthful” worldbuilding. Like its predecessor, the production team consulted psychologists to accurately portray how teenagers’ emotions change during puberty, while also enlisting a group of teenagers to accurately portray modern teenage life.

Inside Out 2 premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on June 10, 2024, and was released in theaters in the United States on June 14. The film received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $1.389 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of 2024. It had the third-biggest domestic opening weekend for an animated film and became the fastest animated film to cross the $1 billion mark, alongside being the third highest-grossing animated film of all-time and the highest-grossing film in Pixar history.

Two years after her move to San Francisco, 13-year-old Riley Andersen is about to enter high school. Her personified emotions — Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger — now oversee a newly formed element of Riley’s mind called her “Sense of Self”, which houses memories and feelings that shape Riley’s beliefs. Joy, aiming to fill the Sense of Self with only positive memories, creates a mechanism that launches negative memories to the back of Riley’s mind.

Riley and her best friends, Bree and Grace, are invited to a weekend ice hockey camp where Riley hopes to qualify for her school’s team, the Firehawks. However, a “Puberty Alarm” goes off the night before camp, and a group of mind workers clumsily upgrade the emotion console, leaving Headquarters in disarray.

The emotions find that Riley now overreacts to any inputs they make to the console. Five new emotions — Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, Ennui, and Nostalgia — arrive and clash with the original emotions over their approaches. In particular, Joy wants Riley to have fun at camp, while Anxiety focuses on winning a spot on the team and making new friends, especially after Riley learns that Bree and Grace will be attending a different high school.

While Joy is in control, Riley inadvertently gets the campers punished by the strict camp director, Coach Roberts. Anxiety, deciding that Riley needs to change to fit in with the older players, launches the Sense of Self to the back of Riley’s mind and has the original emotions captured and thrown into a memory vault. The new emotions then create a new anxiety-dominated Sense of Self and encourage Riley to befriend popular hockey player Val Ortiz, straining her friendship with Bree and Grace. The old emotions escape the vault; Sadness returns to Headquarters while the others go to retrieve Riley’s old Sense of Self.

Under Anxiety’s control, Riley sneaks into Coach Roberts’ office and learns from her notebook that Riley is not considered ready to become a Firehawk. The old emotions find the old Sense of Self on a mountain of negative memories deposited by Joy’s mechanism and cause an avalanche that not only expedites their return to headquarters but also causes the negative memories to spill into Riley’s current Sense of Self. Anxiety realizes that the Sense of Self she has created for Riley is one of self-doubt, which causes Riley to perform poorly during her final tryout match, accidentally hurt Grace, and get sent to the penalty box. Horrified, Anxiety frantically swarms the console in a blinding whirlwind, causing Riley to suffer from a severe panic attack.

With the help of Sadness and a reformed Embarrassment, the other original emotions return to Headquarters. Joy finds Anxiety still in control but in paralysis; Joy convinces Anxiety that Riley does not need to change to have a better future. Anxiety relents and Joy reinstates Riley’s original Sense of Self, but the panic attack persists. After the repentant Anxiety admits that she cannot determine who Riley is, Joy realizes that the same applies to her. Joy removes the first Sense of Self and forms a new one from Riley’s positive and negative memories. The emotions embrace this third Sense of Self, calming Riley and helping her reconcile with Bree and Grace. The console calls for Joy, who takes command and helps Riley happily finish the game.

Riley befriends Val and the other Firehawks at high school while staying true to herself and maintaining her friendship with Bree and Grace. Living in peace, the original and new emotions work together to protect Riley, who checks her phone for the Firehawks’ recruitment results^[c] and looks at herself in the mirror with a proud smile.

In a post-credits scene, Joy frees Riley’s Deep Dark Secret, which is revealed to be Riley burning a hole in the rug, from The Vault, but he quickly shuts himself back in.

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