Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust are the emotions we gave a face to in 2015, when “Inside Out” was first released. Now, in 2024, the second part has arrived at the cinema: the protagonist, Riley, enters puberty and, consequently, to the sphere of more basic emotions are abruptly added others that reflect all the complexity of growth. First of all, Anxiety. When there is Anxiety, everything seems under control, and yet, she is in control: the projections of future scenarios, the mania of “if I’m not good I won’t have friends” or “I’m not up to it”, the vortex of the panic attack. Perhaps this is precisely why the film has struck everyone, both on social media and in theaters, becoming the first film of 2024 to reach 1 billion dollars at the global box office.
Gen Z has a “special” relationship with anxiety and the one shown in “Inside Out 2” knows it very well. Anxiety, like other emotions, only wants the best for Riley, but through dysfunctional mechanisms it ends up taking control of the headquarters, exiling all the old emotions. If those who are teenagers can understand it, those who have passed that age, remembering the teenager they were, may have been a little moved, but they will also have asked themselves: “What happens to Joy when we grow up?”. It is the same question that screenwriter Dave Holstein asked himself, trying to answer with a plot that tells us that sometimes we have to make the effort to choose Joy even in the most difficult moments and put Anxiety on that massage chair for a while.
But there’s also that sweetheart of Embarrassment, the epitome of cringe that reminds us that Sadness is not to be underestimated, on the contrary. And then Envy, in her adolescent and slightly frivolous version, the one we feel when we see photos of those who are better off than us on social media, up to Ennui, aka Boredom, the most iconic of all, who scrolls her phone all day like a perfect Gen Z. When the team returns to full strength, Riley’s sense of self and beliefs embrace all the facets that characterize her, with all the emotions that define her.
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