Monsters, Inc. opened in theaters 25 years ago today, on November 1, 2001, introducing a metropolis powered by children's screams and the factory floor workers who clock in every night to collect them.
The film marked Pete Docter's feature directorial debut before he went on to make Up, Inside Out, and Soul. Rather than recording in separate booths, Billy Crystal and John Goodman insisted on standing side by side in the same studio session, giving Mike and Sulley the overlapping rhythm of an old vaudeville double act.
Behind the comedy sat a major technical leap: Pixar built a new simulation program called Fizt just to animate the 2.3 million individual strands of Sulley's turquoise fur and the way Boo's oversized shirt draped as she ran.
Twenty-five years later, the film holds a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and remains one of Pixar's tightest scripts, building to a third-act roller-coaster chase through a warehouse of millions of hanging closet doors. It is streaming now on Disney+ in the US.
