We used our time wisely, asking about the aborted Disney-helmed Toy Story sequel from 2004, how Unkrich crafted this dark end for the trilogy, and whether he has any live-action ambitions. There certainly were concerns, just as we would enter into any new film. We want everything that we make to be great, whether it is a sequel or not. So, we applied the same rigour and attention to the two sequels as we do to any film that we make. They’re just as important in our minds. I knew that making a third film was going to be a huge challenge. Every time you see a film with three in the title, it means, typically, it’s a bad film. So, we knew that full well, and we knew that the cards were stacked against us to pull this off. But I guess we’re masochists, and we wanted to do everything we could do to break the curse, and make a third film that was as good as the first two films. No, not at all. That was happening, unfortunately. Disney was making a sequel without us, and we were aware of it, of course, and we were very unhappy about it. It was the darkest time in Pixar’s history. But, luckily, that never came to pass, and when Disney bought Pixar, we were able to shut down that version of Toy Story 3 and start from scratch. And we never wanted to look at it at all. We just wanted to pretend it never happened, and start fresh, and create our own story. No, I don’t think we ever thought of it that way. There are some characters that are more sinister in the film, but we always tried to do that in a fun way. It’s a kind of fun scary. Kids like getting scared, and adults like getting scared, for that matter. And I was trying to stay truthful to toys and the world of toys. There are some toys that, in reality, are kind of scary. And that monkey…I was afraid of that toy when I was a kid, and I always thought it was so strange that someone would make such a horrific toy for kids. And the middle part of the film was going to be a prison movie, so we had to populate that prison with shady, sinister characters, so we had fun doing that. And this shift in tone is also there in the colours. At the beginning, it is very much harking back to the bright colours of the original films, but then the world becomes darker. It’s even there on the poster. Is that a way to keep the film fresh for you? It wasn’t so much keeping it fresh, it was being truthful to the story we were telling. Any time you design the colours and the lighting for a film, it’s always in the service of the story. And when the rug gets pulled out from under the toys, and they realise they’re in a bad fix at Sunnyside, and it’s become more like a prison, we needed to stay truthful to that, and make it feel a bit more grim for them. Some of your associates, like Andrew Stanton and Brad Bird, have made a move into live action directing. Is that something you’d consider in the future? The projects would take less time, though… They would take less time, but the one thing about having so much time to make the films is that we can perfect them. And with live action, you almost never get that luxury. Toy Story 3 is out now.
