In 2015, Pete Docter and Pixar gave us all a handy and fun visual metaphor to talk about how our emotions function in our day-to-day lives and in how we develop as people. Many a GIF and reaction meme were born with “ Inside Out ,” which provided a visual shorthand for expressing our strongest emotions through the story of Riley, a young girl from Minnesota who experiences a whole range as she moves with her family to San Francisco. It all becomes especially tumultuous when Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) accidentally disrupt the transmission of core memories and have to journey through Riley’s mind to stabilize the system.
Nine years later, in “Inside Out 2,” Riley’s (Kensington Tallman) emotions, which also includes Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (now voiced by Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira, replacing Mindy Kaling), have found a comfortable stasis, coexisting in a harmony that has resulted in a strong sense of self. That “sense of self” is visualized in the film by a delicate, flower-like structure that grows from a pool of core memories. From each memory grows a glowing strand of a belief system that can be plucked like a guitar string, resonating with a belief or mantra like, “I’m kind,” which results in the belief system “I’m a good person.
” Joy has been carefully tending this belief system, chucking Riley’s bad memories to the back of her mind, creating a happy-go-lucky kid who is totally ill-equipped for what’s coming: pub.