- “I'll kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die, and I'll silence anyone who gets in my way!”
- ―Waternoose to Sulley[src]
Henry James Waternoose III is one of the main antagonists of Disney•Pixar's 2001 animated film Monsters, Inc. As the third-generation CEO of Monsters, Incorporated, Waternoose devoted his life to ensuring the growth and stability of his company. When Monstropolis falls victim to a widespread energy crisis spearheaded by diminishing returns, Waternoose makes a desperate attempt to save his company by formulating a conspiracy with Randall Boggs that places human children in grave danger. He is the father of Roger Rogers.
Quick Answers
What role does Henry J. Waternoose III play in Monsters, Inc.?
Why does Waternoose conspire with Randall Boggs in Monsters, Inc.?
What is the significance of the 'spider' in relation to Henry J. Waternoose III in Monsters, Inc.?
How does Waternoose's role as CEO affect the plot of Monsters, Inc.?
What desperate measures does Waternoose take to save his company in Monsters, Inc.?
Background
Personality
Initially, Waternoose has a calm and fatherly personality and has always been on good terms with Sulley and Mike. He has an affable and boisterous personality, especially when he is excited. However, he is only driven to villainy out of desperation to keep Monsters, Inc. afloat in the midst of the energy crisis (unlike Randall, whose jealousy towards Sulley gives him more of a villainous motivation). Waternoose becomes more villainous as this drive and desperation strip away his morals and he is determined to not let anything stop what he thinks will be the best way for the company to keep going, never taking into account looking for other energy resources.
Monsters at Work showed that Waternoose was a distant father to his son Roger Rogers, who was raised by his mother and Waternoose's ex-wife Wendy in New Squeeland as he not once have mentioned having a wife and child in the first movie.
Despite his actions, Waternoose still has a good chance at redemption, as he was simply trying to save Monstropolis from the energy crisis as well as being Randall's minion in the plot. Also, as Monsters at Work indicates, he wasn't willing to have the company sabotaged as proven when he denied Roger's accusations of hiring someone to vandalize the laugh floor.
Physical appearance
Waternoose is a large, obese gray crab/spider-like monster, completely bald, with five teal eyes, and walks around on a set of six crab-like legs. He is always seen wearing a black tuxedo jacket over a white shirt, a red vest, and a black bow tie. When he was younger, he had Afro-style hair and a mustache. A producer described him as a "cross between a spider and a crab."
Appearances
Monsters, Inc.
Waternoose is first shown at the beginning of the film, strictly informing Thaddeus Bile and the trainees about the dangers of a human child after Thaddeus has unsuccessfully tried to frighten a simulated child in bed.
That afternoon, Waternoose congratulates Sulley for having scared an entire slumber party. Shortly afterwards, the CDA arrives, and George Sanderson gets a sock stuck on his back. Waternoose expresses displeasure at the scare floor being put out of commission. Shortly after, Waternoose asks Sulley to come to the training room to give the trainees a scary demonstration. Sulley agrees, saying to start with the "old Waternoose jump and growl".
Later, while Sulley and Mike carry Boo, they try to alert Waternoose while he is attending a training session for new monsters. However, he asks Sulley to demonstrate his scare tactics, and when Sulley roars loudly, Boo reveals herself as a human child. Waternoose, taking Boo, decides to "take care" of her before anything worse happens, only to reveal that he is secretly in league with Randall as his henchman, worried about the future of the company. He brings a door from the vault and pushes Sulley and Mike into it and betrays them, and the door takes them to the Himalayas in Nepal. Sulley and Mike have a falling out. Sulley, only concerned about getting to Boo, quickly scavenges parts from stockpiles from the Yeti, another exiled monster, and heads to the nearest village to use a door and return to Monsters, Inc.
Inside the secret lair, Waternoose expresses regret for having trusted Randall to attain more screams from children and is annoyed that he had to exile Sulley, his best scarer, because of Randall. He then watches as Randall and Fungus begin to test the Scream Extractor on Boo. Sulley intervenes at the last moment before the scream extractor gets to her mouth, dismantles the device, throws it at Randall and his henchmen, and rescues Boo. Waternoose then tells an already-angered Randall to stop and finish off Sulley, but Mike, who has followed Sulley back into the monster world, accidentally gives away Randall's cloaking abilities, allowing Sulley to knock Randall off him by punching him in the face. After Sulley, Mike, and Boo escape, Waternoose tells Randall there cannot be any witnesses and Randall maliciously replies there will not be, hinting at possibly killing Waternoose as well.
While Sulley and Mike lead Randall on a wild chase through a large chamber where thousands of doors to the human world are kept, Mr. Waternoose rallies the CDA to capture Boo and arrest Sulley and Mike under the pretense that they are the criminals responsible for the entire incident.
After the trio defeats Randall and banishes him to the human world, where he gets beaten up by hillbillies who think he is an alligator, they return to Scare Floor F, which is packed with CDA agents. Mike distracts the CDA by driving them away, while Mr. Waternoose catches sight of Boo with Sulley and gives them a chase to the simulation room.
Waternoose breaks into the room Sulley ran into with Boo and confronts Sulley. Sulley tries to reason with Waternoose to not follow through with the scream extractor plan because kidnapping children is wrong, but he declares he has no choice as times have changed and scaring isn't enough anymore and will kidnap a thousand children before he lets the company die, and will silence anyone who gets in his way. Punching Sulley aside, he tries to grab Boo from the bed, but instead grabs the mechanical simulated child. Just then, the wall goes up to reveal that Mike is behind the controls. Mike, who has recorded the confrontation between Sulley and Waternoose, plays back his "favorite part" to reveal Waternoose's confession to the CDA as Waternoose watches in nervous bewilderment. With this incriminating evidence, the CDA agents turn on Waternoose and arrest him. As he is being dragged away, he angrily accuses Sulley of "destroying" Monsters, Inc. and making the energy crisis worse. Roz arrives and congratulates Sulley and Mike for their help in exposing Randall and Waternoose's evil plot. Shortly after, he is seen in a CDA truck with a few CDA agents to be taken away, which all the Monsters, Inc. employees witness. This seems to be a lose-lose scenario when Sulley realizes how true it is for the company's demise until Mike leads him to realize that based on their experience with Boo, laughter can put the company back in business, which it does as laughter is discovered to be ten times more powerful than scream and thus stops the energy crisis.
With this, Sulley is made the new CEO of Monsters, Inc., and it can be assumed that Waternoose regrets his actions when he hears about the company's rebounds in prison.
Monsters University
Mr. Waternoose welcoming Sulley and Mike to the scare team in the credits of Monsters University.
Waternoose was going to appear in the prequel, but this was dropped at the last minute. After Sulley and Mike begin their new jobs at Monsters, Inc., they eventually work their way up to the position of the scaring team job that they have in the first film. This is revealed to the viewers when Mike's M.I. locker shows photos of them beginning this job and shaking hands with Mr. Waternoose. This is likely when the bond between him and Sulley began to grow. In the photo, he sports a black afro and a mustache, which he lost some time before the events of Monsters, Inc..
Monsters Inc: Scream Team/Scare Island
Just as Mike and Sulley were expelled from Monsters University, Waternoose handpicked the two of them so they can train be to be top scarers of Monsters Inc. Waternoose is briefly seen in cutscenes, introducing the two to various locations in Scare Island where the Nerves (robot substitutes for real children) reside. Eventually, Waternoose congratulates the two for earning the bronze, silver, and golden medals, which he then grants the privileges for Monsters Inc.'s new scare duo.
Monsters, Inc. Laugh Factory
Waternoose managed to escape from prison and used a door called "the master door" to go into children's rooms and scare them to the point that they were terrified of the monster comedians. When Sulley and Mike hear of Waternoose's escape, they decide to set a trap for him in Boo's room. Mike ruins the trap after falling onto a jaw trap.
Waternoose bursts through the door and sees Sulley and Mike. Waternoose tries to close the door, but Sulley stops the door from closing, and he and Mike follow him into a Fear Factory. Mike then decides to destroy the Master Door with an ax. Waternoose tries to stop him from destroying the door, but misses when Mike dodges his attack. He then tries to convince Sulley to team up with him, and in return, he will teach him how to use the master door.
Sulley snaps as he refuses and Waternoose fuels up with rage, violently grabbing the ax to kill Sulley. Sulley dodges Waternoose's strike, fights back by grabbing the ax and throwing Waternoose into the door. He feigns defeat to Sulley while secretly activating the Master Door. He then escapes through the door, leaving Sulley and Mike trapped in the Fear Factory. Waternoose was ultimately captured and put back in jail by the CDA.
Later, Randall and Waternoose would be freed by Sid Phillips and the three would together work on another revenge plot. They cut off the door power when Sulley and Mike return from a visit to Boo's and try to figure out how to go about their revenge. Randall turns down Waternoose's idea of a frame job, and Sid just wants his reward of being given the door system patents to become rich in the human world.
Eventually, Celia and Boo escape when Boo activates her door and the three villains give chase while shutting Mike and Sulley out of it. Going to the neighbor's house, all three try to capture them, but Celia and Boo make it to the resident child's closet and bring the three right to a CDA task force waiting to take them into custody.
Monsters at Work
Waternoose does not physically appear but is mentioned in the first episode, "Welcome to Monsters, Incorporated", where it is revealed that he was the one who approved of Tylor Tuskmon getting accepted into the company. The very next day, Waternoose is arrested for his crimes as a blissful Tylor arrives at the company to learn of his fate. His mugshot is later shown in "A Monstrous Homecoming", confirming that he is still serving time for his crimes. It is revealed in the second season that he was married and has a son named Roger Rogers.
Gallery
Trivia
- Waternoose is the last animated character voiced by James Coburn before his death in 2002, a year after Monsters, Inc. was released.
- Though he ended up becoming involved in abducting Boo, despite his claims of children being toxic to monsters, it is never made clear whether he knew children were not toxic, and thus lied about their danger to the monsters, or if he did truly believe they were toxic but felt saving the company from bankruptcy was worth the risk of being poisoned by a child and potentially killed.
- He is very similar to Buster, Stinky Pete, Lotso, and King Candy, as all five started out friendly at first, but later revealed their true evil colors.
- Waternoose was the first Pixar villain to have his true motives caught on camera, the second being Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco. However, Waternoose had more firm and understandable reasons for his actions, as he was trying to save his company from bankruptcy and stop the energy crisis.
- Waternoose is more of an anti-villain since his only goal was to save the company and stop the energy crisis, for which he meant well with good strategy, only to end up pursuing it in the wrong direction afterwards.
- In the Disc 2 DVD feature Your First Day, it is stated that Waternoose's grandfather, Henry J. Waternoose I, developed the closet door technology a century prior to the film.
- Microsoft's Xenon processor for the Xbox 360 was codenamed (under the IBM chip program) "Waternoose" in honor of the character.
- In Monsters University, Waternoose was originally going to be voiced by Kelsey Grammer, who had previously voiced Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2, replacing James Coburn after his death, but the character was dropped out from the film for unknown reasons during production. Instead, the character made a cameo appearance in a picture at the end of the film.
- Coincidentally, both Waternoose and Stinky Pete were treated as twist villains in their respective debut appearances.
External links
Henry J. Waternoose III on Pixar Wiki- Henry J. Waternoose III on Monsterpedia
- Henry J. Waternoose III on Villains Wiki
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