Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American animated fantasy comedy film directed by Pete Docter, and written by Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly, and Mary Gibbs. It centers on two monsters, the hairy James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (Goodman) and his one-eyed partner and best friend Mike Wazowski (Crystal), who are employed at the titular energy-producing factory Monsters, Inc., which generates power by scaring human children. However, the monster world believes that children are toxic, and when a little human girl, Boo (Gibbs), sneaks into the factory, the duo must safely return her home while evading discovery.
Docter began developing the film in 1996, following an idea conceived in 1994 when Toy Story (1995) was nearing completion, and wrote the story with Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon, and Ralph Eggleston, while Stanton wrote the screenplay with Gerson. The characters went through many incarnations over the film's five-year production process. The technical team and animators found new ways to simulate fur and cloth realistically for the film. Randy Newman, who composed the music for Pixar's three prior films, returned to compose the score for its fourth.
Monsters, Inc. premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on October 28, 2001, and was released in theaters in the United States on November 2. Upon its release, it received critical acclaim and was a commercial success, grossing over $528 million worldwide to become the third-highest-grossing film of 2001. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "If I Didn't Have You" and was nominated for the inaugural award for Best Animated Feature, as well as Best Original Score and Best Sound Editing. Monsters, Inc. saw a 3D re-release in theaters in 2012. A prequel titled Monsters University, directed by Dan Scanlon, was released in 2013. A sequel series titled Monsters at Work premiered on Disney+ in 2021. A third film is in development.
Plot
In a world inhabited entirely by monsters, the city of Monstropolis harnesses the screams of human children for energy. At the Monsters Incorporated factory, skilled monsters employed as "scarers" enter the human world through special doors that become portals to children's bedroom closets. They then frighten the children to harvest their screams; as human children are rumored to be toxic enough to kill a monster through physical contact, this work is considered dangerous. Furthermore, children are becoming harder to scare, causing a decline in production and subsequent energy crisis that worries Monsters, Inc. CEO Henry J. Waternoose III.
One evening after work, top scarer James P. "Sulley" Sullivan returns to the Scare Floor to retrieve forgotten paperwork for his best friend and assistant Mike Wazowski, when he discovers that an active door has been left at the station of his rival, Randall Boggs. He inspects the door and accidentally lets a toddler girl into the factory. Frightened, Sulley unsuccessfully tries to return the girl, who escapes into Monstropolis, interrupting Mike on a date at a sushi restaurant in the process. Chaos erupts when other monsters see the girl, prompting Sulley and Mike to escape with her as the Child Detection Agency (CDA) arrives and quarantines the restaurant. Forced to keep the girl hidden in their apartment for the night, Sulley and Mike realize she is not toxic and her laughter generates more energy than screams.
The next day, Sulley and Mike disguise the girl as a monster and attempt to send her home. While Mike seeks out her door, Sulley grows attached to her and nicknames her "Boo". Randall, waiting to ambush the girl, kidnaps Mike by accident and reveals his plan to kidnap children and cruelly force screams from them using a machine called a Scream Extractor. Sulley and Boo rescue Mike, and they go to the simulator room to alert Waternoose of Randall's plot. There, Waternoose makes Sulley give a scare demonstration to some recruits, and Boo becomes frightened. While attempting to comfort her, Sulley notices images on the monitors depicting him scaring, and he starts to question his line of work. Boo inadvertently reveals herself to Waternoose, who turns out to be in league with Randall. Waternoose abducts Boo and banishes Mike and Sulley to the Himalayas in the human world.
Mike and Sulley are found by the Abominable Snowman, who takes them to his lair. He reveals a nearby village; Sulley hopes to use its closets to return to Monstropolis, but Mike, feeling betrayed, initially refuses to go with him. Sulley returns to the factory and rescues Boo from the scream extractor. Mike returns to reconcile with Sulley, and Randall chases them through the enormous door vault as the trio searches for Boo's door. Randall eventually kidnaps Boo, but she overcomes her fear of him and helps Sulley defeat him. Mike and Sulley banish Randall to the human world and destroy his corresponding door.
Mike and Sulley locate Boo's door, but Waternoose calls it down to the Scare Floor, intending to have the CDA arrest them. Mike distracts the CDA while Sulley and Boo lure Waternoose into the simulator room. Sulley tricks Waternoose into revealing his conspiracy to kidnap hundreds of children to solve the energy crisis. Mike records the conversation and replays it to the CDA, who promptly arrest Waternoose. Scare Floor administrator Roz reveals herself as an undercover CDA agent, and allows Sulley to send Boo home, but orders her door shredded.
Sulley retools the factory to harvest children's laughter rather than screams, since laughter is ten times more powerful. With the energy crisis solved, Sulley becomes the new CEO of Monsters Inc., and Mike becomes the company's top comedian. Mike then reveals to Sulley that he has painstakingly rebuilt Boo's door, allowing Sulley to reunite with Boo.
Voice cast
John Goodman as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, a huge, intimidating but well-meaning scarer at Monsters, Inc. At the film's beginning, he has been the "Best Scarer" at Monsters, Inc. for several months running. Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski, a short, one-eyed scarer assistant who is Sulley's best friend, roommate, and coworker. He is charming and generally the more organized of the two, but he is prone to neurotics, and his ego sometimes leads him astray. Mary Gibbs as Boo, a three-year-old human girl who is unafraid of any monster except Randall, the scarer assigned to her door. She believes Sulley is a large cat and refers to him as "Kitty". The book based on the film gives Boo's "real" name as Mary Gibbs, the name of her voice actress, who is also the daughter of one of the film's story artists, Rob. Gibbs was so young during production that most of her lines were captured via real or simulated play scenarios designed to elicit the required audio reactions, rather than any traditional line work, including being followed around the Pixar office with a microphone by the crew. Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs, a snide and preening monster with a chameleon-like ability to change his skin color and blend in completely with his surroundings, who makes himself a rival to Sulley and Mike in the scream collection. James Coburn as Henry J. Waternoose, the CEO of Monsters, Inc., a job passed down through his family for three generations. He would later work in secret with Randall amidst the energy crisis. Jennifer Tilly as Celia Mae, a receptionist for Monsters, Inc. and Mike's girlfriend. Bob Peterson as Roz, the administrator for Scare Floor F, where Sulley, Mike, and Randall work. She is secretly the "Number One" of the CDA, operating undercover inside Monsters, Inc. John Ratzenberger as Yeti a.k.a. The Abominable Snowman, a former Monsters, Inc. employee who was banished to the Himalayas. His appearance is based on that of the Abominable Snowman in the 1964 Rankin/Bass animated special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Frank Oz as Fungus, Randall's beleaguered assistant. Daniel Gerson as Needleman and Smitty, two small janitor monsters who idolize Sulley and operate the Door Shredder when required. Steve Susskind as Jerry, a good friend of Waternoose who manages Scare Floor F. Bonnie Hunt as Flint, a talent recruiter who trains new monsters to scare children. Jeff Pidgeon as Bile, an accident-prone trainee scarer for Monsters, Inc. Sam Black as George Sanderson, a scarer at Monsters, Inc. In a running gag throughout the film, he repeatedly makes contact with objects from the human world, resulting in CDA agents tackling him, shaving his entire body, and sterilizing him.
Production
Development The idea for Monsters, Inc., along with ideas that would eventually become A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, and WALL-E, was conceived in a lunch in 1994 attended by John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Joe Ranft near the completion of Toy Story. One of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming session was a film about monsters. "When we were making Toy Story", Docter said, "everybody came up to me and said, 'Hey, I totally believed that my toys came to life when I left the room.' So when Disney asked us to do some more films, I wanted to tap into a childlike notion that was similar to that. I knew monsters were coming out of my closet when I was a kid. So I said, 'Hey, let's do a film about monsters.Monsters Inc., 2002 DVD, commentary
Docter began work on the film that would become Monsters, Inc. in 1996, while others focused on A Bug's Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999). Its code name was Hidden City, after Docter's favorite restaurant in Point Richmond. By early February 1997, Docter, together with Harley Jessup, Jill Culton, and Jeff Pidgeon, had drafted a treatment that bore some resemblance to the final film. Docter pitched the story to Disney with some initial artwork on February 4 that year. He and his story team left with some suggestions in hand and returned to pitch a refined version of the story on May 30. At this pitch meeting, longtime Disney animator Joe Grant – whose work stretched back to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) – suggested the title Monsters, Inc., a play on the title of the gangster film Murder, Inc. (1960), and the name stuck. The film would be the first Pixar feature not directed by Lasseter, helmed instead by Docter, as well as Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, who served as co-directors.
Writing The storyline took on many forms during production. Docter's original idea featured a 30-year-old man dealing with monsters that he drew in a book as a child coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had, and conquering those fears eventually caused the monsters to disappear. Docter later scrapped this concept, and instead decided on a buddy story between a monster and a child titled simply Monsters, in which the monster character of Sulley (known at this stage as Johnson) was an up-and-comer at his workplace, where the company's purpose was to scare children. Sulley's eventual sidekick, Mike Wazowski, had not yet been added.