Cars 2 is easily on its way to being the worst critically received film in Pixar history (currently rocking a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes), and the best audience reactions it has been inspiring are “Eh, it was cute” to “My kids loved it.” It seems like the only two universally positive things that anyone has to say about their Cars 2 experience are “Brave looks promising” and “The Toy Story short before the movie was great.”

Well, good news. I doubt that anyone out there was going to drop 3D admission prices just to see that Brave teaser, but now it is on-line — in all its awesome imagery yet strangely mediocre narration glory!

Thanks to Brian for the link.

And speaking of Toy Story… in other Pixar news, during a BBC interview (there is no reason to actually watching the full interview, it is boring) for his new movie Larry Crowne, Tom Hanks was asked if there would be a Toy Story 4 that his recently born grandchild would get to watch. Hanks said “I think there will be… I think they’re working on it now.” So there ya go. Who knows what that really means; possibly nothing. Though the word of Tom Hanks carries a bit more weight than say Tara Reid talking about Big Lebowski 2. Hanks isn’t one for idle bullshit. 

Toy Story Hawaiian Vacation (the Cars 2 preshow short) was indeed a lot of fun and its mere existence was a clever way for Pixar to segue into an Andy-less Toy Story world, and to wet audience appetites. Especially after they all watched Cars 2. The short demonstrates that there is still life in the characters. I don’t know that it demonstrates that there is an entire feature film’s worth of life in them, but if nothing else I really hope we get more Toy Story shorts in the future.