Every so often the conversation comes up “What Is The All Time's Greatest Trilogy of Films?”. The film being subjective you’ll always have a different answer depending on the people you run into. There are some who will come back to a few choices that seem to come up more often than not. The Lord of The Rings movies, the Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy or The Godfather. Everyone has a different reason why a certain trilogy speaks to them above others. The one question I keep challenging them is why have they been looking over a set of films that I consider not only a contender but ultimately may be in the top 3 of best trilogy ever, The Toy Story Franchise.
Most people would not even think to look in the direction of a cartoon when we speak of the greatest films of all time. Hopefully, I’m going to open your mind to something you’ve always known but never thought to consider. Look at the impact that the first Toy Story film had on the industry. It was the mid-1990s and Disney was still in the middle of its run of blockbuster films such as Aladdin and The Lion King. It looked as though Disney would dominate and never need to evolve beyond this working formula. Then came Pixar. At the time it was said that there were people who were against computer animation because the costs were similar to what we were spending to produce 2D animated films. So if it ain't broke, don’t fix it. Once we saw Woody and Buzz fly, I mean, fall in style right into our hearts we were not only exposed to another classic adventure but a new set of characters that captivated our hearts. On a $30 Million dollar budget, Toy Story grossed over 360 thousand dollars worldwide.
At the time, Disney was still in the game of having a sequel go to VHS and DVD. Pixar had put together what they knew was a more superior sequel to the original. They did not follow the same pattern of making a lesser version of the original. So the fight to make Toy Story 2 have a box office release was one that we will all be glad that Pixar won. Toy Story 2 introduced the world to new beloved characters, a story that was just as heartwarming as the original and gained a higher profit than the original. Firing at all cylinders Pixar proved that they were not just creating diamonds in the rough, they were creating magic.
Finally, it was announced that the franchise would officially have a trilogy of films. Toy Story 3, to a lot of the film's most loving fans agree that the 3rd installment is by miles the greatest of the three movies. Something that is hard to accomplish. Nine times out of ten it's usually the second movie that is considered the best of the bunch. Think of Nolan’s Batman and the Terminator. Toy Story 3 had the most memorable and heartbreaking moment with the fire pit scene. Yes we had, to infinity and beyond in the original, we had the father-son moment in part 2 but the scene when Woody is trying to save himself and his friends from being destroyed by fire and having Buzz and the rest come together accepting their fate and face the end together as a family was one of the deepest and emotionally taxing moments in Pixar/Disney history. The only other scene more intense than that has to be the opening of Up. This was also the first Pixar movie to gross a billion dollars worldwide.
Based on financial success and the impact that this trilogy has had on us as film fans and the lasting effects it had on pushing the envelope when it comes to animation, take the time to look to Infinity and Beyond whenever someone asks you “Hey, What do you think is the best trilogy ever?”. Challenge!