Up above is another trailer for Monsters U. that just further seals that it looks like a pleasant enough sequel with enough monster-related gags that I won’t need to bring a fork to stab myself with during the screening.
Down below is director Dan Scanlon’s response to questions about the contuity issue between Monsters Inc. and Monsters U., name the fact that a throwaway line in the first film seems to contradict the timeline as presented in the new prequel. You can see this demonstrated in the video below, which is edited in such a way as to actually capture the cognitive process a plot nitpicker’s mind goes through upon discovery of a plot hole.
So naturally someone has questioned the director about this meaningless inconsistency, and Yahoo! was there.
…director Dan Scanlon claims that he and John Lasseter had always been aware of the line from the first movie and had discussed the issues of continuity. He claims that they devised several other storylines about them meeting in the 4th grade before a fast-forward to the college years, but instead decided that skipping over the early days of their friendship and simply seeing them in college wouldn’t do the story justice. Scanlon claims that ‘you sort of felt like you were missing [their] relationship grow’, so made the difficult decision to have them meet at college so audiences could see their relationship blossom on screen.
It’s also noted that neither film will be altered for so stupid a reason, so the “hole” will remain.
Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t just make a joke about the grade system in the monster world going backwards, so that Freshman year of college is indeed “the fourth grade.” Even that would be too much effort spent on correcting something that only the most silly of folks will actually take issue with.