Entertainment Weekly The Ultimate Guide to Toy Story

By The Editors of Entertainment Weekly

The editors of Entertainment Weekly Magazine present Toy Story 4.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Entertainment Weekly
• Release date: Jun 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781547846573

Book preview

Pixar

FANTASTIC PLASTIC

THE SECRET LIFE OF TOYS

From its debut nearly 25 years ago Toy Story was a benchmark of computer animation. But as the sequels prove, Pixar’s continued success wasn’t based solely on tech wizardry—their artists also understand the human heart. BY JOE MCGOVERN

Tom Hanks (left) and Tim Allen return a fourth time to voice Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 4. Here, the actors in 2010.

THE YEAR WAS 1995, AND A NEW ERA HAD just begun. Millions of people were getting their first crack at this thing called the World Wide Web (courtesy of dial-up providers like Prodigy or America Online), and on Thanksgiving weekend, millions more were filling movie theaters to experience the world’s first full-length computer-animated film.

This technique is gonna probably revolutionize animation in the future, Roger Ebert remarked to Gene Siskel on their movie review program. He could as well have added, To infinity and beyond.

Nearly 25 years later it’s easy to forget that Toy Story was a gamble. A critical or box office failure might have been the undoing of Pixar, the animation house funded by Steve Jobs, even with distribution help from Disney.

Technologically Pixar had its work cut out (the film took almost five years to make) but also its bases covered. In 1988 director John Lasseter’s Tin Toy had become the first computer-animated project to win an Oscar in the short-film category. These Pixar guys understood how to mix a photorealistic, tactile aesthetic with an ambitious sense of possibility and magic. They knew how to dazzle the eyes.

But Toy Story wasn’t going to succeed on looks alone. Pixar lined up a vibrant cast of voice actors, led by Tom Hanks’s aww-shucks anxiety as Sheriff Woody and Tim Allen’s fantastic faux-machismo as Buzz Lightyear. Unexpected delights were found in the supporting roles: Wallace Shawn’s mousy Rex, Annie Potts’s sweet Bo Peep, Jim Varney’s southern drawl Slinky Dog and, in a stroke of casting genius, Don Rickles’s cranky-mouthed Mr. Potato Head.

The notion of dolls coming to life had been an irresistible conceit since before Pinocchio, but here there was a twist. The toys would become animated only when the humans were away. On a conceptual level the distinction was extraordinary. Instead of settling for easy wish-fulfillment (what kid hasn’t dreamed of toys as real live pets?), Pixar hit upon a deeper existential truth—that toys don’t need to literally come alive for us. They are alive in our imaginations. And the toys’ innate understanding of their roles in our lives reinforced the bond we share.

As such they experience joy when we play with them. And sorrow when we don’t. And jealousy, which Woody feels when new toy Buzz takes his spot as the favorite. Or disillusionment, when Buzz realizes he’s not the only Buzz out there.

When the original film became a franchise, another brilliant narrative choice was made. The world around the toys would keep moving forward even as Woody, Buzz and the gang remained a constant. So with Toy Story 2 (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010) and now Toy Story 4, poignant themes of nostalgia and loss emerged. How do we hold on to the past? Why do we grow up so fast? Can our playthings ever really leave our hearts?

For sure, all that sniffling you might have heard in the theater—that was the parents, not the kids. The films span generations. Children who adored the original Toy Story in 1995 will be taking their own children to see Toy Story 4. And that’s because of the trust that the franchise has developed with its audience. As Randy Newman, the merry maestro of Toy Story, sang in the opening moments of the original film, You’ve got a friend in me.

Indeed we do.

Woody and Buzz’s first meeting, 24 years ago, in 1995.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

WOODY’S FINEST HOUR

IT’S THE LAST ROUNDUP FOR EVERYONE’S FAVORITE COWBOY. IN TOY STORY 4, THE LOVABLE LAWMAN SPENDS TIME WITH FRIENDS BOTH NEW AND LONG-LOST. By Kevin P. Sullivan

IT’S BEEN A HECK OF A RUN FOR THE ADORABLE toy sheriff, but even the most beloved heroes have to hang up their spurs sometime. This summer Toy Story 4 marks the final adventure for Tom Hanks as the rootin’est, tootin’est cowboy in the wild, wild west—which meant that the creative team at Pixar had to craft an action-packed emotional story to serve as his swan song. What they came up with has it all—adventure, romance and a talking spork.

Disney/Pixar’s summer sequel flings Woody and his old pal Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) upstate to a sleepy town where they miraculously find a familiar face from home: Bo Peep, who reemerges as a toy lost—and a woman changed. Bo’s been lost a long time, and she’s had a lot of time to work it out, but she’s come to a happy place on the road, says Bo actor Annie Potts, who voiced the character in the 1995 original and 1999’s Toy Story 2. She’s reinvented herself . . . . She’s kind of Mad Max . . . Mad Maxine.

In the film, written by Stephany Folsom and Andrew Stanton, Woody’s relationship with Bo takes center stage, and director Josh Cooley found inspiration for their dynamic in another iconic action-adventure, 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Because they’ve known each other such a long time, the relationship that Indiana Jones had with Marion is something I had in mind with Woody and Bo, says Cooley, who’s eager to showcase the pair’s clashing approaches to adventuring.

Woody flies by the seat of his pants sometimes—actually most of the time—and immediately jumps off emotion into action, says the director. Bo has that same energy, but at the same time she’s always four steps ahead of everybody else. That may only be a few centimeters, but still.

Revisiting Bo in 2019 offered the creative team a chance to come up with a more compelling story line for the character. When we discussed whether something ‘felt like’ Bo, we knew that she is a sarcastic voice of reason for Woody, says story artist Carrie Hobson. There’s a vulnerability that he has with Bo that he doesn’t even have with Buzz. To me, that’s the seed of an idea that we can build upon.

Together, Woody, Bo and Buzz—along with new