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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….

😭😭😭