Inside Out But Only When Riley Feels Anxious, Ennui, Nostalgic, or Embarrassed

Thank you for watching!

This is meant as a constructive view of Inside Out 2’s major flaw. If you liked the sequel I am happy you can enjoy it, but for me it is fundamentally flawed and its presentation misunderstands Inside Out and almost ruins what made it so special and interesting. I cannot get past the blatant disregard of world building and I am astonished that every reviewer out there just accepts this without real criticism.

I wanted to include my discussions but I could not include them all because of the character limit so I will have a link to the full description in the pinned comment. I included the two biggest ones here:

"Fear and Anxiety are different"
This is the biggest disagreement I have seen and I don’t blame people for saying it. Anxiety is clinically and psychologically different from Fear, but for the context of Inside Out it hinders the movie separating them. There are nuances, but anxiety triggers the same fear response; Whether or not that fear is immediate or imaginary shouldn't matter. It feels so different because the context of what it's responding to is different, but they are still responding from the same base human instinct. It's about their core roles in the movie. Going into their roles I first should define what I believe makes the Emotions the species that they are. Each Emotion represents an integral and reactionary Human instinct/response and are introduced with a unique purpose and job. The response they make is intrinsic and natural, you can feel it without thinking it. Anxiety is contradictory to this. Anxiety is too complex to be boiled down into one emotion, since it is a whole mixture of beliefs, fears, sadnesses, regrets, mistakes, future possibilities, and memories. It almost requires overthinking to be felt, which would not make it a core emotion. I would define it more like a unique state of thinking that can be created and displayed in a much more clever way. In the first they didn't make a character called "Depression" but instead removed emotions to display what it actually feels like. Anxiety could have worked the same, creating that feeling and state of mind by showing which Emotions and types of thoughts cause it to spiral. Regarding Fear’s role specifically, When Fear is making his list of disasters, he includes “Getting called on by the teacher” which is not a physically dangerous scenario but a socially dangerous one, since Riley is not in the right headspace to talk in front of her classmates. He and Disgust also both acknowledge the cool girls and are already playing damage control for how to approach them, meaning that Anxiety's social responsibilities are already divided into our core 5. She is a good character and is distinct, but essentially fills the same purpose from a base level. Keeping Riley safe does not need a “present” emotion and a “future” emotion. Fear has been shown to make lists and records of things that might happen, even being commanded by Joy to do so. In the lore of the film, Fear was given these tasks already. They also botch the metaphor by removing Fear from Headquarters in the second movie. It makes no sense to bottle up Fear because you're Anxious, as anxiety usually triggers the same fear response. She would be useless without him unless they can trigger the same sense of worry or dread. If they can, then she is redundant at best. Creating Anxiety also implies that Riley was incapable of being Anxious until she was 13, which is a bold claim to make given her expressions in the classroom scene

“That is not Ennui”

[pokedash]

Thank you all for watching and commenting! I enjoy discussing this movie with everyone, but I am starting to repeat discussions. I was going to address the most common arguments in the description, but I am too much of a blabbermouth for the word count. A full list of Inside Out 2 points and rebuttals can be found here:


Thank you for all the conversations!
-Pokedash

[upbeat]

The difference between fear and anxiety is confusing, but lemme break it down. Riley isn’t really feeling anxious through inside out, it’s actually fear thats truly feeling anxious. Fear is a feeling of being scared in dangerous settings. Anxiety is a feeling of being scared of whats to come.

[awkwardo]

anybody who's ever actually delt with anxiety can easily distinguish the difference between anxiety and just fear. You notice how fear is afraid of more practical and specific things like his obsession over the seatbelts and earthquakes while anxiety is just afraid of what Riley's future will look like. Also it's clearly stated that when Joy and Sadness are gone, it's not that Riley feels a sense of boredom or Ennui, she just feels nothing. And also the emotions can experience other emotions than from their own, you notice how none of the scenes where they're feeling this, they don't control Riley like for example: when Disgusts says she envies the dead mouse, that's just her thought not Rileys, or when Fear is going over all the possible problems that can happen at the new school, he never makes Riley think of them. In summary, Fear is just a cautious dude, and Anxiety is what actually perfectly represents anxiety.

[longforari]

Just because Fear was covering Anxiety's job doesn't mean he was doing it well. He literally plans for meteors on the first day of school it's clear he isn't meant for the role

[OwenMiller-qg]

Honesty Island is probably feeling guilty, not embarrassed

[isobel...]

3:32 when the bored turns black like that I think that means depression

[UniHorned]

0:10 She's not embarrassed, she's feeling guilty which is more akin to sadness;
0:12 Though fear is talking, Riley is not feeling fear, she's not anxious here;
0:25 As you said in some comments anxiety isn't just "fear" as the screenshot of the definition suggests.
Fear is scared of getting rabies, not anxious.

Still talking about anxiety, it seems you understand that clinically fear and anxiety are different emotions and yet you believe it doesn't make sense in the context of the movie?
Ignoring how contradictory that sounds;
Yes, fear and anxiety trigger the same fight or flight sensation in the body, but that's it.
The character fear represents the fear of the present while anxiety represents the fear of the future, it's not complicated;
Since these two emotions guide Riley in a different way, they are seen as two different emotions in the movie aswell because that's what emotions are for. They serve to guide us.
Fear guide us to fight or flee in the present while anxiety urges to prepare for what might cause it, she isn't guiding us to fight or flight right now even if triggering the feeling.

0:28 Disgust is saying it sarcastically to herself, she's not making Riley feel envious; she can't even make Riley feel anything similarly envious in the first place because disgust is probably one of the most contrary emotions to envy, unless the disgust is directed at yourself.
0:30 Boredom is not the lack of feeling, boredom is a feeling of dissatisfaction to your current situation. It tells you to stop engaging in things that are not worth your time and effort and to search for more interesting things. What Riley is feeling here is emotional neutrality, an idle emotional state where she isn't feeling anything in particular or at least not strongly enough to define.
0:39 Nostalgia is a feeling of deep longing for something that was good in the past, simply remembering something good does not define nostalgia.
0:46 Emotional neutrality;
0:49 Fear is actively controlling the console here, she got scared by the light of the car, it's in front of her; not anxiety.
1:01 Anxiety is not just fear; Also, fear explicitly says "right now".
1:04 Remembering isn't nostalgia;
1:20 Though what he's doing here is basically what anxiety does, nowhere in the movie fear makes Riley feel anxious about the future. In this scene, he's helping joy prepare rather than helping Riley prepare.
1:24 What disgust was most likely going to make Riley feel here was what we call "cringe", not embarrassment; though we don't actually get to see.
1:26 This is just reluctance, also, fear doesn't specify what he's reluctant about;
1:30 Helping joy, not Riley;
1:41 An emotion feeling an emotion doesn't mean Riley is feeling it;
1:51 She isn't. Anxiety is related directly to imagining scenarios in your mind about something that has yet to happen, she isn't thinking about any scenarios here, she is afraid of doing something wrong in the present.
2:04 Remembering something isn't nostalgia, she is more accurately feeling a weak/subtle feeling of grief here, realizing she can't go back to her old town. Sadness.
2:11 What I said about fear so far applies here.
2:27 Emotional neutrality;
2:35 Sarcasm is not an emotion;
2:50 Her expression looks more angry or annoyed than anything?
2:59 Emotional neutrality;
3:06 An emotion feeling an emotion(...); anger is in the control here;
3:22 Directors have confirmed that the darkning console was supposed to be an emotion's doing, more specifically Gloom, but they decided not to personify it. Gloom is more akin to a very deep state of sadness to the point of making someone unfeeling;
3:48 Yup, nostalgia, just for her parents; Riley is grieving.
A nostalgia memory for something that just happened though..?
4:48 She's cringing, not embarrassed.

A combination of emotions doesn't necessary make new feelings.

Some feelings might be a combination of emotions, such as envy being a combination of sadness and disgust(to yourself), but people can still have different ways to feel that emotion, such as being angry that they don't have what someone else has, or feeling joy along with it, happy for the other person.

[unodostres]

My interpretation is that Riley already feels these emotions before, but they're heightened after puberty. In the second movie their was a scene where they were flinging bad memories to the back of the brain, and one of them was a mixture of disgust and joy but it was an embarrassing moment. The main 5 induce other emotions such as fear projecting as anxiety, but the new emotions are experienced more during puberty.
There are other inconsistencies such as why the main 5 are controlling the adults and others when it shows the other emotions (we only saw anxiety but I'm assuming the others are there too).

[ayo.itsbrax]

yall don’t know how emotions work and it shows😭

[dxstothebxsto]

Let me differentiate between anxiety and fear in simple simple terms:

ANXIETY: basically a fear of the future (what if...)

FEAR: basically a fear of the present (theres a monster under my bed)

[Lovesick.Sagebrush]

0:44 Nostalgia isn't sadness for memories or looking back on something, it's a very specific emotion which manifests as a beautiful rush.

[aamirsohail]

This may be long but In the first movie, you can clearly see how fear never actually thinks of the realistic possible outcomes in the future and puts it into action, except for one time where he wrote all the problems that could've occurred on first day of school for Riley. Fear is mainly an emotion where it responds to a direct fearful situation. The problem with "all his bad outcomes" is that they're not realistic at all. For example, he wrote "if a meteor crashes". These thoughts are quite irrational and are hardly going to occur and the reason why fear is different from anxiety because anxiety thinks of realistic outcomes that can occur depending on the current action you make. Anxiety is living in the present and future, whereas fear develops a scary experience from the past and may burst out when you are in a scary ambiguous situation.
For example phobias or specific fears like spiders or heights. Fear is primarily more protective and it figures out how to get out of a situation, whereas anxiety figures out how to deal with a situation so there is a huge difference. Additionally, the unrealistic thoughts fear comes up with on Riley's first day of school is primarily situations that can cause distress and psychological harm whereas anxiety focuses on what is socially acceptable and she focuses on the "FEAR" of being left out and not fitting it with the majority and actively worries about the future like altering Riley's personality and prioritising one thing over the other so Anxiety can cause imbalance whereas fear can't. However, depending on situations, both fear and anxiety may be triggered at the same time or fear and sadness may be triggered at the same time. I think anxiety is a mixture of fear, sadness and envy. Therefore, anxiety has similar traits like these emotions but actually takes control unlike the others who are important for other situations. (I commented this on a reply section previously)

[EnnuiMeansBoredom]

I thought I was the only one who noticed this now someone made a vid about it

[revinhatol]

THEY'RE BEEN WAITING FROM DOWNSTAIRS THE WHOLE TIME!

[jujublue]

The moment when Riley takes the boss looks more like depression than ennui/boredom to me though, it's way more serious than being simply bored in this situation.

[bruno-ymdm]

Very random... But i think that nostalgia can't crate memories, only project those that already exist, and and give the feeling of longing by touching the control panel...

[yanderegabby_]

I feel like these emotions did already exist but in a different way
Like, after Riley hits puberty, emotions are more intensified and they get their own physical manifestations
I think the new emotions came from Riley's already existing emotions, which explains why each seem to have a "counterpart" (Embarrassment + Sadness, Envy + Anger (disgust works too), Anxiety + Fear, Ennui + Disgust, and Nostalgia + Joy mostly because you're usually happy when nostalgic)
The main five are like the "core" and most basic emotions and the others are introduced as Riley's mind gets more complex and specific, which is why Riley still exhibits the new emotions in the first movie because they came from the first 5 emotions

[rhetiq]

I wanna know when and where Riley's parents might've felt anxiety in this movie, considering how the second one revealed that it had been in their heads the entire time

[_Quaso]

This is exactly what I was thinking the entire time. Fear’s job COVERS anxiety’s job, she wasn’t needed

[Marngel]

This is definitely one of my main criticisms towards this film. Ultimately, I still enjoyed the film a lot though. But I don’t blame you and others for not liking the sequel because of the inconsistency of how emotions work in these films