I t may have been called Inside Out 2 , but there’s nothing “out” about it. The animated sequel, set among the anthropomorphised emotions inside a teenage girl’s head , has been an unmitigated hit for Pixar , Disney ’s most decorated animation wing. Shrugging off any notion of post-pandemic slowdown, the film, still in cinemas, has risen to become the eighth highest-grossing movie of all time .
Kids loved it. Parents and critics wept before it. This week, however, it’s been at the centre of a PR furore, after a report by IGN claimed that Pixar executives had sought to quash LGBT+ plotlines during the making of the film.
The instruction, claims the report, was to make the film “less gay”. It’s not like this demand came from nowhere. Ever since the film’s release, viewers have speculated over the sexuality of Inside Out 2 ’s 13-year-old protagonist Riley – the girl in whose emotionally turbulent mind we spend most of the film.
The film certainly leaves room for interpretation: much of the plot concerns Riley’s obvious (though not overtly romantic) infatuation with an older girl, named Val. At one point, Riley’s emotions – Joy ( Amy Poehler ), Disgust (Liza Lapira), Fear (Tony Hale), Anger (Lewis Black) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) – encounter a monstrous figure deep in Riley’s subconscious, referred to only as her “dark secret”. It is revealed in a post-credits sequence that this secret referred to her burning a hole in a rug, but that didn�.