May 27, 2025: 2020s Blockbusters: Inside Out 2

[Moviegoinghas unquestionably changed a great deal in recent years, but there is still aplace for the summer blockbuster, and I believe there always will be. So forthe unofficial kickoff of another summer season, I wanted to AmericanStudy ahandful of recent such blockbusters!]

On twodistinct ways to contextualize the highest-grossing filmof 2024.

First ofall, there’s absolutely nothing surprising about the fact that Inside Out 2was 2024’s top-grossing film. As the above hyperlinked list illustrates, fiveof the year’s top ten films were animated, and a sixth (Mufasa: The LionKing) could certainly be defined as such as well (and at least represents asequel to an animated film; well, a prequel, but you know what I mean!). Moreover,the other four of the five top-grossing Pixar filmsof all time were likewise sequels, including Incredibles 2, FindingDory, and the third and fourth installments in the Toy Storyfranchise. While animated films might not fit our stereotypical definition of asummer blockbuster (at least not as well as did yesterday’s subject Top Gun:Maverick, for example), in truth there’s no surer thing in Hollywood thandrawing kids to the movies over the summer, and of course most such kidaudience members will require at least one adult ticket purchase to accompanythem. Moreover, while many films over the last few years have not made it totheaters at all, it seems to me that big-budget animated films are still likelyto have at least some form of theatrical run, making it even more probable thanever that such films will occupy prominent places in the roster of box-office blockbusters.

With allthose caveats aside, however, it’s still interesting to me that Inside Out 2specifically tops both of these lists (ie, is both 2024’s and Pixar’s highest-grossingfilm), and I think we can contextualize that striking success in a couple distinctways. I haven’t seen the film, but from what I can tell it is very much inconversation with a longstanding and consistently popular film genre: highschool dramedies, and especially high school dramedies focused on teenage girls’experiences. That is, by aging the original Inside Out’s protagonist RileyAndersen up two years and making her an incoming high school student in the sequel,directorKelsey Mann and her co-screenwriters Meg LeFauveand Dave Holstein made a very smart choice, taking what had been more of a children’sfilm initially and shifting it into that teen/high school setting and genre. Tocite just one example (of a film celebrating its 30th anniversarythis summer, which doesn’t make me feel ancient or anything), Clueless (1995)was one of the most unexpected summerblockbusters of the 1990s, raking in more than $10 million its openingweekend to put it just behind the far more conventional summer film Apollo 13in that weekend’s box office. Teenagers might be an even more reliable summeraudience than young kids, as they can get themselves to the movies—and these consistentteen hits indicate as much.

It wouldbe wrong to suggest that such teen hits always or only focus on femaleprotagonists—StandBy Me (1986) opened in August, to name just one male-centered teenblockbuster. But I do believe that a significant majority of these summer successesare more focused on female characters and thus (to be reductive about it I know)on appealing to women as a primary audience—and in the case of Inside Out 2,while of course its female protagonist was an existing character to whom thesequel understandably returned, I think it missed an opportunity to add in a teenageboy as (for example) a second protagonist with his own set of animatedemotions. I fully understand how fraught that idea might be in execution (asthe Dad of two still-teenage sons, believe me I fully understand it), but Iwould also note (as manyothers have as well) that one of the central stories of the last few yearshas been a two-part failureto engage with teenage boys’ emotional lives: a failure of our society as awhole to do so; and a concurrent failure of teenage boys to find healthyoutlets for doing so, leading far too many of them to the likes of JordanPeterson and Joe Rogan et al. Obviously those are issues way beyond any onefilm or even the medium as a whole—but if there’s gonna be an Inside Out 3,I’d love for it to take a stab at the complicated and crucial question of youngmen’s emotional lives.

Nextblockbuster tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Summer blockbusters, recent or otherwise, you’d analyze?