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I'm enjoying story analysis a lot now. I've gone beyond watching movies and reading books to know the plot. My hobby now is finding all the possible plots based

by muzani 5y ago

I'm enjoying story analysis a lot now. I've gone beyond watching movies and reading books to know the plot. My hobby now is finding all the possible plots based on the introduced characters and situations. What makes it fun is that multiple people have invented a lot of rules around what a good story should be. Aristotle has written what's closest to the Newton Laws. It's badass that Newton's Laws still hold up with astrophysics and it's badass that something someone wrote in ancient Greece still holds up in the modern era of cinema. It's flawed, but it says things straight, instead of lots of maybes, so it's easy to prove true or false. Megamind is an interesting beginner's analysis. It's very formulaic but doesn't look anything like that. It's subtle too, his cloak changes color according to his progress as a character. Toy Story is probably the most interesting because it doesn't really fit in any major format. It's a Comedy, there's a misunderstanding, and things go from high to low to high again where enemies are friends. But that's about it. There's a lot of little highs and lows, as opposed to the usual where it's all ascends to one really big high (e.g. Guardians of the Galaxy). In Toy Story, he's about to get home, then things get worse. He makes another plan, it fails. It just gets progressively worse. There's no fixed mentor character too. Buzz and Woody are both protagonists, antagonists, and mentors to each other, except the story is told through Woody's perspective. The most interesting part is that they hatched a formula from it that works, which is used in all other Toy Story movies and a little in other movies. It seems they didn't follow the classical literature analysis and made up their own formulas and it works.

syndacks 5y ago
I'd argue that Toy Story, like most Disney movies, is Hero's Journey at its core.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Toy Story is probably the most interesting because it doesn't really fit in any major format. What? It’s clearly Hero’s Journey. I haven't broken the beats down by time, but I’d bet its a reasonable approximation of the Save the Cat ideal times for each part of the plot, as well. The main unusual thing is that it has basically two intertwined Hero’s Journey's, but even that (and the twin protagonists each being antagonist-mentor shapeshifters to each other with, at least initially, diametrically opposed world views) is a not-uncommon paired-lead setup. > There's a lot of little highs and lows That's a fairly typical 2nd act pattern, which makes the arrival of the intense crisis more jarring. > as opposed to the usual where it's all ascends to one really big high (e.g. Guardians of the Galaxy). That's also a common, especially action-movie, pattern, where the idea is for the central crisis to be an expected payoff. But its not so overwhelming as to be “the usual”. > Buzz and Woody are both protagonists, antagonists, and mentors to each other, except the story is told through Woody's perspective Mentor-antagonist (or antagonist-mentor) shapeshifters are a common hero’s journey variation, though.
- muzani 5y ago
  I wrote a rant on why it's not, but you might be right. It's just that most analyses on it are straight up wrong. Woody's made to be special, he's got the writing on the foot. He is the Chosen One. Same with Buzz. So that's an interesting setup. The call to adventure is a bit iffy and the part I had trouble with. The part of there being a bigger world is even more iffy, but it makes sense. Woody lives in the toy world. Buzz mentally lives in space. Woody and Buzz are made aware of the big physical world, Buzz is made aware of the toy world. There's the second part, the journey, this is played straight. The third part, where they refuse to come home are different for both Woody and Buzz. Buzz goes through this first at Sid's house, and later Woody. I think there's a bit of a play here in that they both give up but the other deuteragonist forces them to keep going.

by muzani 5y ago

syndacks 5y ago

I'd argue that Toy Story, like most Disney movies, is Hero's Journey at its core.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Toy Story is probably the most interesting because it doesn't really fit in any major format. What? It’s clearly Hero’s Journey. I haven't broken the beats down by time, but I’d bet its a reasonable approximation of the Save the Cat ideal times for each part of the plot, as well. The main unusual thing is that it has basically two intertwined Hero’s Journey's, but even that (and the twin protagonists each being antagonist-mentor shapeshifters to each other with, at least initially, diametrically opposed world views) is a not-uncommon paired-lead setup. > There's a lot of little highs and lows That's a fairly typical 2nd act pattern, which makes the arrival of the intense crisis more jarring. > as opposed to the usual where it's all ascends to one really big high (e.g. Guardians of the Galaxy). That's also a common, especially action-movie, pattern, where the idea is for the central crisis to be an expected payoff. But its not so overwhelming as to be “the usual”. > Buzz and Woody are both protagonists, antagonists, and mentors to each other, except the story is told through Woody's perspective Mentor-antagonist (or antagonist-mentor) shapeshifters are a common hero’s journey variation, though.

muzani 5y ago
I wrote a rant on why it's not, but you might be right. It's just that most analyses on it are straight up wrong. Woody's made to be special, he's got the writing on the foot. He is the Chosen One. Same with Buzz. So that's an interesting setup. The call to adventure is a bit iffy and the part I had trouble with. The part of there being a bigger world is even more iffy, but it makes sense. Woody lives in the toy world. Buzz mentally lives in space. Woody and Buzz are made aware of the big physical world, Buzz is made aware of the toy world. There's the second part, the journey, this is played straight. The third part, where they refuse to come home are different for both Woody and Buzz. Buzz goes through this first at Sid's house, and later Woody. I think there's a bit of a play here in that they both give up but the other deuteragonist forces them to keep going.