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ebaeschnbliah · 5 years

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M O N S T E R S I N C

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... and it’s stunning similarities with Sherlock BBC

MONSTERS, INC is a computer-animated comedy from 2001, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. A modern fairytale, so to speak. I stumbled across this movie by accident while researching the ‘221b door’ tag on my blog and found an old tweet from Arwel Wyn Jones (x) posted during the filming of Series Four. Watching the movie turned out to be quite the eye-opener. :)

It’s not so much the plot of that movie but rather certain images which remind me strongly of Sherlock BBC. A lot of images, to be precise, but also some dialogues and one distinct voice. Watching MONSTERS, INC really left me speechless at times.

Related posts: The Monsters are loose (initially I’d chosen to name this post ‘Monsters Inc’ but that was before I watched the movie) Overlaps Playing with skulls (soon) Laughs or Screams, additional informations

The ‘monster post’ is waiting below the cut for the fearless …. :))))

For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie: MONSTERS, INC mostly plays in Monstropolis, a city in a parallel universe. The only places where the monster- and the human-world can connect, are the closet doors in children’s beedrooms. Here skilled monsters - the ‘scarers’ - appear at night to harvest the screams of terrified kids. Just like in the human world, the majority of the monsters aren’t evil, nor mean they any harm to the children. Monsters are actually more scared of human kids than the kids are of them. The harvested screams are badly needed because they provide the energy which is necessary to power the monster’s world. And because children are constantly becoming less easily scared, the screams decrase more and more, which means that an energie krisis threatens.

Initially the storyline for MONSTERS, INC had been a different one though:

Pete Docter's (director and writer) original idea revolved around a 30-year old man dealing with monsters, which he drew in a book as a child, coming back to bother him as an adult. Each monster represented a fear he had and conquering those fears caused the monsters to eventually disappear. (X)

The logo of MONSTERS, INC, the powerstation where screams are harvested to light the Monster’s world, combines the symbol of the eye and the letter M. I simply can’t help unsee a certain similarity with the logo for TheGameIsNow. That’s quite thought provoking, to say the least.

The two leading characters in the monster world are scarer James P. "Sulley" Sullivan and his best friend and roommate Mike Wazowski, who is also his assistant at work. A big blue, fluffy guy wearing horns and a short, one-eyed, green guy who prefers to sit in a green egg-chair …. a bit similar to the one from the stagnight scene inTSOT.

Sulley holds the top position among all the scarers of Monstropolis. With military-like training Mike takes care that his friend stays in best form.

Hey! Less talk, more pain, marshmallow boy! Feel the burn! You call yourself a monster?

The most successful scarers are celebrated like stars. Everyone knows them. They can’t go anywhere without being recognized and asked for autographs. And when they enter their company it looks like a hero parade.

Future scarers have to undergo a special training in a high-tec simulation room. Here they are taught everything of importance, including the art of scaring children most efficiently in order to get the perfect scream.

Listen to the lady in front of the surveillance screens who teaches screaming (at 01.40) …. but beware … she sounds an awful lot like Eurus Holmes ….

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And this is the big boss, the chairman of MONSTERS, INC … Mr. Waternoose. He is very proud of his job, which has been passed down through his family for three generations. He acts as Sulley’s mentor and holds great faith in him as a scarer. Additionally …. he reminds me very much of Mycroft in TAB.

The monsters believe that harvesting screams is enormously dangerous, because children are deemed to be toxic, that their touch could kill them. Agents of a special task force - the Child Detection Agency - are on constant alert to neutralize any contamination with objects belonging to the human world.

As soon as anything suspicious has been detected, the ‘big bad bouncy red alert’ goes off, cameras zoom in and then CDA agents enter right through the skylights to take care of the problem. Like AGRA in Tiblisi , really! I couldn’t help a yelp watching this little scene below ….

And then ..... shaved by AGRA … sorry, by CDA, of course …. :))))

The day comes, however, when the unimaginable happens and a human child enters the monster world. And Sulley, the most famous scarer of all, is almost scared to death. I’m really tempted to call this an ‘Eurus-efffect’ ...

Thankfully, Sulley also has a heart of pure gold. He overcomes his fear - a little bit - and takes the human child home. His partner Mike is definitely not amused but helps anyway. Courageously, the friends prepare for the worst case scenario ...

Sulley, the Viking, with shield and horned helm and Mike, who seems to have ransacked the kitchen Cabinet instead. The little ‘killer-girl’ though is completely unimpressed ...

The evening starts rather chaotic, which results in some remarkable accidents … I guess I know now where the idea of shoving a big pack of cigarettes into Sherlock’s mouth comes from …. and maybe Sherlock’s spraying attack on the CIA agent in ASIB as well.

Finally the situation calms down. Sulley beginns to supect that human kids might not be toxic after all. The little girl has a real crush on the fluffy, blue monster. She believes Sulley is a big cat and starts calling him ‘Kitty’. Looks like ‘killer girl’ is a cat lover. :) Against Mike’s advice, Sulley decides to give the girl a name as well. He settles for ‘Boo’ because she likes nothing more than to scare him.

And Boo likes to draw …. Spoiler: Boo doesn’t burn down the house.

Eventually Boo gets tired. A trace of goodies (not breadcrumbs) leads the little girl to bed.

By the way: The book based on the film gives Boo's "real" name as Mary Gibbs, the name of her voice actress. (x)

The architecture of Mike’s and Sulley’s flat … the wide arch in the living room and in Sulley’s bedroom (Mike’s bedroom is never shown) … instantly reminded me of the very similar structure chosen for the 221b Baker Street livingroom set in PILOT.

What would any fairytale be without a good old-fashioned villain. In this case it’s a villain who looks suspiciously like a Chinese dragon. And naturally, where there is a dragon there needs to be a dragon slayer as well.

Randall, the dragon-like monster is one of the most wicked characters in Monstropolis. He works as scarer but holds only the second place on the company’s success-list behind Sulley. Randall’s envy is huge. He is driven by his desire to displace his opponent from the top of the list. One can safely say that ‘murderous jealousy’ is a good description of Randall’s motivation. But his plan to capture the all-time scare record, only scratches the surface of his sinister agenda.

But before it comes to the ‘slaying’, the nasty reptile tries to torture Mike, to find out where the missing human child is hiding.

Randall: SAY HELLO TO THE SCREAM EXTRACTOR! (Jim in TAB: Well, say hello to the virus.)

This is what Randall has created in a secret lab to prevent the looming energy crisis of his world … a machine to harvest the screams of children by force and not through the acting skills of trained scarers. Mike’s unimpressed answer to this realisation:

Mike: WELL, SOMEBODY'S CERTAINLY BEEN A BUSY BEE (Mycroft in TEH: You have been busy, haven’t you? Quite the busy little bee.)

That’s not a joke … and the way down to the secret lab looks strikingly familiar as well ...

Needless to say that Sulley arrives just in time to rescue his friend … but that’s not the end of the story and also not the end of similarities with Sherlock BBC.

Some nice little images in-between: a fish mobile from Boo’s bedroom in which Sulley gets tangled up in, a toy train, a toy ship and a toy plane from the high-tech simulation room. Rater similar items can be detected in Sherlock BBC as well (TST, MHR and TFP). Especially the plane reminds me of the one Eurus’ plays with near the brook.

More familiar images:

the prominent display of the letter M - often in combination with an eye

a precious littel thing ... Boo, who wears pink underneath her disguise as monster, hides in a bin

a rather ‘big G’ painted on a wall

And there are eyes wherever one looks ...

Even contact lenses can be found ...

Mike’s love interest is a lady with hissing snakes for hairs, who works as receptionist in their company ….

At one point the hero’s life is threatened by a deep fall, caused by his opponent, Randall, the nasty ‘dragon’.

Seeing Sulley’s life threatened, Boo overcomes her fear of the reptile-like monster. She attacks him violently. This gives Sulley the time he needs to get out of the critical situation.

And WOW!!! What changeable creature this villain is ……. even Jim ‘I’m so changeable’ Moriarty would be inmpressed.

Randall’s exceptional talent for any kind of masquerade is also demonstrated in a little scene involving a portrait of the company’s chairman, Mr. Waternoose.

The face of a chairman, covered by something related to a dragon … this reminds me instantly of TBB and Sir William, the former chairman of the bank, whose face had been covered with the yellow spray-paint, applied by a member of the Yellow Dragon Circus.

To their dismay, Sulley and Mike discover that Randall isn’t just a jealous colleague. What is far worse, the changeable villain doesn’t work alone. His partner in cirme turns out to be none other than Mr. Waternoose, the big boss of the company. The two of them intend to use Boo for their experiments with the scream extractor, while Sulley and Mike get banished from Monstropolis and are sent into exile .. to the Himalayas. No return expected.

There is no plane involved as in Sherlock’s case, but strictly speaking, the way in which the ‘sending into exile’ happens, can indeed be seen as a variation of ‘flyihg’ …

Snow falls at the place where they land, somewhere in the Himalayan mountains.

While the Himalayas, more precisely Tibet, is closely connected to Sherlock’s hiatus after Reichenbach, the falling snow can also be found in TAB, the place Sherlock finds himself in, as a result of his ‘going into exile’ at the end of HLV … London in the winter 1895.

And it doesn’t take long before the dark shadow of a scary creature falls over them … a seemingly monstrous creature which is covered all over in ‘bridal white’ fur ….

May I introduce you to …. Yeti, the ABOMINABLE snowman!

"ABOMINABLE"! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? DO I LOOK ABOMINABLE TO YOU? WHY CAN'T THEY CALL ME THE ADORABLE SNOWMAN OR...OR THE AGREEABLE SNOWMAN, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD? I'M A NICE GUY.

He is really a very nice guy and helps Sulley and Mike to get back where they came from and where they are badly needed by Boo. Randall is not amused but this time it is him who looses the game.

Yeti’s nickname was inspired by the Abominable Snowman from the 1964 animated special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (X). Knowing this, one could view that bridal-white character also as a sort of Christmas connection. :))))

And have I mentioned those horns?

Some more lovely images: a shot from the inside out of a small box (without a severed head in it though), no fire-extinguisher but it looks like one, silhouettes behind glass, safety helmets (X) and ... flickering screens ….

At the story’s finale, the simulation room from the beginning - a bedroom on a stage with a ‘fake’ victim lying in it and with a moving wall - I’m not kidding - becomes the ‘confession room’ for the main culprit. And of course, every word of his confession gets recorded. Somehow this reminds me strongly of another scene … another film … what was it again? It’s on the tip of my tongue ….

It turns out that chairman Waternoose had already been under close observation by CDA undercover agent 001 - code name Roz (not AMO). An elderly, quite steely lady, who turns out to be his superior. Waternoose gets arrested and Sulley becomes the new chairman of MONSTERS, INC.

Now the time has come for Boo to return to the human world. Sulley takes the little girl back through the closet door into her room, where they part after a big good-bye hug.

Then the closet door which leads to her bedroom gets shredded, to prevent any future contact. But Boo’s short visit to the monster world had a huge impact. It proved that a child's laugh has ten times the power of a child's scream. The energy crisis of Monstropolis is solved. From now on laughter is harvested instead of screams and the power generated this way, is enormous. Mike turns out to be best harvester for laughs ever.

Because Mike knows how much Sulley misses the little human girl, he collects and secretly reassembles the pieces of Boo's shredded door so that it can be activated again.

The End

The song "If I Didn't Have You" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Mike: ♪ But I must admit it. Big guy, you always come through. I wouldn't have nothin' if I didn't have you. ♪ Mike and Sulley: ♪ You and me together. That's how it always should be. One without the other don't mean nothin' to me. Nothin' to me. ♪

Sulley: ♪ I don't have to say it. 'Cause we both know it's true.♪ Both: ♪ I wouldn't have nothin' if I didn't have... I wouldn't have nothin' if I didn't have... I wouldn't have nothin' if I didn't have you. ♪ Mike: ♪ You! You! A-E-I-O... That means you. Yeah. ♪

And doesn’t this almost sound like …. ‘just the two of us against the rest of the world’?

Hopefully you enjoyed the rather long ride. I can highly recommend this movie to anyone. It’s so much more fun watching it with ones own eyes than just reading a summary. This said, I leave you now to your own deductions. Thanks for reading that far. :)

August, 2019

#monsters inc #images #comparison #sherlock bbc #similarities

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