One of the lines confuses me

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

You know that line where Waternoose says Sully is “twice the scarer [Randall] will ever be”? I don’t get that.

Is it supposed to just be him being angry and shouting a random insult that doesn’t actually have a basis in reality? Cause, even ignoring that their advantages and weaknesses seem to balance each other out, the movie itself has the scareboard, where Randall’s like ten points below him. Close enough to pull ahead at one point. That seems like a pretty good sign they’re equal, maybe that Randall is just the slightest touch not as good.

So is it simply a random insult, is the movie arbitrarily labeling characters better than others, is there some big advantage of Sully’s I’m missing, or…?

I haven’t seen the movie in a long time, so forgive me if I’m missing something obvious.

#2

I’ve always figured that a part of Waternoose still liked and respected Sulley, (as he’d said “Because of you I just had to banish my top scarer!”) even though he was willing to do seriously awful things to Sulley to do what he believed he had to do “for the good of the company”. While Sulley and Randall aren’t that far apart in all technicality, I think Waternoose felt that Sulley was an overall better, nicer guy to start with. So does that mean that maybe a part of him wasn’t all into his and Randall’s evil plan? Yeahhh Waternoose is a mystery. Perhaps it was nothing more than a good zinger, but it seems like something different to me…

#3

A funny thing is, Randall IS twice the scarer Sullivan is.
Ok, some may say “Randall is Nexas’s fave”…but hear it out. The first time Randall tried to show his stuff as a Scarer, Sullivan ruined (accidentally) it for him. In MI, Randall’s tired and fatigued from the events with the scream extractor and an elevated stress level due to Waternoose and Fungus. Yet he STILL manages to match up to Sullivan…and he’s NOT at his best to do it. (Sullivan is a fit individual, as he frequents the gym and has a trainer (being Wazowski) to keep him up. Randall doesn’t really have that with Fungus.)

Remember that line. “banished my TOP SCARER”. Not that “I just had to banish James” or even “banish Sullivan”. Waternoose shows he has his pawns and his prize winners. Sullivan seemed to actually be more of a prized show trophy, which goes for MI’s image (commercials, products, reputation increase). Sullivan was an ideal front-man for the company’s workforce. Waternoose may have seen Sullivan more as a respected pawn that he’d rather not throw away if he could help it. There could have been other ways to handle the situation, but Waternoose chose the quickest and easiest, getting rid of the two.

Some, like PBL, would refer to a certain psychological condition of Randall pandering to Waternoose as a form of a father figure, but let me just go simple…
Waternoose is a manipulator and knows how to handle a person. He does it positively with Sullivan (with several grandfatherly gestures) and negatively with Randall (barking orders at him and insulting his progress). He KNOWS them. He knows Sullivan is an everyman and respects Waternoose, allowing Waternoose to count on Sullivan for things (such as demonstrations) and some confiding (the shareholders), and can exploit it. Same for Randall. He knows Randall’s a hard worker, that he aims to be respected and make something of himself. Randall wasn’t a “bad guy”, as some would put it, from the point of his unfortunate college year to MI. He became a scarer, a great scarer, a top scarer…he’d gotten a taste of the stuff he felt he needed. So when he lost it (theories suggest unfairly, again), he became the perfect pawn for Waternoose to manipulate.

That line was about driving in how Waternoose really felt. Randall was only good to him, at this point, as a pawn to revolutionize the scream industry, not as a scarer. He KNEW that Randall and Sullivan had a past (far more than seen in film), that Randall believed Sullivan had cheated himself to the top. It was the same as saying “that CHEATER is better than YOU and you will NEVER be better than him”. That REALLY irked Randall to the point of displaying his distaste for Waternoose.
“Sullivan got what he deserved” - Randall’s line the moment before, rather solemnly rather than a gloat or egotistical response. He believed that Sullivan deserved what he got, but Waternoose, the one who DID the deed himself, brandishes otherwise. Randall was doing so much (risking personal health, keeping things quiet, working on the machine, keeping up his own scare total, etc.) that it really ticked him off that the person he was doing all this stuff under just says he’s below a cheater, that somebody that’s WORSE is actually BETTER than him.
It’s a real ninja-move to things and may have helped spark Randall’s descent into that temporary mental break we see shortly after. A running drive of “he’s not better than me, people like him shouldn’t get the respect and affection of people”.

I could probably word the theory better at some time, but it’s been a long day.

#4

Waternoose uses this as a means of both putting Randall down and “motivating” him to continue with the project, by constantly reminding him of how inferior he is. Waternoose knows fully well that Randall has a massive inferiority complex to begin with, and that he wants to change that, and Waternoose uses this to his own advantage to secure Randall’s cooperation. It’s a bit like a drill sergeant constantly demeaning the troops under his command. Clearly Waternoose DID like Sulley much more, and in fact I’d go so far as to say that he despised Randall outright, but despising someone is hardly a barrier to using that person and discarding them later. In fact, it’s all the more reason to do so. Randall is, to Waternoose, expendable, like a disposable lighter or a plastic fork at a picnic, useful for a brief period of time, and then easily thrown away. He apparently had no family, no friends, no one to miss him if something happened, and he came with pre-existing emotional baggage that someone like Waternoose knows how to recognize and exploit fully. I have no doubt that Waternoose was also manipulating Sulley, too, playing Sulley and Randall against one another deliberately, making sure that Sulley always came out on top, always got the attention and adoration, while Randall was denied any of that. We see in the movie, that Sulley is awarded 100 points for filling his Scream canister, while Randall only gets 75 points for doing the EXACT same thing! No one can tell me that there wasn’t something highly unethical going on behind the scenes to be responsible for that, or that it was just a fluke. Sulley had been named “Employee of the Month” for 11 months, and when you consider that MI employed 4,680 Scarers-that’s JUST Scarers, not even including all the other employees, over an 11 month period that means that the odds against Sulley doing that(again, I’m only taking Scarers into consideration because that is the only number that’s known, as per the “Monsters Inc.Employee Handbook”) are one million six hundred ninety-eight thousand, eight-hundred forty to one AGAINST! There is NO ONE who is simply THAT good at anything, and that is not achievable without someone pulling “strings” and tweaking numbers behind the scenes! By making sure that Randall cannot achieve what he wants, recognition and acceptance, by doing his regular job, Waternoose was able to convince him to take such a huge risk in becoming involved with the Scream Extractor. We see in MU that Randall is NOT a risk-taker by nature, is not dishonest or prone to doing things that go against the rules, so it takes a lot to push someone like him in that direction. I know how people like Waternoose “roll”, because I’ve unfortunately dealt with them before myself. I know how they manipulate people, use people(especially people they DON’T like)for their own gains, how they play people against each other, how they use put-downs to convince someone to go along with them. In a way it’s a lot like an abusive relationship, in which the abuser tells their partner that the partner is nothing without them, cannot be successful except through them, reminds the partner of how unlikeable and worthless they are and convinces the partner that the only way they will ever achieve any success is by sticking with and cooperating with their abuser. By reminding Randall of how “worthless” he was, what a “loser” he was, Waternoose was able to convince him that if he wanted to get anywhere, if he wanted to be recognized, he had to do whatever Waternoose told him to do, as this was the only way that he could finally outshine someone whom Randall knew to be a privileged cheater that was loved by all simply because of his family name: James P. Sullivan.

pitbulllady

#5

To the two members above: Excellent theories, guys! You two really do seem to think about this movie deeply. I never would have thought of it that way.

#6

I personally think it’s crazy that Waternoose insults and alienates Randall so much, when Randall is his second best scarer and along with Sulley is doing more than everyone else to keep his company from going under. I guess Waternoose’s treatment of Randall could be 1) he hates Randall’s personality 2) He’s manipulating Randall.

From Monsters University we see that Randy is a people pleaser by nature, and he enters a harmful dynamic with Johnny that mirrors his harmful dynamic with Waternoose to a T. It seems like the more someone acts displeased with Randall, the more Randall will go out of his way to try to get them to like, or at least approve of, him. Waternoose may have used that touchy insult to manipulate Randall’s people pleasing side so he’d to fix their jumbled plan at any cost.

Maybe Waternoose has a deep knowledge of what makes his top 2 scarer’s tick, which he needs in order to keep them on top of their game. Sulley would not take being treated the way Waternoose treats Randall, because Sulley will stand up for himself. Sulley needs to be reinforced by being treated as a friend or family, and he won’t get a big head because of this. Waternoose probably thinks Randall works best when he is lacking this, when he is thrown over for someone else (Sulley), when he has a goal to attain. Randall doesn’t seem to know what it is to be accepted, and that’s his prime motivating factor (like in MU), and it gets him to work hard. Sulley, on the other hand, has always been accepted (family name), although the events between MU ans MI when he worked his way up from the bottom really humbled him. Sulley needs a comfortable environment of friends to work best (see how he was friendly and said hi to everyone when he first entered the company, no matter how lowly their statuses).Waternoose is playing them both.