3. Deconstruction of Pixar's Inside Out · 12:44pm Jul 8th, 2015
Hello dear followers and anyone who might chance upon this.
It’s been some time since I actually wrote down one of these deconstructive exercises, but I decided to do it now because of a blog post from Bad Horse about the same movie. I’m grateful for his post, for without it I probably wouldn’t have given this one a chance, and I ended up quite liking it.
Still, he said something that felt a bit like a challenge to me. Reproduced with permission:
Popular scriptwriting advice today, which is probably based on something Syd Field wrote, is that each script has to have 3 plot points, at exactly one-fourth, one-half, and three-fourths of the way thru the movie. [...]
I think the people who claim this and watch a movie stopwatch in hand (this is a good idea if you want to write) tend to grab whatever big event happened closest to their desired marks and call them the plot points. I think this movie had 4 or 5 main plot points, not 3; the first 2 happened pretty quickly; and the "realization" point (where the main character realizes what the story is actually about) didn't happen until somewhere shortly before the final plot point, IIRC.
So, naturally, I grabbed a stopwatch, a notebook and a pen and got crackin’. It didn’t surprise me that I found 3 plot points at (nearly) exactly the expected marks. If you are not familiar with the story structure model I’ve been working with, I’d like to point you to my deconstruction of Equestria Girls, which also has links to further reading material on the missions of the different plot points I’ll be pointing out. However, I’ll include small reminders, so feel free to proceed even without beforehand knowledge. I highly suggest you watch the movie first though, because spoilers. More after the break.
imdb says the movie is 94 minutes long, but if you subtract the credits, the actual story is 82 minutes.
In case you didn’t watch the movie, a quick summary from imdb:
Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it's no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley's mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley's main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.
The above excerpt describes what happens in the setup of the story, i.e. Part One. Moving away is not a plot point, but the inciting incident. It’s a challenge, it’s a conflict alright, but the first plot point is where the hero of our story actually decides how to react to that challenge.
Whereas in EQG and Ender’s Game the hero was an obvious choice, it’s a bit more tricky here: is it Riley? Is it Joy? Is it Sadness? Deciding this is essential for a deconstruction since the plot points are what they are mainly for the impact they have on the hero. In the end, I chose Joy because of the first plot point which was so blatantly obvious, a large, flashing sign wouldn’t have changed much.
First Plot Point: If we accept the presumption that the first plot point should happen between 20% and 25% of the story, this means we should be seeing it between 16,4 min and 20,5 min. The way I see it, it’s at the 18 minute mark.
At this point, Joy was ready to give up: the house smelled, the moving van was delayed, dad’s busy and the pizza sucked. Nothing to smile about, despite Joy’s best efforts. Then, mum pops this horrible, manipulative line: “Your dad’s under a lot of pressure, but if you and I can keep smiling, it would be a big help. You can do that for him, right?”
This is how you mess people up emotionally: demand them to be happy. Good job. Joy rises to the challenge, naturally: she goes up to the console, pushes the button, and Riley says: “Yeah, sure.”
This just defined Joy’s mission: keep Riley smiling, against all odds, at all costs. All the other emotions suddenly become ‘Team Happy’. Joy even goes as far as to manipulate Riley’s dreams, leaving her no way to process her negative experiences.
Part Two: It all goes horribly wrong of course: In a struggle that is brought on by Joy trying to dictate and overrule all other emotions and Sadness’s inability to remain furniture, Joy and Sadness get expelled from headquarters, along with all core memories that define Riley’s personality, leaving Riley with Anger, Disgust and Fear. This makes for an irritable mix of emotions.
You could argue that being expelled from HQ is actually the first plot point as it shifts Joy’s goal from “make Riley smile” to “get back to HQ”. I don’t think so, though, because the driving force behind wanting back is Joy’s mission to keep Riley happy: if the other emotions could do that, there would be no urgency in her quest to get back to HQ.
Pinch Point: Quick reminder: Pinch points come in the middle of part two and part three. There can be more than the two, though, and there are a lot in this movie. Their main goal is to heighten tension by showing the antagonistic force directly.
Right in the middle, i.e. the 37,5% mark, would be at 30,75 minutes in this movie. The most dominant Pinch Point I found is at 29 minutes, when Goofball Island collapses under Joy and Sadness’s feet. Not only do they have to run for their lives, the Pinch Point also clearly states that, with the core memories gone, Riley’s core personality is crumbling. This gives Joy’s journey back to HQ even more urgency.
This also establishes the antagonistic force: Riley’s real life. With Joy, Sadness, and her core memories gone, she’s not able to face real life and draw from her strengths. Instead, the challenges thrown at her make her personality crumble, further complicating Joy and Sadness’ journey back to HQ.
Joy and Sadness continue to wander through long term memory without the slightest idea how to get back to HQ, until...
Midpoint: The midpoint should introduce new information that changes the experience of the protagonist, the reader/viewer, or both. In this case, it is information relayed to Joy that bumps her from ‘wanderer mode’ into ‘warrior mode’, giving her a more concrete goal to strive towards.
As Midpoint, it should be at the 41 minute mark, and it is at 38 minutes. Joy learns that the Train of Thought goes straight to headquarters, thereby ending her aimless wandering through endless shelves of old memories, and giving her the goal to catch the train.
Part Three: So, after midpoint, more stuff happens. Abstract thought, imagination land, yadda yadda. Some of this stuff is fluff, but some of it isn’t. In fact, all of the things needed for the resolution of the story are established here: the song-powered cart in the abyss, the weird boyfriend machine, the fact that Sadness can make people (or weird elephant-dolphin chimaeras) functional again when Joy can’t. This best illustrates that plot points alone don’t make a story.
Pinch Point 2: I feel a bit of an ass here because I can’t locate it correctly, or it’s very, very weak. At roughly 49 minutes (squarely between Midpoint and Second Plot point would have been 51,25 min), the Train of Thought, which Joy and her buddies have finally managed to board, stops because Riley falls asleep.
This serves its purpose of hampering the hero’s progress, but is a very weak highlight of the antagonistic force as falling asleep isn’t really a real-life challenge that makes Riley’s personality crumble some more.
Later hurdles in Part Three that Joy has to take serve even less of that purpose though, because all the shenanigans in the dream department and the big, scary clown and what-not all have nothing to do with Riley’s real life.
Second Plot Point: This is where the last missing piece of information is introduced. From this point onwards, no new important things should be introduced that play into the resolution, or they will be perceived as deus ex machina.
I’ve done some hard thinking on this one. I first thought it was the moment Anger screwed the idea bulb of running away into Riley’s console, but in hindsight I think it’s the moment Sadness told Joy that she liked that one core memory of Riley, too, although for very different reasons. It is that information that makes Joy look closer at the memory later during Part Four, realizing that Sadness isn’t just a burden but a very useful emotion, too. Without Sadness, the memory wouldn’t have been able to become a happy one.
Timing wise, that point is at 60 minutes. (82 min * ¾ = 61,5 min … not far off the mark.)
Part Four plays out quite nicely, using all the information previously established. If I have one criticism, it is that Joy’s character arc is restricted to part four alone… I wished there’d been a bit more development before, ditching some of the unnecessary action instead. Then again, it is a kid’s movie, so I shouldn’t complain.
What I really loved was the way Riley’s console turned grey and wouldn’t react to any of her emotion’s commands. I’ve had long talks with someone who’s been suffering from depression most of his life, and I remember him saying that it wasn’t about being sad, but about being numb. The console turning unreactive is a great way to illustrate that.
Conclusion: I liked the movie, and I liked deconstructing it. I think I’ve provided an abundance of arguments how and why it adheres to contemporary story structure, but if you think I’m wrong at some point, go ahead and present your reasoning. I’m a fan of discussions.
Bad Horse mentioned that the best recommendation for the movie were the hateful 1-star reviews of angry parents. I tend to agree. If you read comments alternating between “I just wanted to be entertained, not depressed” and “Riley is such an entitled brat, she has no justification to be unhappy about anything,” I can’t help but hope for more of these kinds of kid’s movies, so that the next generation of reviewers turns out cleverer than this one.
But, recall that I listed what I thought were the 9 most-important plot points, and only 1 of your 3 were on that list. So I think you're just grabbing things close to your marks, not things central to the plot. I can't see Riley's mom asking her to keep smiling as being as important as many other plot points, like her meltdown in school.
3219814 And I think you're mistaken. Riley's mom's words were what made Joy take over. Instead of letting the appropriate emotions handle her state, she tries to control everything and paint it in a glowy joy-yellow. She surrendered her power to other emotions before and was about to do so, but Riley's mom's words induced a mayor paradigm shift in her. The meltdown in school is just a consequence of that.
By contrast, I think you are just taking any major event in the story and call it a plot point, which isn't what they are. For instance, "Bing Bong and Joy trying to wake up Riley" and "Bing Bong thrown into prison" are events, but they are absolutely inconsequential for the main conflict and the story's resolution. Exchange these with "Big Bong and Joy have to get rid of a whale that's blocking the tracks" and it would change exactly nothing. The story could end just the same way.
3220031 I could say the same thing about "Joy learns there's a station where she can get on the train of thought".
And going in the opposite direction, I could use your formulation to dismiss every plot point between there and the ending. Or I could say Riley's mom telling her to keep smiling as just a result of other events before that. It all seems arbitrary to me.
I haven't seen it yet, but I want to. From what I've heard, Pixar had child psychologists, neuroscientists, behavioural therapists, and other emotional experts consult on the script and setting so that under the glittering surface of anthropomorphised avatars for emotions, the actual core layer of the film, of Riley experiencing depression brought on from major life changes outside her control occurs in a (scientifically) plausible way.
What's always funny to me is the 1 star angry reviews from people who went in expecting a bright colourful mindless children's film. Pixar is very well known for its ability to tackle very mature subject matter hidden behind the façade of a children's film. The Incredibles had the subplot of the adults trying to save a slowly failing marriage; the Toy Story series was all about what get left behind when a child grows up and moves on.
Inside Out possibly touches on the most mature and delicate subject they've ever attempted. And with a Rotten Tomato score of 98%, it sounds like they've succeeded.
3220608
Well, that's true. I guess this is invalid criticism of your additional plot points, then. You got me wrong though if you thought I wanted to say that none of the plotpoints I pointed out should be the consequence of something that happened before.
I actually just looked up wikipedia on plot, which says: "Plot is a narrative (and, traditionally, literary) term defined as the events that make up a story, particularly: as they relate to one another in a pattern or in a sequence; as they relate to each other through cause and effect; how the reader views the story; or simply by coincidence."
I guess with this definition, all of your and my points are equally valid. From that point of view, the things I tried to point out in the blog post probably are more accurately termed as 'points important for the structure of the narrative'. I am assuming that you do not dispute my interpretation of what the points accomplish, but that these things are of special importance. I will therefore continue by hypothesizing what would happen if these were premature or delayed.
1. If Riley's mom were to say her line earlier, there wouldn't have been enough time to establish the other crew member's personalities. As one-dimensional as they might have been, highlighting how the other emotions behaved before Joy took away their say in matters was important.
If the paradigm-shift of "Happy-no-matter-the-cost" were delayed, it would feel as though the narrative lacked purpose. This paradigm-shift is neccessary for Joy to have a purpose beyond her usual self (which is pretty close, but that's a given due to the one-dimensionality).
2. If there'd been a clear solution to Joy's and Sadness' problem of getting back to HQ early on, it would've been too obvious to be realistic. It's like the small bridge from Goofball Island... I don't think anyone actually thought this could have worked, simply for that fact that the solution was too early.
If the aimless wandering through long-term memory would've continued for a lot longer, people would've gotten frustrated. It's one thing to give your protagonist a hard time, but if things don't look up at some point, they'll lose interest.
3. Introducing the last missing puzzle piece into a story too early can make folks think your protagonist is derliberatly stupid for not solving it sooner. This is why Joy's delayed character arc caught negative attention from me: although the second plot point was in time, Joy still left Sadness behind with the vacuum-tube-thingy because she didn't get it. This made the story lose quite some points with me.
Introducing vital information much later in the narrative would make it feel like a deus ex machina.
So, while all your additional points are relevant to the plot, I still think the ones I listed are, while probably less poignant at first glance, vital to make the story work as a whole. Point me to another movie and I shall find points close to the marks that fulfill similar goals for the narrative... unless you dispute they do what I think they do.
3220658 The movie sure was a lot of fun, and I wish you a good time when you go watch it. I must say that I admire Pixar for their efforts, and the people that criticize that no child should watch a movie tackling such subjects actually disgust me. Children get underestimated all the time, and it's doing them a disservice. If a child cannot suffer imaginary tragedies (and for my generation, I know we all did: The Neverending Story, The Animals of Farthing Wood, Bambi, The Land Before Time... just to name a few), how can anyone expect it to be able to deal with inevitable real-life tragedies later in life? Emotional maturity is not a question of age, but something to be aquired IMO.