‘Toy Story 4’ Director Says the Key to the Hit Film Wasn’t

This story about “Toy Story 4” first appeared within the Oscar Nominations Preview subject of TheWrap’s Oscar journal.

For director Josh Cooley, the primary query to reply earlier than he started working on “Toy Story 4” wasn’t, “What should happen to Woody and Buzz?” or “How much time should have elapsed since the events of ‘Toy Story 3’?”

Instead, he mentioned, it was an existential query: “What is the reason this movie exists?”

“These characters are so important to people, and to me, that I wanted to make sure this didn’t feel like we were tacking something onto the ‘Toy Story’ world,” mentioned Cooley, who started the mission as co-director to Pixar chief John Lasseter and ended up as the only real director when Lasseter left the mission (and shortly thereafter, the corporate) amid accusations of misconduct.

Also Read: Golden Globes: ‘Toy Story 4’ Helped Josh Cooley Focus During Pixar’s Tough Transition

The story, he mentioned, modified dramatically all through the event course of. “We had a lot of different physical location and character ideas,” he mentioned. “I think you can either approach a story from the fun of the world and the characters, or the protagonist’s point of view and their character arc. With this one, early on it was, ‘We know these characters, we know the world, let’s just play around and see what happens.’ But that was the tough part — we’ve been with Woody for three films, what’s next for him?”

But even because the story modified by means of Pixar’s exacting growth course of, Cooley mentioned one fixed was the character of Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts), who would come again into the lifetime of Woody (Tom Hanks) as greater than only a love curiosity.

“The code name for this movie internally was ‘Peep,’” he mentioned. “Her return was always a part of it — but how she returned and what she was like when she returned was always changing. We had versions where she was more of a villain, not completely on the up-and-up. We tried to make how she comes back into the picture really interesting, so she became the very thing Woody was always afraid of: She’s a lost toy, and she’s loving it.”

Also Read: ‘Toy Story 2’ Blooper Scene About Sexual Misconduct Edited Out of Re-Release (Video)

The character of Bo Peep, he added, had a particular workforce of feminine Pixar staff looking for her. “We have so many different departments at work on a single character,” he mentioned. “And on this case, there have been key folks in every a kind of departments that pulled themselves collectively and referred to as themselves Team Bo, who mentioned, ‘We’re gonna make this character the very best she will be, and never fall into tropes or stereotypes.

“It helped me pull again to give attention to the large image. It felt like having one other complete mind engaged on Bo.”

Many of the important thing sequences within the movie happen in a cluttered vintage retailer secretly dominated by a sinister doll (Christina Hendricks) and her evil henchmen. At one level, Woody and Bo enterprise into the shop on a rescue mission, and she or he leads him right into a pinball machine that seems to be a nightclub for toys on the within.

“The detail you can achieve now is insane,” Cooley mentioned. “I was able to do toys from all different eras: old iron toys, tin soldiers, plastic windup toys … To me, that makes the ‘Toy Story’ world feel bigger.”

Also Read: ‘Toy Story 4’ Film Review: Woody and Company Return for a Sequel That’s No Buzz-Kill

Of course, the true pinball machine wouldn’t be fairly large enough for all these toys, so Cooley and his crew fudged issues. “One of the challenges was, ‘How many characters can we…