Film of the Week: Toy Story 4

Spoilers throughout

I was not expecting how this film ends. I was, however, fully expectant of being completely emotionally broken by the end of the film. Toy Story 4 was not going to be made until John Lasseter liked the script. Toy Story 3 was the perfect ending to a trilogy, by passing the toys onto a new owner, Bonnie, beginning a new era. Toy Story 4 is continuing on from that life-changing moment, and the toys embark on another epic adventure, in the form of a road trip to a fair, but with a new toy. Forky is most definitely a toy, much to everyone’s and his surprise. Synonymous to Buzz Lightyear’s first moments with Andy, discovering and learning that he’s a toy, Forky follows the same path, but with Bonnie.

Having grown up with the Toy Story franchise, when Andy passed them onto someone who would play with them more than he would as he was heading off to college, it truly felt like an end of an era. When Pixar announced they were in the process of making a fourth, whilst of course the first question was “what will they do?” but this is Pixar we’re talking about. They don’t mess around. They know what they’re doing. So, you can imagine how it must have felt when Woody said goodbye to the gang I had grown up with. That was heart breaking, but was the perfect progression for those characters.

Bonnie is not Andy, that was instantly established as the film starts off, and with Woody having been in Andy’s arms for so long, it’s understandable he’s having a hard time moving on, and even harder still when Bonnie doesn’t pick him to play with but instead with the rest of the toys, even making Jessie the new sheriff. Woody had always had a crush on Bo Beep, that was seen way back in Toy Story 1, so when they meet up again and get the opportunity to stay together since Bonnie doesn’t play with Woody anymore, it made sense to stay with Bo.

If you want to observe Pixar’s incredible leaps in animation, then look at the Toy Story franchise, because if you compare the animation in Toy Story 4 with the first film, they have come a long way since then. The main reason why they focused on toys with their first feature length film is because they couldn’t quite get humans right – they just looked like plastic toys themselves. Now, Andy and the rest of the humans look like actually people. Pixar has developed so many kinds of software to create what we would consider the mundane in everyday life, like bin bags – it’s amazing seeing everything they’ve created, learnt, and taught themselves over the years in one film, I was almost in tears just thinking about that.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a Pixar film is it wasn’t filled with plenty of Easter eggs, and I did spot a couple here and there, but given the next opportunity I will absolutely comb through the film to make sure I pick up as many as I can – the antique shop had probably so many I missed more than half.

Keep up the good work Pixar – I’m already looking forward to your next film, Onward.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)