Someone raised an interesting but kind of depressing point about Pixar recently. Between 1995 and 2009, the peerless animation company produced ten movies, with just one of those being a sequel – 1999’s “Toy Story 2.” If all goes as expected, between 2010 and 2015 four of the company’s seven features will have been sequels, the third of which, “Monsters University” (a prequel, technically, but you catch our drift) is set for release in just over two months time.
Now it’s still worth remembering that of the three pre-existing Pixar sequels, two are among the animation house’s best efforts, and while the other most certainly wasn’t, “Cars 2” merely took over the mantle as Pixar’s worst feature from it’s predecessor. Which is to say, let’s not judge “Monsters University” (or “Finding Dory”) prematurely, because there’s every chance it will be another heartfelt masterpiece…even if this latest batch of posters doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
The seven character portraits introduce us to six of Monsters University’s Greek fraternities and sororities, which include the RURs, EEKs and the JOX. See what they did there? The seventh poster, meanwhile, introduces the Greek Council’s President and Vice-President. At least the first, which features a young James P. Sullivan and Mike Wazowski, looks like it’s had some effort put into it, with the individual character snaps at the top differing from the group shot below. Sadly, that same level of attention hasn’t been extended to the others. They do offer up new glimpses at a couple of returning characters like Randall and George Sanderson, and aside from that maybe some fun can be had matching up the new characters to their (mostly) celebrity voices.
Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and Steve Buscemi are returning to their respective roles, while Nathan Fillion, John Krasinski, Bonnie Hunt, Sean P. Hayes, Charlie Day, Aubrey Plaza, Alfred Molina and Helen Mirren come along for the ride. “Monsters University” opens on June 21st. [RecentMoviePosters/EW]
