I just learned from Reaper052 that one of the earliest drafts of TS3 was written by Andrew Stanton. Does anyone know why they chose Michael Arndt instead? I would have preferred Stanton’s take on it, if it was anything his screenplays for Wall-E and FN. I do love Arndt, though, but he took liberties with the film that I will never agree with.
Andrew Stanton didn’t write any complete drafts as far as I know, just the earliest story treatment.
Getting back to the original question: What do you think TS3 would have been like if Stanton had wrote it?
According to Lee Unkrich on the Blu-Ray commentary, it was Andrew who came up with Mr. Tortilla Head.
actually Andrew came up with the story
Hmmm… well, then I’m glad he didn’t write the full script.
I’m sure that it was about the same as the first 2 Toy Stories, where the basic skeleton of the movie was made out by Docter, Lasseter, Stanton and the like.
I didn’t know that he came out with Mr. Tortilla Head, that’s pretty cool!
Spanish Buzz was Stanton’s idea as well. He also suggested the Army men leaving to Arndt, when Ardnt asked him for help on that scene.
This along with Mr. Tortilla Head make me lose a little respect for Stanton.
What? Tortilla Head was hilarious 
Yeah, and it was pretty important, during the escape sccene they needed someone on the outside, and losing his body was his only way of escaping the box.
…Why? I’m not sure I follow what you mean.
It’s just my personal preference, so I don’t expect anyone else to ‘get’ it 
. I think that Mr. Tortilla Head and Spanish Buzz were two of the weakest parts of that film.
Curious, as I thought they were two of the strongest parts of the film. 
Yeah, they were both pretty important to the story.
I understand that there needed to be a distraction to get past the Monkey, but the ‘Mr. Tortilla Head’ plan was extremely tedious and the Toys needed to know exactly what it would lead to without fail. Which seems kind of insulting to Ken and Big Baby as antagonists; rather than the same old punishment every time, they mixed it up and kept it fresh.
Now, as far as Spanish Buzz goes, you’ll really need to do some convincing to show me how important it was to the story. All that scene should have been was ‘Rex sticks his finger in the slot, Buzz goes back to normal, voila, end of story’. But these sophomoric story people at Pixar are easily amused and keep going back to the deluded (or alternative personality) Buzz from the first two halves of TS1 that nobody likes or finds funny. It added nothing to the story except for maybe to get laughs from the younger kids before the suspenseful and emotional ending.