I love the Inside Out franchise and if you’ve seen any of my tweets, you’d know how much I attribute these movies to helping me. I know that might sound cliche but when the first one came out, that was around the first time I considered trying to take my life. Yet this scene reassured me everything would be okay.
And now the sequel that came out this year again helped me as I was at a point where I hit another turbulent point as I came out as gender fluid and yes I once again had those dark thoughts. The scene of Anxiety spiraling into a tornado felt all too real.
Now you might be wondering why I’m covering this franchise on series called Villains Profile as there aren’t really villains in this franchise. Yes, I am stretching the definition of that word but I think antagonist is fine enough for this series. We will be looking at two characters that fall under the antagonist category. This is something I’ve wanted to cover for a while but I just couldn’t figure out the best way to figure out how to approach this series as revisiting the first movie is just a bit too emotionally draining (heh) for me. It’s one of those movies I love but I have to be in the right mindset to enjoy it.
Thankfully though, we now have a midquel miniseries set between the first and second movie all about the making of Riley’s dreams. If you’ll recall from the first movie, we see the dreams are treated as movies and in this miniseries, we explore the studio that produces the dreams. Something I love is how the different types of dreams are treated as genre films and each has a specific director. And this is where the antagonist Jean comes in as she’s the producer of Dream Productions. This is something I’ll explore more as I’ll go on but she’s basically a suit who isn’t much interested in the creative freedom of her directors including her nephew, Xeni (I question how that works but MST3K rule) and is more interested in hits. You might be wondering what I mean by hits pertaining to Riley’s dreams. The best way to describe this is as hits in this sense means she wants her directors to make dreams that Riley will remember all her life. I know this is a bit lengthy for an introduction but I had quite a bit to say. If you are an Inside Out fan, I do highly recommend this miniseries. It’s only four episodes long but it is very rich in expanding the world of Inside Out.
Voice Actor
Maya Rudolph
Nice to see Rudolph here as she’s a solid comedic actress and not her first time behind the mic for a Disney production. She was also the voice of Aunt Cass in Big Hero 6. A much sweeter character looking after her nephews. (Okay, there’s something about animated characters having nephews voiced by Rudolph going on here)
First Appearance
As I said, this is a miniseries but thankfully it gives us enough time to get to know Jean. As I mentioned, she’s a producer and the head of Dream Productions and we see her in the first episode in a board meeting with all her directors as we see the assistant director of the main characters being promoted to director. The idea of a board meeting goes back to how Riley’s dreams are viewed as movies in a studio and this is something I’lll explore as I go on. As I said in the introduction, it’s best to think of Jean as a suit. Does she have Riley’s best intentions at heart? She might believe she does and you’d like to think the beings that live inside Riley would but I think she’s more interested in chasing after hits no matter how much it’d affect Riley. Yes, she does get angry at Paula and her nephew when their fighting over a dream causes Riley to sleepwalk. But more because they got a call from Headquarters and it woke her dad up from a flying dream which apparently are very expensive to produce. This is something that does raise some questions but makes a bit of sense that dreams would have a budget if they are treated as movies. Gotta ask though do the directors get residuals if Riley has repeat dreams.
Personality
As I mentioned in the primer category, it’s best to think of Jean as an exec/suit type that is mainly interested in making dreams that Riley will remember as those are those are equal to hits/blockbusters. She wants dreams that hat Riley will talk about for while. We see this with opening dream “Farewell My Paci” from toddler Riley and how that dream was the talk of the playground for a while.
Jean’s ideology serves as the antithesis to the message of the series. Sure, it’s nice to remember dreams but that isn’t always their purpose. Dreams are meant to help us and guide us and sure it’s nice if we remember them but we don’t always have to always remember them for them to have a impact on us.
Grand Desire
As I said before, Jean is a studio exec chasing after “hits” albeit going about it in the worst way. In her mind, she believes she has Riley’s best intentions at heart even if her motives are questionable such as attempting to shoot a too scary nightmare that’d ruin Riley forever that her nephew wrote. This is also where the exec/suit side of her comes in as with her being so high up, we see she doesn’t understand how the grind works when it comes to shooting a movie… err dream. This in itself doesn’t make her bad but shows how detached she is from the process of making dreams.
Most Evil Deed
There’s actually two different things I want to look at as they’re somewhat equal but different. The first one which isn’t detrimental to Riley but still bad s limiting her directors and not allowing them to go off-script after the fiasco that Paula and Xeni created. And on the one hand, I get it when you look at it from a business perspective as she doesn’t want the bottom line (?) to be affected but this limits the creativity of her directors.
The other big and much more detrimental thing she attempts to do is shoot the dream that Xeni wrote but it’d ruin Riley.
I haven’t talked much about Riley’s subplot here it here we go. Riley is nervous and excited about going to her first dance. Mom lends her a dress that isn’t great looking and in the dream, Riley is forced into it against her will and she shows up at her dance wearing it where she’s confronted by Teen Riley (fan fave character from the show) who mocks her for wearing the dress.
And everything goes awry from there. It is rather hard to argue if she had the best intentions for Riley here as she is told by Paula and Xeni that this dream would ruin Riley.
Paula, Janelle, and Xeni refuse to film the dream knowing what it’d do to Riley so Jean fires them all. Paula in an attempt to protect Riley removes the reality distortion filter on the camera that allows Riley to enter her dream and realize things will work out and decides to go to the dance after all and turns the dream into a happy one. Paula talks to Riley and now that she’s in the dream, she takes control of it and makes it happy.
Demise
Because of her actions regarding the dream that would’ve harmed Riley, Jean loses her position as the head of Dream Productions and is demoted all the way down to sandwich maker.
Is Jean Deweberry A Good Villain?
Again, villain might be a stretch but I do beleive her actions are much more villainous than what Anxiety does in the sequel. There’s almost something of a malicious intent against Riley herself but they’d harm Riley greatly and she brushes off her directors when she’s told all this dream would hurt Riley. Again, I have a hard time calling her a villain but she is malicious. Join me next time as we look at…
Anxiety
About Author
I know I’ve seen the “dreams are treated as movies” concept before, but I can’t remember what else it was done in. Still, this is an interesting interpretation about how our subconscious can work against us by reminding us of painful moments we’d rather forget or causing us to focus too heavily on upsetting hypotheticals. Glad to see they gave Maya Rudolph another role, but man that character design for Jean is really off-putting. Far too simplistic, IMO.