One of Toy Story’s most daring innovations was making its hero, Woody, kind of a jerk
Image: Screenshot: Toy Story Film Features The Pixar Moment
It’s a funny thing to say about one of the most beloved Disney characters of the last 25 years, but Woody can be kind of a prick, can’t he? The cowboy-doll hero of Toy Story and its three sequels always does the right thing eventually, getting his priorities straight in time to save the day. But en route to that enlightenment, he does plenty of wrong things too, like holding grudges against his fellow toys and ditching his friends. Woody can be selfish, petulant, vain, resentful, churlish, and petty. Which is to say, he can be very human, plastic features aside. Those less flattering qualities also make him among the most three-dimensional of cartoon characters, regardless of whether the audience is watching him from behind a pair of flimsy glasses.
There are any number of moments worth highlighting in Toy Story, Pixar’s first feature and hence the subject of this inaugural installment in our new five-week series. We could have picked Woody and Buzz being tossed into Sid’s room and encountering the misfit mad-science experiments he’s made from his own toy box—a sequence that announced Pixar would dare to go a little weirder and scarier than Disney proper. Or how about Buzz getting a televised reality check, the first time this all-ages franchise waded into the deep existential implications of its premise? And of course there are action scenes that show off what was, back in 1995, some truly revolutionary computer animation. But the most significant precedent set by Toy Story might be Pixar’s willingness to build a whole movie around a character as complex and flawed and, yes, sometimes downright dickish as Sheriff Woody. And so while it might not be the most iconic scene in the movie, Woody’s first confrontation with Buzz Lightyear speaks to the emotional truths the studio was after from the very start.
Things are uneasy from the moment the two meet on the surface of Andy’s bed, with Woody immediately defensive about all the attention lavished on the shiny new space-ranger toy by both their six-year-old owner and the other occupants of his bedroom. But it’s a few minutes and one Randy Newman song later that the tension between them fully boils over into rivalry. There’s a case to made that Toy Story is still the funniest Pixar movie, and it comes down to the perfectly calibrated buddy-comedy dynamic between its two main characters—the way the enduringly witty script (coauthored by future Pixar director Andrew Stanton and Joss Whedon, among others) pits Buzz’s inflated hero complex against Woody’s exasperation at his cluelessness. That’s on full display in this scene, a triumph of vocal performance, antagonistic dialogue, and staging. (There might be better illustrations elsewhere of Pixar’s nascent technical sophistication, but don’t sleep on the screwball hilarity of Woody’s poker-faced reactions to Buzz writhing in imaginary suffocation without his helmet on.)
What sticks out most about the scene is just how unlikable Woody is allowed to be. Simba and Aladdin, to name two basically contemporaneous Disney protagonists, weren’t saints either; they had their own character flaws to overcome. But neither got a moment quite as bitter as Woody’s warning to Buzz: “You stay away from Andy, he’s mine,” he bluntly tells the interloper threatening his status as favored plaything. “And no one is taking him away from me.” Woody’s jealous mockery curdles further later in the scene, when the two find themselves helpless to stop Sid, the sadistic, toy-mangling kid who lives next door, from exploding an action figure. “I’d love to see you as a crater,” Woody tells Buzz, which is a pretty callous remark to make just seconds after watching a G.I. Joe ripoff blown to smithereens. A few minutes later, he attempts to knock his new enemy behind the desk and out of Andy’s line of sight—a craven scheme that kicks the adventure plot into motion.
He’s sometimes a real asshole. But Toy Story gets away with it, for a few reasons: because Buzz is a frustratingly deluded dolt, albeit a funny one; because Woody redeems himself in the climax, getting over his space-man envy; and because the character’s voiced by America’s dad himself, Tom Hanks, who can’t help but invest this sentient hunk of plastic with his signature warmth and humanity, even when his animated avatar is at his most caddish. Mostly, though, we forgive Woody his trespasses because it’s easy to see plenty of ourselves in them. Here, and in the sequels, he remains relatable in his insecurity, because who in the audience hasn’t stewed with jealousy toward a sibling, feared they were inadequate in the eyes of a loved one, or questioned their purpose or the stability of their relationships? Disney is sometimes referred to as the house that Mickey built. Pixar, then, is the house that Woody built, on a foundation of imperfection and the acknowledgement that good toys (or people) sometimes behave badly. Movies tend to be more interesting when they do.
206 Comments
Sid, the sadistic, toy-mangling kid who lives next doorYes, from the toys’ perspective Sid’s an evil Dr. Moreau-style character creating monsters. But what I always didn’t like about his characterization is that (until Woody tells him) he doesn’t know toys are alive and sentient. So basically he is being punished for being creative with his mashups.
For his deeds, Sid is rewarded in a way. He becomes the only human alive to be aware that toys are alive. This knowledge terrifies him at first, but we can presume that over time, it gives him a greater appreciation of the wonders of the world around him. When we see Sid again in Toy Story 3, he seems very content with his life, and he even has a steady, well-paying job.*We must imagine Sid happy.
*people underestimate how much a garbage collector makes. Turns out that doing an essential job that most people don’t want to do pays quite well!
In my younger, Bukowski like days I was a garbage collector. It’s one of those jobs that CAN pay very well, but you need to be there for a while and you really need to get in to a township position as opposed to a private company. Still, it had it’s moments. I would go there straight from the bar and I can even remember throwing up in more than one person’s garbage can after emptying it.
I always found the “haha Sid’s a garbage-person now” moment in Toy Story 3 to be woefully elitist
It totally is. I can only presume that someone down at Pixar remembered or decided that just getting one freakout wasn’t enough of a classic Disney Villain Comeuppance™, so in 3 he could appear in some sort of miserable place in life. Then someone decided “what’s the worst thing we could do to him, short of murder?” And the office landed on “garbage person”. I mean, I guess at least he doesn’t sound resentful of job? Still the thinnest of silver linings.
I don’t see that at all, to be honest. I feel like people are reading a lot of their own perspective into the movie. Sid is, after all, quite happy with his job, from what we see of him.
I haven’t listened to any of the commentary tracks or anything, so I might be entirely wrong on this, but it seems to me more like they had written the scene where Lotso gets tied to the truck by the garbage men, and then, upon realizing they put in another toy torture scene, somebody thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that was Sid?”
I’ve been a garbage man, and there is a reason people use them as an example of a ‘shitty’ job. That being said, work your way up the totem pole, get your CDL B and find a job in a township as opposed to a private company, it’s good and steady work. You won’t get rich, but you’ll make a decent living. But let me tell you…picking up garbage at 8:30 AM on a really hot, sunny day after say Memorial day weekend? Fucking horrific.
A decent living, but a dangerous one:
Every moment of that movie is gold, Miller. Gold. Well, not every moment but that whole walk of carnage is perfect.
“Guys, I have this killer script for a Silent Night Deadly Night sequel! But it’s only about half a feature film length.”“Why don’t we just make the original movie into a 45-minute clip show for the first half?”“Brilliant!”
Alright, since you’re here, and you have insight, I have a question that I always ponder. How do holidays work for sanitation workers? Yesterday was Memorial Day, of course, and there was no garbage pickup, so the garbage pickup gets moved to the next day. The sanitation workers got that day off, but then they’re a day behind for the rest of the week, so do they have to make up that time (like a double pickup on Saturday or something) to catch up, or do they have to sacrifice another day off? Either way, it seems shitty.
You’re not a day behind (or at least not where I worked) – but what happens is because of the holiday on Monday, when you do the same routes pickup on Thursday (my routes were Mon-Thursday, Tuesday-Friday with Weds being for alternate Papers and cans) you’re getting double the amount. Folks just let that shit pile up and then put it ALL out on the next day on the schedule. So in your example, that Thursday would be hell because you have garbage that’s been sitting there PLUS extra garbage from the week.
It’s Disney what did you expect? Have you seen full-on Disney parents? These people are ACHIEVERS dammit. They go to CHURCH! They wear UNDER ARMOR! And dammit Des Moines has a LOT going for it! Now put on this Buckeyes hat, Brayden!
Isn’t it only elitist if you don’t like garbage men? I always viewed it as him seeming happy and having a well paying job.
Yes, Sid seems like a sadist but sadists get pleasure out of other’s pain and he had no idea he was hurting his toys. He was a dick to his younger sister, but who isn’t when you’re that age? All in all he turned out ok and maybe on his rounds he got to see a bunch of broken toys in the garbage that he rescued and put back together in his own unique way.
sadists get pleasure out of other’s pain and he had no idea he was hurting his toys.He was pretty clearly imagining that he might be, though. He was playing “prisoner of war camp torturer” with Buzz at one point, if memory serves.
Yeah and I’ve done the same thing in Grand Theft Auto or other games. If I knew I was actually causing harm to the characters though, if they were sentient, then I totally wouldn’t play those games. However, to me and Sid, they’re just games with no real world consequences, just imaginative ones.
It’s still suggestive that he’s at least little a bit of a sadist, though. Okay, he’s almost certainly not torturing puppies to death or anything, and yeah, I blow the shit out of virtual Los Santos and used to smash my toys together too, I’m not getting self-righteous about that. But they’re nevertheless the same kind of impulses. I’d never do it in real life, but like you say — mowing down people in GTA is a consequence-free way of me being able to purge those kind of impulses. There is, after all, a reason there’s so many vile shitheads on GTA Online who make it their life’s purpose to spoil the fun of others in creatively violent ways. The movie is clearly suggesting that Sid himself is at least somewhere on that spectrum, even if lower down. At very least, he clearly likes the idea of being in power and being able to inflict that power on people weaker than him in cruel ways. In any case Sid is clearly not just a sensitive little artist being unfairly tormented by the mean toys, which is what the hint of revisionism in this thread is clearly aiming at. He’s probably not a budding serial killer but the movie is still clearly and heavily suggesting that he is, at very least, a little prick who likes the idea of hurting things weaker than him and is getting what is coming to him when the toys turn it back on him.
I agree with your second paragraph, he definitely had a thing about control and being stronger, especially since he stole his sister’s toys to make some of his creations and tormented her a bit more than the average older/younger sibling interaction. Also, I agree about online gaming bringing out the worst in people who are already shitheads, which is why I mostly stick to single player or co-op campaigns. Because from GTA online to lighter fare like World of Warcraft the games are stuffed with players who just get off on ruining other people’s fun. Though WoW also has incredibly kind and supportive folks, but that’s a tangent for another day. Anyway, I’m glad Sid seems to have grown out of all of that by the third one, maybe the toys in the first movie and their “intervention” really worked and they averted disaster.
I always thought this. It would be a shame if, given his wild imagination and his access to thousands of unwanted toys and toy parts, he didn’t make some new toys. I always imagined him growing into this trickster god of resurrection for old toys, building them into cool one-offs for kids who need them…
But then again, if he knows the toys are alive, why is he strapping them to the front of his garbage truck? Either he got some therapy and decided he only hallucinated the toy uprising, then went back to being a dick, or worse, still believes/knows they’re alive, and treats them awfully. Sid’s an asshole, no matter how you cut it.
“But then again, if he knows the toys are alive, why is he strapping them to the front of his garbage truck?”Does he do this though? The guy from the dump who does this to Lotso at the end isn’t Sid.
He’s not? Shit, okay my memory’s a bit hazy, I guess.
It’s entirely excusable to be vague on the specifics of a cartoon released 11 years ago.But I don’t imagine Sid decries the practice either. He probably enjoys the power play of it given his past experiences.
It’s like those famous quotes that are mis-remembered more than they are remembered correctly. I didn’t believe it when my son told me that wasn’t Sid until we re-watched it recently. Sid appears as a trash collector earlier in the movie, but it’s a different guy that grabs Lotso. It just feels like it should be Sid there. I don’t know why, but I think we’re conditioned to expect that when you introduce a background character that we know, and then there’s a similar background character shown doing something, it’ll be the one we were introduced to. You’re definitely not alone though, I think most people would think the same thing.
If it was Sid, it would mean he’s still torturing toys for fun. I thought the guy at the end was driving a semi.
I think it’s pretty clear that he knows they’re alive and is torturing them on purpose.
holy cow, I totally missed Sid was in Toy Story 3, need to google now. thanks!
Oh yeah, I was actually looking into being a garbage collector in my city for a while. They start at like $17/hour and get every holiday off paid.
There was a (non-canon?) Monsters, Inc. comic where Sid is using the monster world doorways to go into kids’ bedrooms and steal their toys. The twist is that he thinks he’s saving the kids from their twisted living playthings.
Or, it scars him irreparably as he seeks validation of sentient toys, never finds it again, and therapist after therapist dig into other unrelated issues in an effort to explain this delusion. Best case, he chalks it up to a momentary psychosis.
I imagine Sid Phillips has become the Yellow Diamond of Toy Story universe, using his job as a garbage man(by the way, RESPECT!!! My grandfather was a garbage man, way back when they went into your yard to grab the cans) to find toy parts, which he then builds back into whole toys…And since he knows they’re alive, he uses the psychology skills he’s working on in night college to rehabilitate them before he gives them to underprivileged kids who will treasure them forever.That’s a whole spinoff series, right there! Somebody call Brad Bird!
Well, there’s also Sid’s relationship with his sister, which shows he’s a jerk to more than just (purportedly) non-sentient hunks of plastic. Plus the fact that he’s at least as interested in blowing toys up as in putting them together in unconventional ways.We do get to see something of the mash-up spirit in the ways that Andy and Bonnie play with their toys, of course. Having a kid who actually takes apart toys and creatively mixes disparate parts together in reassembling them could be fun, but in the Toy Story world of sapient toys it might be hard to portray that positively without some unintentional, unseemly subtext.
Yeah, Sid’s chief characteristic isn’t really the fact that he combines broken toys together to make new ones – that wouldn’t necessarily be bad in the Toy Story world. It’s the obvious, sadistic glee he takes in imagining these people being horrible maimed and killed. Sure, he doesn’t know he’s actually hurting anyone, but his favourite fun activity is imagining and staging people being hurt, in some detail (it’s clear for instance that the adventure plots he stages are just excuses for the sadistic violence that actually takes most of his focus). That’s not necessarily ‘future serial killer’, but it’s certainly not healthy! And yes, the way he extends his bullying behaviour to his own sister further demonstrates that this isn’t just an over-active imagination, it’s a character flaw.In fact, I suspect the character was intentionally written to make sure that even kids who played roughly with their toys still thought Sid was the villain, and that they themselves weren’t being insulted.
Well, a lot of the mutant toys Sid created on don’t belong to him, they’re his sister Hannah’s like when he steals her doll Janie and swaps its head with a Pterodactyl. And when Buzz has the tea party, it’s with a dolls with no heads.
Except Sid cruelly steals his little sister’s toys, destroys them, mocks her for being upset, and then accuses her of lying about it to their mother. He’s a horrible bully.
Sid’s a shithead, but I knew kids exactly like him who could be fun to hang around because they were full of ideas. Then you got to go home and not deal with him 24/7.
I think it was pretty clear in that movie that Sid was on his way to moving up from toys to animals, and then who knows what next? That kid was straight psycho, and he clearly did the things he did because he got off on pretending he was hurting people. That’s not the kind of creativity we should encourage.If all “mashups” were worthy of celebration for their creativity, the human centipede would be mankind’s greatest achievement.
It’s really impressive how ethically sound and well-adjusted all the commenters here were when they were what, 10 years old? It’s impressive.I never stole toys from anyone but I sure as hell mangled the ones I got for free from like Happy Meals and stuff… And now I’m a brutal serial killer, I guess.
Shit, me and my friend would stab action figures with a knife, douse them in lighter fluid, and set them on fire when I was that age! I mean, it’s not like we did that all the time and there were plenty of other, less violent stuff we did with our toys, but if Sid’s a serial killer from the toy’s perspective Woody ought to lock me up!(I’d like to see that little fucker try with his arms ripped off and flames covering his torso… good luck Sheriff!)
I dunno, I’m kinda scared of a lot of the commenters here. Stabbing and burning action figures is straight-up serial-killer-in-the-making behavior.
Sid was also a dick who broke his sister’s toys.
.
As a fastidious kid who grew up playing with hand-me-downs, I always found the idea of deliberately ruining toys absolutely appalling. If my brothers had pulled that shit, I wouldn’t have had Star Wars action figures (also I wouldn’t have had brothers – our dad was very… “attuned” to the idea we were wasting money).
It would be a horrific irony if the experience eventually convinced Sid, not that toys have feelings like people, but that people are just objects like toys, leading him to take his “mashups” in a much darker new direction.
He is a pretty big dick to his sister, what with the whole “stealing her toys and mangling them for his own amusement/to freak her out” deal he’s got going on, which is also why he’s being punished by the narrative. Which, okay, also makes him a standard older brother, but let’s not act like he’s a sensitive artist being unreasonably tormented and victimised here. The story clearly implies he’s a bit of a bully on top of mashing up his toys.
Kids almost always anthropomorphize their toys. Sid may not have known they were sentient, but he must have been imagining that they were. His behavior firmly places him in the category of “burning bugs with a magnifying glass” kid characters who end up killing humans later in life.As others have pointed out, Sid also stole his sister’s toys and bullied her. As Pixar intended, he’s a diabolical little shit and deserves no sympathy.
He was still a creep though, and a bully too. And a whiny one at that. And does he have any friends? He was definitely a very messed up kid. Maybe he did manage to mature into a well-adjusted adult, win the 2009 Pizza Planet Franchisee of the Year Award, create an innovative life coaching program for homeless youth, and end up as the first openly gay Mayor of the Tri-County Area, for an unprecedented 3 terms.Or maybe he grew up to join the Sovereign Citizen movement, post an anti-Muslim manifesto on his FB page, and ultimately get gunned down after a botched robbery, and subsequent hostage taking, in a Pizza Planet.
Aren’t all Woody’s kinda dicks?
But all dicks are not Woodys
They can be, but you need to talk to your doctor about getting a prescription.
Yeah, I hate people who drive station wagons too.
True, Woody can be a bellend, but he wouldn’t sell you out to the Feds to save his own sorry skin as Buzz did. Allegedly.
After the first six words I was convinced this was going to be a post of pure dick jokes. It took me four re-reads to accept it wasn’t.
Given Tim Allen’s real name (Timothy Allen Dick), it kinda was.
To be fair, it did end up being about a giant dick who did a major dick move. Allegedly.
When you realised it wasn’t, did you feel shafted?
It’s fairly common knowledge by now, but it’s worth pointing out that Pixar always envisioned Woody as a jerk, and the challenge for the writers wasn’t making him flawed, it was toning him down enough that audiences wouldn’t absolutely hate him. In the original draft of Toy Story (which Disney execs disliked so much that they almost killed the movie outright) Woody was a straight-up asshole, and Buzz was so over-the-top stupid that he was hard to sympathize with. It made the whole story feel mean-spirited and unpleasant. Obviously the solution was to deal Woody’s jerkiness back and give him some redeeming qualities.
Also, let’s all enjoy the irony of looking at sexual harassing creep John Lasseter do yet another one of his tacked-on introductions. As John says, “it’s kind of rough to watch these days, but for history’s sake I think it’s important to see.” Yep.
Lassiter’s “aw shucks I’m just a big harmless nerd in silly Hawaiian shirts” persona always grated anyway, and is even creepier knowing what we know now. “Spring-Weiner” is a pretty great insult, though, and a shame they cut it
There’s a Pixar documentary on Netflix that links Woody’s original dickishness with Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney insisting that every animated feature be more “edgy.” Basically the premise is that Pixar, heading into its first feature and wanting to please the money guys, followed an executive’s notes too closely and ended up with a deeply flawed premise. That might just. be an apocryphal whitewash to make Lasseter et al look better in retrospect, but none of us will ever know the truth of the matter so take it for what it’s worth.It’s also true, though, that as a general rule Pixar movies are better in the second draft. The early storyboards for Monsters, Inc. also featured a little girl character who was a tyrannical, unlikeable bully. It took a few iterations before they landed on the toddler Boo character who was a lot more fun.
Some of the Pixar animators have stated they actually hardly do any advance planning while putting their films together, describing it as “jumping out a plane and hoping you can build a parachute on the way down.”
If that is really the case, then they have figured out the golden parachute and they’re making it work. Granted they’re part of the Mouse Club now, but their success speaks for itself. I remember watching Toy Story on opening day (Thanksgiving, 1995) with random family members in a cinema where we were the only ones in the seats. Does anyone think that happens anymore (well, ya know, the CV taken into consideration)?? Pixar was nothing back then, and we took a chance because, well, no Star Trek, no Star Wars re-release, and it was awesome.
Really?Maybe that applies for the animation portion (still seems doubtful) but in terms of storyboarding and story process, Pixar is infamous for going through hundred and hundreds of iterations before they settle on something.Especially in animation where a single scene changes costs them millions of dollars in, they want to make sure that everything is as locked in as possible.
i know it’s not technically Pixar, but Wreck-It Ralph also went through about a thousand iterations and revisions, the first 999 of which look like total trainwreck disasters. It’s a great movie, but woof, the early versions looked terrible. Same goes for Back to the Future, actually. And then there’s Star Wars … Hooray for second-guessing and editing, i guess!
Ed Catmull wrote a book called Creativity, Inc. in which he tried to boil down the elements of Pixar’s creative process that allows them to take early garbage and turn it into gold. It doesn’t work in every case, of course, but the company does have a pretty great batting average.
Wasn’t that one of Whedon’s important contributions – getting the “buddy comedy” aspect of it right away and realising Woody could continue to be a dick if it was in service to he and Buzz becoming friends.
yeah came here to post that — I’ve heard Whedon say when they brought him on, his first reaction was, “jeez why is the main character such an asshole? look — jealousy can make a fundamentally good person do fucked up things, but this guy’s missing the fundamentally good part.”
Yep. That and the whole Buzz not realising that he is a toy bit. Which was definitely an important part of the story, I’d say.
The difference is that it’s not important to see John Lasseter. Seeing his name in the credits? Sure. Seeing his face? Nope. When they released the Studio Ghibli movies outside of the Disney imprint, I was really excited to replace my old DVDs. Partly because they look great in Blu Ray, partly because my kids don’t need the Disney logo attached to every fucking thing, and mostly (if I’m honest) because I was so sick of fast forwarding past that doofus’ mandatory introductions.
HI I’M JOHN LASSETER, I’M HERE BECAUSE DISNEY THINKS YOU NEED SOMEONE TO SELL THIS MOVIE TO YOU EVEN THOUGH YOU ALREADY PAID MONEY FOR THIS DVD. I SEE YOU CLICKING THE CHAPTER FORWARD BUTTON, BUT THIS PART IS UNSKIPPABLE. NOTHING CAN SAVE YOU FROM LISTENING TO ME EXPLAIN THE PLOT OF THE MOVIE TO YOU BEFORE YOU SEE IT. NOW, YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING WHY THEY DON’T JUST LET MIYAZAKI INTRODUCE THE MOVIE HIMSELF. HERE IS THE ANSWER: SHUT UP.
DO YOU LIKE MY HAWAIIAN SHIRT? HOW ABOUT MY HAND ON YOUR LEG? YEAH, IT DOESN’T MATTER. In at least one of them he refers to Miyazaki as his “good friend,” which 1) probably counts as slander at this point, and 2) is super fucking weird. Seriously, you’re name-dropping the guy who directed the movie you’re forcing people to watch you introduce? Are you speaking to people more familiar with the name John Lasseter than the name Hiyao Miyazaki? Because that’s like 0% of the population, guy.
It was definitely the right idea to cut the bit where Woody calls Buzz a “beta-cuck” and rants at the other toys for being part of “the deep state agenda”.
“I’m a veteran!” “Anybody can be a veteran! I’m an alpha!”- Deleted scene from Toy Story (1996)
While Woody had his moments I always found Buzz far more dislikable,even before my knowledge of Tim Allen could influence my feelings about the character. We can all be jerks from time to time but few of us are aggressively delusional and insist on trying to force others to share our fantasies of power and importance. I think being a dick is a pretty natural reaction when you think you’re being superseded by an unpleasant lunatic.
To be fair to Buzz (not Tim Allen) he had no idea that his delusions weren’t real, and when he found out that he was *just* a toy it shattered him until Woody helped him realize the upside. They brought that up again in the second one when all the Buzz Lightyear dolls thought they were real and attacked Andy’s Buzz because he was a “deserter” or something along those lines. I still liked Woody more though. But Mr. Potato Head most of all, especially after he got married and adopted all those kids and mellowed out.
The idea that all you needed for Mr. Potato head to incarnate was something to stick his parts onto – like a tortilla – was genius.
I don’t know, seems about as genius as having slinky dog act like a dog and a slinky.The original Mr. Potato Head toy was plastic parts with pins that you could stick into a (real) potato.
So was the bit with the aliens and the claw. That was brilliant.
Mr. Dowd, it brought me great joy this morning to wake up to see this is a new feature. I was born the same year Toy Story came out and feel very lucky to have grown up on Pixar’s first eleven films. They truly kept hitting it out of the park up to Cars 2 and almost every film from that era is very meaningful to my childhood self.In fact, my mother took my older brother and I to the theatre to see Toy Story shortly after I was born, which meant this is likely the first movie I ever went to the theatre for (though apparently you’re not supposed to bring a month-old baby to the movies, right?)
“I was born the same year Toy Story came out”.Well, you can just get the fuck off my lawn.
Interesting in retrospect that the well-meaning nice guy who just happens to be delusional for the first half of the film got played by Tim Allen where the selfish, petulant, jealous wannabe got played by Tom Hanks. One would think the casting should be reversed, but Hanks totally made it work. This is like the one role Allen does where I disagree with Ricky Gervais’s mostly spot-on joke about him in comparison to Tom Hanks.
Joss Whedon has said pretty much none of his stuff wound up in the finished film, beyond the basic idea of a sweet and insecure T-Rex.
Perhaps it was for the best, as Joss Whedon probably wrote in tiny girl toy who kicked ass and also the camera held on her feet sometimes.
He also wrote Slinky dies in an expected way toward the end.
He also had Mr. Potatohead attempt to rape Ripley with a dick that looked like an earwig, instead of merely viewing her as a mother figure.
I can confirm this! Barbie would have shown up in the first movie in Whedon’s version, based on Sarah Connor so heavily that her first line would have been “Come with me if you want to live.”
“I can never have children. So you see, you’re not the only monster on the team.”“Uh, none of us can have children. We’re made of plastic.”
Uh, not true. He’s admitted a few times that the whole idea of Buzz not believing he is a toy came from him. (And more importantly the folk behind the film have said that too.) Which I’d say is a pretty important part of the finished film.
The T-rex is his favourite part though.
so i guess this section is just gonna be a series of articles about pixar movies? yeesh.
I’m holding out hope “The Pixar Moment” will also cover some of Jim Jarmusch’s later work.
This lengthy article on Woody could have easily been condensed to “Stupid fucking white man.”
That is the best insult in cinema history.
If you have not seen the indigenous zombie flick Blood Quantum, Gary Farmer is in it and gets to reprise that line!
So could this comment
The segment in ‘Coffee and Cigarettes’ where Lightning McQueen and Mike Wazowski discuss Tesla coils as they smoke incessantly is a masterwork of understated surrealism.
Why, yes. What an unexpected turn for a series entitled The Pixar Moment” to take, focusing on the movies of Pxar. I feel concerned that the person holding a gun to your head forced you to click on an article illustrated by a picture of a Pixar character, with a title referencing a Pixar movie in a feature called the Pixar Moment and it turned out to be about *gasp* a Pixar thing.Pixar.
hey man long time av club reader so yeah, i try to read all the new articles every day. over the last few years the amount of content like this on the site, deep dives, have become fewer and far between and while i’m glad that this section will allow the writers to get regular paycheques, personally this just seems like boring, well-tread territory, especially compared to similar sections like the popcorn champs or when romance met comedy.this feels like the kind of thing a lesser, av-club-rip-off site would have done in like 2013. just feels dated and obvious. also didn’t they do a segment like this a few years ago, too? i feel like i remember a ‘pixar-centric’ article series.anyway, it was a bummer for me because i was excited about a new features series, but am disappointed by the topic. i then read it and left a comment.
that being said i appreciate snark as much as the next person so yeah, clicking on ‘that pixar moment’ and complaining about it being about pixar is, admittedly, corny!
“i appreciate snark as much as the next person”OK, that “long-time av club reader” part checks out.
been training my whole life.
Apparently not long enough.
They did a similar feature last year leading up to the release of Avengers: Endgame called “The Marvel Moment.”
Pixar has had a massive influence on animated films since it first started releasing shorts, to the point where it’s taken for granted, so I’m happy to see an excuse for a retrospective. This one was kind of obvious, but across the full filmography there should be some interesting opportunities.
You can’t really compare something that runs every day with a series that run every other week. In that context, these seem pretty well done.
Its not mentioned in the intro but, with Toy Story turning 25 this year, it seems a good time to do deep dives over their filmography. Maybe it would have been timed around the actual anniversary or the release of Soul (as The Marvel Moment series was timed around the release of Endgame) but given the odd times and lack of much pop culture news, it’s an easy series of articles to fill the site outside of ‘This is streaming’ and ‘Here’s something from the archives’.
i get the thought process and it really doesn’t bother me that much. i think i just miss the abundance/range of writing/discussion that used to be on this site so it was a bummer to see a ‘new thing’ that doesn’t feel new or interesting.
But it’s not about Trump or Tiger King and it’s not an article about a tweet that’s full of other people’s reaction tweets, so I’ll take it!
I’m down for some Pixar. Would love for them to do like Tom’s “Box Office Champs”/”History of Violence” features, and just run the gamut. I’d love to get into what the heck happened with movies like The Good Dinosaur and Brave.
I would really love it if Tom did a feature in the same vein as Box Office Champs/History of Violence/Age of Heroes covering the history of animation starting from the 30s, which would certainly end up featuring a lot of Pixar, but would hopefully highlight some less well known features as well. (Like an old favourite of mine, ‘Twice Upon a Time’.)
“Woody can be selfish, vain, resentful, churlish and petty.” Like most kids. Now I understand at least part of why the character registered so well with (now) generations of children.
Woody was pretty mean, but it was also easy for youths like myself to emphasize with feelings of being replaced. Like getting a new sibling or your best friend has a new friend and you feel like a third wheel. Also Buzz is pretty annoying, he’s cocky and so self-assured, but they balance it out by not making him taunt Woody either.
Buzz didn’t need to taunt him. The moment Woody realizes he’s standing on a new Buzz Lightyear bedspread pretty much said “scoreboard!”
I remember that feeling of being replaced as my parents’ favourite child, also by a plastic spaceman toy. They loved that thing.
Can you blame them?
I always wondered why, from the very beginning, Woody wasn’t given a “cowboy” drawl, even with Hanks voicing the role. Yet when his voice-string is pulled, he says things like “Yer mah faaav’rit dep-yew-tee!” Is this so meta that Woody not only knows he’s a toy, but he’s also an ACTOR, PLAYING the role of a cowboy? My head hurts.
Well, we find out later that he’s been around since the 50s/60s, it could be one of those cases where an accent just fades over time when a character (or a real life person) moves to a new location. ~40 years hanging around non-cowboys will do that to a guy.
Now I wish they’d taken it further and given him a posh British accent.“Buzz, you absurd poppinjay, you’re no cosmonaut! A toy you are, and as a toy you shall behave, dash it!”
Up will be that heart-wrenching opening montage; Monsters, Inc. the chase through the door vault; The Incredibles when Dash runs on water (proving it’s Objectivist propaganda); and Cars 1-3 when the credits roll.
The late, great Rod Serling influenced every writer from Stephen King to Vince Gilligan, also left quite an impression on the original TS writers, who were particularly influenced by this classic Twilight Zone episode.
Damn!
“he remains relatable in his insecurity” Hanks may be America’s Dad now (although I think of him more as America’s Evil Grifting Edgar Allan Poe Devotee) but that insecurity was his wheelhouse for a good chunk of his early career, right? Splash, Big, Joe Vs. The Volcano, even Sleepless In Seattle — he was very good at playing someone who didn’t have their shit together but was trying, sometimes wildly, do right. Even if he could be a dick at times, you could tell his heart was in the right place. Except when he killed that hooker.
I came in here to say the same thing, this role works incredibly because of Tom Hanks, who has quite a few roles where he can be a lout, but because he’s Tom Hanks, we know there’s a heart of gold in there that will come out. On top of those movies you mentioned, “A League of Their Own” and “You’ve Got Mail” are a couple of other ones where he knowingly is a jerk at times but comes through in the end. Woody is a character that plays right into those strengths.
Oh, great call on League Of Their Own. More drunken lout Tom Hanks, dammit!
He also passed on hooking up with any number of smoking hot chicks at his bachelor party, rather than cheat on Tawny Kitaen.
Tom Hanks IS Chuck Finley IN: Send Me An Angel
He was in consideration for Groundhog Day. Woulda been totally different, but I bet he’d have nailed it.
I think he would have been great, it IS Tom Hanks and he’s just as skilled at losing his shit as Bill, not to mention all the warm notes he could crush in his sleep. I think the main difference is that with Hanks, even if he’s a jerk, we have a sense his character doesn’t fully mean it, he’s just misguided, too prideful, or in the case of ALOTO, a drunk. With Murray, we absolutely believe a Murray character is an unrepetent PRICK until outside forces shake him out of it (see also: Scrooged, even Ghostbusters).
I always loved ‘Money Pit’/’The Burbs’ Tom Hanks: a guy with a seemingly normal life who loses it in hilarious fits of impotent rage. “America’s Dad” Hanks is a little less to my taste.
“the audience is watching him from behind a pair of flimsy cardboard glasses”The meaningless gibberish of this is going to keep me up tonight, I can already tell.
[…] regardless of whether the audience is watching him from behind a pair of flimsy cardboard glasses.What back alley 3D theaters have you been going to?
“You’re mocking me, aren’t you?” is probably the line that most of my family remembers (and quotes) the most from probably any Pixar movie. Tim Allen may be a real life prick, but man I can’t imagine anyone else being Buzz.
“The word I’m looking for I can’t say because there are pre-school toys present” is very high on my list of favourite Pixar lines.
See also: Galaxy Quest.
Which is funny because the role was initially pitched to Billy Crystal, who turned it down (and regretted so much he jumped at the chance when they came calling again for Monsters, Inc.). But considering how pitch-perfect Allen and Crystal are in their Pixar roles, one of those things that worked out best for everyone.
Crystal’s voice doesn’t begin to fit Buzz, and 25 years ago if Tim Taylor Allen had been given the option to choose what sort of toy he’d want to be, it’s Buzz. Did this movie kick off the concept of casting high-profile stars for cartoons, and marketing on the backs of their names?
I would say the sequel moreso, which I believe actually had the leads’ names on the poster. There were a few animated films prior to that had some big stars in the cast, like The Lion King (which feels like the codifier of giving virtually all the parts to known names), Rescuers Down Under, and Ferngully.
May be, but allow me to remind you about “Gay Purr-ee,” in 1961, whose marketing was specifically targeted to tell you that, my god, Judy Garland and Robert Goulet are doing the voices of a CARTOON!!!
Nah, Aladdin had Robin Williams and then Mulan had Eddie Murphy.
No, that would be Aladdin:
No, if you were to ask Lindsay Ellis, it really started with Robin Williams in Aladdin….With the irony being that Robin Williams did not want his name plastered all over Aladdin and wanted it to be a surprise. Obviously, Disney marketing had a different idea, which is why he didn’t voice Genie in the 2nd Aladdin.
On top of being a surprise, he didn’t want his name overshadowing the movie and he definitely didn’t want his voice all over the merch — he did it for the love of animation and didn’t want the movie to resemble a star vehicle for himself. And the powers that be REALLY pulled one over on him.
No, that’d be Aladdin. Robin Williams basically created the “live action star as voice actor” that’s been the standard ever since, for good or for ill (I’d definitely argue for ill but man Williams killed as Genie and Aladdin made mad bank so it’s hard to argue with results)
I for one would have much preferred Patrick Warburton as Buzz. Funnily enough, he ended up voicing Buzz in the spin-off cartoon about Space Command.
Perhaps it says more about my life than it should, but a sarcastic “Oh no! The orphans!” gets a surprisingly heavy rotation in my vernacular.
I look forward to the tightly argued, capacious piece on why Mrs. Incredible is so hot.
Don’t be ridiculous. This is the AV Club, not the New Yorker.
That’s still very high on my list of “maybe that’s just a you thing” moments.
At least with her it’s about 90% the voice so you’re not worried about the fact she’s a cartoon.Well obviously I can’t speak for everyone.
I mean, that is an absolute goddamn dumptruck right there…
They don’t call her Mrs. Incredible for nothing!
She can do side bends or situps, but please don’t lose that butt
“The Pixar Moment (That I Was Asked by Security to Put My Pants Back On and Leave the Matinee Screening of ‘The Incredibles’).”
Around the time of the second movie’s release, I overheard some boys around the elementary school proclaiming that Mrs. Incredible is, in fact, thick.Actually, I believe in that particular context of the use of the vernacular of the youth, “thick” should be spelled with two c’s.
insert “hello fellow teens” gif here
Woody is all of us. Everyone is capable of being petty and jealous but also a good friend and heroic. Which is why he’s one of the best characters in film history. Fight me.
Well argued, but everyone knows the greatest moment in Toy Story is the shark who wears Woody’s hat and announces “I’m Woody! Howdy howdy howdy!”.
Came here to say this. Pleased that I am not alone.
It’s funny even without knowing The Far Side original. There’s something about a terrible and bare-bones impression that really tickles me.
I can attest to that, having never even known to this moment that it was a reference to something else. That’s how you do it, DreamWorks!
Good grief, I haven’t seen this movie in at least a decade but that’s no excuse for forgetting such a great Far Side reference. Thank you for the reminder.
Ah ha.Ah haaaaaaaaaa.(Gimme that.)
Commenting to send extra love for this comment. That bit still makes me cackle every time.
When my parents were in the midst of a painful divorce, my dad took me on a short trip to Universal Studios in FL. We had some awkward conversations, as only a 12 year-old girl and her beloved dad can have, but mostly just hung out and enjoyed each other’s company. My best memory is sitting in our hotel room watching this movie. This scene cracked us up. For the next 18 years, we would dust this off at random times to make each other laugh. My dad passed away five years ago and this just brought a tear to my eye, but in the nicest of ways. Thank you!
Thank you for taking my reference to a fun joke and making such a beautiful comment about it! I’m sorry for you loss – as someone who bonded with his dad over films and also lost him I can relate to your post and how wonderful such memories can be.
My sister was 4 when this movie came out and to this day blames it for her packrat tendencies. She never wanted to hurt anything’s feelings.
XD
The teddy bear I had from before I can remember still resides at my parents’ house. I pick him up and hug him like he’s alive every time I’m there, and say goodbye when I’m leaving.
And what does he say back?
A couple of months ago, I rewatched this series in the lead up to finally seeing Toy Story 4. And I don’t think it’s crazy to compare the Toy Story series to movies like the Antoine Doinel Adventures, the Up Series, or the Before Trilogy. Like those movies, Toy Story follows a character as he goes on a complex life trajectory. He starts out a bit selfish and insecure, tries to come to terms with the the transients of all things, and finally decides in his twilight years to choose personal fulfilment over duty. It’s an absolute miracle that these movies exist, and I love every one of them for different reasons.
Yeah, I thought Toy Story 4 was fine, but the ending added to a pretty cool and mature arc for Woody.
I think after the emotionally draining third film, it was actually a smart to make a movie that was a bit more contained in its ambition.
I too remember thinking that the film felt a little slight while watching it, but then the ending hit me unexpectedly. In the trajectory of these movies, Toy Story 4 feels like the denouement. But it works in large part because it’s a part of the character’s longer journey. For me, anyway, Toy Story 4 wouldn’t have had the same impact if I hadn’t just watched the first three movies.
Tom Hanks’ voice certainly endears us to Woody on a subliminal level for sure. Pixar gets away with his behavior for all the reasons the article mentions, but also simply because they were smart enough to establish his likeable features
first. The movie starts with how great he is as a leader to the rest of the toys, so everything that happens afterwards is him out of character, which makes it so amusing. It’s also amusing that his authority has never been challenged, and suddenly he’s enacting the other big motif of the movie: he’s acting like a child.
Yeah, he’s thrown completely off his game by Buzz’s arrival. Not just that he’s Andy’s new favorite, but the other toys think he’s pretty cool too.
The movie starts with how great he is as a leader to the rest of the
toys, so everything that happens afterwards is him out of character, which makes it so amusing.
Yeah, I think that’s really important. If we don’t get Woody being a well liked leader, he’s just a sociopath. Instead, he’s in a comparative position to Buzz.
I honestly have a hard time watching these scenes anymore because they just remind me what an absolute chode Tim Allen turned out to be.
The true antagonist of Toy Story is Woody himself. We watch as he battles his own insecurities, desires and prejudices. Think of the extremes that Woody goes to keep his place as top cowboy in Andy’s room. He is so unsure of himself that he attempts to imprison Buzz behind Andy’s desk and instead knocks him out of a window! Then, when the truth is revealed, Woody sets out to rescue Buzz not out of guilt or remorse, but instead to regain his stature amongst his fellow toys. It is not until enduring the final conflicts, reaching the last moments of the film when Woody literally removes his hands from his eyes that he acknowledges all his wrongs at last. Buzz answers with total humility and grace.Woody: Hey, Buzz, you’re flying!Buzz: This isn’t flying. This is falling—with style.Toy Story is a story we all face in life about finding our place. It is of the conflicts we face not just with the outside world, but mostly within ourselves. Woody had for a very long time what he wanted in his struggle for self. Then it all of that was dashed with the presence of a new and strange outsider. Through Woody’s trials and tribulations, he overcomes the demons within. And of all of Pixar’s characters, that makes the little stuffed cowboy toy the most human.
I think our definition of hero has narrowed over the years and I’m glad Pixar remembered that there are different types. Yes, they can be perfect and inspirational (Superman, Wonder Woman, etc…) but the earliest heroes history has given us came from Ancient Greece and they were often anything but. And Woody might begin as a jerk, but so does Peter Parker in the oh so wonderful first Spider-Man issue. A hero that overcome flaws and/or difficulties that we all possess is very often a better inspiration than someone who is from the start obviously better than us.
The thing that immediately impressed me about Toy Story, as a 35 year old male when it was released, was how finely tuned the toys were as nostalgia delivery devices. Not for a moment, and this was the intended effect, did I identify with Andy, or even have anything he particularly did or said trigger an intense recollection of my own childhood. It was the toys and not their owner, who did that trick so deftly. Always wondered how that part of the development went — Woody was a toy who would have been then old and from an earlier generation when I was Andy’s age, whereas Buzz was conversely from the then future, in my recollection of my own childhood. This had the effect of freeing me and de-freighting me so that I could just project back and inhabit an idealized childhood for an hour or so. When did Toy Story occur? What era? Whichever works for the most and more accurately individual viewers.This fantasy had to have edges (who among us had a gauzy, gossamer childhood?) or it would have been vaporous and forgettable. So yes, Woody threw and caught some elbows, but in the end (and really by the middle), he had to be a stand-up-guy pull-toy, or else we would not, 25 years on, be revisiting the worst aspects of our childish selves.
Woody is clearly your standard Jack Lemmon character, but with Lemmon’s white-male-asshole-but-with-a-good-heart voiced by Tom Hanks, so that we are more inclined to sympathize with the character.In my older age, I realize that perhaps 1 third of comedy involves us rooting for annoying assholes, especially if they talk fast and, if possible, also cleverly.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Toy Story, the first feature-length film from Pixar.YOU SHUT YOUR FILTHY LYING MOUTH AV CLUB I’M NOT OLD
I saw this at the theater as a young lad and the fact I have gray hair now is putting me in a Forky-level state of existential crisis.
My youngest sister was born the year the first one came out, and now all I can think about is how she is turning 25 this year, and I AM NOT OKAY.
Whadda you lookin’ at, ya hockey puck?!
all-time favorite random line ever.
A tangent: as good as ‘Toy Story’ is, I have another film in the “toys acting like people” genre that I love a lot more, and it’s called ‘Small Soldiers’. It kind of takes the Buzz Lightyear idea – a toy that takes itself seriously – and goes further with it. A toy company makes a line of action figure with AI chips so they can “play back” with kids, and creates the Commando Elite, soldiers who are programmed to win, and the Gorgonites, aliens who are programmed to hide. But the company advertises the soldiers with the tagline “Everything else is just a toy”, which the Commando Elite take literally; they think even humans are just inferior toys, and threaten to kill anyone who keeps them from the Gorgonites. It’s a little cheesy, but a lot of fun, and it has Tommy Lee Jones voicing a psychotic action figure.
Until Bumblebee came along, it was the only good live-action Transformers movie.
There’s a scene where a Commando Elite quips “What’s the matter, kid, don’t ya like NINE INCH NAILS” before shooting a bunch of roofing nails into Kevin Dunn’s leg.
Good movie.
I played an RTS game for PC about Small Soldiers where the two sides are evenly matched. This made the movie a bit of a disappointment where the Gorgonites are mostly useless cowards that the kids have to run around saving.
Deep cut, man. I haven’t seen that movie in at least 15 years.
Small Soldiers is like the cult film version of Toy Story. Of the two, I think I preferred Small Soldiers, I certainly had more toys at the time, and I loved the Commando Elite characters.
This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Pixar has inspired a lot of copy cats (actually not sure if toy story or this came first) and occasionally they are pretty dang great
This movie rocked. Wish they had made more, but then again, they probably would have ruined it with dumber and dumber sequels.
I wasn’t a fan — the tonal shifts between the Gorgonite moments and the siege of the CE never quite gel for me although it has its moments and it’s a GREAT cast — but man, Tommy Lee Jones is terrific leaning into his full TLJ persona. Up there with Under Siege in terms of wackadoodle Tommy performances, esp. the Patton riff where he hits all the jingoistic cliches in one go.
I feel like the headline and piece lean too much into the jerk-is-innovative thing. I mean, there’s a long history of the protagonists of cartoons being dicks — e.g., Donald Duck, Popeye. Hell, Bugs Bunny was pure prankster-asshole.
What’s interesting about Woody is the complexity, the three-dimensionality. That he’s a fully fleshed out character, not just a single character trait.
Yeah, and according to the Steve Jobs biography, Woody was even worse before being rewritten. Hanks apparently called him a “jerk”.
Woody’s unceasing assholery was my biggest problem with 4. In 1, Woody is an asshole who, by the end of the movie learns to not be an asshole by the other toys, and they all become closer because of it. Until 2, when Woody gets kidnapped, and actually thinks about leaving his toy friends for toys HE JUST MET, and has to actually be reminded that Andy fucking exists. And magically they are all friends again, mostly because 2/3 of the museum toys come live with them. Then in 3, Woody almost immediately abandons his “besties” because now he’s all back on the Andy Train and fuck those assholes! Why should he be getting played with when he could be sitting on a shelf being ignored by Andy?!?!! Though, amazingly he does head back to save them pretty early on this time. So he is almost incinerated with his friends and they have a touching moment and they are finally besties and shut up I’m not crying!And then 4 just tossed that shit right back in the incinerator. Woody is insufferable because he’s getting less play than he was apparently, like what, last week? Which was still way more play than he was getting on Andy’s shelf for at least 6 years! “Fuck you, friends, Forky is now more important than all of you and I’ve gone insane and the rest of this movie is going to be about me but Buzz will get some shitty B-Plot that will totally undermine the fact that we were both the stars of this series up until now!” And then another toy ONCE AGAIN makes him a non-asshole, but still, fuck those other toys because “BONNIE DOESN’T PLAY WITH ME ENOUGH, so See Ya, Bitches!” The moral of 4 was apparently: Once an asshole, always an asshole. Or: Apparently all that talk about being a family was bullshit.(In case you couldn’t tell, 4 dragged the other three Toy Storys down to its lowly ranking on my Pixar Ranking List. Fuck you, Woody; fuck you, Pixar; fuck you, Disney.)
TS4 sucks ass; I pretend it doesn’t exist. The Woody of 1-3 wouldn’t have done that, even if he could sometimes be greedy about Andy’s attention. He had come to learn that not all toys het played with all the time and that they have to be there for when the kid needs them the most. Abandoning Bonnie and everyone else before she could get rid of him forever and always was the asshole move.
That’s really a misreading of the movie.
In the beginning, Woody is concerned about Bonnie. He goes to Kindergarden with her, not because it will give him more opportunity to get played with, but because he thinks that she’ll be sad and he’s the one that can protect her and make sure she’s happy. That’s why when he gets to the school, he doesn’t act like a toy at all (as in, his goal isn’t to be played with). He’s her guardian. He shows up and makes sure she has the arts supplies she wants (and is thus able to make Forky). Then, he spends the vast majority of the movie trying to get Sporky to realize that he’s important to Bonnie. He’s explicitly not made about getting played with not enough, if he was he’d be thrilled about Sporky trying to commit suicide. Instead, it’s an inversion of Toy Story’s plot, instead of Woody pushing out a toy Andy likes better, Woody leaves Bonnie to save a toy she likes the most.“BONNIE DOESN’T PLAY WITH ME ENOUGH, so See Ya, Bitches!” The moral of 4 was apparently: Once an asshole, always an asshole. Or: Apparently all that talk about being a family was bullshit.The whole movie builds up to Woody realizing that he’s not needed anymore and that it’s ok. He can find personal fulfillment elsewhere. Bonnie doesn’t need him as a toy, in fact, he spent the movie basically filling a parental role. Buzz has the gang under control, Sporky is there for Bonnie. The ending is a meditation on gracefully accepting that sometimes fulfilling your mission is doing a good job so others can step in to your role. Unlike in the beginning of the movie, where Woody’s only sense of purpose is being the hero, he can find that elsewhere now.
Thank you. You put it perfectly. 4 is, fittingly, about moving on and out of your old role. It’s about finding somewhere you’re needed, and letting go of where you’re not.
I think this is a really compassionate reading of the fourth movie, and I respect your opinions, but Toy Story 4 was the only one of the whole series that I left the theater actually angry about how they treated these characters. (I’m also aware that I’m way too emotionally invested in the Toy Story movies, haha – my youngest sister was born in ‘95 and we’ve seen all of them in the theaters together. She will never, ever let me forget how I was practically in her lap crying at the end of the third one when it really looked like Pixar was sending their entire cast to a fiery grave.)
You should watch 4 again. Woody’s insecure again, yes, because time moves on and new troubles arise from unfulfilled needs. That’s the point.I hope you don’t simplify the people in your life the way you simplify these characters.
Scrooge McDuck says hi.
My kids have been watching these movies quite regularly for the past few months, and it’s hard to overstate how much I’ve come to despise Woody. The other day I walked in on them watching the part of TS3 where he refuses to shake Buzz’s hand as he leaves the gang — presumably forever — in the daycare center, and I couldn’t stop myself from saying “what a little prick” out loud.