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Monsters, Inc./ Monsters University Analysis- Pt. 2

(WARNING: LONG POST)

-> Part 2/ ?

[click here to read Part 1]

Let’s break for a moment and talk about …….THEM! I love THESE BITCHES so much I can’t these bitches gay af

~MIKE + RANDALL= STILL A BETTER LOVE STORY THAN TWILIGHT~

Oops my hand slipped.

I can’t decide which is the better ship to sail…….. Mike + Sulley? Or Mike + Randall????

Mike and Randall have the tragic gay breakup tho……Sulley i love you but dude lmaoooooooooooo he’s so cucked………. What can I say? I’m Mike + Randall trash.

im not ready to have these gays relationship be destroyed 💔 💔💔 (I’ll talk more about that later but….)

Mike is the first one to give Randy validation. And acceptance. And the feeling of being *wanted*. The feeling of being *mattered*. To boost his confidence and make him come out of hiding. Maybe the first person who really SEES him. And LIKES him just the way he is. I mean-

This dynamic merits study: the interplay between a passive, often self-deprecating reptile, who may or may not have mental health challenges, and a highly assertive, narcissistic cyclops. Their interactions often appear as a paired phenomenon. But they seem to be perfectly suited to each other.

(Stop lying Randall you wrote this on your alt accounts didn’t you?)

Yeah, well. Purple goes good with green too. 💜 💚

They’re grapes, you’re honor!

Going to a football game on their first date????? Is Pixar trying to torture me???? like i was already drunk at 4pm this was the greatest thing i could have seen today.

(why bro sitting there like it’s just another Tuesday😭💀

bros not even paying attention 🤣

just kidding its Monday 🤣)

The sad almost unrequited way in which Randy is *always* fucking LOOKING at Mike for approval, confirmation, and consent and Mike doesn’t even *see* him like he’s not even present like he might as well not even BE there oh my god… and the fact that Randy isn’t smiling his usual smile here like the light is literally leaving his eyes…….Randy wants to support and encourage Mike but he’s losing his friend as Mike loses sight of what matters most….. Mike is withering away in his studies like he can’t even go to a college game with Randy without putting down a book and it’s obviously bothering Randy because Mike’s too busy to remember the value of social connections, of prioritizing hang-outs with his buddy and so he’s drifting away shutting out the world around him and unknowingly pushing Randy away and building up walls around himself…..

…look how happy Randy is just to *be* with Mike, just to exist with him even if their only quality bonding time is quizzing each other for the upcoming final exams… look at the way Randy smiles here, he genuinely enjoys Mike’s company even if they’re just doing the mundane, like he’ll never be this happy again-

….like it’s no longer mutual at this point but Mike doesn’t realize, he thinks they’ll always be together no matter what, so long as they share the same dream, but he doesn’t communicate his needs or put in the effort of maintaining what Randy is trying to maintain between them…. And Mike obviously isn’t doing it on purpose it’s just he’s never had friends before and hasn’t had much practice he’s been alone so long that he doesn’t know *how* to be a good friend he doesn’t know *how* to put other people’s needs before his own and doesn’t realize how needy Randy is…….. and he doesn’t want anything to get in the way of his dreams, even if it means sacrificing quality time with the only real friend he’s ever had…….. Randy has the dream, too, but not in such the extreme way that Mike does, like Randy obviously values friendships over achieving his academic goals not that his studies aren’t important too but like he WANTS Mike, he wants to be with him and hang out with him *in the present* not in the far future…… so is it any wonder Randy went and found another group of people who could give him what Mike couldn’t?????

…..Randy’s heart is breaking because obviously he can’t break down those walls……. That boy be breaking his heart…ohhhhh Randy wants a friend so bad….. great friendship is more than just having fun together and sharing things in common….. it requires an emotional connection as a stable foundation. Without that, it falls apart. And please believe, friendship is way more satisfying when it’s done with someone you have an emotional connection with… not ‘’fake friends’’. Imagine loving someone so much that even their absence becomes part of the villain origin story…. Oh, Randy. The ‘’quality time’’ with Mike probably only felt euphoric because you were starved in every other aspect of the relationship, hope this helps. ;-;

When you’re starved of love, any form of affection or attention feels amazing! And ROR gave Randy the attention Mike couldn’t….. That's why backsliding with a toxic ex-friend is never as good as it was before because you're not longing for the attention and approval they denied you anymore…. I get why Mike was so hurt when Randy turned his back on him, but then again, can you blame Randy? Well, it takes two to make a relationship work and it’s safe to say they’re both at fault. Like you boys have serious commitment issues… Mike learned how to be a better friend through Sulley, thank God… but Randy never got to know what it was like to have a friend like Mike ever again because ROR just used him as a pawn…. And it obviously shaped him into the grievous antisocial thug he becomes.

I honestly think what people deem as ‘’love’’ may actually just be obsession and infatuation. Not that Randy was more obsessed with Mike than he was with popularity, but if he *only* cared about popularity, he wouldn’t have stuck it out with Mike for so long and continued to hang out with him for a whole semester like as much as he wanted to get in with the cool kids, he still obviously deeply cared about Mike… he obviously idolizes and admires him, hence why he always follows Mike’s lead. He had no intentions of leaving Mike behind, he kept inviting him to the sorority parties and football games so they could get in with the IN CROWD *together*. That was Randy’s hope. He wanted to do *everything* with Mike because he was his first real friend. Why would he abandon the first person who probably showed him even a shard of kindness and treated him like an equal?

But Mike didn’t care about status as much, he cared more about being the Top Scarer than ROR accepting him as one of their own, and passing the exams of course wasn’t going to guarantee him a place in ROR anyway cuz they made it pretty clear from the onset that they didn’t want him in their group no matter how much he succeeded…. The more he succeeded in class, and the more he kept beating out Sulley’s ass, the more Johnny Worthington felt spited…. That little Mike was gaining the upper hand over his Star Quarterback. So, it was plain as day that Johnny would *intentionally* keep Mike from joining their group no matter what.

That was never Mike’s concern. He just wanted to do the best he could, even if it meant he would never be socially accepted. Being the Best Scarer wasn’t going to make him more popular and he knew that. Fame and fortune was not part of his plan. He just wanted to do good and make *himself* proud…. He wasn’t doing it for anybody but himself and that’s NOT selfish. Mike was out here living his best life, not relying on others for his own happiness. He chose HIMSELF. To respect himself; to honor himself. To love himself, and prioritize his own needs before anyone else’s and make HIMSELF happy. No one else was going to bring him happiness but HIMSELF and HIS OWN CHOICES. When Mike chose himself over popularity, he was also making a conscious effort to approach life with greater self-awareness. He’s acknowledging that he has the right to make decisions that are rooted in what’s best for him. It’s a practice of self-love and respect, and it’s an essential part of self-care…. Hence why Mike had the boost of self-esteem that Randy didn’t…. hence why Mike survived the college hivemind……. He went through hell and back again and came out smelling like a rosebush.

Randy’s reasons are a little more selfish….. he couldn’t be happy *unless* he was socially accepted. Just like any Freshman who could easily get pulled into the campus toxicity and the power struggles of upperclassman, he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) believe in his own self-worth unless someone popular like Johnny told him he was ‘’cool’’ or ‘’important’’. He needed to be part of a team, a social clique where he had no real identity or voice…. Once he joins ROR, he literally has no voice or individuality…. But that’s what he wanted. He didn’t want to be unique or different, because those things carry negative connotations for him (that’s why he lost the glasses even though it was Mike’s idea. Mike wasn’t necessarily implying that he should *never* wear his glasses, just that he shouldn’t when he’s trying to camouflage because it gave away his trick, but Randy took the advice to heart and decided to lose what was necessary to blend in and become ‘’cool’’… the glasses didn’t make him ‘’cool’’ even though he can’t see without them, and it��s a wonder he got through the first obstacle course without bumping into anything.. but do you think ROR would have let him on their team if he was still wearing them? Absolutely not!). Those things set him apart and keep him living an existence of anonymity. He wants to belong collectively, not individually. He wants to conform. So, he purposedly goes through deindividuation. Once he’s wearing the ROR sweater, he exhibits more antisocial behavior. He starts becoming more impulsive and engaging in deviant behaviors that target his old buddy….. his former best friend, his roommate.... the kid that was *supposed* to be his lifelong soulmate.................

🎵Tell me what's wrong with me My body, face, my hair Tell me all my many faults Tell me like you care When we both know you're cruel And we both know you're right I could listen to you, like a fool all night What's wrong with me? How I speak? How I dress? What's wrong with me? You keep me guessing Mama called me beautiful Don't believe her anymore Now I'm listening to you What do I do that for? Please don't ignore me Mmh, Mmh Tell me who we hate today And I will fall in line Hug me while my shoulders tense And we'll pretend we're fine

Though we both know one day There'll be blood on the floor But which one will betray the other more? What's wrong with me? Where is my mind Where does it end? Maybe I need to find a better friend What's wrong with me? What can I do? What's wrong with me? Could it be you? It's probably me See that, you see What's wrong with me Mmh, Mmh🎵

So Randy felt like he had no choice but to leave Mike behind…..Mike might’ve been dragging him down and he had to cut loose the emotional baggage he was carrying around…..But nothing great has ever been achieved without some degree of obsession…. Randy was obsessed with popularity; Mike succeeded because of his own obsessions with his academic pursuits… so they’re both flawed in that way… Mike’s inability to reciprocate Randy’s feelings gave Randy enough motivation to find the courage to break off from Mike and find his own way in the world and become his own person even if he ended up making a bad choice and ended up letting himself get taken for granted by people who didn’t care about him… and by doing so, he lost his true self. And this explains *so* much of Randall’s feud with Mike in the first movie, not just guilt by association with Sulley his rival, but these bitches have a history they have a past…. wtf omg omg omg 💚💜🏳️‍🌈 my gays

They’re so tragic. I’m in shambles.

yeah, I never want to read a serious article or post about the monster loneliness epidemic ever again.

There is nothing platonic about this image……BE SERIOUS💀and during pride month too… about 1049 fanart and fanfics spawned from this single screenshot, I kid you not. Don’t worry. I’m cool and normal…. legitimately can't tell if we're eating well or not 😭 cuz Pixar robbed of us of more Mike + Randall content…. Like I was *starving* when this movie came out…. I wanted more. That's insane they're insane. It's getting weird now.

I can’t tell which one’s the keeper, and which one’s the exotic pet…. I love their dynamic….. Mike the more dominant, confident one, leading the pack, diligent and intelligent, but also competitive, wise-cracking and slightly neurotic….Randy the shy, nervous, timid twink I mean model bookworm…..unsure of himself and staying safe in Mike’s shadow, depending on Mike as his sense of self security…. Cuz Randy doesn’t want to go to the parties by himself, he always wants to bring Mike along, so he doesn’t look like a loner……. Cuz he doesn’t have a sense of self beyond his friendship with Mike yet, he’s still finding himself and learning how to navigate the cold, harsh world and find his own identity….. and college can be a hostile environment if you don’t have a friend to help you belong. Thank goodness he has a friend in Mike! (I bet on Wednesdays, they wear pink......... god they're so cute. They're so cute together my babies.)

(the way Randy rolls his eyes... he's already 10000% done with Mike's shit and they've only known each other for five minutes💀 )

(there’s no way in hell these college boys keep their dorm room *this* squeaky clean has PIXAR seen actual college dorms???? Lived in by 17, 18-year-old teenaged boys who’ve never lived on their own before and never learned to clean their room without their mom constantly reminding them to???? Was Mike’s mom coming over to clean their room while they slept?? 75% of college dorm rooms are FILTHY – I don’t mean just cluttered – I don’t mean just in disarray – I mean possibly certifiable as a toxic-waste dumping ground DISGUSTINGLY FILTHY! Maybe Mike and Randy are OCD neat freaks….Mike and Randy are not normal…….. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised….. neat freaks that they are… man, this was a match made in heaven! I always did think Mike did all the cooking and cleaning between he and Sulley…… he would be the neat freak in the Odd Couple. Funny but concerning..)

…..sadly, Mike is too locked in and focused on passing the Scare Finals to pay much attention to Randy and spend quality time with him………their love I mean friendship was doomed from the start. (I want to talk about it in depth in a later post because there’s too much to cram here.)

Look at their body language, the way Randy always has his little hands balled up and drawn close to his body……the way Mike uses confidence as a shield, but his pie-eyed puppy dog look betrays his real emotions beneath the surface…he’s insecure, too but he plays it cool……they’re both hiding in plain sight. WHICH COULD MEAN EVERYTHING.

(off topic but…… cuz Mike blew his top when Sulley was shedding his long beautiful fur in their shared bunk bed…….. Randy probably sheds his scales, and it probably itches like hell….Mike better watch out for those mood swings, too, cuz reptiles can get pretty irritable when they’re shedding….like ew…… can’t Mike ever get himself a *normal* roommate? One that doesn’t shed his skin or cough up hairballs? If I was Mike, I’d be mad too…..)

(very normal straight platonic bestfriend behavior rofl…… these two fight like a married couple. I need the GIF of Mike kissing Sulley’s hand in his sleep because if that wasn’t the most QUEERBAITING scene in this movie.. suuuure not gay at all. They did this shit on PURPOSE when I saw it for the first time I was like there's no way…..that their new dorm in OK frat house is literally in a closet….. there’s no fucking way……propaganda I am beyond willing to fall for. Boy Pixar you are slick.)

But honestly…….. and this is probably a stretch, but Mike and Randy’s narrative seems unintentionally queer coded.

i can't believe im being queerbaited by MONSTERS INC in the year 2025 and it's WORKING

help I’m falling for this shit hook line and sinker 😭

Imagine that…..I hope the entire cast in Season 3 of Monsters at Work spends the whole time trying to outgay each other that's the dream………. I AM SEATED.

queer DISNEY nation we won you don't understand

It’s canon that Randy tried to blend into society and push down his camouflage abilities because he thinks it makes him a ‘’big joke’’ and he probably *was* made fun for it at one time, the way Mike was bullied too for not being ‘’scary enough’’. Like how is that NOT queer coded??????

Remember when gays tried to "blend in" to society, and ‘’assimilate’’ and live a double life, and we had to create our own bars, clubs, and social scene just to be ourselves away from public eye? That's because the "straights" who supposedly "didn't care about what we did in our private life" beat the sh*t out of us and murdered us. Hence PARADES. hm okay okay hm hmmmmmm hm OK

Why do you think Oozma Kappa created their own group of misfits? They’re not even a pledged fraternity. They’re not even officially recognized on campus. Because they were shunned and marginalized by the other prestigious campus frats….. because they’re unique. They’re different. They don’t fit in with the status quo. They’re loud! They’re geeky! They’re flamboyant! They’re UNAPOLOGETICALLY queer and everything in-between! They’re TOTAL ACHILLEAN QUEENS! AND THEY EMBRACE IT.

(these bitches too gay to function I love them so much ngl)

They don’t care what the others think of them……. They stay true to themselves…… they created their own community to celebrate their pride, their diversity, to create empathy and solidarity for other monsters like them who have their shared experience of prejudice, discrimination, and disrespect.  These guys are literally urging each other to not be afraid of themselves and their differences, for self-affirmation, dignity, and equality and to rise up and fight against shame and social stigma—they’re encouraging each other to “come out of the closet” !!!!! (Who would ever think that Mike would become their unlikely leader? King of Queens? Self-Appointed Lord of Misfits? Or, The Losers Club, anyone? Because Mike sees Stars in all of these gays. ‘’Because if you knew how strong we were…….’’

(that’s the gayest thing you have ever said…….)

Mike Wazowski said, ‘’Gay Rights!’’

🎵 I see stars So many stars tonight We could make diamonds dull We are so beautiful I see stars We shine as bright as day I will look out for you We'll light each other's way We are so real, we are so rare We see you there, we see you

We're all stars🎵

He’s right and he should say it. Mike has nerves of steel!

……………. It’s honestly so wholesome.

happy pride to all my insufferable OK monsters we won truly 🌈)

When Mike and Randy enroll in college to begin a new life, they’re not simply “banging a drum” . They’re celebrating survival in a world that told them to hide, hate themselves, or disappear. The rainbow isn’t about forcing beliefs, it’s a symbol of freedom after oppression. What really offends the straights isn’t our pride. It’s the fact that we’re free enough to show it. Because when someone walks boldly in truth, it exposes the fears still shackling others.

And Johnny Worthington can’t STAND how much Mike embraces himself, loves himself, and loves and embraces his frat bros despite their flaws and builds them up and makes them become the Top Dogs on the campus that they later become. Because Mike believes in them. And by his believing in them, they learn to believe in themselves. Because the straights always fear what they don’t understand……… and they hate our pride. And you know what? They’re OK for a reason!

(I’ll come back to Mike + Randall and their sad love story but for now….)

~THE DEATH OF RANDY BOGGS= RANDALL DIES AT THE END~

So anyway……….

…….Think about it…….. would Randall be half as scary as he is if he hadn’t listened to Mike and kept his fuck ass glasses? Even though he can’t see past his own nose for the life of him, but he’d rather risk near sightedness if it makes him a halfway decent Scare Major with a kick-ass scare tactic?

So…………………………

Thanks to Mike, Randy goes from the Four-Eyed Hostess Twinkie to…….

………this Squinty-Eyed Ghost Pepper Bad Boy.

G’night Sweet Prince…..

You ain’t see nothing yet 😭😭😭wait for the transformation

THE PLOT THICKENS.

Now that we all know Randall couldn’t see for shit, hence the iconic ‘’evil’’ squint which isn’t actually evil, it’s just that he was blind as a bat….LEGALLY BLONDE…. I mean blind….like, you mean all this time?? and ….the jokes write themselves. The jokes that came out of this fandom will never not be funny….. you go back and re-watch MI knowing he’s *supposed* to wear glasses and then you realize why Randall never noticed the obvious even if it was staring him in the face……I mean yeah pretty much……….look at the way he squints at the Scare Board like an old Grandpa who forgot his specs……..The blind man knows he can't see... the fool doesn't.

…….or when he mistook Mike for Boo………. Cuz mf can’t see.

Like, homeboy, are you blind?????

Oh, wait-

So, when Randy loses the specs…. Little Randy died that day. Randy died and Randall Boggs was born. Randall the Fuck Boi. Or in Mike’s own words…… ‘’Wild Man.’’ You stay out of trouble you Wild Man, you.

Pffffffffft. As if!

He’s a Brooding Bad Boy. I think even geeky nerdy Randy had a bark worse than his bite underneath all that mushy gushy exuberant innocent endearing naivete. You can’t fool us, Randy! But he’s cool. And not 2000s edgy cool where the bad boy tries too hard to be edgy but ends up looking kinda... cringe. No, Randall is cool-cool, not cringe-cool. He’s not cooler than Mike, obviously, but he’s pretty darn cool. Dangerously cool. That bird is sharp!

I never liked Randall much as a kid but I like him now… it just took me decades to realize how cool he actually is. Better late than never. (He still kind of scares me tho… but if we weren’t a *little* scared of Randall we’d be missing the point of the whole movie.)

Btw I forgot THIS IS THE MONSTERFUCKER WEBSITE so…….

~LET’S GET FREAKY~

Some fans think he’s ‘’hawt’’ and ‘’sexy’’… cuz evil is the new ‘’sexy’’ I guess? But I never found Randall particularly ‘’sexy’’. Then again I’m just not really into anthropomorphic creatures in that way. They make for good characters but me being an animal lover and all (NOT a furry) I just can’t see these mfs as hot, fictional or not.. (That’s not knocking King Steve Buscemi, a National Treasure….. and Buscemi’s unique features were obviously assigned to Randall’s final design, esp. the long, skinny weasel body and the telltale Steve Buscemi eyes…)

He’s not unhandsome and unattractive, but……. I just think he’s creepy, not even mid, just creepy. The way the eyeballs move is so weird and unpleasant…. The way the eyes don’t line up…. The way he’s able to move his eyes independently is definitely adding to the whimsy…….Like how one eyes blinks before the other one does, like it’s NEVER in sync like a real reptile, like what on God’s green earth????….. The way his spine is always hunched over when he’s speaking to smaller characters as a means of intimidation (although it could also be because he can’t see too well and has to get uncomfortably close to look you in the eye)……. Like this angle right here is obviously from Mike’s three-foot-tall perspective…… and even though Randall only stands a mere five feet heigh when he’s on four legs (according to Pixar animators), he appears, from the ground level, to be so much larger than he actually is, because this unique camera angle specially makes him slightly out of proportion, with the head appearing closer to us than the rest of his body, because the way in which he’s crouching as low to Mike as possible, it almost looks like he’s going to jump out of the screen, like Samara coming out of the well in The Ring….

 I mean, just look at the crocodile jagged toothy grin, and the prominent underbite that pushes his jaw towards us with those sharp, cone-shaped teeth and powerful jaws….. like Jaws, who????? The way he snarls in that crooked, lopsided smirk that transforms his face into the look of a misshapen Jack O’ Lantern…. I mean, the animators did such a tremendous job in upping the creep factor with this character design and making his movements so terribly unsettling and realistic, like you better believe how much creepier he was up on that Big Screen, magnified to glorious measures….. and even from a mature perspective, you understand why poor little Boo, a two, maybe three-year-old little girl would find this brute absolutely terrifying! Like, who wouldn’t??? I don’t think, of course, that Randall is Michael Myers Jump Scare!Scary, but he *is* creepy. There’s just something unnatural and disturbing about his cool, calculating demeanor. And that Chesire Cat smile of his………..like a frozen clown mask……..like Pennywise shit.

For a Disney/ Pixar movie, esp. he’s the scariest villain imho……………. (I’ll analyze it more later.)

(I’d never thought a salamander can be so creepy, cuz they’re usually very cute and squishable and I love them.) Randall, anyway. Randall’s a creep (a love to hate him kind of creep, but a creep…. A kidnapping psycho Norman Bates creep).

 ‘’Randy’’ is another story. Randy is a harmless brainy dweeb. Randy is just cute af okay??? They’re two different characters…..like a split personality, so you can’t even rightly compare them. Apples and oranges.

ANYWAY popular opinion will have you know that monsters are, indeed ‘’hawt’’. this serve right here should end all discussion

(And he’s got a scar on his right eye now which makes him MORE bad ass than he was before…. Pixar, you’re NOT helping………)

They said it, not me.

Actually you know what dawgs? You're so right about Randall. I was like "He's so hot and so fun. I want a thousand stories about him." Wait, stop. I didn't need this confusion... Well. To be fair, Randall here is hot in the same way Robbie Rotten and Sporticus are hot, so…… Well. Actually. He's 100 times better looking than the trash bags people usually thirst over, so………… this is absolutely against my will.

You'd actually follow him into a wood chipper wouldn't you? 🙄 Welllllll…… maybe.

~GLOW-UP OR GLOW-DOWN?~

Actually my only criticism with MU is…….. the changes in animation. Don’t get me wrong, there’s pros and cons with both movies.

 For instance, I love the glow-up with the animation style in Monsters University. Pixar’s animation is less clunky and uncanny valley than it was in 2001……. As good as the animation is in Monsters, Inc. for the time period it came out, you can still tell it’s computer generated, so parts of it didn’t age as well, because of the way it moves like a computer model, or like a marionette puppet, it’s a little stiff and limited in its movements and aged a little bit like spoiled milk…….whereas in MU, it mimics more real life, like lighting and surfaces look so much more photorealistic and it looks less CD-ROM computer game-y, if you know what I mean, the movements of the characters are more flexible and smoothly elegant. Of course there’s a reason the color grading in MU is fire…… because they were using global illumination, a new lighting system that made the lighting setups more technologically advanced. Like it’s just beautiful to look at. It’s eye candy.

In MI, the animation looks groundbreaking for the time, but some of it looks outdated now. Not unwatchable, just dated. The characters don’t always flow. Like Randall looks great in most of the movie’s shots, but he always looks so weird in this specific frame, and it always bugged the hell out of me…. He springs up in a twisted unusual way like a jack in the box…. Looking a bit like a centipede… but the animation in general looks almost unfinished compared to the rest of the movie…….like it’s not completely rendered…. Idk if it’s just the lighting or……did they run out of budget?????? Was there a power outage????? A failed hard drive????? A computer crash??? WTF happened here?! He looks great in his first introduction in the men’s locker room, but then here… it’s like they just gave up and called it a day.

Plus, the colors in MI are a little washed out and dull and desaturated……… and maybe it’s on purpose because the majority of the movie takes place in a dark dirty factory with harsh fluorescent lights….

But MU is waaaaaaaaay more colorful and oversaturated in a Candy Land kind of way. I love the variety in settings. I love the slight redesigns of the monsters to show their youth compared to the first movie when they’re middle-aged adults, I love how bright and technicolor and pretty the characters look, BUT………

……..the animation style also took a bit of a glow-down, too….. like Randall specifically is a bit of a downgrade from MI to MU. Like I get not wanting to make him as evil looking and macabre and nightmarish, but……. Pixar simplified the designs to a point where the monsters look guppy, like they’re made of Play-Doh, which isn’t a bad thing…….. but if you compare the way Randall moves in the first movie to how he moves in the second movie, it’s vastly different. Like he’s more realistic in the first movie. His eyeballs are a big thing……. In MI, his eyes move independently, like I talked about, one eye moves before the other one does……but in MU, if you look closely, his eyes always blink at the same time, and it irks me.

Look at the normal eyeballs here:

Compared to here when they’re out of sync…. Right eye moves down…. A second later, left eye moves down…. (it’s so bizarre, but it looked better imo… that’s what *real* reptiles do…  they blink one eye at a time, rather than both eyes simultaneously, don’t ask me why):

(i literally can't stop looking at it like it's so gross but epic)

(Also, in MU he seems to be missing the stripes on the eyelids??? And how do his glasses stay up if he doesn’t have ears???? And why does he only have three fingers?????)

Even the mouth shape is totally different…. In MU, his mouth moves up and down like a sock puppet, there’s no real incredible movement there…. In MI, they took great pains to shape every lip curl and every grimace and growl….. with those snaggle teeth, the way his face looks like a torn pocket when he smiles because the cheeks wrinkle up at the corners and the skin around the eyes and mouth stretches when he talks, like it lifts his whole face like a person and it’s weird and creepy and impressive at the same time…. It looks less like a computer model and more like a rotoscope….. like I said, it’s very uneasy and meticulous with the way he’s animated in MI compared to MU.

MU *looks* like an animation, you know? Which isn’t a bad thing. I like cartoons to look like cartoons but……..He may look more fluid and cutsey cartoon-y and vibrant and colorful in MU, but in MI………. he looks like an actual reptile, and despite the limited technology of 2001, his overall skin texture is so much more detailed and reptilian, like you can see every little line on his face, and the bags under his eyes, and patches of skin discoloration and different pigmentation, which is natural, like you can almost touch him through the screen he looks so hyper realistic (even Mike has the visible red veins on the sclera (white part of the eye)! That’s how detailed they were... I know they were older in the first movie but that's not the point). In MU, the characters are waaaaaay less detailed. Maybe it was to make them look more cute and aesthetically pleasing and easier to animate… Randall looks like a cartoon reptile, not a real one……. The scales and the details of his features aren’t as sharp and elaborate, he has no skin flaws, he’s so soft baby smooth, like he’s made of plastic, so it really downplays the creep factor of these designs.

Maybe that was the point? Idk.

Well at least they kept the best part about Randall’s design….. in both MI and MU he’s animated in such a complex way that all four of his arms are always doing something different….. it might get busy to watch but it’s just cool…. Imagine being that ambidextrous cuz Randall doesn’t favor either hand, like he can multitask like nobody’s business.

And then it makes his torture scenes towards Mike even more disturbing, cuz he can’t go more than five minutes without putting his hands *somewhere* on Mike to treat him harshly and inflict pain, like he’s got two hands here and two hands there, each hand doing something different, each hand restraining him, inflicting different levels of pain, one hand twisting his wrist, the other pulling his arm practically out if its socket, like I can literally hear the bones cracking, like poor Mike is a fly caught in a spider’s web……. Imagine being controlled and victimized by a dude with four arms, like Randall’s always got the upper hand over Mike, literally. It makes Mike 1000x more vulnerable because there's no way in hell you can defeat a guy who can make himself disappear and has four fucking arms, like there's no way…

….and you wonder why Randall targets Mike specifically and violently attacks *him* and not Sulley (until he’s forced to), cuz Sulley’s twice his size and he knows he doesn’t stand much chance against Sulley. Mike is half his size and easier to influence and dominate because he’s something like a Man Child who clearly lacks common sense and rationale….. like Randall literally talks down to him like a child.

I can’t see Sulley being cornered by Randall in a dimly lit hallway and being coerced to give information under pressure and physical torture…. Sulley has a little more sense than that. But Mike is too easily persuaded to do something he doesn’t want to do under threat….. Randall literally twists his arm. Randall uses mental and physical suffering to obtain confessions from Mike who easily breaks under Randall even if he tries to protect his friend… Randall *chooses* to threaten Mike for a reason, he knows Sulley will never break that easily. It’s not that Mike is a coward, it’s just that he’s vulnerable and can easily be manipulated and overpowered.

Notice how much more confident Mike is around Sulley when Randall confronts the both of them…. As soon as Mike’s by himself, without Sulley as his wingman, his confidence evaporates. He’s absolutely terrified of Randall. Notice too how Randall *only* specifically targets Mike when he’s alone and doesn’t have his bodyguard to stand up for him…. In the opening scene in the men’s locker room, he’s kind of a playground bully but his making fun of of Mike is more mean-spirited and mischievous but not necessarily in a violent or threatening way like we see him do later. He wouldn’t dare physically hurt Mike in that scene, because Sulley is right there and can stomp him on the sidewalk and turn him into grape Jell-O if he wanted to. Later when Randall realizes Mike is directly involved in letting Boo into the monster world, he literally waits until he can get Mike alone…. Away from witnesses, and away from Sulley, and stalks and traps him in an unoccupied part of the factory where no one would be able to hear Mike's cries for help. Like gee, Randall… you sure are tough messing with the ones you know won’t (or can’t) fight back. 🙄Randall’s over here abducting and exploiting children with their trusting nature and natural curiosity, and he has no qualms in doing the same to ‘’little monsters’’ like Mike (he even physically and verbally abuses his own assistant!)….. which is pretty low of Randall, cuz he never targets anybody his own size (or ten times his size), probably cuz he *can’t*……. Not that he’s all bark and no bite, but he’s only powerful if he’s preying on those he perceives as physically weaker than him……

…..but as I’ve said before, Randall can use his camouflage to his advantage, and so his small size doesn’t matter when it comes time for him to assault and ambush Sulley… David does almost succeed in taking down Goliath….. naturally Sulley can knock him over with his thumb, but that’s not Sulley’s nature…… he only knocks him out because he has no choice… but his pacifist nature won’t let him stoop to Randall’s level, like he doesn’t want to *kill* the guy……meanwhile Randall over here literally trying to *kill* Sulley by crushing his windpipe…… like, Randall doesn’t f*ck around, he means business… he’s like Sonny Corleone, he’s bulletproof! He’ll kick your ass, he’ll kick your dog’s ass…. Hell, he’ll kick his own ass!… Sulley, my man…. You’re too nice… you’re too soft…..

…..but yeah, Randall is just……. He’s an impressive villain for so many reasons, like no other villain in Disney or Pixar film history surpasses him. He’s just petrifying. He’s insidious. He’s deadly.

Now for the cons. Some folks criticized the animation in Monsters at Work, because…… well, obviously it’s not as good as cinematic animation because it’s a TV show, it’s on a stricter schedule and tighter budget, but they used the MU designs instead of the MI designs despite being a continuation of the first movie, so……… they made the characters look more like their younger counterparts and it doesn’t make too much sense continuity wise…. But animation wise, their simplified university designs were probably easier (and faster) to animate for a direct to streaming show……… but even if that wasn't the case, Pixar’s animation has changed so much over time. It’s almost ‘’dumbed down’’ a lot. Character designs are way less detailed than they used to be. It’s like they forgot how to animate the way they looked from the first movie. They were more crude and less ‘’cute’’ looking in the first movie but it worked for the story…… the cute designs work for college days, but I wish they went back to the older, rough-hewn, primitive looks they had from the first movie. they looked less like Sesame Street Muppets and more like.... you know.... monsters. The style is Night and Day. Just a minor thing, but yeah……………

In all seriousness, they couldn’t make Randall *too* scary. The early concept designs of all the monsters (including Mike and Sulley) were pretty terrifying…. But Disney execs had to step in and remind Pixar that they were marketing this movie for children, and in order to sell plushies and stuffies, they couldn’t make the monsters *too* scary. The kids wouldn’t buy the merch, and that’s *clearly* all Disney cares about, so they had to sacrifice hardcore bloodcurdling, bone chilling storytelling for the sake of the kiddos, and so they were forced to tone down Randall’s design and all the other monsters…….. so, even if they’re *kinda* cute in the final version, there’s still an element of creepy… maybe not Tim Burton creepy, but it’s there.

~A RANDALL BY ANY OTHER NAME~

btw Randall was never really a ‘’scary’’ name for a villain, it sounds like a FUCK BOI if anything…… well, at least it’s not ‘’Ned’’ or ‘’Switt’’ like what he was named in early story treatments, am I right? That would’ve been way worse… still, ‘’Kevin’’ would have been more villainous than ‘’Randall’’ like if that’s not the geekiest name on the planet…. It would’ve been kinda funny if they named him ‘’Donny’’ after his character in Big Lebowski……. His code name for Monsters at Work was ‘’Edward’’ to hide his eventual reveal from audiences. But that’s worse than ‘’Randall’’. You might as well have named him Barney the purple dinosaur…. with a name like Randall, it’s hard to take him seriously. But Randall Flagg the servant of Satan was the name of the villain in Stephen King’s The Stand, so Idk…. Is that who he was he named after? The Devil incarnate? The Eyes of the Dragon? Or was he named after Randall Weems in Recess? Idk…….

i’ll be damned if his last name don’t rhyme with ‘’dogs’’ like you know… Reservoir Dogs…. Reservoir Boggs, much???? Sure, cast the Sicilian Mafiosi from The Sopranos, why don’t you…. Is it just me, but I think Randall should’ve had an Italian name at the very least…. I mean if they were gonna go with a Polish-Jewish surname for Mike and cast a well-known Jewish comedian to play him, they should have committed to Randall once Steve Buscemi was casted… with the Brooklyn accent and all, they could’ve played him like an Italian gangster… cuz he literally tries to strangle Sulley to death, Godfather-style, using his entire body like a garrot … like dayum, this movie was messed up! Nobody better f*ck with Randall or you’d be sleeping with the fishes.

…..but no, it’s okay…… ‘’Boggs’’ strangely fits cuz it reminds me of a wet, muddy swamp… where gators thrive… and it kind of foreshadows his fate at the end of the movie, with his being mistaken for a gator in the Florida Everglades… or am I reaching????? Just say I’m reaching.

‘’Are you hurt from that stretch?’’ you ask. Yes. Yes, I am.

I’m dragging it lol

Oh we have lost the fucking plot.

Randall literally changed the chemistry of my brain forever…….. fuck you Randall. I love you. But fuck you.

----

To Be Continued……….

[hsboo03]

Monsters, Inc./ Monsters University Analysis- Pt. 1

(WARNING: LONG POST)

-> Part 1/ ?

[Part 2]

Y’all this happening on only the first week of pride 😭😭

I’m sorry i’m about to be a menace to everyone i know….. I don’t even know where to begin because I love these movies SO MUCH I was so obsessed like 10000% I used to eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I was a kid, no joke.  I was five when the first movie came out but I have so many fond memories…….

Call me delusional but I think Monsters, Inc. is Pixar’s greatest film, to date (as much as I love Toy Story, Wall-E, A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo…. MI always takes the cake with the cherry on top….. it is a masterpiece). It was my main obsession in 2001, and it still is. It’s such a well-structured, multi-layered story with so many deep, dark themes that went way over my head as a kid, but I appreciate it that much more now as an adult…

We can’t forget Monsters University… it’s one of the greatest Pixar sequel/ prequels, just as good as if not better than the first film…… dare I say better than the Toy Story sequels, which I liked well enough but haven’t watched since they came out…. But MU? You wanna know how many times I’ve watched this BEAST since I first saw it on the big screen??? I can’t believe it came out in 2013, it feels like only yesterday. I must’ve gone to see it in theaters five times in a row because it was THAT good. I wanna go back in time and watch it for the first time all over again.

I’m not putting SPOILER ALERTS cuz this ain’t your standard review and I assume everybody’s seen it already, I mean the first movie is 23 years old! There’s no excuse if you haven’t seen it already! With the assumption that everyone’s seen it, I’m gonna just be combining my thoughts on both movies… cuz reasons… and I’ll try real hard to organize my thoughts because they’re all over the place……….

Without further ado………….

Let’s spill some tea, shall we?

Boy, have I got news for you, buddy.

We ain’t got just tea but the whole tea pot lol 🫖

It’s Pride Month, y’all! These monsters be comin’ out of the closet, you know what I mean?

!!THE STAR-STUDDED CAST

Before I jump into characters, let’s talk about how they absolutely COOKED with this casting.

John Goodman as James P. Sullivan—Broadway Legend and Coen Brothers Royalty. Wait, you mean Roseanne Legend, right? Right???? Hahaha. No, that was not a typo. Yes, you heard me right. BROADWAY legend. I’m talking the Tony-Award winning Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at La Jolla Playhouse in 1984 and on Broadway in 1985. Won the Tony for Best Musical. Goodman originated the role of Huck Finn’s abusive alcoholic father, Pap Finn, and his villain song (‘’Guv’ment’’) totally slaps. Nobody could’ve played Pap like Goodman…… Goodman being a Missouri native and all with strong ties to the Ozarks, born and raised in Affton, in south St. Louis County, brought up Southern Baptist……..he’s a literal Beverly Hillbilly, for a lack of a better word, and with Huck Finn being synonymous with Missouri, he was born to play the part.

Why is this relevant to Monsters, Inc.? It’s not. It’s just a super cool piece of trivia for Theatre Kids anyone who cares. I may have outed myself as a Theatre Kid….oops.

Quick story: I remember watching the 74th Academy Awards in March 2002 and seeing John Goodman perform live the Oscar-winning Mike and Sulley classic Broadway showtune love duet, ‘’If I Didn’t Have You’’ from the movie with songwriter Randy Newman singing Mike’s part because Billy was MIA for some reason and my mom said, ‘’Wow he sings really good I didn’t know he could sing!’’ like mom???? Hello??? This man got his start on Broadway, he’s a classically trained singer, OF COURSE he can sing =____=

But even now I’m surprised that so many people don’t know that………. Esp. cuz he sings in other movies and TV shows…… was everybody sleeping on this man????? This National Treasure??????…… but yes, he was the perfect choice to play Sulley based on that hidden talent…… plus his deep, grizzly bear drawl (I heard someone say, he doesn’t attempt to lose his Midwestern accent but lays it on thicker when he needs to, almost as a manipulation tactic when he wants to try and pull the “simple ol’ southern pastor” wool over someone’s eyes. He needs to talk like he is from Montgomery with Molasses oozin outta his mouth.)

ANYWAY, this man has a God-given, rich operatic baritone, can sing circles around bluegrass, country, gospel…..like………..Triple Threat.

Like…….. not to be weird or gross, but he can top me…….with that voice. Present tense mind u ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seriously he may be SUPERMEGAFOXYAWESOMEHOT but I fall in love with him because of his voice :)

(And I secretly wish MI was made into a quasi-musical like the Disney Renaissance movies because Billy Crystal and John Goodman sure got some serious pipes, don’t they? Wigs were snatched.)

Even cooler trivia………Sulley’s original name was Johnson……. djjfjfhf my god.

I’m glad they changed it to Sulley…. So much cuter, right? Sulley was, in fact, named after Ed Sullivan of The Ed Sullivan Show. So, for anyone who knows the ‘’Ed Sullivan’’ song from Bye Bye Birdie? Yeah, *that* song. Paul Lynde. Pride Month, y’all.

Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski—Broadway AND Hollywood Legend. Yes, another one of THOSE. 700 Sundays. Mr. Saturday Night and his showstopping self-aware fake Yiddish scat routine at the 75th 2022 Tonys that literally brought down the house! Yiddishists need not despair. You had ONE job, sir…. And you nailed it. A real traditional song-and-dance man. He’s a TITAN of musical theatre. My lovey dovey Manhattan-born, Bronx, Long Beach, and Long Island-reared Jew. I want to talk more about him later and why he was so perfect for Mike. But it needs its own post.  

(King Billy with the rainbow????? And why did he turn into Stephen Sondheim??? lord take me now)

Mike MIGHT be my favorite character deadass. Yeah 😅my character preferences are. they sure are predictable lmao

The fact that Mike was never *supposed* to be part of the original story, like that is MADNESS because I cannot even imagine the story working as well without Mike. He is the heart and soul of the franchise. He is the CINAMMON ROLL……and the rest of them are frosting. IS ANYONE GONNA TALK ABOUT HOW HE LOOKS ODDLY ENOUGH LIKE A WALKING TALKING MI COMPANY LOGO OR?????

…………………………………………………………………. OR WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FIND OUT THAT OUT FOR OURSELVES????

Em. Eye. It’s literally……..just an ‘’M’’. With an eye………. Like……… ‘’M’’ for Mike but………….if you just flipped the ‘’M’’….it would be a ‘’W’’…….. for ‘’Wazowski’’………… Coincidence? I think not.

So does that mean Mike is the unofficial mascot for the MI franchise????? am i hallucinating????????

So anyway, luckily they created a (Boy)Friend for Sulley…… but…….

The fact that they had the NERVE to consider Eddie Murphy for the part, like c’mon………….he was a good Mushu and a Donkey, but his voice does NOT fit Mike. Crystal was made for Mike………. With a name like ‘’Wazowski’’ he *had* to be voiced by a Jew, preferably a New York-accented Jew, and I’m not sorry.  (The only alternative to Crystal was *maybe* Nathan Lane, with his witty gay sass (Timon!!! My Love!!!)…….but Mike would not have worked as well if he was played by a non-Jew, and that’s just my opinion, my maternal grandfather was a Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi German-Jew, so it’s just something I need to get out of my system about why I love Mike—and Billy Crystal!!!!!—so much…….I’ll talk more about why later because it’s a big part of his character…….it was definitely a choice…..Billy Crystal understood the assignment.)

Of course, everyone already knows the story how he was the original choice for Buzz Lightyear…… Buzz’s early animation test used a sound clip from the famous ‘’THIS STUPID WAGON WHEEL ROY ROGERS GARAGE SALE COFFEE TABLE!!!!!’’ scene from When Harry Met Sally (1989). It’s funny as hell but……….

His voice honestly did not fit Buzz, bless his heart. It was just that Buzz worked better with a deeper tone, like Tim Allen………so Crystal politely declined, later regretting his choice when Toy Story became a smash hit (but he made the right choice, it be like that sometimes.) Well, they promised they’d find him a better part……………..

…………………………………and the rest is history.

~THE BIG WAZOWSKI~

Btw, what the hell is a ‘’Wazowski’’???? It’s funny, because Boo has a nickname for Sulley…. ‘’Kitty’’……. His real name isn’t hard to remember or pronounce; she must hear Mike calling him ‘’Sulley’’ but she always calls him ‘’Kitty’’ because that’s what kids usually do…….. but then the great irony of it all is she has no special pet name for Mike. She can perfectly pronounce ‘’Mike Wazowski’’ without missing a beat! It’s just funny, because it’s not like an easy to pronounce, easy to spell generic name like ‘’John Smith’’ esp. for a kid who’s still learning to talk, it’s like the most longest, most sing-song name you can possibly come up with, like it’s a mouthful……. BUT it wouldn’t be funny if Mike had a simple John Doe name. ‘’Wazowski’’ is just funny to say. And everybody in the movie wears it thin, stretching it to its last syllable……to a point that NONE of the kids in the audience watching this movie for the first time were EVER gonna forget *that* name. I remember in grade school all the kids chanting Boo’s ‘’Mike Wazowski! Mike Wazowski!’’ down the hallways in perfect unison, just a chorus of little kindergarteners starting their own Monsters, Inc. fanclub on the playground, like…… the animators knew what they were doing. They brainwashed us.

My ten-year-old cousin LOVES this movie to death and Mike of course is her favorite character (bitch, me too, the fuck!). Yep, it was love at first sight for me, too, kiddo. She’s going through the phase! With a name like that, how can you NOT?

When this movie first came out, my older cousins and I were so obsessed that we would re-enact every scene from the movie, we took turns playing all the characters of course. We used a baby doll for Boo. But our favorite game was the ‘’Wazowski Game’’. My older cousins and I used to imitate Randall insulting Mike, like literally *all* the time…………… we used to call each other’s houses and purposedly not pick up the phone so we could leave insulting voice mails. Our answering machines were literally full with all kinds of messages like: ‘’SHUT UP, WAZOWSKI!’’ ‘’CAN IT, WAZOWSKI!’’ ‘’YOU’RE KILLING ME, WAZOWSKI!’’ ‘’KISS MY LIZARD BUTT, WAZOWSKI!’’ ‘’IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE, WAZOWSKI???’’ ‘’DO YOU THINK I’M STUPID, WAZOWSKI???????????’’ ‘’DID YOU EAT MY SANDWHICH, WAZOWSKI??????????????’’ ‘’IS IT BECAUSE I’M FAT, WAZOWSKI????????????????????????’’ ‘’FUDGE YOU, WAZOWSKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’’ in our best Steve Buscemi impression (it wasn’t very good, but it was fun to do……. Like, go home, Randall, you’re drunk. =__=

Cut us some slack, we were only five for Pete’s sake……… of course we drove our parents bonkers).

So why give Mike an ethnic Polish name like ‘’Wazowski’’ and not something like ‘’Crawford’’ or ‘’Davis’’?

Mike's name was inspired by Frank Oz's Dutch-Polish-Jewish father Isadore "Mike" Oznowicz…….. Frank Oz of course was the famous puppeteer who voiced Miss Piggy in The Muppets, and he provided the voice of Randall’s assistant, Jeff Fungus.

‘’Wazowski’’ sounds like ‘’Wachowski’’ a Polish surname originating from the village of Wachów, Poland. It also sounds like ‘’Warszawski’’ from Warsaw.

And naturally, ‘’Wazowski’’ rhymes with ‘’Jeffery Lebowski’’ from the Coen Bros movie The Big Lebowski (1998) and it was no accident (the movie stars both John Goodman and Steve Buscemi in a small part)…… ‘’Lebowski’’ like ‘’Wazowski’’ is of Polish origin, probably derives from ‘’Lebow," a town in Poland. The two main characters in The Big Lebowski were hinted to be Polish-Americans in a beach side town (John Goodman’s character, Walter Sobchak (from Sobczak), was a Vietnam vet, originally Polish Catholic, but converted to Judaism when he married his wife, then divorced wifey, and decided to stay as a Jewish convert and took his religion very seriously, hence hilarity ensues).

Interestingly enough, ‘’Wazowski’’ isn’t terribly common in America OR Poland. There are fewer than 100 people in all of Poland with this surname. That’s Wild. The actual pronunciation, of course, is NOT ‘’ Wuh-ZAW-ski.’’ That’s just the anglicized pronunciation of the Polish version, pronounced like ‘’Vasovski’’ because the ‘’w’’ in Polish sounds like a ‘’v’’ (just like German). there’s also no “wow” sound in “-owski.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UisQy0LFyK4&t=390s

Anyway. There’s an episode called ‘’The Big Wazowskis’’ in Monsters at Work, so………… Pixar knew what they were doing. Oh, they knew EXACTLY what they were doing……….👀

You see what happens, Larry? You see what happens when you find a stranger in the alps?!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. XD

Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs—Hollywood Legend. Coen Brothers Royalty. Star of Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014). Born and bred Sicilian-American Brooklynite. Also reared in East New York and Long Island and attended school in Manhattan.

(Of course he's not just a versatile character actor, but he's also done a lot of behind-the-scenes work. He's a brilliant filmmaker too who's written and directed some highly-acclaimed Indie film festival darlings like Trees Lounge; 1996 and Animal Factory; 2000.)

I know he's type casted in gangster flicks and he plays pretty convincing villains, but he's actually a genuinely nice, sweet and down to earth person off-camera (which made him the perfect pushover Nice Guy for College!Randall... a nice change of pace for him I'm sure). It's a wonder he turned out so nice cuz he grew up in a pretty tough working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn infested with gang violence.... once as a kid he had his bike stolen from him... while he was riding it! 😭 Once he even stopped a drunken brawl between two guys in a bar and got stabbed in the process.... and ended up in the hospital.... like he was always the Nice Guy peacemaker in a world fraught with turmoil, like he is too good for this world.... 😭 But Buscemi is something of a local hero, too.... a month before Monsters, Inc. was released in theatres in November, the sad tragedy of 9/11 occurred.... Buscemi was a former firefighter before he became an actor and he was one of the volunteer firefighters that helped rescue survivors from the wreckage.... well naturally the event traumatized him and he developed PTSD that he battled for years, but this man literally threw himself in the line of fire and laid down his life to help his fellow citizens and the city he loved... like this man played Randall Boggs for crying out loud, who's supposed to be the villain.... but in real life, he's a Hero, a National Treasure. Thank you for your service. 🫡

Billy Crystal is of course the eldest of the three, nine years older than Buscemi……. Goodman’s the middle……Buscemi’s the baby between the three of them, but I think it’s funny that Crystal and Buscemi were fellow countrymen on the same side (or similar side) of the tracks here, both being native New Yorkers.

Well, By Golly Gosh! So was Mike and Randall within the context of the story………….. (they were roomies) doesn’t it make sense they both have Cawfee Tawk dialects????????? (I can’t explain Sulley’s Inland North St. Louis twang, but there it is…. Wouldn’t it be funny if that was just part of Sulley’s species? In general?)

Do you think it’s funny that both Mike and Randall have thick Noo Yawk accents? Cuz I do. Like, why are monsters speaking like New Yorkers with New York City English? I know there's not one single, monolithic NYC accent but Randall sounds like an Italian mobster…… and he even did the Italian hand gesture 🤌 when he was interrogating Mike with the third degree…. ‘’Get the picture? Are you screwing with me? Che vuoi? Capice? Leave the gun take the cannoli! Fuhgeddaboudit!’’ Like I can’t even.  😂

“Now listen here Mikey, we’re gonna make this guy a fuckin pizza, and it’s gonna be the best God damn pizza he’s ever had! Or so help me God Mikey, oh! so help me God I’ll just whack ya myself! Now get ya fat ass in the kitchen and figure out how to use that fuckin pizza oven!”

🤣🤣🤣

(someone at Pixar was definitely watching Goodfellas…. If they couldn’t get Buscemi to voice Randall, Joe Pesci would’ve been the next best thing, imo…. They should’ve made Randall Italian once Buscemi was casted, what a missed opportunity… I mean wtf is even a ‘’Boggs’’? Give him a Sicilian name for crying out loud… I mean if Mike can be Polish, then Randall better be Italian, specifically Sicilian cuz that’s the ‘’don’t f*ck with me’’ Italian…. Can ‘’Cc'è la luna n menzu ô mari’’ otherwise known as the ‘’Che La Luna’’ TikTok trend please be his official theme song? Things that just makes sense?? This is seriously taking me out.)

Actually, it makes perfect sense that Mike and Randall talk like New Yorkers and Randall was obviously based on mobster stereotypes because Monsters, Inc. was named after the 1960 gangster flick, Murder, Inc. which starred Academy Award nominated pre-Columbo Bronx-born Peter Falk as the real-life Jewish mobster Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. The movie is based on the real-life Murder Incorporated, an organized crime outfit which included both Italian and Jewish mobsters that operated in Brooklyn, NY between 1929 and 1941…... Like you can’t make this shit up. That explains SO much about the setting of Monsters, Inc…. and the overall post-WWII vintage neo-Noir feel. And why Randy Newman went with 30s-40s Big Band/ Swing era jazz music for the score, like-

Now if only they had a Humphrey Bogart-esque Maltese Falcoln detective in the movie, privately investigating the corruption within the MI power plant at the same time that Roz is working as an undercover agent, it would have been GOATED.

But yeah seriously, it was no accident that Mike and Randall were voiced by a Jewish-American and an Italian-American, from NY of all places... since the movie title is literally based on Jewish/ Italian mobsters.... like....... NOTHING in this movie was an accident. Every little tiny detail was meticulously planned by Pixar, it's brilliant storytelling and doesn't get enough credit.

But I love the diversity in Monstropolis…… with all the different American regional dialects, it mirrors the human world because they’re all different species and it’s brilliant, like gee, Monsters aren’t that different from Humans.

As an extra cool piece of trivia, John Goodman pushed for Buscemi to get the part of Randall. They were developing Monsters, Inc. as early as 1996, the year Fargo came out, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, which starred Buscemi, of course, in a career defining role. Goodman and Buscemi have a track record of appearing in more Coen Bros. movies than any other actor, and they shared the screen together in The Big Lebowski in 1998, just a year or two before they were casted in Monsters, Inc.

Though the Pixar people were fanboys of the Coen Bros. (obviously, with all the easter egg references to their filmography), John Goodman was surprisingly not the first choice for Sulley. Bill Murray, was in fact, the first choice, but he never returned the call after testing for the part, so they went with John Goodman as the next best thing, mainly because David Silverman (one of the co-directors) saw Goodman in other Coen Bros. flicks, Raising Arizona in 1987 and Barton Fink in 1991. They also knew his work on Roseanne and Big Lebowski was playing in theaters at the time they were casting MI.

So, once Goodman was casted, they were having apparent trouble finding a good Randall, and Goodman happened to suggest  ‘’a guy I worked with on another movie.’’ Goodman and Buscemi became casual friends after shooting The Big Lebowski so Goodman recommended they go watch said movie (The Big Lebowski) and Fargo if they hadn’t already. ‘’I think you’ll find your Randall.’’ So, they did………..and sure enough, they found him in Fargo. (Not Fargo TV series btw…. Original Fargo).

(LET RANDALL SAY ‘’F*CK’’.)

…………..and then you get the door shredder/ wood chipper inside joke that only people who saw Fargo will understand (SPOILER ALERT: Buscemi’s character, Carl Showalter, personally gets put through the shredder at the end of the movie.) That’s what they *should* have done with Randall, but that’s……….

………………..moving on.

!!THE ROLE REVERSAL

.....it was interesting that, in Monsters University, there was the total role reversal between Mike and Sulley, where Mike was less the comic relief character like he was in Monsters, Inc. and actually he played the straight man in the prequel and became, in Sulley's own words ''the heart and soul of the team''.

Actually I just love the Role Reversal between the three lead characters. Like I said in another post, I love how Sulley and Mike go from being enemies to friends and how Mike and Randall go from being friends to enemies... like it's more interesting than just repeating the same dynamic they had from the first movie. We know how their story ends so it's interesting to see where it begins and how it's going to become the familiar relationships we know. Sulley is the protagonist in the first movie; Mike his loyal sidekick; Randall the obvious villain.... but MU said, ''Nah forget everything you know about these characters'' and they flip it on its head. Our heroic Gentle Giant Sulley from the first movie is basically the antagonist at the beginning of the new story...more extroverted than the introverted humble guy we saw as the Top Scarer but even though he's a douchebag for 90% of it (a facade to mask his inner fears) he becomes something like an anti-hero and slowly transforms into the Sulley we know and love. Mike of course is our central character, more introverted here than his extroverted older self...and Randall becomes his sidekick for the first half (and much more timid as well)........... it's completely unexpected in a good way.

one of my favorite things about their dynamic is that Sulley finds Mike’s goofiness and dumb (affectionate) remarks genuinely endearing and charming as opposed to annoying…. Like yeah, Sulley could get it.

Mike and Sulley are #FRIENDSHIPGOALS.

Mike and Sulley are #POWERCOUPLE.

🎵 Our friendship goes beyond Your average kind of bond

But not because we're gay

No, not because we're gay

We're close, but not that way The only man that I love is my dad

Well anyway! 🎵

(don’t mind me dropping references nobody knows)

How to talk to short people: MU edition!!!!!!

I LOVE how Sulley the Stud Muffin leans down to talk to Short King Mike like I AM NOT NORMAL ABOUT THEM OK

stopppppppp this is so vile…… screaming crying throwing up…..

Jesus Christ what type of yaoi cocaine are they giving these writers?????? And can I have some???????? i'll have what they're having!!!!! I'm pretty sure Dan Scanlon took one look at the script and went "holdup, we can make it gayer!" give them MORE save me doomed yaoi save me toxic doomed yaoi I'M BEING FED THAT'S FOR SURE

Move over, GELPHIE, this is my OTP right here…. These freaks…….first off it's about the Themes™/dynamics/potential……. They make me go insane I love them so much, ugh…… they’re Pixar’s answer to Timon and Pumbaa…… the Jew and Gentile (Boy)Friends. *giggles over them…….dying inside* Happy Pride Month to these babies! 💙💚 Blue goes good with green, or no?

They’re married, your honor!

Oi. They absolutely wrecked me…The amount of delusion coursing through my bloodstream at the moment...

Do y’all see the vision??????

MICHAEL ‘’MIKE’’ WAZOWSKI

(Bright eyed, bushy tailed….. ready to conquer the world…… Someone serious…Someone lawyerly……Someone who wears black when nobody's dead! Cuz college is for boring, ugly, serious people! And you, Button, are none of those things!)

MIKE WAZOWSKI THE ICON THAT YOU ARE

MY BEAUTIFUL DARLING BOY WHO HAS DONE NO WRONG

AISUDJEANS OMNG OMG IT’S HIM IT’S MY BOY AKHSIDJNDJUBDIJ

I LOVE HIM SO

I MISSED

HOIMALKNDOIDHOIWNSLKNDOKENOAKNDOKFNOKENA

IM LOVE THIS

MAKEOKNDOJENKJWBSKJBDIJBDUFHBYGFUYFGGUSKJAJNJNKNAAUAAFGGGGGHAAUUUUHGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

gjkgopdhrjiosod why is Mike so flippin’ cute I literally can’t stand him ugh he’s so darn squishy like a jellybean and would you look at his little retainer??????? you can’t do this to me, PIXAR, you can’t! Mike has NO BUSINESS being this mf cute!!!!

My son!!! <3 <3 <3

*heavy breathing*

(Mikey’s backpack being twice his size is making me laugh idk why alfkskfkdk)

Forgive me im going to be insufferable…..

Mike is the most misunderstood character in MI but people aren’t ready for that conversation……….

I can’t believe Mike INVENTED Pixar and no I will not be taking questions at this time.

I feel like Mike in the first movie is the right amount of goofy, he’s so endearing but not to the point of being overly annoying and obnoxious. Maybe he’s a lovable jerk but he does grow as a person. In the second movie, Mike is played completely straight and serious in MU, he's more quiet and reserved than the extroverted personality he becomes later... he’s a competent hero who stands up to his oppressors who are twice his size….them showing Mike’s softer/more vulnerable side and using his sarcasm as a defense mechanism versus the first movie just making him snarky for the sake of comic relief has to be one of the BEST changes they’ve made for the films…..

Billy Crystal’s line delivery won 10 Oscars in my house like if it’d been anyone else in this part it would have come across insincere, but I feel like Billy Crystal found a perfect balance of being genuine while staying true to how Mike leans into comedy when he feels vulnerable……………. Like Billy is the perfect actor to juggle comedy and drama, like he’s very disciplined when it comes to finding the sweet spot between the two, he’s not just funny he can be incredibly sad when the story needs to take us on an emotional roller coaster…….It reinforces what I thought of Crystal’s performance in these movies, especially in MU; that he delivered the comedy with nuance and a knowing sense of more going on beneath the Mike Wazowski artifice. This line reading is just his nailing that perfect balance again. he absolutely ATE 🔥🤌😭😖❤️‍🩹 (is this enough emojis to show how I feel ?!)

I’ll talk more about it later, but here, he's the same Mike, but with more intelligence, subtlety, and restraint than what we saw in the first film, and even for a college freshman, he's very mature and reflective, in fact he's the most mature member of Oozma Kappa. He’s focused on his goals. He’s organized. He’s a bit of a workaholic. He’s a born leader. He’s also very young and impressionable and naïve and easily affected. He's a very deep and three-dimensional character here. I mean there was so much to unpack in that little one-eyed beach ball, who probably weighs 90 pounds soaking wet...

You’re not scary my darlin’ Mikey Wikey not even a little bit but LOVE the optimism

(!!!!!! That big doe eye of his…. IM DEAD)

OK, Captain Obvious, your job here is done.

I said it before in another post, but Mike is one of Pixar’s greatest protagonists, imho. But what really makes Mike SO great of a character is the opposing characters he faces throughout both movies.

Sulley may be the central protagonist of the first film, but Randall is his only main character foil. Sulley pretty much has an easy, laid-back, retiring personality that makes him well-liked and popular with his superiors and co-workers. He’s a big softie. Of course, Boo causes a conflict between him and Mike in the second act, but it’s quickly resolved. In the second movie, he has more conflict with the dean, Mike, and Johnny Worthington, president of RΩR, the premiere campus fraternity, but otherwise, his conflict with these characters is not nearly at the same magnitude as the conflict Mike faces head on. Basically, he’s got Main Character Syndrome. He’s the Golden Child who can do wrong.

Mike, even though he’s the secondary deuteragonist, he’s the one which the character foils mainly bounce off of. Where Sulley compromises with the other characters (even Randall, who he tries to be polite with if nothing else), Mike creates conflict in almost every interaction with the other characters. Mike does not compromise. He confronts and challenges them. For example, Roz, the receptionist and key master and administrator for Scare Floor F… Randall, naturally. Even his girlfriend, Celia, poses a minor conflict. He tries to smooth talk his way out of trouble and it usually backfires….In Monsters University, Mike doesn’t just confront and challenge his enemies; he bargains with them. He sets the bar so damn high, that not even a ten-foot giant can jump clear over him. For example, he bargains with Dean Hardscrabble that if he wins the Scare Games, he can be accepted back into the Scare Program, under one condition; if he loses the tournament, he must voluntarily drop out of college altogether, which has potential long-term implications for career prospects and financial well-being…… like did Mike shoot himself in the foot or does he drive a hard bargain? He’s got some serious balls, I’ll say, well I guess cuz he *is* one…. Giant ball… but that’s beside the point…….. I mean champion negotiator over here; he should’ve moved his ass to the debate team! Ran for office or something, Idk……..and in MU he has to jump over even more hurdles with a whole village of character foils……. Which brings me to my next point.

(I have so much more to say about Mike, but we’ll come back to him in another post, I promise……………)

!!THE VILLAINS

Yes I know. People have always loved villains. I feel like writers know a good villain when we see one. People love a good antagonist. Psychos are fun sometimes. These are FACTS.

Villains make the heroes heroic. If your villainous character can't either make you love to hate him, or make you hate to love him, your heroes won't be much. That's why some of the best characters in fiction are villains…….

And MI is populated with great antagonists.

This is so weird and cringe but yeah, sure, MI has not one… but two villains. One's a red herring, and one's a ''twist villain.'' Don’t @ me, they were doing it before it was cool.

RANDALL ‘’RANDY’’ BOGGS

Randall is the obvious villain from the moment he pops up on screen...

(lol it always bugs me that Mike is looking around long after Randall already revealed himself like Homeboy are you farsighted??? maybe yes cuz he wears a giant contact lens... oh Randy and Mikey, the two blind mice ;-; they make one helluva pair and that's where the comedy comes in)

Like, Randall has an insane Face Card.

Like…….. he is specially designed to be LETHAL.

Like………. How is Mike’s bisexual ass surviving? Mike is NOT leaving that room in one piece.

Someone’s lying.

Not to be that person, but…..sexual tension being an elephant in the room makes it soooooooooooo........... uhm sorry i forgot what was i going for mid-sentence

You’re not wrong…..

I’m jk……. But like……… no, they were roommates you cowards……….. which makes this scene (and *every* scene they have in this movie) that much more sexually tense…….. cuz they were (ex)BoyFriends……. Like, wouldn’t you strap your ex to a chair too and torture them to death????????? Just me?????? Okay then……..

……….if this is not a satire then I might have to drown myself………… if i had to see this so will you……

Am I weird for thinking that Randall is proud and probably gets off of the idea of "scaring Mike straight" and doing it in public in front of his best friend to humiliate him? or am I too woke? Be real.

no such thing as ‘’too woke’’. you can always be woker…..

Guess we’ll find out in this drama we call life…..

Ahem.

Back to the point. Though I think MI is written exceptionally well, and is better than the average family flick, Disney/ Pixar is very formulaic in how you can tell right off the bat who are the Heroes and who are the Villains even before they open their mouths to speak. Well, keep in mind, these movies are targeted for children, even if they can be enjoyed by adults and contain loads of adult humor… but character types are not thinly disguised…… they pretty much spell it out for us. The villains always have this clear-cut design that you can spot a mile away… beady eyes, sinister smile… a darker, shadier coloring… certain voice inflections… like gee, that’s definitely NOT the bad guy.

Now, wouldn’t it be funny if Mike… who’s a brightly phosphorescent green googly-eyed avocado, turned out to be a villain? Or Sulley, who looks like a jumbo, life-sized huggable lovable fluffy cotton candy panda bear? No, of course not! It’s obviously Lizard Boy. Sleazy, slimy, stereotypical reptile…. Wdym oversized garden gecko who looks like a cross between an iguana and a chameleon is actually a real piece of work? No, I bet he’s a Big Misunderstood Softie underneath all that sly, stealthy, cunning secrecy. I bet he’s got a sobbing tragic backstory that explains why he’s so- Yeah, no, it’s def. that guy……………

Now, if they gave Randall the nerdy, adorkable Harold Lloyd horn-rimmed glasses he wears as a twinkie teenager, it would have made him far less obvious… he could’ve easily blended into the background, making us think he was some sweet, shy, techy twink nerd who was the smallest monster on the Scare Floor and not nearly half the Scarer Sulley was but loved his job just for the hell of it whether he was good at it or not………. Actually, maybe he loves his job *too* much….And maybe kissed Waternoose’s ass once in a while, maybe let people walk all over him like a doormat, but otherwise was never gonna be anybody’s idea of Teacher’s Pet or Employee of the Month, because he’s just another face in the crowd, content to be where he is…. With a total lack of ambition or ego……Would never be more noticed than he ever was before…… not a Superstar like Sulley….a smart little cookie, maybe a genius whose talents go unrecognized because he's……invisible. Literally and metaphorically speaking. Nothing special. Just the Average Joe……sure, maybe in another life……… or another movie. (I never liked Surprise!Villains anyway…… classic Disney villains are more entertaining. I like Randall cuz he’s an evil little shit and he doesn’t hide the fact that he is. No surprise there. 🤣… tho he doesn’t have a tragic backstory, he did start off as a *nice guy* so that was a little bit of a surprise.)

!!!!!look at his squishy jellybean face look at those big green bambi eyes jesus christ……

Like when your mom dresses you and tells you what a handsome boy you are………..HES SO CUTE !!!! ;-; I love College!Randall btw…Randy has me gagged! Fuck ass glasses and a dream! Mad respect.

Wait………………….

He looks like somebody I know…….

dork ass glasses 😭You can’t tell me that Harold Lloyd’s ‘’Glass’’ character wouldn’t make a convincing live-action Randall. Watch THE FRESHMAN (1925) and you’ll see why.

Like wow omg ur soooo cool and ironic and jaded YAWN

There he is. Mike’s first (Boy)Friend! The Cupcake Monster! The giant Florida Dog. A good scale boy. This is.... the sweetest dangerous boy.... ever.... is this Mike’s ex???? It cannot be smiling...can it???

Because this is deeply unserious…….. Now if only he came into kid’s bedrooms looking like THAT, ‘’Hi kids I baked some cupcakes! Be my friend! I love you!’’- then Boo would’ve been his number one fan instead of…… the creep ass kiddie napper we got….. like how did he go from loving everybody and wanting to be everybody’s ‘’best chum’’ to the psychotic freakshow kidnapping / experimenting on/ and suffocating innocent children to death with a literal torture device and spitting on the whole world and wanting to kill Mike and Sulley for petty, self-serving reasons??? How did he go from Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer to neo-Nazi killing machine??? How does it get worse???? And why the fuck does he look like Strawberry Shortcake!? This is a hate crime! 😭How could they massacre my baby like this?? I am going to strap a bomb to my chest, holy shit PIXAR.

(*stares but not in a gay way* be my doll, you say? What the hell sure.)

This Randy can carry a tray of pastries without spilling a single-

you'll never work at Hooters again....

Like……. This is NOT the same guy. Not Dino Boy. Why is he so damn happy all the time??? Is it normal to be *that* happy?? That whole aura of absolute contentment is GOALS. My man, you have nothing to smile about in your sad pathetic life……… baby boi, what happened to you? Why did you become so evil???? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PIXAR ?????? ohhh im jumping off a cliff

Can I just say he is the absolute most perfect character, jokes aside. He looks genuinely terrifying in MI and yet we’re supposed to believe this is the same character???? The child kidnapper???? The cradle robber???????? The baby killer?????????????????? The Phantom of the Freakin’ Factory?????????????????????????? He’s our problematic fave for a reason, he’s a hot mess…………………………………………………………………

 I just can’t picture how they were able to make such a sweet innocent looking bespectacled little swamp puppy into the complete prehistoric Jurassic Park dinosaur Randall becomes. Can we not domesticate the apex predator? Huge well done to the Pixar animation team, and to Steve Buscemi for kindly lending his vocal chops and embodying him so perfectly! The voice is so different as Randy, did anyone notice? You can literally hear him *smiling* through the microphone, he’s so boyish sounding and positive and upbeat? It’s not the thin, reedy, bitter snarl he uses in MI????? Like……….the voice and everything is different??????? whyyyyy Pixar whyyyyyyyyy????? I’m clenching my fists and frothing at the mouth and hyperventilating oooooooh my gooooooddddd screaming and crying

In an alternate universe, he could’ve been some kind of Elphaba Thropp, who’s wrongfully accused of wickedness just by the mere fact of good deeds gone bad…….. like maybe he really *did* believe in the good of the company, and didn’t want to *really* harm children, but he ended up doing all the wrong things for the right reasons…….. morally righteous reasons??? No Good Deed Goes Unpunished reasons?????

Like what if Randall’s entire character arc is how nothing he can do as a social outcast/ marginalized monster in his society is good enough btw??? So he embraces his label as the wicked witch??? Like he fails everyone he loves and every action he takes and every inaction, regardless of his intent or his trying to be good, was seen as wicked no matter the outcome??????????????????????????

……..but no, unfortunately, Randall is not a Misunderstood Villain, he’s just a Draco Malfoy/ Death Eater ghoul, plain and simple. Nothing morally grey about him………..He’s the quintessential Wicked Bitch of the East and his intentions are NOT good. He *may* believe he’s doing a morally good thing for the company during the Energy Crisis *maybe* by proposing a New Energy Plan aimed at transitioning to a more sustainable and renewable energy system by investing in renewable energy sources, reducing reliance on manual scream fuels, replacing monsters with machines, and promoting energy efficiency, and lowering energy costs……..

… like it makes him that much more scary, because he honestly believes this is a *good* thing or a *necessary* thing for the monster world to continue to survive…. Desperate times call for desperate measures….Like, he really thinks this is noble and heroic. Like this is genius. Yeah, on paper that sounds great, Randall. IN THEORY. But the way in which he approaches aforementioned plan is anything *but* moral. His Scream Extractor is a brutal and radical social engineering experiment. His ideology of racial supremacy of monsters harvesting the inferior species of human children for their screams and his aggressive pursuit of industrial expansion will lead to widespread death and destruction. His reasons for abducting these children and human trafficking and torturing these children to death by slow and painful Asphyxiation is a politically motivated execution. It’s genocide. That’s evil work. That’s Nazi shit! (why yes, when you put it that way, children have *every* reason to fear the bogeyman in the closet… irrational fears? NOPE. This movie gave me *nightmares* when I was a kid…. Randall scared me so much I had to sleep with the light on for weeks, lol I thought he was gonna come out of the closet and smother me to death with a vacuum hose)

 He’s a Slytherin cobra! And he has no real, deep, dark backstory to explain his decline… if you can call MU a backstory. but at least it confirms he *was* originally a nice guy! And he and Mike *did* like each other at one time so it makes their scenes in MI that much more intense… and sad actually….. Randy seemed to be the *last* monster on earth that would ever end up wanting to harm children OR his former friends for his own personal gain….. like I’m going to blow up and kill everyone in this room. Shit just got real!

~RANDY + SULLEY= WORLD BURN~

It’s not a deep backstory by a longshot. It was *one* instance of Sulley the Herry Muppet beating his puny beanstalk ass at the Scare Games, literally the *only* time they ever interact in college…

(sdfjkhsdhfjkskhjf this will never not be funny what the FUCK)

…..and we’re supposed to believe he’s such a Sensitive Snowflake, that he forever holds that lifelong grudge against James P. Sullivan, Number One For Too Long, like a bloke he never once batted an eye at or even said so much as a friendly ‘’hello’’ like Sulley and Randall don’t even know each other yet!!!!! They’re only acquaintances through Mike, they literally never speak a single solid word to one another in college they don’t even know each other on a first name basis…

yeah, I know, it wasn’t *just* losing the Scare Games to Sullivan…. It was the fact that he was publicly humiliated in front of his Roar Omega Roar fraternity brothers and stripped of his position within the hellish social hierarchical ranks of the Kool Kids Klub…. And probably ostracized by his peers for the remainder of his studies…….and never accepted back into the brotherhood….. and made to be some kind of loser in their eyes……… but he holds it against Sullivan, who was not directly responsible………he doesn’t even know Randall exists!

………..but yeah, basically, that’s all there is to it.

I wanna say there’s an underscore of Freudian self-loathing or something, but there’s not enough backstory to go on. We can sit here and speculate but Pixar gave us nothing. I guess that’s what fanfiction’s for. His loss at the Scare Games doesn’t necessarily explain why or how he became so unapologetically evil, or why he harbors such a deep-seated murderous, revenge-driven hatred for Sulley apart from being rivals on the Scare Floor, like it’s such a big leap from the last time we see him in university to the first time we see him on the Scare Floor…. There must’ve been something in-between, some slow descent into madness…… like, maybe after he’s discarded like chopped liver by his frat bros, he’s once again the underdog who has to prove his worth, except he no longer has a friend like Mike to encourage him and stroke his ego, that he can fall back on and depend on and is basically left all alone without a fraternity or the common peer pressure to make him feel more important than he really is….. no, we never see what happens to Randall after he loses to Sulley, like…….

🎵 Steppin’ to the bad side, Gonna take a mean ride The smile I had has gone away Those that steal are gonna pay Steppin’ to the bad side today 🎵

We know Johnny, the mega asshole that he is, most likely kicked Randall out of his ruling campus clique but like……. did he continue his studies????? Did he stay a Scare Major??? Did he go into mechanical engineering as a minor???? Which helped him gain the skills and knowledge to build the Scream Extractor??? Did he ever regret giving up his friendship with Mike?????? Is he actually *jealous* of what Mike and Sulley have??? Like is it more than just being jealous of Sulley’s Superstar Status, but is he actually *jealous* of their friendship? Like ‘’it should’ve been US, bro’’????? Like ‘’you chose him over ME are you kidding?????’’ ‘’like out of everyone in the world and Mike chose this... SULLIVAN over ME??? BOY that's rock bottom.’’ Because Mike turned out to answer his true calling of being one hell of a trainer and if Randy had stayed with him and joined Oozma Kappa, for better or for worse, would Mike have been *his* personal trainer and made *him* the Shining Star of the Scare Floor????? WOULD THEY STILL HAVE BEEN ROOMMATES??????? OR BOYFRIENDS??????????????

Asking the real questions…..but Pixar doesn’t leave much to the imagination……. It just is what it is…… they never go too deep into Randall’s motivations or his transformation from Hero’s Sidekick to Super Villain……but there it is……. This was probably not the single greatest character defining moment that convinced him to step into the dark side, but it was probably the first moment in a series of unfortunate events….. I bet a lot of Randy’s transformation happened off-screen, in later years, but we never see it….

Home boy is having a mental and emotional breakdown on the daily love him so bad…

(He was* supposed* to have a redemption arc in the unproduced, scrapped sequel Lost in Scaradise…. But is he beyond redemption at this point???? Will he ever bake cupcakes again??????????)

oh Randy… you could’ve had it all , babe…… 💔

Randall will forever revisit this moment, he will become *obsessed* with this moment, rewinding this moment over and over again like a movie in his mind, it will literally fuel his motivations to destroy and obliterate Sullivan… he will visit the stain like it’s a Civil War site……….. like Randall, dude… it wasn’t *that* deep, like get over it.

Brother no. You gotta fight your battles lmaoo don’t project, bitch. Seems like such an extreme reaction to an almost nothing moment, that was so insignificant that Sulley just completely forgot about it and it obviously didn’t phase him in the slightest…….. like five seconds later, he was so unbothered.

I can imagine, off-screen, that Randy flipped on full Regina George mode:

🎵 Sullivan, time to watch your back Sullivan, time to turn and cough Because you took me down But you didn't finish me off …

And in case you're keeping score Sullivan may have won the battle But I will win the war

… I wanna watch the world burn I got the gasoline 🎵

………

There is no heterosexual explanation for this.

Randall is obsessed I mean ‘’loathing’’ Sulley.

Get therapy, Jesus fucking Christ. Or a padded cell.

No, for real though……I kinda wanna hug Randy here…. But then later I want to kill him. Specifically strangle him. Not Randy. Randall.

Look, Randy. I can tell that you will have a lot to fight for in this wild ass world, so I just want to give a lil for your journey :) I hope all ur pillows are cold and ur sheets make u wanna rub ur legs like a cricket they’re so cozy, the rest of ur days……..

~TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM~

I know he’s a college kid……….. kids always think stuff like this is the end of the world as they know it. Kids don’t think that far ahead. They don’t think they have their whole lives, their whole futures ahead of them……… they think their whole college career is going to determine who they become as adults….one failure in school, and it’s like……. Kill me now. I know. I’ve been there, don’t that……. But like, literally nobody cares about college frats outside the Ivy League campuses, and I doubt anyone in the *real* world gives worth a damn about the Scare Games… it’s a self-contained championship that only Scare Majors care about. Who you are (or aren’t) in college does not shape your success in the real, grown-up, corporate world. There’s always room for improvement, Randall! Look at Mike…….. he never took it lying down. He would’ve lost the games had Sulley not rigged it, and even still, he didn’t give up…….. Sure, the Scare Program was preparing these kids for the Big Leagues in the factories, but literally………………….

People can go from being the Prom Queen in High School, right……. But when you put in an application for Walmart, the hiring manager is not going to give a shit! No one is going to care if you were in the Art Club or if you were a Jock. Or if you were a Band Geek or a Computer Nerd. They don’t care if you were popular or if you were a loser……….. Employers care more about your skills, if anything. A diploma or degree only gets you so far, but what’s important is letting them see a window into your world. You want to tell a story, and your story gives them a sense of who you are as a three-dimensional person—beyond what your high school GPA, test scores, education, and internship experience can reflect. Sulley and Mike were permanently expelled from school, had to start in the mail room, work their way from the bottom up………. Pull themselves up by their own bootstraps…..I mean, that’s how the real-world works. They took the alternative route…. And they still achieved their dreams it just took a little longer for them to get there because they didn't take a direct path to success... and you don't HAVE to in order to be successful.... that was the whole moral of the movie...

And it's pretty deep for a college movie. Pixar wasn't saying to kids, ''Hey drop out of school you'll be fine,'' sure Mike and Sulley don't get their B.A. but what they're saying is... no yeah, absolutely stay in school if it's for you but college isn't for everyone and it's not the *only* way to be successful.... and if you do decide to go to college, your major or your initial goal may not be what you end up doing for the rest of your life. AND THAT'S OK.

Real quick, look at Audrey Hepbrun as a real-life example. She wanted to be a professional ballet dancer... that was her childhood dream! but no matter how hard she studied and trained to perfect her craft, her dance instructor told her the cold, hard truth.... that she just didn't have what it took to be a prima ballerina! But her instructor encouraged her to explore other avenues... to consider becoming a dance teacher, that way she was still exercising her passion...... or to find other talents. Well, even though it broke her heart to never dance ballet, little did she know that she was gifted in other areas of performing arts.... she used her beauty to break in as a model... and though she never had former acting lessons, she had a real knack for it when she began testing for movie roles and she ended up becoming one of the greatest actresses of Old Hollywood! And to think she may never have done that if she stayed in ballet school and pursued something she wasn't very good at.... she had a hidden talent she didn't even know and all because she made the difficult decision to give up dance. To give up her dream to pursue another dream.

Mike is like Audrey Hepburn... he begins this childhood dream of becoming a Top Scarer at Monsters, Inc. But like Audrey he has to realize that, no matter how hard he tries, he's just not a scary monster.... he's too cute and little to be scary. But darn tootin' doesn't he know all the Scare Theories, and the techniques to be a good Scarer? Yes, but he's unable to perform those tasks in a way that impresses Dean Hardscrabble or convinces her that he has what it takes. Some got it, some don't. It takes Mike half the movie to realize this as he continues to pursue an unattainable goal... the impossible dream... because he doesn't want to let himself down, no matter how inspired (or uninspired) he is on his Hero's Journey.... well, Sulley makes him realize that maybe he wasn't meant to be a Scarer after all....but he has a SUPERPOWER he's totally unaware of....... he's a damn good teacher. He sure as shit can take any ol' bumpkin and train him and groom him to be a Star. He helped Oozma Kappa bring out the best in themselves and become Scare Majors.... he knows how to form a team of people together and be good players. He could've been a coach for the NFL! So Mike realized his true calling.... and though he didn't get to do the one thing he wanted to do most.... he ended up finding something better! And he still got to do something he loved.

And that's it. That's the message. Sometimes life doesn't work out how we plan...... but taking the road less traveled by can be just as rewarding.

No goal is truly impossible if you put in the work! Even if Mike and Sulley did not cheat their way through the Scare Games and stayed in the undergrad program and finished school with a bachelor’s or whatever, Sulley’s celebrity status was something he had to *earn* in the factory, it wasn’t simply rewarded to him just because he bears the name ‘’Sullivan.’’ He just happened to get into Waternoose’s good graces with pure work ethic and happened to train hard to get where he was……….. HE WORKED FOR IT.

Randall…….. it’s like he thinks the world owes him something. It’s not that he doesn’t work hard, but he always comes in second best behind Sulley…….. AND he thinks that actually matters because it doesn’t. But he wants to be the Big Dog on the Scare Floor. He’s a sore loser cuz he wants to win. Not some of the time. But 11/10, he wants to win. But he ends losing 99.9% of the time because he’s blind with envy…..instead of being humble about his losses, and trying to learn from his mistakes, he lets the power and greed corrupt him….. he isn’t even a terrible performer…….he’s *one* of the best……. But he wants to be THE Best. He thinks there’s not enough room on the Scare Floor for both he and Sulley…. It has to be one or the other…. And either way, it’s never enough. He’s never satisfied. He could easily settle for second best, like his numbers aren’t *that* bad. But it’s never good enough for Randall. Because he wants to be the cream of the crop. He always blames that loss at the Scare Games on the one person who succeeded where he failed. Like, dude…… even if you beat Sulley at the Scare Games, it doesn’t necessarily mean you were gonna ace it on the Scare Floor…….he had to keep working his ass off to beat the Scare Record and stay on top of the game. But that’s Randall’s mindset, clearly. Like, if only he’d kept his status in college, maybe he too, could’ve been a Rockstar. He wants to rule the world……..like any teenager, I guess.

But now he’s an adult…….so………… I’m less forgiving of him being stuck in this teenage mindset. Imagine letting another person send you into depression/ spiral into insanity knowing you’re a GROWN ASS MAN MR. BOGGS😭Learn to control your emotions you nutsy lizard lmfao

What a jerk. Is that too kind? He’s not just a jerk. He’s a hardcore sociopath. (More on that later)

~HIS DESIGN~

But as I’ve said before in another post, Randall’s got a pretty SICK design, all things considered. Silver Medal Olympics Scarer. The other monsters just roar and use their teeth, claws, and immense size for intimidation and what not, but this freak of nature is insanely talented and unusually skilled……. Because he doesn’t have what the other monsters have. He isn’t the biggest beast on the floor….. in fact, he’s smaller than the other monsters (MU finally explains why…. He and Mike were in the same league, not born to be Scarers), but he does use his small size to his advantage…… he can use his whole body like a weapon…… and the only reason he was accepted by Johnny’s group was because of his rare abilities, despite his smallness, cuz he’s the smallest ROR member (five feet tall and appx. 220 pounds which is nowhere near Sulley’s colossal 7’8’’, 795 pounds)…..on the surface, he doesn’t appear as threatening as some of the other Scarers, so why would anyone find this seemingly harmless garden gecko a menace? He doesn’t have claws or fangs… his rows of sharp teeth are more for aesthetic purposes than any real monstrosity. Sure, every monster uses their own strengths to their advantage. Some look cuddly buggly like George Sanderson….. so it’s safe to say that even a smaller than average Scarer like Randall could still be frightening in a dark bedroom, esp. if he’s coming out of the closet in the middle of the night. I mean, even a rattle snake is frightening when it sneaks up on you. It doesn’t have to be a 500-pound gator to be malignant and fearsome.

But Randall is no ordinary monster.

He’s got literal superpowers.

Okay. Yeah. It’s just ‘’camouflage’’. Big whoop. The vast majority of animals, including insects, reptiles, fish, and mammals, utilize some form of camouflage, you say. Making it a very widespread phenomenon, you say. Yeah, Randall is a giant lizard, you say. Not nearly as creative as some of the other monster designs, you say. Because he’s just a more advanced version of an already existing earthly species, you say!!!!

Yes, and no. Yes, Randall is an upgraded lizard-thing. He’s based on reality, more than some of the other monsters, who are a combination of things==pure imagination, real-life animals, and Greek and Roman mythology (in the case of Mike and Celia… Cyclopes of Homer's Odyssey, with a mix of Medusa in the case of the latter). But like………… here’s the thing.

Randall doesn’t *just* change colors. He doesn’t have the physical limitations of a real-life animal because he’s NOT a real animal, he’s a fantastical beast in an alternate reality. He literally disappears. Like if he was wearing the cloak of invisibility. Yes, he can match his body color to its background or to other characters and their patterns, so it makes him *look* invisible when he really isn’t…. He can even mimic other objects, like in MU where he disguises his body into the shape of a lamp to avoid detection during a round of the Scare Games.

 His skills are predatory in nature because it allows him to ambush prey (Boo…. And later, Mike). But the guy can literally almost become seemingly INVISIBLE. He basically surpasses Griffin in H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man. Because he doesn’t need a serum to disappear. It’s literally his biology. That’s spooky. That’s like…… some Twilight Zone shit. That’s a big cup of NOPE. I lack the cojones to even think about the possibility of a giant lizard predator in my closet in the middle of the night... Boo, I get you, homegirl….

And Mike was the one who helped him realize said talent because-

HOLD.

THE.

MOTHERFLIPPIN’.

PHONE.

Mike created the Monster!

He pulled a Colin Clive/ Dr. Frankenstein and brought this thing to life!

Mike is basically responsible for the Monster we’re familiar with as the main antagonist in the first film.

He recognizes Randall’s talent…. Randy who bullies himself into a corner and constantly shrinks his shoulders to make himself appear small….. who lacks the confidence to be himself…… it was even part of his original backstory that his Disappearing Act is seen as something of a curse rather than a blessing, in that as a child he was not able to control his abilities because he disappears when it’s unwarranted or at the most inopportune times, like when he’s scared or nervous, like so:

Mike was probably the first person who did not see Randy’s abilities as an inconvenience, and tells him as much. Imagine that Randall was told his whole life that his disappearing thing was a nuisance, or a burden, or a problem he needed to learn to regulate or manage or restrain. Randall be like:

DON’T TALK ABOUT ME

DON’T LOOK AT ME EITHER

IF ANYONE ASKS, YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF ME

PUSH MY EXISTENCE FROM YOUR MIND AND ALLOW ME TO REVEL IN ANONYMITY

Not Mike.

Mike literally sings his praises like ‘’DAWG, COOL BEANS, AWESOME SAUCE……. But lose the glasses. It gives it away.’’

And Randy goes, ‘’By George, you’re right!’’

And Mike be like, ‘’Homies help Homies. Always. Always.’’

And Randy be like, ‘’ 🎵 But if you really see me If you like me for me and nothing else Well, that's all that I've wanted for longer that you could possibly know! 🎵’’

And well, that’s how they (almost) fell in love I mean became (almost) best friends…. bestie idk if we're getting past this one….. the winds are strong but so are you…….. the winds are changing…… Mike and Randall be waving through a window……. But nobody can hear….

😭😭😭

(Meanwhile, Randall *always* out here shushing people & Mike be like, ‘’don’t f*ckin SHUSH me, b*tch’’ they act like an old divorced gay couple XD)

----

To Be Continued……….

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Flowers x Robot Dreams 🌷🌸

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I was born to adapt the photos that the Eds took a long time ago in the episode "Quick Shot Ed" 📸

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Some doodles

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I've got my summer, summerboy. 🌷🌟

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Do you get d��jà vu when he's with you? 🌀

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I’m, uh, low-key animating again…

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Manikin 🌷

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