Movie Monday: Toy Story 3

This is a poster for the upcoming movie Toy Story 3.

This is an interesting movie poster. It doesn’t even have the title of the movie on it.  Actually, none of the American posters that I’ve seen (and there have been quite a few so far) have the title on them!  This one easily gets away with it by having nearly all the major, and several of the minor, characters from the previous two movies (along with what appears to be quite a few new characters) crowded into the frame with the 3.

And this has generally been the theme of posters for this movie.  There is a whole line of character posters (which I am not going to post) that each simply features one of the major characters we already know with that 3 in some dynamic, characteristic way.  None of the posters features any other text prominently.  No movie name.  No character names.  No tagline.

And you know what?  It totally works.

Movie Monday: Toy Story 3

This is a trailer for Toy Story 3 that I saw on a DVD (I think it’s on the Up DVD, but don’t quote me on that).

I think this is a great trailer.  It tells us nothing about the movie, but it doesn’t have to.  For a third movie, they can come out with a trailer really early and not have to say anything other than “look! these characters are back!”  They’ve released more information about the plot and more plot focused trailers since, and I’m sure that there will be more of them as the June release date gets closer.

What makes this ad really work is that it manages to show us not only all of the fun characters from the first two movies, but the organized chaos that is their world.  Each conveys his or her or its personality in just a few seconds of screen time, reminding us why we loved them.  And then we get part of Buzz and Woody’s eternal (mostly) friendly rivalry, which was such a vital component of both previous movies.  It’s like a miniature movie in and of itself, reminding us of the fun of the first two movies and letting us know that we can expect more of that fun in the third movie.