Deep Dive Pixar: Wes Looks at Toy Story 3

Welcome back to Deep Dive Pixar, the off-brand version of Deep Dive Disney that can be found at your local Dollar General. Today, we’re continuing the adventures of our favorite Toys as we look at Toy Story 3. This is a bit of an odd one for me. While I have watched and rewatched the first two Toy Story films almost ad nauseam, this was only my second viewing of Toy Story 3. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it and feel that it is a powerful film and a worthy entry in the franchise, but for whatever reason, it didn’t leave quite the same level of impact that the first two entries in the series did. Regardless, I very much enjoyed the experience of re-watching this movie and I look forward to analyzing it for this blog (though a lot of that may have something to do with the fact that one of my personal favorites, Tangled, being up next). As you may recall, last time around, Woody and the Toys welcomed Jessie and Bullseye into the Andy’s Room fold, thwarting the prospector’s efforts to get them all sold to a museum in Japan. However, despite the misguided actions of the antagonistic Prospector, he was right about one thing, children grow up and Andy is no different. As such, our film picks up years later and Andy Davis, having mostly outgrown his childhood playthings, is now in his late teens and bound for college and the future of our toy friends is most uncertain. Our heroes are faced with three options: Being thrown away, facing a possible eternity of storage in the attic or being donated to a day care center. While Woody, remaining fiercely loyal to Andy, votes attic since then he’ll be close if Andy needs him, the others think that the day care is their best bet. However, this assertion is very quickly proven wrong as the toys of Sunnyside Day Care must answer to a tyrannical teddy bear who runs the place like a prison, enjoying the suffering of those outside of his inner circle. Now it’s up to Woody to save his friends from a horrible fate and find their way home. Let us waste no further time and dive right into, Toy Story 3.

Main Character:

Once again, the spotlight falls on good old Sheriff Woody. I think the big issue this time around is Woody having the most difficulty of any of the Toys with the inevitability of Andy growing up. As we learned over the course of the series, Woody was Andy’s favorite since kindergarten and has likely been a part of the Davis family since some time before then. At the beginning of the movie, Woody seems to be in denial, feeling that Andy still needs him despite the fact that the toys have been confined to the box for years at this point. When Woody finds himself in Bonnie’s house, he is finally able to experience playtime again, experiencing what he’s been missing for all this time, and I think it’s here that Woody realizes, he can’t hold on to Andy any more than the now adult Andy should hold on to him. The purpose of a toy is to be there for a child that needs them, and as hard a pill as it may be for Woody to swallow, Andy doesn’t need him anymore, but Bonnie does. I also appreciate that, even as desperate as Woody may be to get back to Andy, Woody still drops everything when he learns his friends are in danger. While I think Toy Story 2 did more for Woody’s character development, this one advances his character quite nicely and brings the alluded to inevitability of Andy’s impending adulthood some satisfying closure.

Villain:

In my opinion, Losto Huggin’ Bear, voiced by Ned Beatty who unfortunately passed away earlier this year, might be the first truly malevolent villain we’ve seen in the Toy Story franchise. As we discussed with Sid, Sid was simply a troubled child who had no idea he was torturing sentient beings and in this movie, it appears he’s gotten his life together after Woody and the others scared him straight and seems genuinely happy in his job as a garbage man. And yes, the writers have confirmed that that was indeed Sid, they even brought back his original voice actor and everything. Prospector was definitely more of an active antagonist, but despite doing some nasty things to accomplish his goals, he genuinely believed that he was doing Woody and the others a favor. Lotso on the other hand seems to simply take pleasure in the suffering of others. While at first, Lotso seems a kind and benevolent father figure to the wayward toys who find themselves at Sunnyside, it’s not long before the big bear’s true colors are revealed. Long ago, Lotso was lost by his previous owner, Daisy, and after a harrowing trip back to her, he found himself replaced. Seeing this rocked Lotso to his core and left him a bitter and cynical creature. Now, Lotso runs Sunnyside with the iron fist of a tyrant, coming across as one part prison warden and one part mafia boss. While certain privileges may be granted to Lotso’s inner circle, the truth of Lotso is that he is a miserable creature and wishes to inflict that same misery on everyone else. He does this by forcing new arrivals into the room with the very small children who will essentially torture them into submission so by the time they’ve “earned their due,” those toys are every bit as bitter and cynical as Lotso himself. Even after Woody saves his life, he still willingly leaves the toys to die in the incinerator. What a bastard. Frankly, being tied to the grill of a semi-truck was too good for him.

Side Characters:

The Andy’s room gang are all back and they’re all mostly unchanged, though I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that in the time since Toy Story 2, Jim Varney had unfortunately passed away, the role of Slinky this time around being filled, and filled well I might add, by Blake Clark. There are other little touches here and there that I appreciated like Jessie having what appears to be a sort of PTSD attack when the idea of storage in the attic comes up and Mrs. Potato Head’s missing eye being a major plot device used to keep an eye on what’s going on in Andy’s house. All good stuff.

Then of course, there’s our old favorite, Buzz Lightyear. Now, I’m just going to come out and say it, the writers clearly had no idea what to do with Buzz in the later movies. I mean, it makes sense since Buzz’s character arc came and went in the first movie, but the whole thing with the other Buzz in Toy Story 2 was a ton of fun and showed that even though he wasn’t the primary focus anymore, he still had a place in the franchise. However, for this movie and the one that comes after, Buzz seems to be relegated to Goofy shit that feels like a disservice to the character. Trust me, we’ll have plenty to say about that stupid “inner voice” nonsense once we get to Toy Story 4, but that’s still a long way off. Here, as amusing as Spanish Buzz may have been, it just further demonstrates how the writers were wasting a great character in Buzz Lightyear. As for new characters, we have a Barbie Doll being donated along with the Andy’s room gang voiced by the great Jodie Benson, and I can’t help but laugh at the fact that the literal Barbie Doll is somehow less of a vapid airhead than the other character Jodie Benson is well known for playing. Part of me feels that it would have been a cool easter egg to have Christopher Daniel Barnes play the Ken Doll in Lotso’s inner circle, but I’ll never be upset to hear Michael Keaton, even if the character himself is kind of an unfortunate queer stereotype.

Songs:

The only song I’d like to discuss is called Hay Un Amigo En Mi. My Spanish speaking readers have likely already deduced that this is a Spanish language cover of You Got a Friend in Me, played in reference to Buzz’s Spanish setting to close out the film. In my opinion, this version of the classic Disney song blows the original Randy Newman version, which I do enjoy, completely out of the water. Performed by the Gipsy Kings, who are also the people who did the Spanish cover of Hotel California from my favorite movie, The Big Lebowski. Unlike its predecessor, this song is a lot more fun and fast paced and makes you want to dance along with it. Great stuff.

Memorable Scenes:

There are two memorable scenes in this film worth discussing and they happen at the beginning and end of the film. First, we’ll be discussing the opening scene. Throughout the franchise we’ve seen playtime from a human perspective, and it’s more or less what you’d expect, a kid clanging his toys together while a fun and creative story plays out in his head. Here, for the first time, we actually get to see that story from the Toys’ point of view, and it’s exactly how Andy envisions it, epic in scale. Woody, Buzz and Jessie must stop a train robbery perpetrated by the Potato Heads under the guise of Black Bart and Black Betty, but once they’ve dealt with them, they must deal with their maniacal boss, the evil Professor Porkchop and his mighty Porkchop Laser. I swear, the Toy Story movies keep making me combine words that just don’t go together. At least Porkchop Laser sounds better unnerving than Potato Sex but it’s still weird. Also, not for nothing, between this and The Underminer from the end of The Incredibles, John Ratzenberger playing a supervillain will never not be hilarious to me. There’s even an awesome callback to the opening of the first movie what with the whole forcefield dog/forcefield dog eating dinosaur exchange.

The other scene, well, you already know what it is. It’s the tear-jerking scene where Woody gives his toys away to Bonnie. You can really feel the emotion when Andy gives away the toys one by one, explaining to Bonnie what each of them meant to him. It’s like he wants to express the significance of each of them to make sure that they’ll be taken care of. Finally, he gets to Woody, and if you don’t cry when Andy gives away Woody. At first, Andy isn’t sure if he’s ready to get rid of Woody, but once he sees little Bonnie’s eyes light up, he can tell that this is the right thing to do. The way Andy describes Woody makes him sound like more than just a Toy. He describes how Woody will never give up on you, and he’ll be there for you no matter what. I wonder if, on some subconscious level, Andy knew that Woody was alive and knew all he’s gone through just to make him happy, and now, by giving him to Bonnie, he’s returning the favor. And after one last playtime, Andy heads off to college, leaving his old friends for the last time. And then, right at as Andy drives out of sight, Woody, happy for better days to come, but still forlorn about losing his best friend, says his farewell to Andy with three simple words. “So long, partner.” While this movie may not have had as much of an impact on me as the first two, I still say that this is easily the most powerful scene in the entire franchise.

Story:

As I’ve said in my last two Toy Story articles, there is a greater story being told over the course of the trilogy. Well, here we are in Toy Story 3 and, well, here we go. First, pay close attention to Andy’s age in each of the films. In the first movie he’s very young, maybe five or six. Toy Story 2, he’s a little older, possibly eight or nine, a bit more mature but definitely still at the age where he’d love playing with his toys. By movie three, he’s in his late teens and right about to head off to college. One look at the years that the various films were released in and you quickly deduce that this is absolutely no coincidence. Andy, throughout the trilogy, has not only been aging in real time but by the time we reach the end of the trilogy, he’s about the same age as the young children who saw the first movie back in 1995. When you really look at it, these movies are about growing up, but more than that, this movie is, and always has been, about making the most of ones childhood because it’s over all too quickly. Not only is this story told from a unique point of view, that of one’s childhood playthings, but it is also a nice message that young children can comprehend and those who saw all three movies as they grew up can one day pass along to their own children.

The Dark Disney Factor:

We’ve already discussed in our last Toy Story Article how the World of Toy Story is an absolute fucking nightmare, and yeah, that continues here what with the Toys being horribly abused by both small children and their fellow toys and the daycare center being run like Shawshank State Prison. There’s also this weird bit where Mr. Potato Head has to put his parts into a piece of flat bread and later a pickle that’s just… really unsettling to me for some reason. And naturally, since Potato head turns himself into a pickle and pop culture is what it is in 2021, I am legally obligated to do this. *breathes in*

I TURNED MYSELF INTO A PICKLE MORTY!! I’M PICKLE RIIIIIICK!!!!!!

Finally, there’s the incinerator scene. A scene in which all of these characters whom we’ve come to know and love over these past fifteen years are almost horribly melted in a garbage incinerator. It’s pretty much as fucked up as it sounds. What I like about this scene is how, when the Toys believe that there’s no way out, they all silently agree to accept their fate together. That’s kind of nice.

Final thoughts: While it doesn’t have the same nostalgia factor as the first two for yours truly, this is still an incredibly fun and powerful film that I enjoyed immensely and would have been a great note to end the franchise on. We’ll see if Toy Story 4 does better when we get there, but next time, we’ll be covering one of my personal favorites when Deep Dive Disney looks at Tangled.