Inside Out is the Best Pixar Movie Ever Made

Trying to decide the best Pixar movie is like trying to decide the best dessert at a critically acclaimed five star dessert bar.  We all have favorites, but certain ones resonate with us more than others and it may be different from person to person. Once thing can be sure thought, Pixar makes great movies that oftentimes illuminate things about life and the human condition.

When I saw Ratatouille I was convinced that no other Pixar experience would surpass it for me. The story of Remy and his plight to be a chef was an incredible underdog story, that taught us to follow our dreams and put all our effort in no matter the odds against you. To my incredible and joyous surprise though, I recently saw a movie that rivaled the Ratatouille experience for me and maybe even surpassed it. That movie was Inside Out.

I had been looking forward to seeing Inside Out for a while, but I didn't expect the emotional heartfelt journey that awaited me. Pixar has always been infamous for building incredible movies that make us think, beyond being enjoyable. Every movie they make has a theme or a message behind it, but never before has an animated movie been so much about looking inside ourselves as Inside Out. Even just the name denotes that very thing.

Inside out focuses on a young girl named Riley. A girl who, love hockey, does well in school, has a great family life, and has a happy young childhood all around. Underneath things though, the characters we get to know are Riley's own human emotions. That of; joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. These emotions are characterized as their own beings, entirely focused on that single emotion and instilling that emotion in Riley through a console in Headquarters (or Riley's mind.)

We see Riley grow up and have a wealth of happy memories being developed by the emotions, but when she turns 12 the whole world gets turned upside down when the family moves to a tiny house in San Fransisco. This sees the emotions of the young girl run wild as her life gets much more complicated. Through the lens of humanized emotions given character, we see the mind of a twelve-year-old girl go through  emotions trying to make sense of the change in her life. Inside Out shows us how conflicted and emotionally unstable a developing teenager can be when massive change happens.

Through this brilliant storytelling mechanism, the master storytellers at Pixar walk us through the story of a young girl coping. Inside Out as most Pixar movies is a ton of fun, but on top of that it has a wonderful message to impart to it's audiences. We see the characters travel through multiple parts of the human psyche, including imagination and the subconscious, as well as memory banks. Of course Pixar finds fun ways to play on each of these things, making it funny and heartfelt throughout. My personal favorite scene of the movie includes two characters hilariously trying to scare Riley awake through her dreams.

At various points we see the emotions of other human characters throughout the movie reacting to things that Riley does or things in the world. No doubt, some of the impact and message is lost on me with Inside Out as I believe anyone who is a parent will especially find meaning in the movie.

---------Slight Spoiler Ahead----------

Partway through the movie we see Riley lose the ability of her joy and sadness emotions. Because of this she reacts to things in very different ways. Lacking those emotions it's basically like those have been turned off. Through trauma in our lives, especially when we're younger it may be difficult for us to feel certain emotions. For anyone who's life has undergone a sudden change like myself, I believe we can identify with this. While the movie finds a fun storytelling way to do this, it's something that resonated very much with me. Sudden change like that at such a young age is incredibly scary and numbing, and although I never moved away from what I was used to I did find ways to identify with the movies story.

Growing up I lived a fairly sheltered life, as my parents went through a horrible divorce and custody battle through much of my adolescence I found myself very much without friends throughout middle school and high school. I spent my time with entertainment, as my mother was unwilling to let me go anywhere without being watched, or just spend time with friends by myself. This feeling of loneliness permeates your life, causing you to feel those emotions like fear, and anger and sadness more than anything else. Then at a certain point you lose the sadness too, and once joy and sadness leave you have only the emotions left that can cause you to do drastic things. Being driven by fear and anger causes you to think irrationally, and when you're a developing mind you may not know how to handle those emotions correctly something Inside Out shows perfectly.

The real beauty of Inside Out lies in just that, it shows something that many of us have gone through in our lives. The confusion of growing up and not knowing how to cope, or the confusion of dealing with a child going through that and not knowing how to help them. Pixar has impressed me on many many occasions in my life so far, but never have they created something so emotionally impactful and resonant for me. This is what our entertainment should be, incredibly insightful and meaningful pieces that cause us to think or feel something. Or something we can share with others, that will bring us closer. Which is also what I think Inside Out is, a piece that everyone can connect to and a movie that parents and children and families all need to see.

Indeed, Inside Out shows us the importance of taking time to be with not only the people we love but the things we love to do. In Riley's mind the things that are important to her form into islands. There's hockey island, friendship island, and family island among other things. These are the focal points of her life and what forms the basis for her as a person. We have to embrace the things we love.

Without droning on too much, I'd rather have you see the movie yourself. Let me just say that Inside Out is a masterpiece of animation and storytelling, everything about it is impeccable right down to the execution. It's an incredible piece of cinema that teaches us about the very most inner working of ourselves as humans. It's a piece that everyone young or old can connect to, and a movie you owe it to yourself to see. There's no doubt in my mind at this point that Inside Out is the best movie Pixar has ever made, and if you haven't seen it yet I hope that you choose to do so now. Inside Out is what we should strive to do with our entertainment, and I'm happy that I had the chance to enjoy it.

Persona 4 Dancing All Night Looks Fabulously Wonderful

There are few game series that get me as excited as the Persona series. With that in mind I wanted to take a second to note one of my most hotly anticipated titles of the year. Yes I'm not being sarcastic here, one of my most awaited games involves Persona characters dancing their butts off with disco fever.

In all honesty, when Persona 4 Dancing all Night was announced I like many others was totally skeptical. Looking back on that fact now though, Persona 4 is the perfect fit for a dancing game. I mean just look at this new trailer from E3.

Glorious, completely fabulously glorious. Persona 4s cast of characters are a prime fit for this style of game and so is the world of Persona 4. The original game was a bit of a change for the series, which is traditionally very dark  storytelling wise. While the original certainly had its dark tones (the game is about a murder case after all), the overall tone of P4 is totally goofy. It's a story about a group of teens banding together and learning about each other in the process while investigating a murder mystery. Of course anyone who has played Persona 4 knows that this investigation takes place inside of a mysterious TV world that people get trapped in. After Persona 4 another game came out that involved the gang getting wrapped up a crazy fighting tournament in Persona 4 Arena.

This makes the series easily accessible for a multitude of ideas from here, including P4DAN. In the game the investigation group gets back together to find abducted idols, and in the process ends up in another TV-like world where they have to dance to survive instead of fight. While a bit far fetched in theory, this idea sounds incredible to me. The world of Persona is very malleable, and the team always finds a way to stretch their storytelling muscles. The original Persona 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, and was one of the most emotionally impactful experiences I've ever played. I have high hopes for this new game, of course I myself am a huge fan of rhythm games.

I would encourage anyone interested to take a look at Persona 4 Dancing All Night when it releases in September, the Persona team has an incredible standard of quality in their games and this looks no different.

The final thought I'd like to leave you with is the impression that the Persona 4 games leave on me. Never before have I played a game that just gives me such a feeling of happiness with everything related to it. Persona 4 was one of the happiest games I've ever played, so much so that I put the soundtrack on my phone to cheer me up in times that I may not be feeling top notch. Seeing these characters return yet again in such a fun setting, gives me that warm fuzzy feeling inside. It may sound cheesy, but honestly no other game gives me the feeling that Persona 4 does. Maybe part of that reason is that Persona 4 got me through a really rough time in my life, with serious family issues a terrible breakup and an identity crisis. But that's something to delve into another day, and believe me I will.

Video games can be great escapes for us at times, as well as teach us many lessons. Sometimes as well, they can just be whole lot of fun. That's exactly what I'm expecting out of Persona 4 Dancing All Night, and boy I cant wait to take my favorite characters to the dance floor in another interesting tale. To close play the Persona 4 games if you haven't, they're all well worth it. It's easy to find some character or part of the story to connect to in such a wonderful game. Also, here's a picture to describe my feelings right now.

Unravel Deserves Your Unbridled Attention

This week fans of video games get to enjoy a crazy lineup of the biggest and best games that will be releasing over the next year and a half.  This E3 has been exciting, possibly more exciting than any E3 I've seen in the last 6 years. There have been so many announcements that are exciting to see, but also meaningful to me. 

In a show that officially announced the return of The Last Guardian and the long awaited Final Fantasy VII Remake, I'm amazed to say that neither of those or everything else huge at E3 is my favorite thing I've seen. Little did I know that a wonderful charming surprise lay in wait halfway through the EA press conference. Although I don't necessarily want to call EA's conference a disappointment, it certainly was the weakest of them all. There were high points, but overall I found myself unsatisfied with it. EA went on about sports games and certain features for far too long, and had a lackluster look at the new Mirrors Edge. Of course the ending footage of Star Wars Battlefront blew us all away, but there's one other thing that stirred something within me at the EA conference.

At about the halfway point EA pulled something completely unexpected out of their hat, an incredibly charming and emotional looking game called Unravel. This game completely broke the tone of the conference and the show in general, for a few minutes we changed gears from the violence and explosions, to a much more quiet and low-key adventure. It was this very change that was partly responsible for how incredible Unravel looks. 

You see, Unravel is a game about a small being entirely made of red yarn called Yarny. It's a 2D puzzle-platformer in which you use the yarn from your own body to keep progressing through the game and overcome obstacles to keep Yarny moving. What really drove home Unravel as my favorite new game of the entire show was just how sincere the entire experience felt. 

Our look at the game started with the creative director for the game, Martin Sahlin, coming out to talk about how the game came to fruition and what it meant to him and the team. I'll just let you watch it instead of explaining. 

The entire experience was incredibly sincere, and you could literally see Sahlin shaking on stage he was so nervous. This is where I really started to feel something about Unravel when Sahlin stated, "It was born out of the need to make something more personal, something with heart. The yarn it represents love and the bonds that we make, and it unravels because that's what happens when we are separated from what we love." That moment that we saw Unravel was so different from everything else we saw at the show, and made me feel emotional like I never thought I would when watching a stream of an E3 press conference. 

This brings me to the point of why I'm so excited about Unravel. Of course on one part it looks like an adorably fun platformer but Unravel looks like it could be so much more. If you've listened to my radio show Playing with Perspective, you know I have very strong feelings about what video games mean as art and what they can do for us. Video games have a very special unbounded potential to be incredibly immersive emotional experiences that stick with us, and teach us things about life and the nature of humanity. There are many games that have made me think and consider things more deeply, the first of which was Final Fantasy VII, a topic that I will be touching on very soon .

The point here is that video games have the potential to show the best and worst of humanity, on comment on the very nature of life. Unravel was something that fitted this feeling exactly. Among the flashing lights and in your face trailers, Unravel was a fantastic breath of fresh air. Now a developer shouldn't have to point out the themes and meanings in their games as that's something the player uncovers for themselves, but clearly this project means so much to the team making it. 

As excited as I am for Fallout 4 and Kingdom Hearts 3 and the other huge Triple-A titles of the year,  Unravel was the one game of this E3 that looked like it would truly make me feel something special. Of course I'm totally sure that I am wrong about that, and there will be many wonderful experiences with many of the games from this show. Unravel gave me a special feeling even just by it's trailer, and it's an example of the very reason that I have such a love of video games. As long as people keep making games like this I'll stay wholeheartedly invested in the video game industry. I'm stunned that this game is my favorite game of the entire show, but it's the greatest surprise I could have asked for this year. Take a look at the trailer and see if it means anything to you. 

Time For An Update!

Hello fine folk of the internet, I felt like I should give everyone a quick update here. If you've noticed its been a few weeks since I've been active and I wholeheartedly apologize for that.

With a hectic finals week for the semester, and starting up a brand new season at the amusement park I work for (running an admissions department isn't easy) I've been a bit short on time as of late.

However I'm pleased to say that there will be a wealth of content on the way. I've been playing The Witcher 3 and Splatoon lately, both of which have stirred up a lot of feeling and ideas in me about gaming. Also E3, the most exciting time of the year, is right around the corner. As such, I will definitely have a lot to talk about over the next couple weeks. So look forward to it.

Just a couple exciting notes too. First off, I'd like to tell you about an editorial series that I hope will run for a long time is going to be starting up soon here on Optional Analysis. All I will say at this time, the series will be called Life Lessons. Also exciting , season two of Playing with Perspective has officially started! Our first episode is all about E3, so I hope you'll take a listen here,

https://soundcloud.com/playing-with-perspective/season-2-episode-1june-9th-electronics-entertainment-excitement

Look forward to some exciting news to be forthcoming about Playing with Perspective and YouTube in the coming months.

Cheers,
Hayes