Toy Story 3 (2010)
- To accurately portray their role in Toy Story 3, Tom Hanks spent weeks conducting hands-on research and rehearsing directly with director Lee Unkrich.
- Toy Story 3 utilized mostly practical sets and locations to ground the story, a specific choice insisted upon by Lee Unkrich.
Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Lee Unkrich. Set over a decade after the previous installment, the film follows Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the remaining toys as their owner Andy prepares to leave for college. Through a series of mishaps, the toys end up at Sunnyside Daycare, which initially appears to be a toy paradise but is actually a totalitarian regime run by Lotso, a strawberry-scented teddy bear voiced by Ned Beatty, who assigns newcomers to the toddler room where they are subjected to destructive play.
The toys must plan an elaborate escape while confronting the existential question of what happens to toys when their children outgrow them. Toy Story 3's emotional power derived from the fact that its audience had literally grown up alongside Andy โ viewers who had been children when the first Toy Story was released in 1995 were now the same age as the character leaving for college. This real-world parallel gave the film's themes of letting go, moving on, and the end of childhood an authenticity that no amount of clever storytelling alone could have achieved.
The incinerator scene, in which the toys face apparent destruction and silently accept their fate by holding hands, was one of the most emotionally devastating moments in animation history. Toy Story 3 earned $1.07 billion worldwide, becoming the first animated film to cross the billion-dollar mark, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Lee Unkrich and the writers achieved something remarkable: a second sequel to a beloved film that was not merely good but was widely considered the equal of the original, bringing the trilogy to a perfect emotional conclusion.
