TOY STORY 3 (2010): two movies in one

Posted by Stephen Jannise

Increasingly, the discourse surrounding Pixar films suggests that they truly are “family” movies, in that they contain something for the kids and something for the adults in the audience. To a certain extent, this has been true of films like Finding Nemo and Up, which featured heroes for both the younger and older moviegoers. While the kids could associate with the young fish Nemo or the boy scout Russell, their parents might see themselves in Nemo’s worried father Marlin or Russell’s cranky neighbor Mr. Fredrickson. However, at the end of each of these films, the underlying depths of emotion provided by these older characters ultimately intersected with the more light-hearted elements directed toward children, resulting in undeniably happy conclusions. This is not the case with Toy Story 3, which actually has two concrete endings. For the kids, the film provides one of Pixar’s patently moving finales, but for the adults, the film actually ends a few scenes earlier, in an unusually stark, wholly genuine display of friendship and mortality.

The story of the film is known by anyone who has managed to get to a recent film early enough to see the trailers. Andy, the owner of Woody, Buzz, and the other toys, is shipping off to college, so what is to become of his toys? By the time they end up at a daycare named Sunnydale, allusions to the feelings of abandonment and isolation that humans encounter as they enter old age are flying at full force. The toys, at least in terms of their relationship with Andy, have hit what we generously describe as their “golden years,” and there is some debate among them as to how to handle it. While most of the toys see the daycare as a second life rather than being put out to pasture, Woody, always the most loyal toy to Andy, is unwilling to move on and desperate to make his way back to his old friend.

The sadness and desperation of old age is represented by this lovable stuffed bear. Believe it.

Thus, the film belongs to Woody, and his conflict is simple: as he enters the last years of his life (even toys have to go sometime), with whom does he want to spend his remaining days? The general thrust of the series thus far has always been the toys’ efforts to remain with Andy at all costs, but as Woody realizes over the course of this film, the bond he has formed with his fellow toys has grown stronger than any other, even the one he shares with Andy. So, in that “grown-up ending” I just mentioned, the toys find themselves facing incineration at a local landfill, and they lock hands with one another in an overwhelmingly poignant acknowledgment of the love they feel for one another. If it has come to this, at least they have one another. Although the toys ultimately escape their fate, to the delight of the kids in the audience, the adults, who are all too aware of their own mortality, know that a similar moment will eventually come for them, and the scene leaves them hoping that, when it does, they will have a few friends there with them.

I will admit that I wasn’t expecting the third film of this franchise to rival the thematic explorations of recent Pixar films like Ratatouille and Wall-E, so I must also happily admit that I was wrong to worry. Along with such inspired storytelling, the Pixar animation team shows no signs of stopping in its continued evolution of cinematic style. I came away from this film believing that there are a few people working at Pixar who could direct a feature-length live-action film tomorrow if they wanted to. The film combines the kind of adventurous camera movements associated with animation with the familiar elements of classical Hollywood style to a more successful extent than ever before, and I think it may be only a matter of time before one of these Pixar directors is considered for some of Hollywood’s many directing awards. The latest technology has allowed for a greater sense of depth than ever before, thanks not only to the new 3-D craze but also to remarkable advances in light and shadow capabilities. So this is what they meant when they started worrying about human actors being replaced.

I'm gonna miss these guys.

Next up for Pixar, reportedly, is a sequel to Cars, and I can think of no better praise for Toy Story 3 than to say that I’m going to give Pixar the benefit of the doubt and plan on Cars 2 being another masterpiece. Cars is almost universally considered to be Pixar’s weakest film, so one wonders why they would want to make a sequel. One theory could be that, every five or six years, Pixar needs to take a storytelling break and just toss out a fun little movie about talking cars. But this is a company who has left the disappointments of A Bug’s Life and Monsters Inc. far behind them (only for Pixar could those films be considered disappointments, by the way), and I can’t help but think that, somehow, they have a truly great idea for the continued adventures of those obnoxious cars.

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