How ‘Inside Out 2’ Battles Anxiety | Anatomy of a Scene

It's a battle inside the mind to prevent one young girl’s thoughts from being overrun by anxiety in this scene from “Inside Out 2.”

The sequel once again sets the bulk of its action inside the mind of Riley, who this time around is contending with the onset of puberty. Her emotions are still anthropomorphized by a colorful collection of characters, but with a new stage of adolescence comes an additional cast of emotions. Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke) arrives in the form of a wild-looking orange creature with a busy plume and a tendency to overreact.

In this scene, Anxiety is directing a room full of mind workers to draw up projections of everything that could go wrong in Riley’s big hockey match the next day, keeping the girl tossing in her sleep at each negative thought.

Narrating the scene, the film’s director, Kelsey Mann, says, “I always envisioned this being a movie about anxiety taking over, and was reflecting on my own life and how my anxiety does that in me.”

As things become overwhelming, Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) infiltrates Anxiety’s plan and begins to draw up positive projections to send to Riley to make her feel better. As she tries to get the mind workers to rise up against Anxiety, a number of film references come into play, from “Norma Rae” to “Jerry Maguire,” with a little bit of “Network” thrown in.

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[FishareFriendsNotFood]

This is the rare sequel that moved me even more than the original.

[tremorsfan]

The scene where Riley has a panic attack really got me.

[steffie]

I love knowing how this scene was crafted and also the whole idea behind it. When I went to see it, most of us were adults in my showing and that was pretty cool to see. These last scenes really hit you hard because I think we can all relate to that anxiety feeling, some worse than others, and it was so well portrayed in the movie that you could not help to be moved by it. Pixar did an amazing job in this movie, so the amazing success is well deserved 👏👏

[goodboiadvsp]

The apple commercial reference was hilarious

[trinaq]

My favourite movie of 2024 so far. My little cousins and I saw it last weekend, and all greatly enjoyed it.

[cjezzi]

All jokes aside. I have severe anxiety, especially at night. It causes me to have really bad insomnia. Days at time without sleep. It sucks

[omgwtfrofltomato]

They outdid themselves with this scene

[aesculapius]

Great movie, I had low expectations but it made me ugly cry . Good job

[pou-qgru]

I would love the last movie to be about like getting really old and Riley getting dementia or Alzheimer's and the headquarters slowly deteriorating over time and everything in Riley’s mind gone but all an empty bliss.

[noahnathaniel]

Anxiety is literally like fear but more advanced

[TsbBoy]

2:49 “umm joy reality is also a thing”

[zaidlacksalastname]

This movie was beautiful. I'm glad I watched it.

[TheFMHatter]

Sure the film was exactly like the first movie but it exceeded my expectations and I do believe Inside Out 2 really brought back the feels to Pixar and that they hit it out of the ballpark. 10/10 for Disney/Pixar they need this win and I'm obsesed with this movie right now as a film buff and lover of animated movies like this

[freakinggenius]

I love every scene that has Anxiety. So this scene is one of my favorites.

[dillonwright]

To anyone who doesn’t understand, this whole place is an animation studio, or what an animation studio used to be, with desks that had animation discs attached to them so animators could do animation on paper, long before digital options became mainstream, and this scene, basically screams the industry’s disrespect towards hand drawn animation.

[HR_PaperStacks]

if they did an Inside Out about Joe Biden it'd be like the monkey in Homer's head with the cymbals