Toy Story 3 and Genre

Watched Toy Story 3 last night. WOW! Just shows you what happens when you nail the story BEFORE production. This, to me, is the secret of Pixar’s success.

Because they make animations, they absolutely, positively MUST crack their story riddle prior to production. They cannot rely on improvisation or stumbling around on the set to experiment to see what works. If it isn’t on the page, it won’t be on the screen.

I won’t be writing my own beat sheet for Toy Story 3, as Ben Frahm has already done that over at blakesnyder.com. What I will be doing, however, is expanding on some of the concepts that support the story beats that Blake talks about in Save the Cat! The first will be a brief discussion of genre.

When Blake identified ten different story genres in Save the Cat! he wasn’t talking about the different classifications you’d find down at the local video rental store, things like Drama, Western, or Comedy; he was talking about the specific characteristics that stories have. For example, Bruce Almighty, a comedy, is about supernatural wish-fulfilment, whereas Napolean Dynamite, also a comedy, is about the title character’s passage through a difficult life stage. Both comedies, yes, but very different genres.

So, what genre is Toy Story 3? (SPOILER ALERT!)

I believe that it fits quite neatly into the Rites of Passage genre. Blake states that there are three key features of a Rite of Passage story. As listed in Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, they are:

1) A “life problem.”

2) The “wrong way” to attack the problem.

3) A solution that involves “acceptance” that it’s the hero that must change, not the world around him.

The “life problem” that Woody and the gang face is that they are obsolete as far as Andy is concerned. Andy is heading off to college, and his toys merely collect dust in an old chest. They have not been played with for years, and they fear that their next appointment is with the dump truck. The physical goal that drives Woody at first is making sure that he is in the box bound for college and that the other toys are safely stored in the attic.

Woody’s insistence on heading off with Andy to college, however, is his “wrong way” of attacking the problem. It certainly allows for adventure and laughs, but it is not the way that is going to solve Woody’s problem of no longer being relevant in Andy’s life.

To successfully pass through his life problem, Woody must accept that Andy has grown up and no longer needs him. Woody must change his outlook, rather than try to change the world around him. This acceptance brings growth and understanding to Woody, and he is able to live out his purpose more completely by accepting the change and moving on, rather than clinging to the old hope he had of being with Andy at college.

There’s plenty more to say about Toy Story 3, but I’ll save it for my next post, where I’ll look at the Act structure in Toy Story 3 and demonstrate how it matches Blake’s idea of Thesis – Anti-thesis – Synthesis.