Wirxaw

I'm 9 years late to this, as I had mixed feelings about the premise of Inside Out back when it came out. So this is in a way a review of two movies back to back without nostalgic impression.

Not to break the reviewing rules too much - the original was, obviously great. A proper classic. But does this sequel live up to the 9 year old original? Well, there's a proverb that states "DEI makes everything worse". And it's true. But not in the way you would expect.

First of all - yes, the diversity exists in this movie, and it stings your eyes a bit. The four new and important characters(humans, not emotions) are all "diverse". But they themselves aren't too bad. Some of them suit their "diversity", but others are just mcguffins, and their diversity matters as little as their nature. And, of course, it is an american product. Made for american audience. Much like the censure of other countries - this choice has to be respected.

In my opinion it's not the diversity that makes this just a decent sequel, but very much not a cult classic. It's mixed messaging. You see, in the original - Riley was just a normal girl. A troubled one, in fact. And part of those troubles - was the machinations and mishaps of her emotion personas, who were balanced and each had a narrative purpose. And by the end - everything made sense.

Unfortunately, that's not the case in the sequel. The movie starts off so high that you know that you are either going to get a twist... or something even more predictable. And the process of getting there is just... boring. There are some memeable scenes, but none hold the weight of those from the original. The new emotional personas also seem awkward and unbalanced, with one being titular, one being mcguffin, and the other two just... being there for... well, one of them is at least a decent Simpsons throwback. But was it really necessary to do it? They already had a lot of emotions, they introduced new secondary characters, and maybe it was better to work with what they have instead of just spamming characters because they wrote themselves into a corner.

And, like I said, you can guess the score. You can guess it the moment you see the setup. And you hope, you hope that with all the built-up tension, with all the stakes, with all the new characters - there's gotta be a twist. Some smart way to make sense of it all. Alas...

What's worse is that as I was typing this, I remembered one scene that... didn't pay off. A Chekhov's gun that didn't fire. So I thought "oh, this has gotta be a sequel bait, like in the original". A less obvious one. So I go to wiki and... yep, that gun did fire. Predictably as well. Like that fart gun from Despicable Me. They couldn't even make something smart out of this, not turn it into a joke.

Overall - I'm a bit disappointed. The original has just set the bar too high. Makes you expect too much. I just hope that the very undeserved box office would make them do a sequel before 2030. For all intents and purposes - if "puberty" was supposed to be subject of this meaningful sequel, then... well, it wasn't. I wouldn't classify it as a spoiler, but the ending of the original had more "puberty" than this. This was more like a hockey DLC to the original story, but with the haphazardly introduced new mechanics of the purported sequel.

At least it wasn't "Turning Red". Ugh. And I hope it never will be.

Sony really had it. Venom always had a positive revenue, it was always almost up to Marvel standards, it had the right lead and the right tone.

But instead of setting the budget aside for the "main series", instead of thinking up a coherent strategy... Sony wasted hundreds of millions on awful spin-offs just to establish their SSU franchise.

As you can imagine, nothing is last when money is on the table. There are no dances, only phases. And there's so much setup in this movie for the next phase that it literally doesn't make sense for it to be "last". But it is. Because money is off the table now. Sony has fulfilled its contract obligations, and made it "last" for all the wrong reasons.

I would give this conclusion more stars, if it didn't throw out not just its own past continuity out of the window, but even some future one. Symbiotes were special. Dangerous. They weren't an Iron man nanosuit. And just to fulfill its "last dance" - the movie really sacrifices more sense than it should have.

Of course, the action scenes are decent, the animation is good, Hardy is still rock-hardy and the new cast are lookers as well. It's just that... there's only so much disbelief you can suspend. Sometimes there's too much nonsense. You know the score, but instead of getting "there" in a creative way, at some point the movie just snaps to the culmination. That has to be very action-packed. And that very action tries too hard to be the "last" dance, again, for all the wrong reasons. It's like Justice League. Characters have really no coherent power levels. Things just happen because.

And by the end of it, you don't just feel bitter from this "last dance", because there's far too many mixed messages - you feel much more bitter from reading up on the state of Sony. And realizing the nature of this dance.

Let's press F to pay our respects.