Monsters vs. Aliens
Monsters vs. Aliens is a 2009 American 3D computer-animated science fiction comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures about a group of monsters hired by the U.S. military to stop an alien invasion in exchange for freedom. It was DreamWorks Animation's first feature film to be directly produced in a stereoscopic 3D format instead of being converted into 3D after completion, which added $15 million to the film's budget. The film was directed by Conrad Vernon and Rob Letterman and features the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Kiefer Sutherland, Rainn Wilson, Paul Rudd and Stephen Colbert.
The film was released on March 27, 2009 in the United States in RealD 3D, IMAX 3D and 4DX and was a box office success, grossing over $381 million worldwide on a $175 million budget. Although not successful enough to be followed by a sequel, the film started a franchise consisting of a short film, B.O.B.'s Big Break, two television specials, and Night of the Living Carrots, and a television series on Nickelodeon.
Plot
Out beyond the far reaches of space, an unknown planet explodes, which sends a strange quantonium meteorite across the galaxy towards Earth. Meanwhile, Susan Murphy of Modesto, California is going to be married to news weatherman, Derek Dietl. Just before the ceremony, she is struck by the meteorite and its energy causes her to glow green and grow to an enormous size with her hair turning white during the wedding, resulting in a U.S. military detachment tranquilizes and captures her. She awakens in a top-secret government facility that houses monsters of which the public are ignorant of, where she meets General W.R. Monger, the Army officer in charge of the facility and her fellow monster inmates: Dr. Cockroach P.H.D., a scientist who became half-human, half-cockroach after an experiment gone wrong; B.O.B., a brainless and living mass of blue goo that is a result of a food flavoring mutation; Insectosaurus, a massive bug mutated by nuclear radiation standing 350 feet in height; and the Missing Link, a prehistoric 20,000-year-old fish-ape hybrid who was thawed from deep ice by scientists. Susan, herself renamed to "Ginormica", is forbidden any contact with her friends and family, leaving her feeling increasingly isolated.On a mysterious spaceship in deep space, an alien overlord named Gallaxhar is alerted to the presence of quantonium, a powerful energy source on Earth, and he sends a robotic probe to retrieve it. The probe later lands on Earth, where the President of the United States attempts to make first contact by playing "Axel F" for it, but the probe goes on a destructive rampage, heading straight for San Francisco; Monger convinces the President to grant the monsters their freedom if they can stop the probe. In San Francisco, the robot detects the quantonium radiating through Susan's body and tries to take it from her, putting many lives at risk. At the Golden Gate Bridge, the monsters manage to destroy the probe by using debris from the bridge itself.
Gallaxhar sets a course for Earth to obtain the quantonium in person while the now-free Susan returns home with her new friends and reunites with her family. However, the monsters alienate themselves from Susan's family due to their inexperience with the real world, while Derek breaks off his engagement with Susan by claiming that he cannot marry someone who would overshadow him and his career. Initially heartbroken by this breakup, Susan realizes that her life as a monster is better and promises not to remain short again. Suddenly, Susan is pulled into Gallaxhar's spaceship; Insectosaurus tries to save her, but is shot down by the ship's plasma cannons, seemingly killing him.
Onboard the ship, Susan breaks free from her prison cell and chases down Gallaxhar, but is trapped by a machine that extracts the quantonium from her body, shrinking her back to her normal size. Gallaxhar then uses the extracted quantonium to create clones of himself in order to launch a full-scale invasion of Earth. Monger manages to get the monsters on board the ship, where they rescue Susan and make their way to the main power core where Dr. Cockroach sets the ship to self-destruct to prevent the invasion. All but Susan are trapped as the blast doors close and she personally confronts Gallaxhar on the bridge. With time running out, she sends the ball of stored quantonium down on herself, restoring her monstrous size and strength. After rescuing her friends, they flee the ship and are rescued by Monger and Insectosaurus, who has morphed into a giant butterfly. The ship then self-destructs, killing Gallaxhar and his army.
Returning to Modesto, Susan and the monsters receive a hero's welcome. Hoping to take advantage of Susan's fame for his own career, Derek tries to get back together with her, but she rejects him. Monger then arrives to inform the monsters that a new monstrous snail called "Escargantua" is slowly making its way to Paris, resulting in the monsters taking off to confront the new menace.
Voice cast
Monsters
- Reese Witherspoon as Susan Murphy A.K.A. Ginormica, a woman from Modesto, California who is hit by a radioactive quantonium on her wedding day, causing her to mutate and grow to a height of. Her exposure to quantonium also makes her hair turn white and gives her super strength.
- Seth Rogen as B.O.B., an indestructible gelatinous mass-created when a genetically-altered tomato was injected with a chemically-altered ranch dessert topping. He can devour and digest almost any substance. His one weakness is that his mutation didn't give him a brain.
- Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach P.H.D., a brilliant scientist who attempted to imbue himself with the resilience and abilities of a cockroach, with the side-effect of his head becoming that of a giant cockroach.
- Will Arnett as The Missing Link, a 20,000-years-old fish man who was found frozen and thawed out by scientists, only to escape and wreak havoc at his old lagoon habitat. Usually referred to as Link.
- Conrad Vernon as Insectosaurus, formerly a grub transformed by nuclear radiation into a monster with the ability to shoot silk out of his nose. He is unable to speak clearly and is mesmerized by bright light. He has a close bond with Link, who can understand what he's saying.
Aliens
- Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar: An evil alien overlord intent on collecting quantonium - the substance that transformed Susan - to give his cloning machine enough power to generate an army of clones of himself to conquer Earth. He is served by gigantic robot probes. He claims to have suffered several traumas in his youth, driving him to destroy his own homeworld, and plans to make a new one on Earth.
- Amy Poehler as Gallaxhar's computer.
Humans
- Kiefer Sutherland as General Warren R. Monger: A military leader who runs a top secret facility where monsters are kept, it is his plan to fight the invading aliens with the imprisoned monsters. In a scene during the credits, he claims to be 90 years old, in spite of his youthful appearance.
- Stephen Colbert as President Hathaway: The impulsive and rather dimwitted President of the United States. Not wanting to be remembered as "the President in office when the world came to an end", he agrees with General Monger's "monsters vs aliens" plan.
- Paul Rudd as Derek Dietl: A local weatherman and Susan's ex-fiancé. He jumps at whatever opportunity he has to boost his career, which causes him to place his job before his relationship with Susan, cancelling their plans to have a romantic honeymoon in Paris to land an anchorman job in Fresno.
- Jeffrey Tambor as Carl Murphy: Susan's over-emotional father.
- Julie White as Wendy Murphy: Susan's loving mother.
- Renée Zellweger as Katie: A typical human girl. Her date with her boyfriend Cuthbert is interrupted by the landing of Gallaxhar's robot.
- John Krasinski as Cuthbert: Katie's boyfriend.
- Ed Helms as News Reporter
Production
Production designer David James stated that the film is "a return to what made us nerds in the first place," getting classic movie monsters and relaunching them in a contemporary setting. Director Conrad Vernon added that he found it would be a great idea to take hideous monsters and giving them personalities and satirizing the archetypes. Each of the five monsters has traits traceable to sci-fi/horror B movies from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, although none is a mere copy of an older character. Susan, who grows to be 49 feet 11 inches tall, was inspired by Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Dr. Cockroach represents The Fly and The Curse of Frankenstein, while B.O.B. is an amalgam of slithering and slimy characters that were featured in the films, including The Blob and The Crawling Eye. Insectosaurus, a 350-foot-tall monster, is a nod to the 1961 Kaiju film Mothra. According to Vernon, the Missing Link has no direct inspiration. He "just represents anything prehistoric that comes back to life and terrorizes people." For the San Francisco sequence, the producers researched many films and photographs for an accurate depiction of the city, and filmed animator Line Andersen, who had a similar body type to Ginormica—tall, thin, and athletic-looking—walking alongside a scale model of San Francisco, to capture better how a person not comfortable with being too big with an environment would walk around it.
Ed Leonard, CTO of DreamWorks Animation, says it took approximately 45.6 million computing hours to make Monsters vs. Aliens, more than eight times as many as the original Shrek. Several hundred Hewlett-Packard xw8600 workstations were used, along with a 'render farm' of HP ProLiant blade servers with over 9,000 server processor cores, to process the animation sequence. Animators used 120 terabytes of data to complete the film. They used 6 TB for an explosion scene.
Starting with Monsters vs. Aliens, all feature films released by DreamWorks Animation were produced in a stereoscopic 3D format, using Intel's InTru3D technology. IMAX 3D, RealD 3D, 4DX and 2D versions were released.
Release
Marketing
To promote the 3D technology that is used in Monsters vs. Aliens, DreamWorks ran a 3D trailer before halftime in the U.S. broadcast of Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009. Due to the limitations of current television technology, ColorCode 3-D glasses were distributed at SoBe stands at major national grocers. The Monsters, except Susan and Insectosaurus, also appeared in a 3D SoBe commercial airing after the trailer. Bank of America gave away vouchers which covered the cost of an upgrade to a 3D theatrical viewing of the film for its customers.Home media
Monsters vs. Aliens was released to DVD and Blu-ray in the United States and Canada on September 29, 2009 and on October 26, 2009, in the United Kingdom. The home release for both the DVD and Blu-ray format only contain the 2D version of the movie. However, the release is packaged with a new short, B.O.B.'s Big Break, which is the more traditional 3D that required green and magenta glasses. Also included are four pairs of 3D glasses. On January 6, 2010, it was announced that a 3D version would be released on Blu-ray. On February 24, a tentative March release date was set for the United Kingdom, where anyone who buys a Samsung 3D TV or 3D Blu-ray player will get a copy. On March 8, it was reported that the 3D Blu-ray would be released in the United States, also with Samsung 3D products, on March 21. As of February 2011, 9.0 million home entertainment units were sold worldwide. In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation from Paramount Pictures and transferred to 20th Century Fox; the rights are now owned by Universal Pictures.Reception
Critical response
Based on 216 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Monsters vs. Aliens has an overall approval rating from critics of 73% based on 216 reviews and an average score of 6.47/10. The critical consensus reads: "Though it doesn't approach the depth of the best animated films, Monsters Vs. Aliens has enough humor and special effects to entertain moviegoers of all ages." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 56/100 based on 35 reviews, which indicated "mixed or average reviews".Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2.5/4 stars, saying: "I suppose kids will like this movie", though he "didn't find rich with humor". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that "WALL-E had more charm, more soul, more everything. But there's enough merry mischief here to satisfy, even if you’re way past puberty."
Box office
On its opening weekend, the film opened at no. 1, grossing $59.3 million in 4,104 theaters. Of that total, the film grossed an estimated $5.2 million in IMAX 3D theatres, becoming the fifth-highest-grossing IMAX 3D debut, behind Star Trek, ', The Dark Knight, and Watchmen. The film grossed $198.4 million in the United States and Canada, making it the second-highest-grossing animated movie behind Up. Worldwide, it is the third-highest-grossing animated film of 2009 with a total of $381.5 million behind Up and '. It was the highest-grossing film worldwide in Witherspoon's career until Sing overtook it in 2017.Despite its success in the United States market, DreamWorks Animation's CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg said in the Los Angeles Times that a sequel would never be made due to the film's weak performance in some key international markets. Katzenberg explained: "There was enough of a consensus from our distribution and marketing folks in certain parts of the world that 'doing a sequel' would be pushing a boulder up a hill." In April 2011, Katzenberg commented that the studio did not have plans to produce future film genre parodies like Shark Tale, Monsters vs. Aliens and Megamind, saying that these films "all shared an approach and tone and idea of parody, and did not travel well internationally. We don't have anything like that coming on our schedule now."