Krämer, Peter. " Toy Story, Pixar and Contemporary Hollywood." Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature

Krämer, Peter. " Toy Story, Pixar and Contemporary Hollywood." Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature. By Susan Smith, Noel Brown and Sam Summers. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 7–20. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 2 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501324949.ch-001>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 2 October 2021, 04:37 UTC. Copyright © Susan Smith, Sam Summers and Noel Brown 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 7 Chapter 1 TOY STORY , PIXAR AND CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD Peter Kr ä mer In 1995, the press book for Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) announced it as ‘the fi rst full- length animated feature to be created entirely by artists using computer tools and technology’: ‘Four years in the making, this delightfully irrever- ent new comedy- adventure combines an imaginative story and great characters with the visual excitement of 3D computer- generated animation.’1 Th e fi lm was thus presented as the coming together of a long tradition of high- quality storytelling and recent technological innovations, the former embodied in the output of the Walt Disney Company and the latter the specialty of Pixar, which the press book introduced as ‘a Northern California- based pioneer in computer graphics’. 2 Disney and Pixar were said to have ‘join[ed] creative forces’ on this fi lm project, 3 their relationship ‘dat[ing] back to 1987, when the two companies embarked on a joint technical development eff ort’ (known as CAPS) for which they received the 1992 Academy Award for Scientifi c and Technical Achievement.4 In 1991, said the press book, ‘Disney and Pixar entered a three- picture deal . with Toy Story being the fi rst fi lm to be green- lighted.’5 It was ‘conceived and directed by John Lasseter’, Pixar’s ‘vice president of creative development’ who was ‘a former Disney animator’.6 Indeed, following on from an early interest in animated movies, Lasseter had been one of the fi rst students on an animation course that Disney had set up at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). According to the press book, he had ‘apprenticed at Disney’ during summer breaks, and worked for fi ve years in the company’s ‘feature animation department’ aft er his graduation in 1979: ‘Inspired by Disney’s ambi- tious and innovative fi lm Tron [Steven Lisberger, 1982], which used computer animation to create its visual eff ects’, Lasseter produced an experimental short fi lm and eventually left Disney for ‘the Computer Division of Lucasfi lm, Ltd.’ 7 When Steve Jobs acquired the division, the press book continued, ‘it was incorporated as an independent company’ under the name Pixar.8 Lasseter, who had won Student Academy Awards for animated shorts made at CalArts, 99781501324918_pi-240.indd781501324918_pi-240.indd 7 111/8/20171/8/2017 22:49:31:49:31 PPMM 8 8 Peter Krämer wrote and directed Pixar’s fi rst computer- animated short, Luxo Jr. (1986), which was nominated for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar, an award won by Lasseter’s third Pixar short, Tin Toy (1988), in 1989. 9 Already at Lucasfi lm, the later Pixar team had been responsible, said the press book, for ‘computer animation sequences’ in major blockbusters such as Star Trek II: Th e Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer, 1982) and Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), while their soft ware had also been used in all of Disney’s animated features from Th e Little Mermaid (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1989) onwards, and for special eff ects sequences in blockbusters such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991) and Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993). 10 Th e press book summarized Pixar’s unique status as follows: ‘Pixar has been responsible for almost every major breakthrough in the application of computer graphics to fi lmmaking’, in both animated and live- action fi lms; and ‘in recognition of its pioneering work in computer animation, the company and its employees have to date been awarded 12 Academy Awards’. 11 In this way, the press book positioned Pixar at the centre of three important developments in Hollywood cinema: the digital enhancement of special eff ects in live- action movies (especially in the science fi ction genre); the digital enhancement of traditional cel animation (initially at Disney); and the production of computer- animated features, starting with Toy Story . 12 Th e fi rst two developments concerned genres which had come to be very prominent in box offi ce charts both in the United States and in the rest of the world by the mid- 1990s. Th e reign of science fi ction – previously, with very few exceptions, a marginal genre at the box offi ce – had started with Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) and had recently included the success of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park . 13 Disney’s animated features had, aft er several decades in which the company mostly relied on the success of re- releases, returned to the top of the charts, somewhat tentatively with Th e Little Mermaid in 1989, and then triumphantly with Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, 1991), Aladdin (Clements and Musker, 1992) and Th e Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff , 1994), all of them digitally enhanced. 14 As is well known, Toy Story and Pixar’s subsequent features, as well as computer- animated fi lms by other companies, were able (more or less) to match the box offi ce success of Disney’s hits of the early 1990s, and traditional cel animation disappeared from the charts. 15 At the same time, the digital enhancement of live- action fi lms proceeded to the point where some, including several of Hollywood’s biggest hits, most notably Avatar (Cameron, 2009), consisted to a considerable degree of computer generated imagery, and thus could be categorized as live- action/ computer- animation hybrids.16 Th e implied promise of the Toy Story press book that Pixar and its technologies would transform Hollywood has thus come to pass, but only, it has to be noted, because two of Hollywood’s leading companies – Lucasfi lm and Disney – provided necessary 99781501324918_pi-240.indd781501324918_pi-240.indd 8 111/8/20171/8/2017 22:49:31:49:31 PPMM 9 Toy Story, Pixar and Contemporary Hollywood 9 support along the way (all three companies now, of course, belong to the same corporate entity). I have discussed the ways in which George Lucas and Disney have shaped contemporary Hollywood cinema in various previous publications, in which I have also begun to explore the role of Pixar. 17 In this chapter I extend my earlier work by situating the Toy Story fi lms in the context of Pixar’s overall output, and also within hit patterns at the US box offi ce and in Hollywood’s export markets. I pay particular attention to the increasing box offi ce domi- nance of adaptations and sequels, and highlight Pixar’s role as one of the few hugely successful generators of new stories (i.e. stories that are neither adapted from other sources nor sequels to previous fi lms) in contemporary Hollywood. I then examine both the fi rst Toy Story fi lm and its two sequels in terms of the rather complex and very peculiar stories they tell. I should explain that I use the shorthand ‘fi lms based on original scripts’ for fi lms that are neither adaptations nor sequels; this is in line with the Academy Award categories which consider scripts for sequels under ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ rather than as original screenplays. It is worth pointing out that the question whether a fi lm is an adaptation is not always easy to answer, because one might want to consider whether a source text is acknowledged in the fi lm’s credits, or how close a fi lm is to a particular source text. Th is is a diffi cult issue especially with regard to fi lms featuring superheroes from comic books. For the purposes of this chapter, I count all of them as adaptations, and I also count both reboots of superhero franchises, and all but the fi rst fi lm in a series (such as the James Bond series) as sequels.18 Hits, Original Scripts and Animation It is an easily overlooked fact that until 1976, the vast majority of the biggest box office hits in the United States were adaptations of books (including the Bible) and Broadway shows. 19 In most cases, the source book or show had been very successful in its own right before being adapted into a hit movie. However, Star Wars and E.T. The Extra- Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982), which were the biggest breakaway hits of the late 1970s and early 1980s, were based on original scripts, and the majority of the other big hits of this period were also based on original scripts, or they were sequels to such originals. 20 While sequels had occasionally been very successful before 1977, they became much more prominent in the charts from the late 1970s onwards. Nevertheless, for about two decades after 1977, films that were neither adaptations nor sequels were much more successful at the US box office than they had ever been before. While it is difficult to gather suffi- cient evidence for the decades before the 1970s, it would seem that the same 99781501324918_pi-240.indd781501324918_pi-240.indd 9 111/8/20171/8/2017 22:49:31:49:31 PPMM 10 10 Peter Krämer applies to Hollywood’s export markets, although, as we will see, the shift after 1977 towards hit films based on original scripts was less pronounced outside the United States.

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