Another frustrating thing I had with Toy Story 3 was the character overload. I felt that most of the supporting characters were indistinct enough to warrant their existence. Most of Lotso’s gang, for example. You could replace their lines with any other toy and it would still make sense. Or Bonnie’s toys, though I find a few of them such as Buttercup, Trixie and Mr Pricklepants appealing.
Whereas with HTTYD, the side characters actually had importance. Here’s the bully ringleader, Snotloud who will pick on Hiccup. Astrid, the love interest (though Ruffnut fans might disagree). Fishlegs, as Hiccup’s best friend. Gobber the Belch, as the mentor.
Or LOTG. Gylfie as the best friend. Digger as the voice of reason (though in this movie, he’s nuts half the time). Twilight as the warmonger. Ezylryb as the mentor. Otulissa as the ‘nerd’ like Fishlegs.
All very Joseph-Campbell, but it works. And the cast of characters who speak weren’t more than ten at the most. With Toy Story 3 (and I fear Cars 2), there is character overload such that hardly anyone gets enough screentime for you to know and appreciate them better, and they sort of melt into an uncohesive pack.
Rango, for example, had a pretty big supporting cast. But the movie is proportionately long, and there are a lot of quiet and talky scenes where you get to appreciate the characters better. And from the dialogue, you get a sense of their backstory and histories before we enter the point in the movie. I’ve described that in the Rango thread, so I won’t bore you guys here. Cars did something like this with Sarge and Filmore’s bickering, or Lizzie pining about her late husband Stanley. I saw something like that with Buttercup and Pricklepants’ banter about method acting, or the ‘roulette game’ in the vending machine, but other than these scenes, I have very little idea about the group dynamics, the back histories, the ‘heirarchy’ of the pack, et cetera.
Only Lotso, Barbie and Ken, Chuckles and Baby had any worthwhile place in the cast in the sense that they contributed to the story. A screenwriting maxim is that if a character doesn’t add anything to the story, dump him/her. It’s harsh, but it helps weed out ‘useless’ characters who say a line and then exit stage left. With the Pixarian’s attention to detail, I though they would’ve been stricter and ‘trim the fat’.
You’d think by the third movie, they’d learn.
I ask myself that same question with each Shrek movie plot. But the toys are adorable, and woody is wise.
) and Chunk were remarkably unremarkable.