By: Sammy Wang
A lot of people grew up with the movie Inside Out, a 2015 animated movie produced by Pixar Animation Studios about Riley, a young girl learning to accept and deal with her emotions after moving away from Minnesota to San Francisco. With added complications along with that big change, the inner personified emotions, specifically Joy, learn that Riley can’t always be happy and that it is okay for negative emotions such as sadness to be expressed to her family.
With its sequel, Inside Out 2, being released on June 14, 2024, many people were curious to see just how Riley would grow up to be. Especially with trailers of the new movie revealing that Riley would be going through puberty, along with new emotions showing up to say that Riley is changing, not just from the outside, but also the inside.
But this article isn’t about the new movie, it’s about Riley’s emotional journey from the first movie.
From the very beginning of the movie, Riley’s parents describe her as a bundle of joy. This remains true before the family moves to San Francisco as most of Riley’s memories are joyful because Joy controls the emotion console at all times.
That implies that most of Riley’s childhood was filled with happy memories, but being faced with so many negative memories on one day is something completely foreign to her. But with Joy’s insistence on controlling the emotion console, Riley has no choice but to ignore her negative thoughts by masking them with humor. This leads to Riley’s parents coming to the conclusion that Riley is fine with the move.
This is proven when Riley’s mom tells her, “ Thank you…for all this confusion…you’ve stayed our happy girl…if you and I can keep smiling it would be a big help.”
By further reinforcing the thought that Riley can help ease her parents’ burden with work and moving by being happy, it encourages her to ignore her other emotions and continue to be happy.
During the climax of the movie, Riley is resolved to go back to Minnesota, where she believes she can be happy. She wants to go back to normal, back to the days where everything was familiar and not met with any negative thoughts spurred onto her every moment.
It is also during this scene where Joy realized that expressing sadness can help Riley get the emotional help she needs at certain times.
At the conclusion of the movie, Joy lets Sadness take control of the console, to let Riley be vulnerable. To be vulnerable to get the much needed support from her family.
“I know you don’t want me to…but I miss home. I miss Minnesota. You need me to be happy, but I want my old friends, and my hockey team, but I want to go home.”
Although not all of Riley’s problems are solved just by revealing her feelings to her family, it makes her feel a lot better knowing her parents feel the exact same way she does. They also miss Minnesota .
The original Inside Out is a good reminder to people of all ages that they shouldn’t hide their emotions. Your emotions aren’t a burden, they are there to help you express yourself.