Plenty of technical advances went into "Toy Story 3," but one of the most noticeable is that Andy and the human characters look, bluntly, much more human. I asked director Lee Unkrich if the animation technology behind CGI people has gotten that much better in the 15 years since "Toy Story." "It has, but in great part because we really pushed it, especially in this film. You look at the humans in the first two 'Toy Story' [films] and they're kind of crude by today's standards. We knew at the time that they didn't look great, but they were the best that we could do with the resources we had, but in the subsequent years, we had done successful humans in films like 'Ratatouille' and 'The Incredibles.' On 'Toy Story 3,' I knew at the beginning that the human characters were going to play a much bigger role in the film, and they needed to be really appealing and believable; they had to have souls. So I laid the gauntlet down early on with my team and let them know that if we were going to successfully tell this story, the humans would have to look really, really fantastic and believable." Unkrich explained how 3-D, for him, was more about storytelling than showing off in stereoscopic vision: "We always knew we were going to release ['Toy Story 3'] in 3-D, but I also knew that I didn't want to use a heavy hand with it. The moment that the audience is distracted and paying attention to the 3-D, I've lost them; I've failed in my job as a storyteller. I want them to be immersed in the story and forgetting they're even watching a film, 3-D or otherwise. That being said, we found that the 3-D was really great for helping us cement the illusion of telling a story at a toy scale in a large human world that's looming over them." Finally, I have to ask Unkrich: "Toy Story 3" does a great job of bringing the series back home and closing the tale of Woody and Buzz off, but, at the same time, as long as money is still green and can be used to buy things, there's the possibility that "Toy Story 4" might be seen as a good idea someday. Did Unkrich, I ask, deliberately want to close things off with "Toy Story 3," to put the toys away for good? "Well, I really tried my best to end the story of Andy and his toys and bring that story to a close in a really nice way at the end of this film. That being said, we know that people love the characters, love Woody and Buzz, and would hate to say good-bye to them completely. I don't know that there would ever be a '[Toy Story] 4.' We don't have any plans for one -- but we are trying to find ways to keep the characters alive. We have announced we're going to do a short film in front of 'Cars 2' that uses the 'Toy Story' characters. We're going to keep them alive; they're not going away forever." |
