Monsters University is a 2013 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Dan Scanlon (in his feature directoral debut) and produced by Kori Rae, with John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich as executive producers. The music for the film was composed by Randy Newman, making it his seventh collaboration with Pixar. It is a prequel to Monsters, Inc. (2001), making it the first, and currently, only time Pixar has made a prequel film.
Plot
Young Mike Wazowski aspires to become a Scarer – a monster who enters the human world at night to scare children and harvests their screams for energy – after visiting Monsters, Inc. (Monstropolis’ most profitable scaring company) on a school field trip. Eleven years later, Mike is now a first-year scare major at Monsters University, where he meets James P. “Sulley” Sullivan. Mike studies hard, while the privileged Sulley relies only on his natural ability and begins to falter.
As the semester progresses, Mike and Sulley attempt to join a fraternity, but only Sulley is accepted into Roar Omega Roar (ROR), the most prestigious fraternity on campus. At the semester’s final exam, a fight between the two causes them to accidentally break Dean Abigail Hardscrabble’s cherished scream canister; Hardscrabble fails them both on the spot, citing Mike’s complete lack of scariness and Sulley’s laziness, to which ROR promptly expels Sulley.
Wanting to prove himself, Mike enters the university’s “Scare Games” and makes a deal with Hardscrabble: she will reinstate him and his team to the scare program if they win, but Mike must leave the university if they lose. He joins a fraternity of misfits named Oozma Kappa (OK), but they are initially denied entry to the Games for being one team member short, so Sulley joins them upon seeing the competition as his only ticket to the scare program.
OK loses in the first challenge, but are saved when another team is disqualified for cheating. OK improves gradually due to Mike’s training and intricate knowledge of scaring, despite setbacks and humiliations by rival fraternities, and they advance through each following challenge, finishing second to ROR. In the final round, they defeat ROR with a decisive final scare by Mike in the simulation bedroom. However, Mike, much to his disbelief and fury, discovers that they won because Sulley secretly rigged the machine to give him a maximum score, causing a fallout between the two.
Determined to prove that he can become a Scarer, Mike breaks into the school’s lab where he enters the human world, but upon finding himself at a summer camp in a cabin full of children, and truly unable to scare any of them, he is forced to flee into the woods. Sulley confesses to Hardscrabble that he cheated just as Mike’s break-in is alerted. Hardscrabble forbids anyone from going through the door, but Sulley sneaks through to rescue Mike. After reconciling, they try to return, but are unable to exit after Hardscrabble deactivates the door, waiting for the authorities to arrive.
Pursued by camp rangers, Mike realizes that the only way to escape is to generate enough scream energy to power the door from their side. Working together, Sulley and Mike terrify the camp rangers and generate an overwhelming amount of scream energy, returning to the lab as the device overloads and explodes in front of a surprised Hardscrabble.
Mike and Sulley are expelled from the university, while the other members of OK are accepted into the scare program for the next semester as Hardscrabble was impressed by their performances in the Games. Hardscrabble wishes them good luck, stating that they were the first students to have surprised her. Sometime later, the two get jobs at the mail room of Monsters, Inc., eventually working their way up to join the scare team.
Cast
Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and Steve Buscemi (top) reprise their roles from Monsters, Inc. while Helen Mirren, Nathan Fillion, and Alfred Molina (bottom) play new characters.
Main article: List of Monsters, Inc. characters
Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski
Noah Johnston as Young Mike
John Goodman as James P. Sullivan
Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs
Peter Sohn as Scott “Squishy” Squibbles, an Oozma Kappa fraternity member
Joel Murray as Don Carlton, a middle-aged returning student and the founding member and president of Oozma Kappa fraternity
Sean Hayes and Dave Foley as Terri and Terry Perry, Oozma Kappa fraternity members who share each other’s body
Charlie Day as Art, an Oozma Kappa fraternity member
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