From TED, Andrew Stanton provides fantastic insight into story. Perfect fodder for this blog.
My favorite excerpt:
Storytelling is knowing your ending. Knowing that everything you’re saying, from the first sentence to last, is leading to a singular goal. And ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.
To me, Monster’s, Inc. represents Pixar’s second good idea. A Bug’s Life was a ho-hum affair and Toy Story 2 was further explorations into variations on a theme. Monster’s, Inc. provides evidence of sustained creative and original thinking at the studio. A trend that, thankfully, would continue.
The film’s concept — the workaday world of monsters — provides a wealth of opportunities for exploration. Much like Toy Story and later The Incredibles, Pixar accentuates an off-kilter and unexpected subject. In this case, monsters.
We find a universe where a child’s scream provides the energy to power the monster world. Our heroes are 9-to-5 workers, who extract screams from children via their closet doors, like coalminers in a mineshaft. They fill out paperwork, shower and change in a locker room, send their children to daycare, complete scare training. The fantastical nature of the monster world is well grounded in the mundaneness of corporate life.
The small details bring life and depth to the setting and the film. The Monster’s, Inc. headquarters with its massive parking lot and billowing smokestacks provide a monolithic quality to the place. And the giant blue “M” with its all-seeing eye is quite Orwellian. But perhaps it is more of a comment on the monsters’ myopia — their inability to see the shortsightedness of their ways.
Further splashes of color and texture enliven the monster world. Recliners with built-in tail holes, doors with multiples hinges, eyeglasses with three lenses. The attention to detail creates a sense of authenticity, and, in a strange way, believability. Their world is fully formed, and does not require us as the audience to fill in the blanks.
The story finds its adventure in a plot to return a child (“Boo”) loose in Monstropolis to her room. It provides a clever backdrop that reveals the inner-workings of the monster world. We see a monster restaurant and television broadcast.
The film’s chase sequence — which is essentially the last third of the film — is truly spectacular. We are taken from the nether regions of the Monster’s, Inc. headquarters to the snows of the himalayas. We are then transported to the remarkable warehouse of millions and millions of doors. The shot of Mike, Sully, and Boo flying into this mass expanse of endless doors hanging and flying on tracks is a moment of epic proportions in Pixar history. We see the ambition of the animation, and the potential of the unbelievable.
The emotional center of the story, however, are its characters. Mike and Sully’s friendship is a source of comedy, drama, and joy throughout the film. Sully is a gentle giant and Mike is a comedian and a romantic.
Sully’s attachment to Boo, however, is the Pixarian flourish to the entire story; without this weird relationship between a giant monster and a little girl, there is no purpose to the film. It allows the story to explore the nature of being frightened and allows us to reflect on the child and monster in each of us.
The contrasts been the Toy Story films and Monster’s, Inc. are clear. Toys harken back to wonderful memories filled with imaginative adventures. Monsters, on the other hand, connote the fears of childhood — the dark, a world unknown, what lurks behind the closet door. They’re two sides of the same coin. The memories of childhood continue to be a theme in future works from Pixar: a boy’s comic book collection in The Incredibles, the adventurers spirit in Up, and the prepubescent fascination with cars.
Among the most common refrains you’ll here about Toy Story 2 is that the film is just as good, if not better than the original. While largely true, the sentiment genuinely misses the mark. You would never claim that one verse of “Like a Rolling Stone” is particularly better than another, or that any stanza from a Whitman poem pales in comparison to its previous.
Each film in the Toy Story trilogy belongs to the whole. The films are a complete epic spanning three features and fifteen years. Each sequel repeats and rhymes and echos the previous and the next. The characters and themes grow in complexity and richness. Without the first, the second and third are inconceivable.
It would be more appropriate, then, to say that Toy Story 2 is a fantastic second act, worthy of its predecessor and sets high watermark for the final chapter to meet. It brings detail and texture to a world we all adore, and provides further clarity and understanding to the lives of toys.
Of all of the aspects of the film, perhaps the most entertaining was the continued development and growing complexity of the toy world and the psyche of toys. The first film introduced the fear of replacement, the nature of being lost, and the essence of being owned and played with. The second film introduced new and creative intricacy to this fictional universe.
The filmmakers deftly put the characters in circumstances that confront their fundamental toyness. From the beginning, a yard sale threatens to break up the gang. The toy store forces Buzz to confront his doppelgänger. Jessie’s fear of storage nearly cripples her.
These touches and flashes become the cornerstones of the films; the ideas that drive the story and motivate the characters. It is inspired storytelling that so thoroughly imagines its world and allows its characters to exist and live in it.
My favorite bit of toy narrative comes from Stinky Pete. His pain from being trapped in a box is heartbreaking. You can almost sympathize with his cruelty towards Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye. Being left on the shelf while all other toys are bought and played with must have been torture. And now his only chance to be adored — behind glass at a museum — will be dashed unless he breaks his box’s seal. Mint condition must be the worst fate for a toy.
The film opens with a highly elaborate video game sequence of Buzz attempting to enter Zurg’s lair. He kills 10,000 robots with their guns trained on him, sneaks into the underground fortress, and does battle with the Emperor. This opening sequence sets a heart-racing pace for the rest of the film.
From a wide lens, Toy Story 2 is a fairly straightforward adventure film. Buzz, Potato Head, Ham, Slinky, and Rex head off into the world in search of their friend Woody. They encounter harrowing and dramatic obstacles. They must cross five lanes of traffic, covertly enter Al’s Toy Barn, and make their way through ventilation ducts and up elevator shafts.
More than the first film, where the first half is set in a boy’s room and is essentially a comedy and juts into adventure in its final moments, Toy Story 2 relies on adventure to drive the film. All of the characters are always moving, always adapting to new roadblocks. There’s never a dull moment. And perhaps this is the difference in audience reaction from the first to the second. The sequel keeps the audience’s attention rapt the entire 92 minutes.
The film’s final sequence at the Tri-County airport is marvelous, and a wonderful spectacle to watch. First Buzz and his compadres commandeer the Pizza Planet truck and must improbably drive (stick) to the airport, weaving through traffic at very high speeds. Next a dizzying maze of conveyor belts packed with luggage must be overcome to rescue Woody and the Roundup Gang, and send Stinky Pete off to his fate. Finally Woody, Buzz, and Bullseye shoot out onto the tarmac as they must rescue Jessie from the belly of the plane.
Gripping stuff.
A review of this film would be incomplete without mention of Jessie’s story and the “When She Loved Me” montage.
Up to this moment in this film and in the previous, we’ve known joy and fear and sobering reality from the toys. But Jessie introduces us to pure, gut-wrenching sadness.
Her story with her owner Emily sounds eerily familiar to Woody and Andy. At a young age Emily and Jessie were the best of friends. But from the vantage of time gone by, we see Emily grow. She misplaces Jessie beneath her bed and replaces her with the trappings of young adolescence. Jessie’s importance to Emily has all but vanished. And given one last joyful reprieve — a drive to the park where they once played — Jessie is shattered when she is left in a donation pile.
Nothing in our lives prepares us for a moment when we will be discarded. It’s unimaginable. Seeing it happen to Jessie horrifies us. “Why doesn’t Emily love her anymore? Doesn’t she care? How could she do that?” These the thoughts and questions that race through our mind as tears race down our cheeks.
The willingness in an all-ages movie to take an audience to the extreme lows of despair and sadness is a truly bold choice. This moment, this montage of Jessie’s story is when Pixar took a step past being simply an animation studio and towards being among the finest storytellers in America. The choices and risks Pixar took here will have paid off for future films. Their directors and writers now have a standard to meet and exceed.