Well, The idea of making animated sequels never occurred to Disney, since they were too busy making the first movie of everything. And then the DTV movie market heated up, and it became a sequel-centric market. If you look at things now, Disney isn't the only one that does cheapquels, and it's no longer just animated movies. Look at how many sequels and spinoffs we're getting of the Eddie Murphy Doctor Doolittle alone.There's a huge part of me that wishes this movie wasn't being made. It's not that I am not looking forward to it or that I think it won't be a wonderful film, but it's great to see Pixar working on different new projects. You never really saw Walt Disney making too many sequels at least of his animated films and I think that worked as far as being able to do keep moving forward and to do something different.
But the faith I have in Pixar is pretty amazing. TS2 blew TS out of the water in scope and writing. I say a good sequel makes the first film look weaker by comparison... a bad sequel does the opposite. I always felt Empire Strikes Back was a more intense film than Star Wars that preceded it, and back to the Future 2 was a lot more exciting to watch than the first.
But then, with a lot of trilogies, the third movie always turns out to be the weakest... Shrek 3 was a pretty dull film compared to the other 2 (I blame the fact they absolutely had to recycle the Donkey and Puss share a caustic relationship jokes from Shrek 2)... BTTF 3 was pretty lame compared to the other 2 (though it had a nice ending)... SOmehow I don't think Pixar would make the film if they didn't absolutely think it was necessary (they aren't Dreamworks or Blue Sky after all ). Only thing that bugs me is that the next 2 Pixar films will be sequels.... Cars must have some marketing motive behind it, since they're STILL selling new Cars merchandise... especially since they cleared out all the Ratatouille merchandise before it hit DVD.