Toy Story 4 (Pixar) (2019) (1 Viewer)

[Jeff Cooper]

Holy crap, has it really been 20 years since Toy Story 2?

 

[Jake Lipson]

Holy crap, has it really been 20 years since Toy Story 2?

Well, it came out at Thanksgiving (Pixar's first use of the summer release slot was for Finding Nemo; Disney's summer release that year was Tarzan), so not quite to the day, but yes. It was 1999. Crazy, right? I can still remember the day I saw that in theaters, because I had to choose between a family tradition on Thanksgiving and going to Toy Story 2. I chose the movie, obviously.

It's also ironic how Disney and Pixar have now flipped positions, since Pixar almost always gets the summer release slot and most of the time the Disney Animation film goes at Thanksgiving.

We haven't seen Bo Peep in 20 years, but it's not clear how long after that she was separated from Woody and the gang. Still, they've got a lot to account for with her character.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I follow Josh Cooley, the director of Toy Story 4, on Twitter. He posts a lot of interesting stuff. Today, he retweeted a photo posted by Maddy McGraw of the two of them while she was recording her lines for Toy Story 4.

Maddy McGraw is a child actor and she used the hashtag #bonnie. She played the young version of Hope in the opening of Ant-Man and the Wasp.

This means that Pixar has had to recast the role of Bonnie.

Clicking through to her Twitter account, I see she pinned a Deadline story announcing her casting back on March 22. I'm not quite sure how I missed that, since I read their site daily, but this is the first I've heard of it. https://deadline.com/2019/03/toy-story-4-madeleine-mcgraw-disney-pixar-movie-1202581180/

Bonnie was originally voiced by Emily Hah in Toy Story 3. Hahn also carried the character through the Toy Story Toons shorts and the ABC specials Toy Story of Terror and Toy Story That Time Forgot.

The only reason to replace Hahn is if she has grown too old to voice the character. I thought this might be a possibility, but now we know for sure that she has aged out of the role. According to the trailers, Toy Story 4 places Bonnie in kindergarten. Since she was in preschool in the third movie, this appears to be the first time in franchise history that the amount of time between the movies in-universe does not match up to the amount of time between their release in the real world. That's a big shift from how the first three films were structured.

The significant lag time between Finding Nemo and Finding Dory and the two Incredibles films necessitated the recasting of Nemo and Dash, respectively, for the follow-ups. I thought both of those were handled relatively seamlessly, with the replacement actor on the second film sounding not too far off their original counterpart, so it was easy to buy that it was the same character. Hopefully McGraw is reasonably similar to Hahn as well -- not that I want her to mimic it necessarily, but I anticipate watching these films in proximity to each other, so it's important that Bonnie not feel completely different between them.

Also, this just reminds me how fortunate we were to be able to have John Morris play the character of Andy throughout the first three films. There was a level of consistency in picking up with that character in Toy Story 3 all these years later that wouldn't have been there if they had needed to recast it, so it was very lucky indeed that he could still do it by the time the third film came around. It's too bad for Emily Hahn that this one was long enough in development that she had to give up the role, but oh well. I'm sure her voice has broken in the last nine years, so they really didn't have a choice if they weren't going to age up Bonnie too. I wonder what Hahn sounds like now. Not that it's really any of my business, but still.

 

[Sam Favate]

New trailer. It made me smile.

 

[Malcolm R]

Child's Play takes another poke at TS4.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Another tidbit from Josh Cooley on Twitter -- or rather, a tweet that Josh Cooley responded to and confirmed.

Spoiler: Casting Spoiler and Speculation

Jack McGraw appears in Toy Story 4 voicing Young Andy. And he is the brother of the new Bonnie, Maddy McGraw. The tweet was sent to him by their other sibling, Violet McGraw, who said that she and her mom cried while watching the first 17 minutes of the movie with both McGraw kids in it. Cooley responded, "I’d be crying too, Maddy and Jack are incredible actors. All you McGraw children are so talented. Whatever your parents are feeding you is working. Please ask your mom to adopt me."

This also might explain the presence of Laurie Metclaf (Andy's mom) on IMDb's cast list which I posted about a while back. If there are flashbacks involving Andy, she's probably in those too. We knew that there would be some sort of flashback element because there are shots in the trailer of Bo Peep in her original look from the first two movies, but those could just as easily have taken place exclusively while Andy was out of the room or something. This is the first confirmation that I know of that Andy is going to appear in the movie, which is a big deal even if it's just for flashbacks because it's Andy.

I suspect we might actually see the circumstances under which Andy and/or his mom gave away Bo Peep. Presumably, Woody would attempt to stop that from happening, as he did with Wheezy in Toy Story 2, although this time we know he is unsuccessful.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Showtimes have begun to show up on Fandango. As was the case with Aladdin yesterday, it looks like general showtimes will start shows at 6:00pm again, with upcharged fan events at 5:00pm. The only difference this time is that the fan event here is not marked as 3D, which it was for Aladdin.

Tickets will probably go on sale at some point next week.

Also, the running time is listed as 1 hour 40 minutes.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Tickets are on sale now.



On another note, incidentally, this is the second Disney release in a row (after Aladdin) where tickets for the movie went on sale before the soundtrack has been announced or made available for pre-order. Of course, Aladdin did eventually get announced and was released the same day as the movie, so perhaps this isn't worth worrying about.

But I do hope they cut the crap and release a physical soundtrack for TS4 at the same time as the digital release.

For Toy Story 3, there was not a physical CD release until a LONG time after the digital came out. Avengers Endgame got a physical release a month after the digital one, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I bought the soundtrack digitally on iTunes when it came out and was really annoyed not to get a physical version. According to Amazon's listing for the CD, the physical release did not come out until 2012, which if true was two years after the film. I never have gotten around to buying the physical release, even though that's what i wanted all along, since I feel burned by having to double dip to get it.

So, I really hope that Toy Story 4 has a physical CD release this summer and we don't go through that again.

 

[Jake Lipson]

This awesome little surprise was announced today by director Josh Cooley in an interview with USA Today: Betty White, Carol Burnett, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks are voicing new characters who are Bonnie's old toys.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life...ive-look-whos-joining-woodys-gang/1299634001/

 

[Jake Lipson]

Walt Disney Records just released a digital single called "The Ballad of the Lonesome Cowboy" from Toy Story 4 performed by Chris Stapleton, whoever he is,. I assume he must be some pop or maybe country star I've never heard of. This, of course, is composed by Randy Newman, and there will also be a second song "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away."

The release date of the soundtrack is June 21, the same day as the movie, although there's no mention of whether that means digital or physical copies or both. I'm hoping there's no delay in physical copies coming out as was the case last time on TS3.

https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/1073361-toy-story-4-soundtrack/

 

[Jason_V]

I wouldn't call Chris Stapleton a star, but he is accomplished:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Chris_Stapleton

5 Grammy's
7 ACM's
10 CMA's
5 Billboard Music Awards

Among a lot of others...

 

[Jake Lipson]

The physical CDs are in fact going to be on June 21, and they're cheap: https://www.amazon.com/Toy-Story-4-...rds=toy+story+4&qid=1559854377&s=music&sr=1-5

 

[Jake Lipson]

It's Buzz's turn to be taken down by Child's Play:

 

[Jake Lipson]

On another note related specifically to this film, the social media reactions embargo has been lifted, and the responses so far are fantastic.

Also, the review embargo lifts next Thursday, June 13, which is a full week ahead of the movie's release. That indicates that Disney is pretty confident in what they have and they expect to get great reviews.

After being seriously underwhelmed by Aladdin, I am especially grateful that in Disney's '90s throwback summer, the one that is actually continuing the narrative from the original films seems to have gotten it right.

https://www.slashfilm.com/toy-story-4-early-buzz/

 

[Jake Lipson]

The review embargo lifts today and so far, the ones I have seen have been very positive.

It's worth noting that there is not a short film screening in front of the film. That surprisingly breaks a tradition that has been going for 21 years since A Bug's Life. The only other Pixar film that didn't have a short in front of it in its theatrical release is the original Toy Story.

(The asterisk is that Coco had Olaf's Frozen Adventure, which wasn't a Pixar short, but was still a short.)

 

[Malcolm R]

EW gives it a Grade B. Their biggest issue seems to be that there are too many characters and too many plotlines:

https://ew.com/movie-reviews/2019/06/13/toy-story-4-review/

 

[Jake Lipson]

Another poster from Disney social media. This one has a really creepy vibe.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Love the Tin Tin rocket, or am I just seeing things?

 

[ScottRE]

I Was really happy with how things ended in TS3. I felt like they were done.... I will probably see this, but the "need" for it by me is long gone. Kind of like The Incredibles 2, but for a different reason: I wanted that film shortly after the first, not decades later.

I'm a crabass, obviously.

 

[Jake Lipson]

With 63 (edit: now 76) reviews posted so far, it's currently sitting at a perfect 100% on the Tomatometer.

I will probably see this, but the "need" for it by me is long gone.

Obviously I can't speak to it directly yet, but I feel like the reviews would not be this strong if the film wasn't needed. Most people, myself included, felt a very strong sense of closure with Toy Story 3, but it seems like Pixar has come up with another story worth telling. If indeed it is worthwhile, I'll be glad they did it.

Incredibles 2 was also worth telling. Would it have been nicer for the fans to get something sooner? Sure, but sometimes it takes as long as it takes. It needed to be a story Brad Bird wanted to tell and I'm glad they didn't pump it out sooner just to have a piece of content, since that wouldn't have been as good. I think it worked out well the way it happened. Hopefully this one does too.