This is my point though. Inside Out 2 suffered from high expectations. If Pixar never existed and Inside Out 2 came from an unknown studio it would have blown you away.
Exactly. Pixar is somewhat a victim of its own success, but in this case Inside Out 2 is just Inside Out again - none of the additions or developments are really surprising.
And that's not bad! Sometimes you really do just want more of the same - after all, many wildly successful TV shows are just the same story, told differently each episode.
Flow wildly beat expectations which already gives it a leg up, but it was "new and weird" enough that I bet more of the reviewers actually watched it vs Inside Out 2 or other big-name movies.
Even the tagline of "feature length movie with no dialogue that's actually good" is enough to get people interested.
