Monsters vs. Aliens

For other uses, see Monsters vs. Aliens (disambiguation).

Monsters Versus Aliens
Theatrical Poster
Directed by	Conrad Vernon Rob Letterman
Produced by	Lisa Stewart Co-producers: Jill Hopper Latifa Ouaou
Written by	Maya Forbes Wallace Wolodarsky Rob Letterman Jonathan Aibel Glenn Berger Conrad Vernon
Starring	Reese Witherspoon Seth Rogen Hugh Laurie Will Arnett Conrad Vernon Rainn Wilson Kiefer Sutherland Stephen Colbert Paul Rudd
Music by	Henry Jackman
Editing by	Joyce Arrastia Eric Dapkewicz
Studio	DreamWorks Animation
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	March 27, 2009 (2009-03-27)
Running time	94 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$175 million
Box office	$381,509,870

Monsters vs. Aliens is a 2009 American computer-animated 3-D science fiction action comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The computer-animated movie was the first to be directly produced in a stereoscopic 3-D format instead of being converted into 3-D after completion, which added $15 million to the film's budget.

The film was scheduled for a May 2009 release, but the release date was moved to March 27, 2009. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray September 29, 2009 in North America and included the easter egg to the upcoming movies and previews. Monsters vs. Aliens features the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Conrad Vernon, Rainn Wilson, Kiefer Sutherland, Stephen Colbert, and Paul Rudd.

Plot

Bride-to-be Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is hit by a meteorite on her wedding day to weather reporter Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd), causing her to absorb a substance called quantonium and grow into a giantess. Alerted to the meteorite crash by first an Arctic base then Susan's dad, the military arrive and capture Susan, who is labeled "Ginormica" and sent to a top-secret prison facility headed by General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) where she meets her fellow monster inmates: B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a brainless, indestructible gelatinous blob; Dr. Cockroach, PhD (Hugh Laurie), a mad scientist with the head and abilities of a cockroach; the Missing Link (Will Arnett), an amphibious fish-ape hybrid; and Insectosaurus, a massive grub that is larger than Susan. She is then told that she won't be reutrning to her old civilian life since the government wants to keep her cooped up away from the outside world due to her giant size, much to her dismay.

An alien named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) detects the quantonium radiation emanating from Earth and deploys a gigantic robotic probe to find it. The President of the United States (Stephen Colbert) attempts to make first contact with the alien robot by playing Axel F on a keyboard, but the attempt fails and the robot begins destroying everything in sight, impervious to any weapons. General Monger convinces the President to use the monsters to fight the robot instead. The monsters accept the mission with the promise of freedom if they succeed. Arriving in San Francisco, Susan is chased by the robot across the city to the Golden Gate Bridge, where the monsters are able to defeat the robot.

Now free, Susan returns to her hometown and introduces her family to the monsters, but they are quickly rejected after innocently causing a panic in the neighborhood. Derek, meanwhile, breaks up with Susan, claiming that he cannot be married to a freak who would overshadow his career. At first devastated, Susan begins to realize that becoming a monster has improved her life, and fully embraces her new lifestyle. Suddenly, she is abducted by Gallaxhar, who seemingly kills Insectosaurus when he tries to save her. On Gallaxhar's spaceship, Susan breaks loose and chases Gallaxhar down, only to enter a machine that extracts the quantonium from her body, shrinking her to her normal size. Gallaxhar proceeds to use the quantonium to power a cloning machine which reproduces him into an army so he can invade Earth.

With assistance from General Monger, B.O.B., Dr. Cockroach, and the Missing Link infiltrate Gallaxhar's spaceship, rescue Susan, and hot-wire the spaceship's power core, activating the self-destruct sequence. During their escape, Susan is cut off from her friends, who are trapped in the power core. They tell her to save herself, but Susan instead confronts Gallaxhar, who tries to escape with the quantonium, and attempts to force him into releasing her friends. When Gallaxhar says he cannot reverse the sequence, Susan absorbs the quantonium, restoring herself to giant size and she saves her friends. The monsters leap out of the exploding spaceship and are rescued by General Monger on the back of the revived Insectosaurus, who has metamorphosed into a butterfly.

The monsters receive a hero's welcome home. Derek tries to get back with Susan for the sake of an interview that could benefit his career. Instead, Susan rejects him by throwing him in the air where he is caught, swallowed and spit out by B.O.B. on camera. The monsters are then alerted to a giant snail named Escargantua attacking near Paris and fly off to face the new menace.

Cast and characters

Main article: List of Monsters vs. Aliens characters

Monsters

• Reese Witherspoon as Susan Murphy/Ginormica, a normal woman who is hit by a radioactive meteor on her wedding day, causing her to mutate and grow to a height of 49 feet 11 inches (15.21 m). Meek and unassertive, she just wants to return to her old life, but gradually warms up to her new status as a monster. In addition to her size, she is amazingly strong and has a resistance to energy attacks. She serves as the film's central character.
• Seth Rogen as B.O.B. (Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate), an indestructible gelatinous mass created when a genetically-altered tomato (which he referred to in the Halloween special as his mother) was injected with a chemically-altered ranch dessert topping. His greatest strength lies in his ability to digest any substance as well as being indestructible. His one weakness is that his mutation did not give him a brain ("Turns out, you don't need one!"), making him incredibly dimwitted, such as sometimes mistaking the other monsters' goals in life for his own. His main goal in life is to digest things.
• Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach, PhD, a brilliant but mad scientist who, in an experiment to imbue himself with the abilities of a cockroach, ending up with a giant cockroach's head and some cockroach personality, but gained the ability to climb up walls and high resistance to physical damage. He is charming and sophisticated in spite of his tendencies to eat garbage and laugh maniacally, working to help Susan learn more about her condition while in captivity. He is also an avid dancer, which was handy in overriding the ship security system.
• Will Arnett as The Missing Link, a 20,000-year-old fish-ape hybrid who was found frozen and thawed out, only to escape and wreak havoc at his old lagoon habitat. Usually referred to as Link, he behaves as a macho jock most of the time, but is out of shape. Despite this, he is an expert martial-artist and takes it upon himself to lead the team in attacks, even if his energetic attitude does not always work to their advantage.
• Conrad Vernon as Insectosaurus, formerly a 1 inch (25 mm) grub transformed by nuclear radiation into a 350 foot (110 m) monster with the ability to shoot silk out of his nose. He is unable to speak clearly, and is mesmerized by bright lights (usually used to lead him to other locations); He also has a close bond with the Missing Link, who can understand what Insectosaurus is saying. As Butterflysaurus, he has wings and is able to fly and becomes the Monsters' mode of transportation.

Aliens

• Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar, the self-proclaimed alien king who hopes to take over Earth. He is served by gigantic robot probes (around the same size as Insectosaurus) and possesses a giant cloning machine. 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 – although viewers never hear most of the story. He aims to collect quantonium – the substance that transformed Susan – to give his cloning machine enough power to generate an army of clones of himself to conquer Earth, and is determined to extract it from Susan. Gallaxhar serves as the main antagonist of the film.
• Amy Poehler as Gallaxhar's Computer, a user-friendly computer that follows his orders, albeit with a sarcastic tone.

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. His name is a pun on the word warmonger. Despite imprisoning the "monsters", he never shows them any particular disrespect, and upholds his part of the bargain to set them free when they defeat the alien probe. Later on, having helped the team infiltrate the ship, he comes back for them on Insectosaurus, just as he promised. At the end of the film, Gen. Monger is promoted to the President's senior security staff.
• Stephen Colbert as President Hathaway, the impulsive and 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. He is very tolerant of the use of weapons, firing repeatedly—and pointlessly—at the original alien probe. He even suggests using nuclear weapons to attack the aliens, only to be stopped every time by his more-reliable staff. Colbert's performance as Hathaway is distinctly similar to the caricature of himself that he portrays on his Comedy Central series, The Colbert Report.
• 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 himself before his relationship with Susan (he cancels their plans to have a romantic honeymoon in Paris to land an anchorman job in Fresno, for example). After she sees him as the self-obsessed man he really is, she effectively turns him down by publicly humiliating him during his attempted interview with her.
• Jeffrey Tambor as Carl Murphy, Susan's over-emotional father.
• Julie White as Wendy Murphy, Susan's loving mother.
• Renée Zellweger as Katie, an adventurous human girl. Her date with her boyfriend Cuthbert is interrupted by the landing of Gallaxhar's robot.
• John Krasinski as Cuthbert, Katie's more timid boyfriend.
• Ed Helms as News Reporter
• David Koch as newsreader who comically notes how aliens only ever seem to appear in America (voice-over only in the Australian Edit).

Production

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 large and powerful 'render farm' of HP ProLiant blade servers with over 9,000 server processor cores, to process the animation sequence. The movie demanded 120 terabytes of data to complete, with one explosion scene alone requiring 6 TB.

Since Monsters vs. Aliens, all feature films released by DreamWorks Animation will be produced in a stereoscopic 3-D format, using Intel's InTru3D technology. IMAX 3D, RealD and 2D versions were released.

Release

Marketing

To promote the 3-D technology that is used in Monsters vs. Aliens, DreamWorks ran a 3-D 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 3D glasses were distributed at SoBe stands at major national grocers. The Monsters, except Susan and Insectosaurus, also appeared in a 3-D SoBe commercial airing after the trailer. Bank of America gave away vouchers which covered the cost of an upgrade to a 3-D theatrical viewing of the film for its customers.

Home media

Monsters vs. Aliens was released to DVD and Blu-ray in the US and Canada on September 29, 2009 and on October 26, 2009 in the UK. 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. As of November 29, 2009 the DVD has sold 4,431,584 million copies generating $73.79 million in sales so far. On January 6, 2010, it was announced that a 3D version will be released on Blu-ray. On February 24, a tentative March release date was set for the UK, 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 will be released in the United States, also with Samsung 3D products, on March 21.

Reception

Critical reception

The film received generally favorable reviews. Based on 206 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Monsters vs. Aliens has an overall approval rating from critics of 72%, with an average score of 6.5/10. Among Rotten Tomatoes' Cream of the Crop, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television, and radio programs, the film holds an overall approval rating of 58% based on 36 reviews. By comparison, on Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 56, based on 35 reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film a mixed review, saying "I suppose kids will like this movie", but said "I didn't find the movie rich with humor."

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 theaters, becoming the 5th highest-grossing IMAX debut, behind Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Dark Knight and Watchmen. The movie made $198,351,526 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 $383,466,166 behind Up and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. According to Boxofficemojo.com the film cost $175 million to develop.

Awards

On 2010, the films is nominated for 4 Annie Awards, including Voice Acting in a Feature Production for Hugh Laurie. Reese Witherspoon and Seth Rogen were both nominated for best voice actor at the 2010 Kid's Choice Awards for voicing Susan and B.O.B, but lost to Jim Carrey for Disney's A Christmas Carol. Monsters Vs Aliens was also nominated for Best Animated film but lost to Up. On June 24, 2009 the film won the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film.

Awards
Award	Category	Name	Outcome
Annie Awards	Annie Award for Best Animated Effects in an Animated Production	Scott Cegielski	Nominated
	Annie Award for Best Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production	Tom Owens	Won
	Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production	Hugh Laurie	Nominated
Kids' Choice Awards	Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie	Seth Rogen	Nominated
Saturn Awards	Saturn Award for Best Animated Film	Rob Letterman Conrad Vernon	Won
Visual Effects Society	Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Effects Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	David P. Allen Amaury Aubel Scott Cegielski Alain De Hoe	Nominated

Soundtrack

Monsters vs. Aliens
Film score by Henry Jackman
Released	October 24, 2011
Genre	Score
Length	1:05:51
Label	Lakeshore Records

All music composed by Henry Jackman, except as noted.

No.	Title	Artist	Length
1.	"A Giant Transformation"		3:05
2.	"When You See (Those Flying Saucers)"	The Buchanan Brothers	2:17
3.	"Tell Him"	The Exciters	2:35
4.	"A Wedding Interrupted"		2:09
5.	"Meet the Monsters"		2:29
6.	"Planet Claire"	The B-52's	4:37
7.	"Do Something Violent!"		2:07
8.	"The Grand Tour"		2:10
9.	"Oversized Tin Can"		3:38
10.	"The Battle at Golden Gate Bridge"		6:08
11.	"Didn't Mean to Crush You"		1:51
12.	"Reminiscing"	Little River Band	4:14
13.	"Imprisoned By a Strange Being"		5:28
14.	"Galaxhar as a Squidling"		2:06
15.	"March of the Buffoons"		5:15
16.	"Wooly Bully"	Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs	2:21
17.	"Susan's Call to Arms"		3:02
18.	"The Ginormica Suite"		5:51
19.	"Monster Mojo"		2:08
20.	"The Purple People Eater"	Sheb Wooley	2:15
Total length:			1:03:06

Other media

Main article: Monsters vs. Aliens (franchise)

Beside the main film, Monsters vs. Aliens franchise also includes a video game, a short film B.O.B.'s Big Break, and two television specials, Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space and Monsters vs. Aliens: Night of the Living Carrots.

External links

• Official website
• Monsters vs. Aliens at the Internet Movie Database
• Monsters vs. Aliens at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Monsters vs. Aliens at AllRovi
• Monsters vs. Aliens at Rotten Tomatoes
• Monsters vs. Aliens at Metacritic
• Monsters vs. Aliens at Box Office Mojo