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I_smell

Toy Story 4 (and other toy stories)

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Halfway through watching Toy Story 4, when I leaned over to my girlfriend and said "the toys are the kids' parents!", she groaned, rolled her eyes and pleaded with me to shut up as if I were claiming that aliens secretly built the pyramids.

 

I think Toy Story is a perfect example of a movie you can watch again as you grow up, because you'll see different things the 2nd or 3rd time.

I can't find it any more, but I read somewhere that some elements of Toy Story 1 were inspired by drafted soldiers finally coming back home to small towns, where they'd be these buff, capable heroes and handymen in the community, but were suffering from a creeping loss of identity behind closed doors.

When I first saw Toy Story 2, there was something really scary about Jessie's fear of abandonment. A long time later, I imagined the story was about an adult who was abandoned by someone they were in love with and could never move on. It was only a couple weeks ago that I thought "Maybe Jessie is a parent who's abandoned by their children." and right now I think that clicks with the scenes in Jessie's song the most.

I had never thought about that until just now. It's probably because I'm 27, I moved far away from my family about 6 years ago and a less-than-weekly phone-call with my Dad is the only connection I'm really giving to my parents. I think it's fair to say that my own personal situation, and my guilt of abandoning my parents, has inspired this reading. I actually want to watch the film again to see what's in Woody's story if you view him as an old parent afraid to be left alone.

 

 

I'm personally really interested in sub-text these days. I think it brings these roller-coaster blockbusters down to something very honest, heartfelt, human and written from real-life experience. I love the text, and the sub-text, and I appreciate the way they're stitched together.

 

Toy Story 4 is very loudly packed with sub-text and themes, but it's also really fun and has some good laughs. So I recommend it to basically anyone who's watched the other movies.

I saw Toy Story 3 once and it didn't really stick with me. Maybe I should watch it again.

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Toy Story is a series that I've never really enjoyed watching but always enjoy reading/hearing people's opinions on. Not sure what it is but I just don't like them.

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For discussion of the first two Toy Story films, check out our Pixar re-watch thread!

 

(We didn't make it to Toy Story 3 because a general reluctance to watch Cars killed the whole endeavour.)

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Well with Toy Story 3, I felt like the plot was being pushed along by movie-corp Pixar. When I was watching the scene where they're all very sad, I only felt that the Pixar company wants me to feel sad now, and they were using the resources they had to hit that target.

With Toy Story 4, it felt like the plot was written by some old parent, possibly a grandparent by now, who's lived a life and had a lot of things to tell me in a broad topic. Not just for one quick conflict in the third act, but for most of the film.

 

I'm glad that Toy Story 4 does that, because it shows what Toy Story's role is among other animated kids' movies: to have themes and ideas. I would expand that to Pixar's role in the industry, but I didn't have much to chew on from The Incredibles 2, Coco or Finding Dory (even though they're all fun and nice movies!)

I think the arc of this particular thing maturing over time is really interesting.

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Wow, after reading that thread, I've realised that I don't really like Pixar films. I'd not made the connection but overall found myself dismissive of 3-D animated films. All of the ones I have seen have been Pixar films.

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