So Randall wanted a child to strap into his scream extractor, and he chooses Boo's door. Then the child goes missing. Wouldn't he just go kidnap another child? Did he want to find Boo just so he could cover his tracks?
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The main reason that Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live
First of all, from a monster perspective, it was NOT "kidnapping". Monsters did not consider humans, let alone human children, to be people, and by definition, kidnapping is taking and holding a PERSON against their will or without their consent, or consent of their guardian in the case of a child or someone unable to give/deny consent. Monsters considered human children to be just animals, as we ourselves think of dogs, rabbits, Guinea pigs, turtles, etc. Human children were a resource and very useful, but were also viewed as toxic, disgusting creatures by their entire society, not just by a select few monsters.
But to answer that question-and understand that this is inference-as to why Randall chose THAT particular child, I honestly think that he was "hedging his bets" with regards to the Scream Extractor actually working by choosing a kid he knew was already terrified of him and who would therefore scream reliably no matter what. That would allow Randall to use the lowest possible setting on the machine, the safest level, and still get results, enough to hopefully please Waternoose and end Randall's part of the bargain. He'd get his promised reward(yeah, I'm sure he would have), whatever Waternoose had promised him in exchange for building and testing the machine, get Waternoose off his back, and once his boss secured official approval for the machine, he'd be famous as its inventor and savior of the economy and finally get the respect and acceptance he'd wanted all along. In the process, he'd by-pass someone he believed was still cheating and riding a famous family name to success, James P. Sullivan. If you can't beat a cheater at his own game, invent a new game. Most people didn't even realize that Randall only had the machine's control panel set at 15% when Boo was strapped into the seat, and that Sulley pushed them all the way up to 100% when he put Fungus in the seat, so they assume that the same thing, or worse, would have happened to Boo that happened to Fungus. Another reason why Randall chose Boo is because he did NOT, contrary to what some people believe, design the machine to kill or permanently harm human kids. What would be the point in doing that, knowing that human kids, disgusting or not, are still vital to Monster World economy? Randall intended to simply return her to her room after the test, and didn't want to pick a kid old enough to verbalize what had happened to them once they got back home. They could not describe what they'd seen to anyone, so it was necessary to pick a child that was too young to really talk just yet.
pitbulllady
Thanks for the reply.
Your second paragraph is very interesting. I like the idea of him choosing a child he knew well, to get best results for the scream extractor. Also, the fact that he was trying to win over Waternoose would make him not want a human child running around who could be traced back to the company.
On your first point though, Waternoose himself calls it kidnapping, even if he doesn't give it the same significance as kidnapping a monster child.
Henry J. Waternoose: I have no choice. Times have changed. Scaring isn't enough anymore.
Sulley: But kidnapping children?
Henry J. Waternoose: I'll kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die, and I'll silence anyone who gets in my way!
Waternoose uses that term after Sulley tries to reason with him, and it's Sulley who first brings up "kidnapping", because NOW Sulley has had that rare opportunity to find out what humans kids are really like, so now Sulley comprehends that they are equal to monster children, and that they are PEOPLE, too.
The thing is, it's a ruse. The company would NOT have "died", no matter what happened. That's not how things work in the utilities trading world. That company ended with the suffix, "Inc.", which stands for "Incorporated", which means that it was a publicly-traded utilities in the stock markets and did not belong to any one individual but to stock holders, and indeed, we see stock report graphs on Sulley's clipboard near the end of the movie. The company might have declared bankruptcy, as many large corporations have to do at some point(Ford Motor Co., for example), and that is certainly not a death sentence but often a GOOD thing in the long run. It might have also been bought out and taken over by another company, and that sort of thing happens every single day in the markets. The only difference that the customers would have noticed would be whose logo appeared at the top of their bills. No, the only thing that Waternoose was trying to hold onto was his position as CEO, because the company's performance in the markets was HIS responsibility, and he was held accountable to the Board of Directors, whom he mentions having problems with to Sulley earlier in the movie, at the coffee machine. Had he not been able to pull the stocks up out of a slump and increase Scream production, they would have fired him, and the thought of the company no longer having a Waternoose at the helm for the first time since it was formed was simply unacceptable to him. Waternoose was willing to do whatever it took, including bringing in those illegal "toxic" human kids and using other employees, playing them like pawns on a chess board, to keep his position, which he could very well have been planning to use as a step up to bigger things, like politics. We know that in our world many of our political leaders have come up from the world of utilities and energy sources, like the oil industry. I just know that Waternoose's whole angle with trying to "save the company" wasn't legit.
pitbulllady