“Toy Story” Puts Away Childish Things
I think it hit me during the scene in Toy Story 3 when Woody, Buzz and the crew are in a garbage dump, stuck on a conveyor belt and heading towards a hellish-looking incinerator. After attempts to scramble and claw their way out of harm’s way, they finally are stuck out of ideas. Jessie the cowgirl starts screaming “what do we do?” Buzz Lightyear, the fearless spaceman, just kind of sits there. Blank-faced and horrified, he impotently grabs her hand and waits. Before long, the toys are all joined in hands, as far away from their home and the owner they love as can be and heading towards certain death. And there’s me, sitting absolutely devastated in the movie theater, and all I could think of was:
What in the hell kind of kids movie IS this?!
Back when the first Toy Story came out, I was still young enough to have the same kind of imagination Andy (the toys’ owner in the films) did. I still enacted crazy scenarios out with my playthings and would permit myself, at times, the wildest wish that my toys were real. That movie, in a lot of ways, was kind of a wish fulfillment for me, as I’m sure it was to a lot of kids.
Since then, of course, Pixar has gained a reputation for being not both consistently amazing and absolutely brutal with its allegories. Wall-E, one of my favorite movies ever (and Pixar’s best, in my humble opinion) is basically a blue-collar working man’s story, as well as a thoroughly crushing romance. Up is built around an old widower’s regret over not giving his wife the thing she always wanted as a child. And there is a LOT of male impotence stuff going on inThe Incredibles.
It’s safe to say these stopped being kids movies a long time ago, and now Pixar has gone and made a movie about abandonment issues. Real lighthearted there, boys.
To say the last fifteen minutes of Toy Story 3 are rough is a baffling understatement. Of course everything ends happily, as it must in a Disney film (yes yes, they escape death by incinerator and my heart rate happily dipped back below 150 once that happened). But the message is that everyone grows up and everything changes — kind of a terrifying prospect for a kid my age, really.
And it’s kind of a terrifying prospect for the toys, who fear being relegated to the bargain bin or the trash bin. They end up in a day-care center that’s more like a prison, and yes, the standard thrills and yuks are there, so even kids who can’t grasp the subtext will enjoy the movie on a surface level. The new toys are fantastic and adorable and, even in my old age, I wanted to buy about half of them (my favorite is Chuckles the clown. I won’t spoil it, but it’s easily the best sight gag in the whole movie. Second favorite is Mr. Pricklepants and third is the rock-man with the interchangeable faces). But the movie is all about identity and what do you become when everything you knew is gone?
There’s also a lot of other stuff in there. I could go all day about the prison metaphors, the fact that Woody himself was always kind of obsolete as far as toys go, or entertain excessive discourses about Big Baby, the scariest toy in all three Toy Story movies. And then there’s the fact that the Ken doll (Michael Keaton) is one thousand percent gay and no one in the movie (and probably, a good chunk of the audience) has any idea. So I suppose you can add mob mentalities, closet cases, and the like to the list of Pixar’s storytelling devices.
But I guess that’s become Pixar’s role in moviemaking: to entertain kids and sort of shuffle them, bit by bit, towards adulthood at the same time with their storytelling. I guess everyone grows up. But I always kind of hoped the toys never would.
