Interesting thought concerning doors...

Pixar's Feature Films Monsters, Inc. / University
#1

Haven’t really posted here much, but here’s a thought that popped into my head one night.

Say that there’s a kid that is afraid of monsters, but wants to overcome their fear and say to his/herself “There are no monsters in my closet”, and to do so, he/she decides to enter their closet and possibly shut themselves in. However, on the other side, the monsters assigned to that kid are powering up the door. The question is, if a kid goes inside their closet and shuts themselves inside (with clothes and toys and all) to prove that there is no monsters, and then the door is powered up on the other side, will it instantaneously teleport the kid?

I’m probably going to use this thread for other Monster World questions, but here’s one to start it off. :wink:

#2

When activated, a door is a dimensional portal.

So, technically, while the door is online, the interior of the cupboard is not accessible.
If you walk through the frame, you’ll end up in the dimension inhabited by the Monsters.
And you’ll be able to see through the portal when you open the cupboard, so it’s physically impossible to shut yourself inside the cupboard while the portal is there.

#3

I once saw someone suggest that this is actually what happened with Boo. She was in her closet, so when Sulley opened it she appeared next to him, where her closet would be. It was more of a tongue in cheek thing, but I thought it was pretty clever. ;-p

Hey, can I use this thread for Monster World questions, too?

#4

buckmana: I meant before the monster powers up the door, and then it is, if he/she would be teleported, not after.

Villainess: Of course! In fact, here’s some of my other monster world questions that Pixar has not answered:

  1. When a monster builds a door, how do they know where that are building a portal to? It’s not like some monster says “I’ll build a wooden door that leads to a summer camp,” or is it?

  2. If scream and laughter both produce power, then it indicates that the basic source of power is human voice/sound. That said, would other sound patterns besides those two produce energy as well (singing, shouting, humming, conversation, etc.)?

#5

I’m not sure if it works that way.
It’s possible the portal is only accessible if you walk into it from a specific direction.
Being inside the closet would make the portal impossible to reach.

Especially, as I speculate, the interior of the closet isn’t there anymore.
Well, technically, it’s still there, but anyone inside it at the time would be wondering why (from their perspective) the rest of the world just magically disappeared!
And if they spent long enough inside a closet they were incapable of leaving, they’d end up quite traumatized by the time the portal was deactivated!

What they are looking at, I cannot say, but either they’re looking at nothing or an energy barrier stopping them from leaving.
The latter one is the most likely, since if we were to apply multispatial physics, it would be very very bad if they were physically occupying the same space-time co-ordinates as the monster going through the door.
Basically. there would be a small biomolecular explosion as their cells merged and neither of them would survive!
And the portal would be destroyed in the process, as the energy would feedback into it.

I assume the monsters do know where each door goes, as they open specific doors for one reason or another.
How they target their spatial co-ordinates is unknown, other then picking X door to Y location.
I’m assuming that the doors were manufactured long ago and either they don’t know how they work or that job is handled by the technical/science division.
After all, you don’t need to know how a dimensional portal works to turn a handle and open a door.
But they would have to be making new doors every so often, for when new houses are created which aren’t linked into their transport network.

There are two possibilities, either they don’t know where a door is going to go until someone goes through it or they have a scanning device that locates doors to replicate them, but can’t provide any information about the residence it’s connecting to.
But it seems that they have no ability to see what is on the other side of the door, because monsters are frequently surprised by something unexpected on the other side after they go through.

There is also a scene where they open a door without the benefit of a closet connected to it, so they may not need a physical locus to create a portal.

Singing possibly, the others I doubt it.
Based on what they say, you require a certain amount of volume to harvest energy from the sound being produced.
Shouting would overcharge the system and break it, the volume is too high, generating too much energy for the system capacitators to conduct into the storage canisters.
The other sounds would be too quiet for the system to pick up, the equivalent of background energy levels.

#6

It’s unlikely singing does anything, Boo starts doing it in the toilet at one point and nothing happens. Then again, that was weird two year old singing.

Here are some of mine:

  1. What would happen if someone recorded a human scream? Would they be able to draw power from that, or does it need to be fresh, for a lack of a better word?

  2. Ted. How does he operate in this world? Are there giant versions of all places specifically made for giant monsters we just don’t see?

  3. If you went to the back of a portal while it was on, and you put your arm through, and then you pulled it back, would you lose your arm through the portal?

  4. It kind of confuses me how you have these doors, which are either teleporters or interdimensional portals and therefore very, very high end technology…and every where else in the Monster World is stuck in 2001. Earlier, they’re still using tapes. Like, where’d this massive boost of technology come from and why hasn’t it effected anything else?

#7

  1. A recording does nothing, it’s got to be stored live in a special tank or it’s of no use.

  2. That was a throwaway visual joke, don’t try to find logic in it.
    But more realistically, I think he’s just a guy working on the floor, he’s not a scarer.
    But I haven’t seen this movie in quite some time, since my dvd copy is damaged beyond repair, so can’t recall specifically if they say he’s a scarer or not.

  3. Two possibilities.
    The first is that your arm just goes through the portal and you poke someone as they’re trying to walk through it from the other side.
    The second is that your arm disintegrates when it comes in contact with the “wrong side” and well, that’s not good!

The only analogy I can think of is Stargates from the tv series, but I don’t think they ever addressed what happens if you go in the “wrong side”.
The only thing I really remember is they’re quite specific about having to go through it from the “right side”.

  1. I think Monsters Inc is using a variant of technology that just looks like it’s from 2001, but it’s really more advanced then it appears.
    Example, Mike’s Car runs on the energy extracted from human sound, because when there is a shortage of it, he’s not allowed to drive it to conserve energy.

So to use the above example, Mike’s car may look very ordinary, but if you were to open the bonnet and look inside, I’d expect you’d see something quite different from a stock standard petrol driven motor.

And that probably extends to everything else, it looks like standard technology, but if you were to examine the inner workings, you’d see it wasn’t as simple as it appears to be.