By: Elaine Zhang
Recently, the new movie Inside Out 2 was released, introducing many new characters to the movie. New characters mean new emotions, with one of them being Anxiety.
Inside Out 2 is a sequel to the original movie Inside Out, where there are characters who represent different emotions. The first movie starts out with four emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, and Disgust. Together the emotions work to control a girl named Riley’s mind. In each movie, Riley and her emotions deal with a different problem. In the first, the protagonist deals with moving to a new city, and in the second, she copes with puberty.
When we first meet Anxiety, Joy and the original emotions enter a large room with screens lining the walls. In the middle is Anxiety on a large screen supervising the mind workers, who are sketching scenarios that could go wrong during Riley’s hockey tournament tomorrow. The mind workers draw in tiny cubicles made from playing cards, sketching scenarios out on animation desks.
When Joy sees this, she immediately rushes to an empty cubicle and starts drawing out scenarios that could help Riley relax. Seeing what Joy was doing, the other emotions join in to help her. For example, instead of “Riley misses an open goal…coach writes about it in her notebook” Joy draws “Riley scores and everyone hugs her”.
Unfortunately, Joy and her friends were immediately caught when Anxiety saw the happy ideas they had drawn. This caused all the mind workers to turn to look at Joy. Realizing there was no turning back now, Joy gives a speech, which convinces the mind workers to no longer obey Anxiety. Instead, the mind workers drew ideas that would relieve Riley of her stress.
Convinced by Joy’s argument, the mind workers draw up uplifting ideas to send to Riley. The scene ends in a pillow fight and a tiny pink mind worker throws a chair at the big screen Anxiety was on, putting an end to the horrible ideas they were told to draw.
Kelsey Mann, the director of the movie, says, “I always envisioned this being a movie about Anxiety taking over” and “I think this is something everyone can relate to.”