With Lightyear looming later on this year, let’s take a look back at Pixar’s first prequel-origin story for one of its most beloved franchises: 2013’s Monsters University. Monsters University currently holds an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. Which, okay, great! Fine! That is a solid B- average, Monsters University, which is never anything to sneer at. Combing through reviews at the time, there was a lot of use of descriptors such as “charming,” “breezy,” and “pleasant.” Just good enough.
Dan Scanlon’s directorial feature debut, though, is so much more than merely “good enough.” In an animation year that was dominated by Disney’s Frozen, Monsters University didn’t get the credit it deserved for daring to break the mold of children's entertainment’s most beloved moral. The message of Monsters University is, “No, despite what pretty much every other Disney or Pixar property has ever taught you, sometimes your first and most desired dream won’t come true, and that doesn’t mean your life will be less worthy.” Monsters University is a gentle story of dreams derailed and how someone can “keep moving forward” in spite of such a profound and under explored loss.
Mike Wazowski (voiced as a first-grader by Noah Johnston and later by original Googly Bear Billy Crystal) realizes his dream on an elementary school field trip. No one else in the class will be his field trip buddy, leaving him (once again) as the buddy of the teacher. The message is clear: Mike doesn’t fit in. And, honestly, he’s handling it like a champ, enthusiasm undeterred by being picked last over and over again.
The class trip is, of course, to Monsters, Inc. As the kids approach the Scare Floor, they are instructed not to cross the yellow safety line on the floor. Once the Scarers – the rock stars/sports heroes/ultimate icons of the monster world – appear, the kids jostle for the best place to watch the action, leaving Mike stuck at the back, unable to see.
Mike can’t take it, though, so he sneaks across the line and into a kid’s room where “Frightening” Frank McCay (John Krasinski in a small but essential role) is working. There is, naturally, a kerfuffle upon discovering little Mike has broken away from the field trip group, but Frank is more impressed than angry.
“I didn’t even know you were in there,” he says with cool, addictive Jim Halpert approval as he places his old college baseball cap upon Mike’s head. Mike Wazowski, never picked to be someone’s field trip buddy, gets his first taste of acceptance. “How do I become a Scarer?” asks a wide-eyed Mike as we see a dream take fierce and immediate root.
If you’ll allow the author a personal anecdote: When I was in the 7th grade, my other dorky friends and I dared to attend the spring formal in the cafeteria. And we had fun, but, as these things often go, no one else danced with us. I will always remember Ms. Layfield looking at us with an equal mixture of pity and hope while telling us, “You guys are going to have so much fun in college.” Because isn’t that the dream for so many know-it-all outcasts in their high school years? Yeah, no one appreciates you now, Mike Wazowski, but one day, if you work hard enough, you’ll go to college where someone will finally get you.
The monster world is a perfect backdrop for a classic college movie, because, even at its best, college is a bit of a fun nightmare. After a great Pixar opening credits sequence, Mike is an MU freshman, fresh off the bus and instantly swept up in the fervor of a student activities fair happening on the quad. What is more thrilling and frightening than being an eighteen-year-old, alone for perhaps the first time, navigating booth after booth of confident, older students pitching you belonging and acceptance? “Join the improv club!!” Terrifying.
Mike Wazowski, though, is not here to party. He didn’t really even come here to make friends, though he has a nice, easy relationship with his freshman roommate, a pre-descent-to-villainy Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi). Mike is here to study and to be the best and to realize his dream of becoming a Scarer. “Scariness is the true measure of a monster,” says the formidable Dean Hardscrabble during Mike (and Sulley’s) first scaring class. She says that her job is to “not make mediocre students less mediocre.” The freshmen are informed that there will be a final at the end of this first semester, and any student who does not pass will be immediately cut from the Scare program.
As a theatre kid myself, I find the pedagogy of the Monsters U Scare Program very reminiscent of any MFA program. I was also reminded of teaching drama summer camp to nerdy high schoolers who told me that, already at fourteen, their teachers had instructed them they would absolutely never ever make it on the stage. Monsters University captures that inexplicable venom which teachers and professors can wield over impressionable kids.
To spare you an entire recap of the film, rest assured there are collegiate shenanigans and hijinks which put Mike and Sulley’s (John Goodman) future in the Scare Program in immediate jeopardy. Their only recourse is to join the lamest fraternity on campus, Oozma Kappa, and participate in the famed Scare Games. If they can pull off a victory, Dean Hardscrabble will allow them to continue in the program. If not, they will be expelled.
Working together to get Oozma Kappa ready for the games is where Mike and Sulley begin to discover what a great team they are. Sulley’s natural scaring talent combined with Mike’s encyclopedic knowledge is powerful and gets them all the way to the final event of the Scare Games against the rich jerks at Roar Omega Roar.
In the end, they win because Sulley cheats. Because, despite every stride forward Oozma Kappa has made, Mike still isn’t scary enough. It won’t matter if he gets to stay in the Scare Program. He’s not going to make it. “I wanted it more than anyone,” Mike tells Sulley after the fiasco at the Scare Games, and it’s a heartbreaking line and delivery.
It’s the scariest line in any Monsters franchise film because we believe Mike. We watched him want it more than anyone, and we watched him do absolutely everything he thought he had to do to get to this place. We watched him make sacrifices in terms of studying over socializing. And, in the end, it just wasn’t “enough.” Mike Wazowski dreamed of becoming a Scarer, and it isn’t going to happen. It is a radical moment. This is the moment where Monsters University transcends its trappings of a silly, breezy, needless franchise prequel.
When Mike and Sulley are indeed kicked out of school, Pixar doesn’t eventually let them wiggle out of it. In the film’s final dialogueless montage, we see Mike and Sulley working themselves up through the ranks of Monsters, Inc, starting out down in the mail room. When Mike Wazowski finally crosses over the threshold of the Scare Floor as Sulley’s Scare Assistant, it is entirely different from how he first dreamed of it. And that’s okay.
Our society is often dominated by the message that the only Right Path is to go to college right out of high school before doing anything else. That’s not necessarily the best choice (or even possible) for so many people, and Monsters University gets that. Monsters University works as a prequel, because it has its own stakes regarding the outcome of the Scare Games, but also the audience has the security of knowing Mike and Sulley will be okay. We know they are destined to become the top Scare Team at Monsters, Inc., and that they will remain best friends.
Monsters University is about the joys of discovering new dreams later in life and of considering all the multiple paths to get there. It’s obviously been a tough couple of years in the non-monster world, and many of us are contending with new dreams and unexplored paths. If you need a reminder that it’s okay to be in that admittedly scary place, I highly recommend spending some more time with Mike and Sulley.
Monsters University is streaming on Disney+.