It’s been a full 15 years since the first Toy Story was released; a groundbreaking movie that was not only Pixar’s first full feature-length animation (an extremely impressive debut that has proved neigh on impossible to top, despite Pixar’s reputation for producing consistently excellent work), but basically rendered the old style cartoon animation null and void, and set off a whole chain of events that would lead to rival companies attempting to copy the format, and in some cases succeeding (the Shrek movies being the ultimate example of another studio scoring a win with a Pixar-esque format); and now, 15 years on, the third movie in the Toy Story trilogy is still doing the rounds at local cinemas, bringing the story to an end, and breaking records along the way.
Shrek the Third, and Shrek Forever After (which itself is said to be the final chapter in the Shrek saga and was also released this year), both failed to top the grosses of Shrek 2, which grossed just shy of $920 million at the Box Office, becoming not only Dreamworks most successful film to date, but also the highest grossing fully animated film of all time; until Toy Story 3 that is.
Continuing a story that is, after all, aimed at children, can be quite a hard thing to do, particularly in the case of Toy Story, as it’s core audience of 15 years ago has now grown up (all those 6-year-olds hogging the cinema seats back in ’95 are now 21 and hogging the local bar-stools) and as such shouldn’t be interested in watching animated children’s movies, but the success of Pixar’s latest classic is not only entertaining the next generation of youngsters, but bringing a truly gripping, emotional, and perfectly fitting end to the tale of a group of Toy’s that come to life when their owner isn’t looking; an end that’s so well made it appeals to not only young children (which are the only ones who really enjoy Shrek’s latest outings) but adults, and teenagers alike, and even brings it’s original core audience back off the bar-stool and into the cinema; to watch the final chapter in the story that not only entertained, but deeply affected them; as it was the defining children’s film of that generation.
And having the ability to satisfy audiences of all ages is something that all family-films strive for, but none quite quite manage as well as the Toy Story movies, and that’s precisely why Toy Story has been so well received, why it continues to gain new fans (both old and young), and why Disney could make the announcement on Friday that it will be topping the grosses of Shrek 2 this weekend; becoming Disney’s fourth highest grossing film of all time (behind the second and third Pirates of the Carribean movies, and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland), and the highest grossing animated film ever to be released.
Everyone knew that Toy Story 3 was going to be a success; because there’s nary a child, or bar-stool-hugging 21-year-old in the world that wasn’t desperate to see it; and so it came as no surprise when it debuted at number one at the Box Office, and broke the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a Pixar film; both solid achievements that are no mean feat, and will undoubtedly give the studios high expectation for home-media sales, when the Blu-ray and DVD gets released on November 2nd in the States, and at a time yet to be announced in the U.K.
