sequels and storytelling

[jgarvin]

Oyvind J. Karstad wrote:

"I think Toy Story 2 was excellent, *at least* as good as the first movie.
  (BTW, I wouldn't call Toy Story and A Bug's Life Disney movies.
  They're made by the independent company Pixar.)
When I think about it, the reason that this sequel did work,
could be that both movies start and end with the same conditions."

Actually, both of those films, while not made in Disney's studios, are very much Disney in
that they used Disney concept artists, story board artists, character designers, etc.
Pixar has imported, wholesale, the Disney approach to storytelling, and through their
partnership with Disney, has imported a good deal of their technicians and artisans as
well.

And I disagree that these movies end with the same conditions: one of my criteria for
determining whether a screenplay is well written, is the degree to which the central
character (as a result of his own actions in response to situations the film presents to
him) grows and changes.  If the protagonist has not changed significantly, either in the
way he thinks or feels or sees the world, by the end of the movie, then it's probably not a
very strong story.  This is certainly not always true, but it is true of the great films:
Kane in Citizen Kane, Rick in Casablanca, Dorthy in Wizard of Oz, Luke in Star Wars,
Michael in the Godfather, and yes, Woody in Toystory.  Toy Story 1 is all about how Woody
changes from being selfish, self centered, and insecure, to being a selfless friend who
truly cares about others.  This lack of profound character change and growth is probably
the main reason I have never liked series television (broad generalization here) because it
does require the type of story telling you are talking about, where by the end of each
episode, things are back to the way they were at the beginning, with nothing changed.
Probably the biggest obstacle that a sequel faces, now that I think of it, is finding a way
to continue the story after this "change" has taken place.  Many of the later Disney films,
for instance, follow this character-arc type of story very strongly.  Think of how each
story focuses on the central character and is really about the changes that character goes
through as they mature, and learn: Beast, Ariel, Simba, Alladin, Kuzco, or Hercules. This
is probably why, technical achievement aside, the early Disny films based on fairy tales
have never moved me: their central characters, like Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping
Beauty, are ciphers and have no arc at all.  Oh they go through changes, to be sure, but
those changes are external and happen "to" them, and are not the result of choices the
protagonists make.  Pure adventure stories, like Tarzan, Atlantis, Black Cauldron, Great
Mouse Detective, the Rescuers (and Down Under), Robin Hood, 101 Dalmations, etc. tend to
have "flat" characters as well.

To bring this back on topic, Barks, like most creators working in comics, had pretty much
the same constraints as those working in series television, which Oyvind referred to:
Everything had to be returned to the same state in which it began.  You're not going to
find great sweeping character arcs in any Disney duck comic.  But that's probably not what
kids in the 40's and 50's were looking for, eh?