Monsters University prequel is a bigger picture all round
Pixar's likeable Sulley and Mike return for the animated prequel Monster's University, writes James Mottram
If you happened upon San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on a particular day earlier this year, you'd have seen an excitable bunch of grown- ups there for a special screening of an animation film. It was Pixar Animation Studio's employees' showing of Monsters University, the 3-D prequel to 2001's mega-hit Monsters, Inc.
A ritual undertaken for every one of the 14 feature films produced by this remarkable animation company, everyone who works for Pixar goes - whether or not you worked on the film.
With the company now boasting more than 1,200 staffers - their offices stretch across a nine-hectare site in Emeryville, California - the screening is a major event in the life cycle of a Pixar film. "It's my favourite time to see the movie because I always tear up when I'm watching it," says Monsters University's supervising animator Scott Clark. "I feel very proud. I know how hard these things are to make. There's so much love put into them. People really care."
That, and the attention to detail, is what sums up Pixar's ethos, from the company's early days making short films to the 1995 debut feature Toy Story. Since then, it's only got better.
A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and Wall-E grossed more than US$2.2 billion and earned 15 Oscar nominations between them. Even so, when Monsters University opened in the US last week, it surpassed the already sky-high expectations that accompany every Pixar release.
