Translated material
Let's continue our games
"Toy Story" on Moscow screens
On the boy Andy's shelf lived and lived a variety of toys, led by the shabby but always beloved cowboy Woody. But then Andy had a birthday, for which he was given a brand new, hit and ultra-modern star pilot Buzz Lightyear. A serious struggle began between the toys for the heart of the owner, which, however, was resolved to the great satisfaction of both parties. This is exactly what the first Toy Story (1995) was about - a cartoon by John Lassiter from the Pixar studio, which was already laying claim to world domination. Four years later (producing cartoons of this level is a slow business), in the second series, Woody is kidnapped by unscrupulous collectors to sell him to Japan, but Buzz and his friends will do everything to return him to his place.“Toy Story” became one of the most high-profile cinematic enterprises of the end of the century: the first series settled in 141st place in the ranking of the most profitable films of all time ($358.1 million), the second jumped even higher - to 70th position ( $485.7 million), and with the re-release of the first episodes in three-dimensional form (it is for this reason that they returned to wide screens around the world), the numbers will inevitably increase. But this is not the most important thing - what is much more important and interesting is that Lessiter’s films have become an integral part of not only the world of animation, but also the general cinematic context. In 1996, the debut film was nominated for three Oscars in general categories (music, song, original screenplay, and John Lassiter himself received an honorary statuette for his contribution to the development of the film process), received eight Annie Awards and half a dozen more awards, including including from regional societies of film critics, and the second - an Oscar nomination for best song, seven more Annies... and so on. In the ranking of the best films, according to users of the world's main film database IMDB, the cartoon about talking dolls left behind - taking at random - the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. A rare ten, or at least twenty, of the main films of the last decade (or even those starting from the Lumiere brothers themselves) do without Toy Story. And the cowboy Woody is seriously considered one of the main acting successes of Tom Hanks, who voiced him.
A lot has already been written about the reasons for this (including quite scientific ones), but the question still remains open. Even without special glasses, you can see that all the characters are really written (and drawn) recognizable and successfully, the film is peppered with not universally understandable, but quite funny allusions to everyday American life and mass culture, the stunts were invented at the highest Hollywood level, and the general problems seems quite philosophical to many - on Wikipedia the second part is described in the following terms: “The leitmotif of the plot is the theme of children growing up and changing their interests... in a broad sense - the theme of relationships exhausting themselves...” Well, yes, the leitmotif, well, yes , exhaustive. And the film teaches, there is no doubt about it, only the best and the best. But... still, something is noticeably missing - just like a person who has learned to read, elementary copybooks and alphabet (even if published in the most luxurious way) begin to be insufficient. There is no feeling that this is actually a significant work, by which the entire cultural situation during the reporting period will be judged. This, by the way, also applies to many other Pixar films, which (with all due respect, and at times genuine delight) are too actively positioned as not just very good cartoons, but as something much more significant.
However, there is some hope that technical tricks in this particular case can perform a miracle - and the heroes of Toy Story, after they cease to be literally two-dimensional, will finally find true adherents even among complete skeptics. And plastic cowboys, astronauts, piggy banks and other inhabitants of the nursery will actually outplay all the real actors. The third series, scheduled to premiere next year, will be designed for 3D viewing from the very beginning for the first time. And then a masterpiece clearly cannot be avoided.