Newsletter Entry #6 - Industrial Analysis

Pixar’s Inside Out 2 builds on its discussion of mental health struggles for adolescents and adults. Outside of the film’s production and distribution, it has heavily influenced how these themes are shown to audiences. Disney's corporate oversight directly affects the creative decisions made to the marketing strategies and social media campaigns implemented Inside Out 2 reflects the creative and industrial realities that come with creating an emotional animated film with a deep discussion of mental health.

Pixar has widely been known for its bold way of storytelling, however, the changes in societal topics have led Disney to make corporate decisions when shaping its films. Reports show that an earlier version of Inside Out 2 had a stronger focus on Riley exploring her identity as discussions suggested that the film explored LGBTQ representation through Riley and Valentina. However, former Pixar employees say Disney made Inside Out 2 creators change some of the lighting and tone to remove any romantic feeling. While the current version of the film focuses on the mental health battle with anxiety, this raises the idea of whether the original edits of Inside Out 2 would have not only explored Anxiety but also discovered personal identity amid mental health battles. This discussion is an issue that many teens and young adults face today, this is coming after the box office flop Lightyear which sparked controversy over its homosexual characters.

The changes Disney reportedly told Pixar to make came during a time of turmoil as Disney began laying off Pixar employees. This forced the remaining employees to be on a time crunch and work unrealistic hours to finish the film while also feeling the pressure of avoiding LGBTQ themes in the film. The layoffs and changes in the themes of the film show Disney’s shift in prioritizing franchise profits over taking risks in storytelling. Since Pixar was forced to align with what Disney wanted, this suggests that the depth of Inside Out 2’s theme on mental health may have been impacted by this shift.

Although Pixar was dealing with corporate constraints during the creation of the film, Disney’s strategy of turning the emotions and mental health discussion in the film into marketing and promotion of the film resulted in Inside Out 2 being Pixar’s largest marketing campaign. The marketing for Inside Out 2 heavily taps into the nostalgia aspect by understanding that people who watched the original film in 2015 are now teens or even young adults who face mental health struggles. Pixar collaborated with different brands tailored towards these teens and young adults by tying in emotion with the advertising of the brand. For example, Inside Out 2 collaborated with Bubble Skincare and promoted it with slogans such as, “Face your feels,” or “Every mood is a good mood.”

In addition to brand collaborations, social media campaigns played a large role in selling emotions and mental health to the film’s audience. Pixar shared much content on social media from movie clips to behind the scenes with the voice actors. But one post that stands out is a clip of Sadness dropping popcorn at a movie theater and feeling alone until Joy comes to comfort her and ends with them both going to see the film together. This particular video shows Pixar’s attempt to create once again a relatable emotional experience while tying it into an advertisement for the movie. While Pixar was creating marketing campaigns, the release of the film began a trend on TikTok of viewers sharing how the mental health aspect resonates with them.

Inside Out 2 showcases a deep discussion of mental health for adolescents and adults but the production and distribution outside of the film itself shows how corporate decisions can influence the emotional storytelling in animation films. The decisions made by Disney and Pixar raise the question of how much creative freedom animation studios actually have when discussing real emotional struggles.