At D23 today, John Lasseter described Pixar’s 2015 film Inside Out as “One of the most unique films I have ever been associated with,” saying it was a “magical, wonderful, original film.”
Inside Out is the next film from director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up), who said he loved telling stories that “can only be done in animation” but that there needed to be “Some element of real life experience” for the audience to relate to. Inside Out centers on an 11-year old girl named Riley — who looks a bit like a young Gwen Stacy, with her blond hair and black headband — trying to cope with her new life in San Francisco after her parents move there. But as Docter noted, “Riley is our main character, but she’s also our setting.”
That’s because much of Inside Out takes place inside Riley’s mind, where we see her emotions embodied by five characters, whose voice cast was announced today: Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Fear (Bill Hader), Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). We saw production art showing “headquarters” in the film, where the Emotions each add to Riley’s mindset – with glowing, lite-brite-like walls surrounding a screen where memories can be brought up.
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Fear (Bill Hader), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Joy (Amy Poehler), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Anger (Lewis Black) in Pixar’s Inside Out.
In the film, a crisis strikes when circumstances lead to Joy and Sadness being “kicked out into the far reaches of the mind.” We saw artwork for many of the places the two journey, all of which had very distinct looks. Long Term Memory looked like a pseudo-futuristic city, with a huge tower in the center. Imagination Land looked like a theme park, and as the audience noted some notable similarities to Fantasyland, Docter quipped, “Any similarities to a nearby theme park is purely obvious.” A glimpse at Abstract Thought was conveyed via a drawing of Joy and Sadness looking distorted and Picasso-esque, while Dream Production looked like a Hollywood studio. Finally, there was the mode of travel through the mind – the Train of Thought, which looked like a kids toy train, but traveling along an imposing mountainside. Yes, the idea of “the people inside our mind” was once done by the FOX sitcom Herman’s Head, but this looks like a far more ambitious and expansive look at that idea, as one expects from Pixar.
With Joy and Sadness lost, that leaves Anger, Fear and Disgust as the only emotions Riley has access to. With Inside Out a couple of years away, there was no fully animated sequences to show, outside of some tests. But as the presentation ended, we were shown an animatic of one sequence, complete with voice over. It was a truly hysterical scene that the crowd loved, in which Riley sits at the table with her mom and dad, giving them some notably emotional responses, as Anger, Fear and Disgust take turns in control. What really makes the scene a classic though is that we then see the five characters controlling her mom’s emotions and how they are attempting to figure out what’s going on. When Mom looks to Dad for some help, we then go inside his brain, where his five emotions are all distracted watching a hockey game in their memory before noticing Mom wants to talk.
The headquarters for each person is different too, with Dad’s mind looking like the mix of a Star Trek bridge and a military control room. At one point, as Mom gets exasperated, we see her emotions mention the “Brazilian helicopter pilot” they could have been with rather than him. As Anger makes Riley give increasingly hostile responses to her parents’ question, Dad’s emotions decide it’s time to “put the foot down,” and Dad sends her to her room. One of Dad’s emotions turns to the other and says, “Whew, that could have been a disaster,” while in Mom’s mind one of them says, “That was a disaster” – and we see a handsome, Brazilian helicopter pilot smiling at them from their memory screen.
Inside Out opens June 15th 2015.
Article source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/09/pixars-inside-out-looks-like-another-funny-creative-creation-from-the-director-of-up-and-monsters-inc