Ultimately, Gabby Gabby and her ventriloquist henchman don’t harm Woody, but he willingly helps the doll – disturbing as she may first appear – find an owner. “She was a little desperate and a little creepy in her manner of expressing it, so you were quick to judge.”
What makes her interesting: “It was very easy for people to have a bad first impression and assume that she had an agenda that was darker than she really did,” Stanton says of the old-school doll who was jealous of Woody’s working pull-string. Gabby Gabbyīio: The pigtailed doll with a defective voicebox blinks slowly and talks sweetly to other toys in the antique store, giving viewers the heebie-jeebies. Barbie and Ken wind up living happily ever after at the day care. Ken is the funniest part of “Toy Story 3,” especially when he enthusiastically gives Barbie a private fashion show before she ties him to a paddle ball toy and makes him reveal Lotso’s vindictive plans. “Ken was a chance to flip gender (norms) and make him as shallow and bad at math as you wanted.” What makes him interesting: Ken’s “not bad, he’s just misunderstood,” Stanton says. Kenīio: The doll, who loves his ascot and his dreamhouse, hangs out with the wrong crowd at Sunnyside Daycare.
“If we had used them in the movies earlier, it would’ve been too much.” 5. “They fundamentally messed with so many of us growing up,” Stanton says. What makes them interesting: To many, ventriloquist dummies are inherently horrifying, and the way they were animated to creep around the antique store made them appear even scarier. The Dummiesīio: Benson and the other ventriloquist dummies don’t say much, but they follow the orders of Gabby Gabby in the antique store. He could’ve stayed friendly if Woody had just always gone along.” 6. As Stanton explains it, Prospector wasn’t pure evil but “kind of being genuine until he felt his future was threatened.
The character shows his dark side after he can no longer handle sitting on a shelf while every toy around him is sold. What makes him interesting: Filmmakers like Stanton asked themselves this question: “If I was stuck in a box and never got played with, what would it do to me?” Stinky Pete the Prospectorīio: A toy with a white beard and overalls who spends most of his time in a box after his TV show “Woody’s Roundup” (with Woody, Jessie and Bullseye the horse) is canceled. "The logic was just it’s a toy that turns on, wants to kill Buzz. Zurg is "the opposite of complexity," Stanton says. What makes him interesting: Zurg spoofs “Star Wars” in his Darth Vader-esque voice and gets plenty of laughs when he tells Buzz, "I am your father." Voice: Andrew Stanton (yes, the screenwriter)īio: A purple caped toy with one mission: Destroy Buzz Lightyear. What makes him interesting: Al is an adult who obsesses over toys, one of the “man children of the world that can’t stop collecting toys and then start making it a trade,” says Stanton, adding that he and his co-writers “all willingly putting elements of ourselves into that character.”Īlthough Al is unscrupulous when it comes to obtaining toys, by the end he’s a lonely, sad man crying in a chicken suit. Voice: Wayne Knight (Newman from “Seinfeld”)īio: The owner of Al’s Toy Barn steals Woody to complete his rare collection of "Woody’s Roundup" toys. We didn’t force Stanton to play favorites.) 9. How do the movies’ iconic baddies (who are sometimes secretly good guys) rank? Take a look at our list, which includes commentary from Pixar filmmaker Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote all of the “Toy Story” movies. No, not heroes Woody and Buzz, but the multidimensional villains who – despite mostly being children’s playthings – provide humor, plot twists and heft in “Toy Story” (1995), “Toy Story 2” (1999), “Toy Story 3” (2010) and “Toy Story 4” (2019). 22, 1995, and led to three more successful films, we’re looking back at some of the best characters in the franchise. It has been 25 years since the unlikely friendship between a pull-string cowboy and a plastic space ranger was forged onscreen in “Toy Story.” To celebrate the groundbreaking Pixar movie, which premiered Nov.