This past summer, Disney’s latest sequel, “Inside Out 2” caught viewers by surprise. This film dives deep into Riley’s navigation through her life as a teenager. “Inside Out 2” introduces a whole new cast of emotions, including Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment.
The first “Inside Out” film helped build a strong foundation for the second movie, showing Riley’s emotions and life progressing. Eighth-grade student Mya Stapleton believes that the movie takes a look at the challenges that come along with maturing.
“I think that the movie is extremely relatable because as a teenager I can relate to having lots of crazy feelings like the movie illustrates,” Stapleton said.
The original emotions of “Inside Out“ are Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. The second film demonstrates that as you grow up, it becomes difficult to stay true to yourself. Seventh-grade student Maddy Vargas pointed out how it’s important to stay positive like Joy, even when life gets tough.
“It’s eye-opening to see how your brain works at different times and how the movie gave it the sense that as you get older your life gets more complex as well,” Vargas said.
This film brings to the audience’s attention that understanding your emotions is important. Journalism teacher Ms. Ashley Swain thinks that the animation in the movie successfully shows the internal workings of your mind.
“I think that the emotions are a good representation of feelings that everyone has,” Swain said. “I connected with the second movie more because of the new characters added.”
“Inside Out 2” highlights the fact that we are all still growing both physically and mentally. Seventh-grade student Taylor Henry watched the film in theatres the day it came out, and she loved it.
”I think that movie really shows the different emotions that we especially middle schoolers go through,” Henry said.
While the first film takes more of a look at Riley’s childhood, the second film goes more into depth about emotions that develop over time.
“Disney’s been doing lots of sequels recently and this one I actually enjoyed because it was very accurate on what an average teenager goes through,” Stapleton said.
In the first film, Joy and Sadness appear as opposites and they don’t want anything to do with each other. However, in the sequel to the first movie, we can see that all the emotions intertwine especially Joy and Sadness.
Overall “Inside Out 2” portrays the challenges of a normal teenager’s life. This relatable film shows young audiences that emotions aren’t a bad thing that you should try to get rid of but something to accept and manage through life. Most importantly that all emotions even the difficult ones are crucial to personal growth.
