Villain Vignettes #24: Randall

You may have noticed we were one day behind on our Villain Vignettes. It was just because this Randall post was camouflaged and we couldn’t find it! But here it is now!

I love Randall as much as I love Monsters, Inc. His character design is super cool, he’s a lot of fun and he’s voiced by Steve Buscemi so he basically wins. But the best thing about Randall is his camouflage powers. An enemy who can instantly adapt to his surroundings and become practically invisible is a truly scary enemy.

Randall Boggs: Origins

So let’s start with Randall in Monsters University. As you can see in the image above, he was the adorable Randy Boggs. At first he’s friends with Mike Wazowski but then he’s tempted away from our favorite one-eyed  monster by the popular guys. And although I’m not a huge fan of the resolution of his story because I don’t think it justifies his life-long feud with Mike and Sulley, his inclusion in the movie is justified when we learn his evil eyes are caused because he should wear glasses.

Randall works much better in Monsters, Inc where we see him as an excellent scarer who is just not good enough to be the very best. You think that’s the reason he’s constantly trying to sabotage the titular duo, only to find out he’s kidnapped Boo in order to try out a new (and cruel) piece of technology that could end Monstropolis’s energy drought. So his intentions are good but his methods aren’t! That always makes for an interesting villain. Just as being voiced by Steve Buscemi.

An enemy that adapts

Another thing that makes Randall a great bad guy is, as I’ve already mentioned, his powers. While Mike and Sulley struggle to adapt and accept that what they know about children may not be true, Randall is the ultimate adapter. Kids aren’t getting scared as before? Build a new machine to extract the screams out of them anyway. Your rivals found the human kid you were supposed to kidnap? Trick them into handling her over to you. Plus, the ability to use his surroundings to hide himself.

Scary Design

If you think about it, the only two monsters that are really scary physically (Randall and Mr. Waternoose) are the bad monsters. Everything about Randall just screams evil, from the way he moves to the way he looks around. And clearly, he’s good at his job because Boo is terrified of him. In fact, one of the most satisfying moments in movie is when Boo starts attacking Randall making him change colors with every punch (That makes two great Pixar moments where an infant attacks the villain and one of them changes shape/color rapidly) because it means she’s no longer scared of him. Even little Boo has an arc in this movie, and that’s why Pixar is so great.

So Randall is an evil guy with semi-good intentions, crazy powers that make him an amazing and worthy adversary and he makes us laugh all the time. Also, he’s voiced by Steve Buscemi, in case I hadn’t mentioned that.