Monsters vs. Aliens is a 2009 computer-animated 3-D feature film from DreamWorks Animation and Paramount Pictures. The movie was the first computer animated movie 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.[3]

The film was scheduled for a May 2009 release, but the release date was moved to March 27, 2009, to prevent competition with James Cameron's upcoming Avatar,[1] which has since moved its release to December 2009. Monsters vs. Aliens features the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Rainn Wilson, Kiefer Sutherland, Stephen Colbert, and Paul Rudd.

Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is hit by a meteor on the day of her wedding to weatherman Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd), absorbing a substance called quantonium and growing into a giantess. Alerted to the meteor crash, the military arrive and capture Susan. She is labeled a monster, renamed "Ginormica" by the government, and sent to a top-secret prison facility headed by General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) and containing other monsters: B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a brainless, indestructible gelatinous blob; Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (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 colossal grub that is even larger than Susan. The monsters are forbidden to have any contact with the outside world; while the other monsters have been living contentedly with this lifestyle for the past 50 years, Susan feels incredibly isolated and wishes to return to her old life.

An alien named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) detects the quantonium radiation emanating from Earth and deploys a gigantic robotic probe to find it and extract it from its source, Susan. After a botched attempt by the President of the United States (Stephen Colbert) to make first contact with the robot, it begins destroying everything in sight, resisting all conventional military force used against it. 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 and friends to the monsters, who are quickly rejected after innocently causing a panicked ruckus in the neighborhood. Derek, meanwhile, breaks up with Susan, claiming that he can't be married to someone who could overshadow his career. Initially devastated, Susan realizes that becoming a monster has improved her life, and fully embraces her new friends and lifestyle. Suddenly, she is abducted by Gallaxhar, who apparently kills Insectosaurus when he tries to save her. On Gallaxhar's ship, 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 machine which clones 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 ship, rescue Susan, and hot-wire the ship's power core, activating the ship's self-destruct sequence. Susan, however, is cut off from her friends, who are trapped in the power core and tell her to save herself. Instead, Susan 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 takes the quantonium back and absorbs it, restoring her to her gargantuan size and allowing her to save her friends. The monsters leap out of the exploding ship and are rescued by General Monger on the back of the revived Insectosaurus, who had sealed his body in a cocoon and transformed into a giant butterfly.

The monsters receive a hero's welcome upon their return. Derek attempts to get back with Susan for the sake of interviewing her, which could benefit his career; instead, Susan rejects him and forces him to endure the humiliation of being thrown into the air and caught, swallowed and spit out by B.O.B. on camera. At that moment, the monsters are alerted to a monster attack near Paris and fly off to combat the new menace.

Cast and characters

Monsters

• Reese Witherspoon as Susan Murphy, aka Ginormica: A young woman from Modesto, California who is hit by a radioactive meteor on her wedding day, causing her to mutate and grow to a height of 49' 11 1/2". Somewhat meek and unassertive, she initially wants nothing more than to return to her old life, but gradually warms up to her new status as a monster. Due to her exposure with the meteorite's radiation, in addition to her size, she is amazingly strong and has a resistance to energy attacks, making Gallaxhar's weapons all but useless against her.
• Seth Rogen as B.O.B. (Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate): An indestructible gelatinous mass created when a genetically-altered tomato was injected with a chemically-altered ranch dessert topping. His greatest strength lies in his ability to devour and digest any substance as well as being indestructible.
• Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D: A brilliant but mad scientist who, in an experiment to imbue himself with the longevity and abilities of a cockroach, ending up with a giant cockroach's head and some personality features of the cockroach, 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.
• Will Arnett as The Missing Link: A 20,000-year-old fish-ape hybrid who was found frozen and thawed out by scientists, only to escape and wreak havoc at his old lagoon habitat. He behaves as a macho jock most of the time, but is rather 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 gung-ho attitude doesn't always work to their advantage.
• Conrad Vernon as Insectosaurus: Formerly a one-inch grub transformed by nuclear radiation into a 350-foot 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. In his butterfly form, he grows wings and is able to fly and becomes the Monsters' mode of transportation.

Aliens

• Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar: An evil alien overlord who hopes to take over Earth. He is served by gigantic robot probes 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 we never hear most of the story. He needs 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.
• Amy Poehler as Gallaxhar's Computer, a smooth-operating, user-friendly computer that follows his orders, albeit with a sarcastic tone.

Humans

• Kiefer Sutherland as General W.R. Monger: A military leader who runs a top secret facility where monsters are held. It is his plan to fight the invading aliens with the imprisoned monsters. With this, the monsters gain his respect, and he gains theirs. 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, he comes back for them on Insectosaurus, just as he promised.
• 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. He is very tolerant of the use of weapons, and even carries a gun with him at all times, 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.
• 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 (and 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: A typical human girl. Her date with her boyfriend Cuthbert is rudely interrupted by the explosive landing of Gallaxhar's robot.
• John Krasinski as Cuthbert: Katie's boyfriend.
• Ed Helms as News Reporter
• David Koch as Australian newsreader: A newsreader in Australia who comically notes how aliens only ever seem to appear in America.

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 terabyte of data to complete, with one explosion scene alone requiring 6 TB.[4]

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.[5] IMAX 3D, Real D and 2-D versions were released.

Marketing

The teaser trailer had two versions that show General W.R. Monger's plan to use the monsters to defeat the aliens. The first version was seen on the Kung Fu Panda DVD and the other version was shown with Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. A full-length trailer was launched on the Internet on December 23, 2008.

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 3-D glasses were distributed at SoBe stands at major national grocers. The Monsters, except Susan, also appeared in a 3-D SoBe commercial airing after the trailer. Bank of America is giving away vouchers which cover the cost of an upgrade to a 3-D theatrical viewing of the film for its customers.[6]

Reception

Based on 178 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Monsters vs. Aliens has an overall approval rating from critics of 72%, with an average score of 6.4/10.[7] 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 56% based on 32 reviews.[8] By comparison, 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 33 reviews.[9]

Box office

On its opening weekend, the film opened at #1, grossing $59.3 million in 4,104 theaters.[10] Of that total, the film grossed an estimated $5.2 million in IMAX theaters, becoming the third highest-grossing IMAX debut, behind The Dark Knight and Watchmen.[11]

Video game

A video game was released March 2009 on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, and Wii. It is the last Dreamworks film video game published by Activision. The game, devoloped by Beenox and Amaze Entertainment, allows users to play through scenes from the movie as Ginormica, B.O.B., and The Missing Link, and features drop-in/out co-op. Players can play as Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D in multiplayer co-op, as well as Insectosaurus on the Nintendo DS version of the game. The music was composed by Jim Dooley, with live brass recorded at the Warner Brothers Eastwood Scoring Stage.[12]

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