Lee Unkrich
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Connections, in both directions
The situation offers an opportunity for a few movie jokes, a Pixar favorite (expect lots of “Cool Hand Luke” references).
At least this one is wrapped in a fun "Great Escape"-flavored prison-break story, which features nods to "Cool Hand Luke" and "Escape From Alcatraz."
It becomes a straight-up prison-camp escape picture -- modeled very consciously on classic films like "Stalag 17," "The Great Escape" and "Cool Hand Luke," right down to the music -- with the evil warden taking the form of a good-ol'-boy stuffed animal named Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear (voiced to perfection by Ned Beatty).
(The film has all kinds of subtle Cool Hand Luke moments, with Lotso playing Strother Martin to everyone else.)
The toys' breakout from the day-care center winds up being the ballast of "Toy Story 3," which takes its cues from "Cool Hand Luke" and assorted prison-break flicks, and culminates in a scene of near-death, which, after several episodes of darkness and peril, seems gratuitously excessive.
The best of these is Mr. Lotso Huggin Bear, a lavender plush teddy who “smells like strawberries” and, as ingeniously voiced by Ned Beatty, behaves like a deranged hybrid of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's Big Daddy and the warden from Cool Hand Luke.
The toys want out, and the movie promptly becomes an homage to escape films like "The Great Escape."
The film’s most inspired section is a brilliant, thrilling Woody-led version of “The Great Escape,” with a junkyard climax that may actually be too scary for sensitive little ones.
How does a G-rated family film become a sophisticated combination of “The Great Escape” and “Animal Farm” without going over young people’s heads?
What follows is a massively complicated, and ever escalating escape attempt (with nods to classics like The Great Escape), which culminates in an extraordinary sequence inside a giant trash disposal device.
It becomes a straight-up prison-camp escape picture -- modeled very consciously on classic films like "Stalag 17," "The Great Escape" and "Cool Hand Luke," right down to the music -- with the evil warden taking the form of a good-ol'-boy stuffed animal named Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear (voiced to perfection by Ned Beatty).
Better to enjoy Toy Story 3 as a well-executed action yarn, a sort of cartoon version of The Great Escape , even if the film’s admittedly thrilling set pieces—like the opening, which features Woody and Buzz chasing a thieving Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and trying to save a runaway train filled with hilariously squealing toy trolls—are more referential than satiric, feeling as if they’ve sprung less from the imagination of a young boy than from the minds of grown men with much affection for the collected works of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, and Peter Jackson.
Joe Morgenstern, the film critic for the Wall Street Journal, has compared Beatty’s performance to Andy Griffith’s in “A Face in the Crowd,” and the comparison is apt: a folksy facade masking instinctive ruthlessness.
Chief among them is Lotso (Ned Beatty), a plush, strawberry-scented huggie-bear who’s a little too reminiscent of Andy Griffith in “A Face in the Crowd.’’
"Toy Story 2" took the concept further, exploring themes of friendship and betrayal (real or imagined; when you feel betrayed it doesn't really matter which).
The conceptual genius of 1999’s Toy Story 2 was that it took the idea behind The Velveteen Rabbit to its logical end: A child’s love can bring a toy to life, but children grow up and leave their toys behind, which is a form of death for a toy.
3 1/2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet State of Play By Jeffrey M. Anderson The geniuses at Pixar haven't necessarily improved upon Toy Story 2 (1999), but more than ten years later they have effectively repeated its themes and provided a terrific and funny summer adventure.
Director Lee Unkrich — who worked on the first “Toy Story” and co-directed “Toy Story 2” — and scriptwriter Michael Arndt (a Pixar outsider who won a best original screenplay Oscar for “Little Miss Sunshine”) have done a good job of combining the classic (and much-loved) characters of “Toy Story” with new toys that quickly establish their own personalities.
The mournful message of Jessie's song, which takes up only a few minutes of screen time in the otherwise boisterous adventure that is Toy Story 2, makes up the entire theme of Toy Story 3.
It's a theme that was explored in Toy Story 2 and is continued here.
Toy Story 4 (2019)
Directed by Josh Cooley
influenced by Toy Story 3 (2010), Coco (2017)
Themes Characters
Verily, the finest moments in the Pixar pantheon—the opening scenes-from-a-marriage sequence in 2009’s Up , the titanic final performance of “Remember Me” in 2017’s majestic Coco , the whole of 2015’s fucking WHAT IF FEELINGS HAD FEELINGS monstrosity Inside Out —tend to double as the most painful.
2009’s Toy Story 3 seemed like the definitive end to the Pixar series begun in 1995.
With Toy Story 3, many of us cried because we were the ones leaving our toys behind just as Andy was, letting them become our past as we grew into our adult ways.
In “Toy Story 3,” that dark political privilege fell to a fluffy bear who smelled of strawberries; this time, authority rests with Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a glass-eyed doll of yesteryear, who has a busted voice box and badly needs a working one to replace it.
There’s a heartfelt “saying goodbye” sequence in Toy Story 4 that, while quite emotionally hefty, fails to even compare to Toy Story 3 ’s final scene.
Just off the top of my head, you could also cite Margery Williams’ “The Velveteen Rabbit,” Russell Hoban’s “The Mouse and His Child” and Kate DiCamillo’s “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” among the children’s literature faintly echoed in “Toy Story 3.” But I’ll just invite you to consider the scope and extent of “Toaster” influence herein and then come back and talk about it.
It even — or so some critics more imaginative than I have suggested — channels bits of minimalist French director Robert Bresson’s “A Man Escaped.”
On top of that, not unlike how director Lee Unkrich and his team made many trips to Mexico and brought in many to consult for the sake of authenticity when it came to Coco , Soul is very much a film that made an effort to embrace black culture.
With its themes of musical aspiration and mortality, Soul has a kinship with the 2017 Pixar production, Coco ; elsewhere there is narrative overlap with pictures like Here Comes Mister Jordan and Heaven Can Wait .
Perhaps that’s giving short shrift to Coco (from Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich), a film with a visual grandeur and world-building panache not unlike Soul.
It doesn’t have the eye-popping wow of Coco (2017), another netherworld jaunt that turned a Dia de los Muertos visual palette into something both culturally specific and universal.
Coco , a film that leaned heavily on the cultural influence of the Mexican Day of the Dead, was originated and shepherded by a white director, Lee Unkrich, with co-writer Adrian Molina drafted into the same co-director spot Powers occupies on Soul .
For me, Toy Story and Toy Story 3 , The Incredibles and above all WALL-E are the best.
Pixar likely borrowed the premise from Thomas M. Disch’s The Brave Little Toaster: Objects once prized lose their newness and become disposable.
I guess it’s a good thing that “The Brave Little Toaster” was also a Disney film (and one made more than 20 years ago), because for anybody who happens to have dragged that VHS tape out of storage recently, the plot of “Toy Story 3? might seem a tad familiar.
With shades of “Winnie the Pooh,” the folks at Pixar have also narrowly avoided the fact that their trilogy is a more advanced version of “The Brave Little Toaster.”
Your heart pounds as Woody and his friends face what feels like certain death inside an incinerator while your mind goes, “Didn’t I see this already in The Brave Little Toaster ?”
The Book of Life (2014)
Directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez
influenced Coco (2017), Toy Story 3 (2010)
Visuals Themes
Though undeniably gorgeous, none of this feels terribly original, from the film’s message to the look of the Mexican underworld, which so recently inspired another computer-animated feature, 2014’s “The Book of Life.”
Controversy struck again when fans of the film The Book of Life reacted to similarities between Coco and the 2014 brainchild of Mexican and Mexican-American writers and artists , accusing Disney of idea theft.
Basing a family feature around Mexico's annual Day of the Dead holiday is not entirely novelit was previously explored in 2014's well-meaning, ultimately forgettable " The Book of Life "but it has finally received the gloriously conceived, dramatically sound treatment it deserves.
Shortly after Lee Unkrich won an Oscar for directing “ Toy Story 3 ,” Pixar announced that his next project would be about the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
It feels like the playtime story within a story that opens Toy Story 3, derivative yet inventive, and based heavily around a series of toys.
If we’re talking Pixar threepeats here, it’s certainly no “Toy Story 3.” Instead, it’s a reasonably diverting, somewhat sluggish attempt to reinstall the “heart” of the first installment, as it focuses on Lightning McQueen (voiced as always by Owen Wilson) as he attempts a comeback after a crushing defeat against state-of-the-art bad boy Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer).
(Can’t you just imagine a broken-down McQueen, tilting toward a fiery landfill apocalypse, like the nearly incinerated playthings of Toy Story 3 ?)
More along the lines of the masterful “Toy Story 3” and “The Good Dinosaur” than the irritatingly spastic “Cars 2,” “Cars 3” is unassumingly one of the most poignant films so far of 2017.
“Cars 3,” much like “ Toy Story 3 ,” is the perfect opportunity for Pixar to walk away from a much-loved franchise with its head held high, but of course they won’t, because money (“Toy Story 4” is scheduled to arrive two years from now, which is nine years after the previous film and 24 years after the first installment).
Since Toy Story 3, Pixar has released seven films in seven years, of which exactly one — Inside Out — was the kind of milestone Pixar used to set almost every time around the track.
The first one (released in 2006) is considered the one major black mark in the animation studio’s killer run from 1995’s Toy Story to 2010’s Toy Story 3 , and 2011’s Cars 2 is the only Pixar film with a “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Toy Story 3’’ hits a high point of comic surrealism when Mr. Potato Head is forced to reinvent himself as Mr. Pita Bread Head — it’s harder than it looks, especially when a pigeon turns up — and Buzz goes through more personalities than Joanne Woodward in “The Three Faces of Eve.’’
Buzz, once again, gets plunged into delusion and strangeness (in a device similar to one Danny Kaye mined for comedic gold in 1955's " The Court Jester ," this time around) by his very nature as a toy.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)
Directed by Dean DeBlois
influenced by Toy Story 3 (2010)
Themes
Written and directed by franchise veteran Dean DeBlois, The Hidden World is aesthetically as beautiful as ever, with melancholy themes reminiscent of Toy Story 3 .
The gold standard has always been Toy Story 3, which (at the time) wrapped up Pixar’s marvellous franchise in spectacular fashion.
The Hidden World does eventually build to an emotional Hail Mary, its very own Toy Story 3 tearjerker of a trilogy conclusion.
Thank the voice talent I just recited, the sincerity of the Mouse House’s intention, and screenwriter Charise Castro Smith for imbuing Encanto with soft tones of regional folklore or fairytales, much like writer Adrian Molina did for Coco while touching on different themes.
There has been a distressing amount of discourse as of late charging that Disney’s latest animated musical, Encanto , is nothing more than a carbon copy of Pixar’s 2016 offering Coco , as if the mere presentation of cartoon characters with darker complexions amounts to retread.
See Adrian Molina‘s work on Coco.
This is no Toy Story 3 .
Picking up where last year’s Oscar-winning “Toy Story 3” left off, “Hawaiian Vacation” is probably the closest we’ll get to a “Toy Story 4” for quite some time, and we’ll take it.
"Hawaiian Vacation" picks up where "Toy Story 3" left off, with its box full of fabulous playthings living at little Bonnie's house.
Pixar owned the films, but Disney had sequel rights, and a Pixar-less version of Toy Story 3 was in the works at Disney until the Mouse bought Pixar, and John Lasseter, taking the reins at Disney animation, pulled the plug.
The truths it proffered to its audiences about hard work and friendship were pretty standard ones, lacking the complexity offered in knottier, more involving fare concerning family ties and growing up and growing old, such as the " Toy Story " films and " Up ."
As it recently reaffirmed with "Toy Story 3," Pixar never ventures into the bottom-line-driven sequel market without the essentials of a good story and a clear artistic purpose.
Like Toy Story 3 , which used the depressing theme of growing out of your toys (depressing, at least, for the toys) to illustrate a greater theme of mortality, Monsters University has grown up with the original film’s audience.
Monsters University is not going to have you silently blubbering away/wiping away manly tears like the brilliant Toy Story 3 , the Pixar Animation/Walt Disney Pictures film you’d have to be comatose not to love.
In the case of Monsters University that younger sibling is Dan Scanlon, a storyboard artist on Pixar films Cars and Toy Story 3 who stepped up to the plate to direct this prequel.
Remember how you felt watching “The Incredibles” or “Ratatouille” or, most recently in the Pixar canon, “Toy Story 3”?
If you were worried that animation giant Pixar was dipping into the same old wells too often (" Toy Story 3 ," " Cars 2 ," et al), the announcement of a prequel to their 2001 hit " Monsters, Inc. " might have given you pause.
It becomes a straight-up prison-camp escape picture -- modeled very consciously on classic films like "Stalag 17," "The Great Escape" and "Cool Hand Luke," right down to the music -- with the evil warden taking the form of a good-ol'-boy stuffed animal named Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear (voiced to perfection by Ned Beatty).
The movie nimbly alludes to prison-escape films — "Stalag 17," "The Great Escape" — but it also mimics the tropes of those movies and all sorts of action pictures, making "Toy Story 3" often ordinary and, at its lowest, ho-hum.
It is love at first sight for Barbie (voice of Jodi Benson who is famous for the title role of Ariel in “The Little Mermaid”) who falls for this dreamy guy in short shorts.
Besides sending up prison break movies, the filmmakers also give us wonderfully nutty scenes like Barbie (Jodi Benson from “The Little Mermaid”) finally meeting Ken (Michael Keaton) and Buzz being reprogrammed in unexpected ways.
Barbie (The Little Mermaid's Jodi Benson) may have proverbally and literally found her Ken (Michael Keaton), but Sunnydale is clearly not the dream house they had in mind.
For there is, alas, no denying that the movie takes an awfully long time finding a tone that it wants to stick with, and so we have broad physical comedy matched with winsome, sugary sentiment and vigorous swashbuckling, with all of it playing against the backdrop of fantastic mythic adventure, and the marriage of all these different modes is nowhere remotely near as effortless as the comic/tragic slurry of Toy Story 3 or the adventure/domestic drama of Up , for example.
Releasing just one picture per year, they have seen fit to go the lazy sequel route, first with 2010's amiable but arguably lesser " Toy Story 3 " and then with 2011's appalling " Cars 2 ," a desperate, charmless affair that spit on everything that made 2006's " Cars " so special.
But for the Pixar Animation crew it’s just another number in their unbelievable string of hits: “Toy Story” (1995), “A Bug’s Life” (1998), “Toy Story 2” (1999), “Monsters, Inc.” (2001), “Finding Nemo” (2003), “The Incredibles” (2004), “Cars” (2006), “Ratatouille” (2007), “WALL-E” (2008), “Up” (2009), “Toy Story 3” (2010), “Cars 2” (2011) . . .
The " Toy Story " films essentially put computer animated family features on the map while " Toy Story 3 " went on to gross over $1 billion, " Finding Nemo " is getting a 3D re-release September 14, people are still clamoring for a sequel to " The Incredibles ," and " WALL-E " and " Up " featured some of the most effective animation that shot straight for your emotions with little to no dialogue.
There’s little of the adult feeling that drove “ Up ” or “ Toy Story 3 ,” either.