Josh Cooley:“That idea was the thing
that made the movie. Originally we did
not start with that idea. Bo Peep had
returned, and we needed Woody to go
through some sort of change. It wasn’t
until we had that idea that it felt like,
‘Okay, this is the movie. This is the
reason to make this movie.’ This idea
is big enough to be called Toy Story 4.
That idea came out of just plotting
out all the possible endings of the film.
And any time we had Woody returning
back to Bonnie’s house, it felt like he
didn’t learn anything. It just felt like
a reset, and it made me angry to think of
it that way. I thought it would make the
audience angry, too. It got to the point
where I was talking to the team going,
‘This is the only way we can end this
movie.’ I’m so thankful to Pixar because
they never said, ‘Well, that’s a stupid
idea, we can’t do that, that would ruin
everything.’ They were like, ‘That is an
emotional ending — how can we get there?
How can we line up everything so it feels
like a natural progression?’ Every single
person, from the story team to animation
to Randy Newman doing the score, got
that. To me, that’s the reason to make the
movie. It is life, you know — you meet
people, and then you separate from them.
I wasn’t thinking about [futureToy Story
films] at all. This was a way to complete
Woody’s arc as a character. The same way
that Buzz comes into his life in the first film,
he is now leaving his life. It was just making
sure that this film felt like it belongs.”Yesterday
DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SPOILERS OFFEND
DO NOT CROSS HERE IF SPOILERS OFFEND
DO NOT CROSS
FFEND
Toy Story 4
WARNING!
ILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOIL
WORDS: JOHN NUGENT. GETTY IMAGESbecomes clear, is John Lennon, who, because he
didn’t become famous in the ’60s, wasn’t gunned
down in 1980 by Mark Chapman. And, instead of a
life in music, he has pursued a life in art, which
could be argued to be Lennon’s first love.
I can see why Boyle thought it would be
divisive. There will be some Beatles fans who
see this as an absurd, overtly sentimental attempt
to rewrite the past; that it may even be insulting to
Lennon’s memory to have him live on in this
alternate reality. Lennon’s murder is, was, an
aberration. An atrocity. An appalling act that ended
the life of a genius far too soon. Yesterday’s
fantastical premise isn’t always fully explored —
there’s an argument that no Beatles would have
meant no Ed Sheeran, who features heavily in
the movie — but here it’s brought to its natural,
logical conclusion. Just because The Beatles
don’t exist in this world doesn’t mean that
John, Paul, George and Ringo (or Richard
Starkey) didn’t. It just means that they
never formed The Quarrymen, and after
that The Beatles. It just means that Paul
and John, in particular, never drove each
other on to greater creative heights. It just
means that John, as Boyle and Curtis
imagine it, chose art over music, and
a quiet and long life. For them,
and for the actor who plays
Lennon (widely believed to be
Robert Carlyle, but he insisted
upon anonymity in return for
taking the role), they are
righting the wrongs of
yesterday. For me, it’s as pure
a piece of poetry as movies
have produced this year. Long
live John Lennon.Chris Hewitt:The other month, we were
shooting Danny Boyle as part of his #Empire30
interview, and got to talking about Yesterday.
The film was still in the ‘upcoming’ column, and its
central premise: a man enters a coma and
awakens in a world in which The Beatles never
existed, and so never wrote the songs that
changed the lives of John Lennon, Paul
McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
I mentioned that I was a huge Beatles fan.
Boyle smiled. “I would love to know what
you think of it,” he said. “There’s something
in there that might divide Beatles fans.”
And that was all he said on that.
A couple of months later, I finally saw
Yesterday, and the something in there that
might divide Beatles fans. Namely, the
scene where Himesh Patel’s Jack,
one of only three people in the
world who can remember The
Beatles, and riddled with guilt
that he’s launched a lucrative
music career off the back of
passing off their back
catalogue as his own, drives
to a remote beach house.
He knocks on the door. An old
man with long, grey hair,
granny glasses and a Scouse
accent appears. This, it quicklyTHE JOHN LENNON
MEETING
WOODY’S
EMOTIONAL
FAREWELL