{"id":89,"date":"2010-07-16T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T06:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/?p=89"},"modified":"2010-07-16T01:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T06:11:00","slug":"toy-story-3-and-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"Toy Story 3 and Genre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watched Toy Story 3<\/em> last night. WOW! Just shows you what happens when you nail the story BEFORE production. This, to me, is the secret of Pixar\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t on the page, it won\u2019t be on the screen.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t be writing my own beat sheet for Toy Story 3<\/em>, as Ben Frahm has already done that<\/a> 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!<\/em> The first will be a brief discussion of genre.<\/p>\n

When Blake identified ten different story genres in Save the Cat!<\/em> he wasn\u2019t talking about the different classifications you\u2019d 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<\/em>, a comedy, is about supernatural wish-fulfilment, whereas Napolean Dynamite<\/em>, also a comedy, is about the title character\u2019s passage through a difficult life stage. Both comedies, yes, but very different genres.<\/p>\n

So, what genre is Toy Story 3<\/em>? (SPOILER ALERT!)<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, they are:<\/p>\n

1) A \u201clife problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

2) The \u201cwrong way\u201d to attack the problem.<\/p>\n

3) A solution that involves \u201cacceptance\u201d that it\u2019s the hero that must change, not the world around him.<\/p>\n

The \u201clife problem\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Woody\u2019s insistence on heading off with Andy to college, however, is his \u201cwrong way\u201d of attacking the problem. It certainly allows for adventure and laughs, but it is not the way that is going to solve Woody\u2019s problem of no longer being relevant in Andy\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s plenty more to say about Toy Story 3<\/em>, but I\u2019ll save it for my next post, where I\u2019ll look at the Act structure in Toy Story 3<\/em> and demonstrate how it matches Blake\u2019s idea of Thesis \u2013 Anti-thesis \u2013 Synthesis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s success. Because they make animations, they absolutely, positively<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[140,96,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genre","category-save-the-cat","category-toy-story-3"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/k-tock.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}