The Inside Out Message of 'Inside Out 2'
There’s little doubt that, cinematically speaking, Inside Out 2 is a good movie. Like its predecessor, it’s entertaining, hilarious, poignant, and beautifully made. The writing is sharp, and the voice actors mostly do a wonderful job—new additions Maya Hawke as Anxiety and Ayo Edebiri as Envy were relatively bland. As a result, the movie has easily become the biggest success of 2024, already earning over a billion dollars within a few weeks of its release.
However, is Inside Out 2 a good movie, morally speaking? Considering its popularity and its status as a family-friendly film, this question merits asking. And the answer is far from obvious. On one hand, the movie seems wholesome enough, avoiding the usual woke preaching and teaching an important lesson to not be tyrannized by one’s emotions. On the other hand, this lesson is subverted (in both films) since the host of these contending emotions, a girl named Riley, never seems to develop any agency or wisdom about governing her emotions. Rather, it’s Joy and Anxiety who seem to grow more mature while Riley safely makes it through a turbulent period in life, utterly ignorant about how or why this is.
Based on the logic of both Inside Out and Inside Out 2, all human beings are governed by their emotions, who function as a virtual oligarchy. These emotions oversee how memories are stored, beliefs are formed, decisions are made, and even the construction of one’s sense of self. True, the rational part of the mind—represented as an impersonal network of tubes, library shelves, laborers, and machines—works independently of the emotions, but the emotions can guide it, tinker with it, and even destroy parts of it. Whether Riley likes it or not, her emotions are the ones in control.
Thus, contrary to Plato’s model of the soul, in which the intellect directs the passions and appetites like a philosopher-king ruling over soldiers and laborers, the soul of Inside Out inverts this setup with a team of emotions pressing buttons on a control panel that determines what the host thinks and does.
The real conflict of both movies, then, has little to do with external circumstances and more to do with power struggles within one’s psyche. In the first film, Joy attempts to shut out the other emotions, specifically Sadness, from influencing Riley, leading to her and Sadness being sucked out of headquarters and forced to make a journey back home while the remaining emotions (Anger, Fear, and Disgust) fill in for them. The fact that Riley and her family have moved from Minnesota to San Francisco is incidental, mainly raising the stakes for the protagonists to finish their journey before Riley runs away from home.
The conflict and overall plot of Inside Out 2 is almost exactly the same, except that it’s Anxiety who causes Joy, Sadness, and the other three original emotions to be sucked out of headquarters and forced to make their way back. Even though Riley’s puberty ostensibly precipitates this conflict, the story really ends up centering on Joy, whose toxic positivity strikes once again and leaves Riley at the mercy of her other emotions.
While the second film adds another layer of complexity to Riley’s mind with the inclusion of core beliefs and the sense of self, these additions are still under the power of the emotions. Evidently learning nothing from the first film, Joy shoots out Riley’s non-joyful memories to the back of the mind and only allows the joyful memories to be planted in a literal cavern of core beliefs. This in turn leads Riley to have a positive sense of self—at least before puberty. After some tussling during the onset of puberty, Anxiety takes over this operation and begins storing predominately anxious memories into the cavern, leading to a change in Riley’s sense of self.
Needless to say, Riley’s a hot mess throughout most of the film. But it's difficult to say whether this is because of the biological changes brought on by puberty or because her emotions underwent a crisis of leadership.
This matters because of the way it gets resolved. In the real world, people dealing with emotional distress find ways to cope with whatever caused the distress and develop strategies and cultivate self-knowledge. In the world of Inside Out and Inside Out 2, people need to hope that their emotions will sort things out and pull them away from mental illness before it’s too late. The lesson is not about mastering one’s emotions, but about the emotions mastering themselves and governing responsibly.
Ironically, for all this focus on emotions, beliefs, and identity, Inside Out 2 has almost nothing to say about therapy or moral values. No one is counseling Riley on how to deal with her stress, manage her relationships, or become a virtuous adult—thankfully, neither is anyone prescribing her medication. Nor does Riley ask any deep questions about life that would affect the way she perceives herself and the world. She is as basic and flat a human being as it’s possible to be: a generally nice girl who likes hockey and wants to fit in.
In Inside Out, all this was excusable. After all, Riley was a child dealing with a change in her surroundings. Presumably, she would learn from the experience of moving and use it to help her adapt to her new environment.
The problem is that she ultimately doesn’t, which makes the plot and messaging of Inside Out 2 less excusable. Instead of going through the same problems she went through before puberty, it would have been nicer to see Riley go on a search for meaning. This wouldn’t have to be necessarily spiritual—though that would be nice too—but something that can account for her newfound identity and conscience. After all, there’s a reason those first few years of adolescence are so formative: this is usually the time when people decide who they’re going to be for the rest of their lives.
As it is, Inside Out 2 steers clear of this reality, opting for the tried-and-true formula of the first movie. Judging by its enormous success, this was obviously a smart move. That said, for those looking to truly learn something from the movie, they will be disappointed. In terms of values and messaging, the movie really is “inside out” and will not serve as any kind of honest guide to growing up or being happy.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.
