Three is the magic number for 'Toy Story'

The passing of time helped make the third 'Toy Story' a poignant ending to an adventure that began 15 years ago at Pixar, where the mentality remains that of an old-school collective, writes DONALD CLARKE

FOR AN ORGANISATION that has generated so much cash – think of a figure and raise it to the third power – Pixar Animation still behaves surprisingly like an old-school collective. Each individual speaks for all. The mighty whole employs one many-faceted consciousness. Come to think of it, the studio – creators of masterpieces such as Toy Story, Upand Wall-E– comes across like a less genocidal version of the Borg in Star Trek.

"We do think of ourselves as a gang," Lee Unkrich, the director of the predictably enjoyable Toy Story 3, says. "Every now and then we get together and try to recapture the original chemistry. Everyone has a different background. I am the first person to direct a film who is not originally an animator. But, hanging out with these people for 15 years, I have probably got a better training in animation than if I'd gone to college."

John Lasseter, the founder of Pixar and the inventor of modern digital animation, remains the body’s benign dictator, but when interviewing any of the studio’s individual directors one can’t help but marvel at how each is happy to speak for the entire organisation.

Unkrich, originally a film editor, is, for example, eager to disentangle the legends surrounding Disney's first, abortive attempts to complete the trilogy. Toy Storywas originally released in 1995, managing the rare trifecta of delighting snooty critics, thrilling infants and taking in huge amounts at the box office. Four years later the second episode, one of the best sequels ever made, built on that achievement.

Released here on Monday, part three, in which the toys fret as their owner leaves for college, has already won ecstatic reviews in the US and passed out Alice in Wonderlandto become the most successful film of the year so far.

Might things have been different if Disney got its way in 2004? At that point the Mouse House, corporate partner with Pixar, was desperate for a third film in the franchise. Lasseter and his gang were, however, eager to pursue original projects.

Disney stubbornly launched plans to develop its own version of Toy Story 3with no involvement from Pixar. Consider the company's first forays into digital animation – Chicken Little, anyone? – and you will appreciate how disastrously such a scheme could have worked out.

“We had a deal with Disney for five pictures. But sequels did not count towards that deal,” Unkrich, an amiable, sober fellow in neat clothes, explains. “But Disney really wanted it. At that point there was a lot of friction between the studios, and it just became a bargaining chip. They were all crewed up and ready to go. That was the most painful point in our history. It was like somebody had taken our kid away.”

How different from today. In January 2006, following a change in personnel at the top of Disney, the entertainment conglomerate bought Pixar. Surprisingly, the arrangement gave Pixar greater freedom and happier relations with its new parent.

“When Bob Eiger took over Disney, his first priority was to mend relations with Pixar, and, with that in mind, he put John [Lasseter] in charge of Disney’s entire animation wing. The other Toy Story 3 was shut down. Actually, in a funny way, I’d like to see that film. It exists in a kind of alternate reality.”

In the real world, Toy Story 3once again showcases all Pixar's considerable strengths and capabilities. Following Buzz Lightyear and the crew as they get donated to a children's day-care centre, the picture has a tight script and profits from the usual gorgeously intricate character design. It addresses serious issues but never forgets to place a good joke at every corner.

Unkrich and his animators were, however, presented with a real creative dilemma. The first film was made with technology that, by today's standards, seems as rudimentary as flick books drawn in crayon. The Toy Story 3team had to retain the look while still utilising all the advances in digital animation.

"When we made Toy Storywe knew, even back then, that this was going to be the ugliest film we would ever produce. We hope Toy Story 3looks amazing but still retains the character design of the first film. I like to think it looks like Toy Storywould have looked back then had we had the skills and the technology."

The cuddly Borg seem to have achieved their aim with Toy Story 3. It looks contemporary but utilises the same visual vocabulary as the first film. Once again Pixar demonstrates impressive artistic integrity. The collective still operates like a bunch of friends.

"I hope so," Unkrich says. "We got together as a group to come up with the idea for Toy Story 3in the same cabin where we dreamed up Toy Story. In a way, time passing helped us develop the story. Back then John could hold all his kids in his lap. Now he has sent a few off to college. That really helped us."

And yet. For the first time, Pixar fans are beginning to get a little bit restive. Last year's Upwas regarded by many as the studio's best film to date. It is, thus, something of a shame that the studio will not be releasing another entirely original feature until 2012.

This year we get Toy Story 3. Next year we get a sequel to, of all things, Cars. That 2006 film was Pixar's most poorly reviewed picture and one of its least successful financially. However, it did, unlike Upor Wall-E, generate huge merchandising revenues (all those toy cars). Are we wrong to start worrying about Pixar's current direction?

“People talk a lot about Pixar going off the rails,” Unkrich says in an equable tone. “A lot of people are saying they aren’t happy that we are making sequels. But for every one of those people there is one that is happy, because they fell in love with the worlds we created. We hope we’ve proved that a sequel can be every bit as enjoyable as the original.” Thus speaks the one among many.

The good, the bad and the ugly; why trilogies aren't always what they seem

We can probably trust Pixar when it tells us that Toy Storyis destined to remain a trilogy. The third film offers a close to the larger narrative that feels poignant and decisive. Besides, the trilogy is a key artistic form. Aeschylus had a crack at it with the Oresteia. David Bowie managed his three albums from Berlin.

JRR Tolkien still keeps teenagers awake with his triptych about short creatures with hairy feet.

When telling a long story, the three-part structure allows the artist a leisurely beginning, followed by a period of mid-narrative disruption, before moving on to a tying up of loose ends. No wonder film-makers have taken to the form so enthusiastically. You've got your Godfathertrilogy, your Back to the Futuretrilogy, your Mad Maxtrilogy, your Matrixtrilogy and, now, your Toy Storytrilogy. The starter-main- course-pudding arc is a vital element of contemporary cinematic grammar.

Isn't it? Not really. Until the mid-1980s or so only snooty high-brow directors claimed to work within the form. Sour Swede Ingmar Bergman delivered his loosely connected Faith trilogy in the 1960s. A decade earlier Satyajit Ray, the Indian master, worked on his touching Aputrilogy. The slightly pompous business of attaching the T-word to popcorn movies did not really take off until George Lucas mounted the (first) Star Warsseries, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Suddenly, the amiable space opera was granted the status of high art. Since then the temptation to regard anything with three bits as a trilogy has overpowered a few too many distributors and DVD manufacturers.

The Aliensequence was described as a trilogy until Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed a fourth. Then it became a tetralogy. If Ridley Scott gets his way the brutal science-fiction cycle will soon become a pentalogy and then a hexalogy. Mad Maxis, it seems, also about to lose its trilogy status.

Sometimes the designation seems random and faintly absurd. Why, exactly, is The Good, The Bad and The Uglypart of a "dollars trilogy"? Can Terry Gilliam really get away with calling three of his films – Time Bandits, Braziland The Adventures of Baron Munchausen– an "imagination trilogy"? Surely, to properly qualify, a sequence must have at some early stage been conceived as a three-part entity telling the same story ( The Matrix) or addressing linked themes (Kieslowski's Three Colours).

This is not to suggest such grand schemes are always wise. Too often – Back to the Futuresprings to mind – the middle film ends up as a holding pattern between set-up and denouement. On rare occasions the imposition of a third film risks poisoning the reputation of those that went before. You know where I'm coming from. Let's all agree there are only two parts to The Godfather.That feels better. Doesn't it?

Toy Story 3

is on general release