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My Pre-Comments & Post-Review of Toy Story 3

I am about to FINALLY see Toy Story 3 today, so before I do I’ve made a list of hopes and predictions…

Things I want to see in Toy Story 3:

–A Western adventure imagination for Woody: nows the chance to match the Buzz space-adventure that turned out to be a video (with graphics that still don’t exist in video games 11 years later) at the beginning of Toy Story 2. Maybe Woody misses and partially regrets not going to the Japanese museum he could have gone to in T2 and longing to be the star even more now that he’s been unplayed with for years and goes into a fantasy or dream about the Woodys Roundup gang having a real adventure. I really hated that in Buzz’s video game he is still a toy though and although its certain that if a similar sequence is in T3, Woody will too be a toy, I really wish they would correct this and make him real. That means no doll hinges on his elbows and and knees, no pull string and no wooden head. Make him a real dude. won’t happen but I can dream about dreams in a fantasy movie.

–Sid & Hannah: we know Andy is is his late teens in the movie and unless his little sister Molly is away at camp or something, we’ll see her grown up too – now we just need to check in on Andy’s former next door neighbor and toy torturing punk, Sid and his sister. Not for more than a minute, but a brief cameo is eagerly anticipated.

–Another finely executed work-together plan: Toy Story 2’s sequences were mostly searching and fighting. in Toy Story 1, Woody hatches a collaborative plot to escape Sids house that utilizes all the toys strengths and it makes for an awesome montage. T3 sends the toys to a daycare so I’m guessing there is an escape involved there too, so I’m hoping for another “Legs… you’re with Ducky” attack plan.

–Unmutated, mutant toys: this one is partial cheating since I saw the beetle action figure in his intact form is in T3, but i’d like to see some of the others hopping around in the background here and there maybe.

–More toys from our childhood: Toy Story 2 introduced Barbie and the Rockem Sockem boxers and… that’s about it. the rest of the focus was on the Woodys Roundup gang and the cameos of toys from the T1. T3 has an opportunity to really go for it in this arena, especially since the setting is a Day Care. I wanna see plastic food, GI Joe type action figures, more plush animals, a Cabbage Patch and/or My Buddy/Kid Sister parody, more iconic oldschool trinkets – the works.

–Disposable new characters: dammit Pixar, you better handle this right… don’t give me any new characters I will want to see more of. Don’t be like Star Wars throwing General Grievious into the mix in the last act only to get rid of him an hour later and make me go “hey, we wanna see more a THAT guy”. This purple Teddy bear and whoever else is added better serve their purpose for moving the plot forward only and then EXIT before becoming distracting.

–Mr Potato Head putting his body parts on a tortilla: I’ve always wanted to see what would happen if — okay, just kidding. This one was added to the list in an UPDATE after I saw the movie… the rest were all genuine before-viewing predictions and hopes though.

UPDATE (with SPOILERS): No Sid or Hannah :(. bummer… Good movie though, however flawed with distracting foibles. Will do a video review with clips as soon as it comes out on DVD.
I have lots of comparisons to other movies (none that were intentional or at least obviously intentional homages or parodies). I’ll give away one…

There’s a scene where the toys lock hands and embrace an inevitable death (i cried) – which vindicates me since for a long time after seeing Aladdin when the palace tower is rolling down the mountain side and Aladdin balls himself up into it’s path, I had thought he was accepting that he was fucked and had decided to kill himself – only to by chance be lucky enough to have been in the hole of the window during the roll. On later viewings of the movie it is more obvious that he wasn’t giving up but rather saw the window and ducked into the roll to save, not kill himself. I felt dumb after the realization cuz it was like “duh, they’re not just gonna have people saying ‘well, i guess i die now, better embrace it’ in a Disney movie” and then BAM… 15 years later: exactly that happens.

Anyway, I brought that up cuz when the Toys bring themselves to be at peace with dying, Mr and Mrs Potato Head clutch each other as they roll towards death and it made me think of the old couple in bed as their cabin fills with water in Titanic…

It’s also pretty jarring that the main toys are the only ones to survive the holocaust of Andy’s growing up. No fucking Bo Peep though? Jesus… Molly is only like 12 years old. she didnt want a nice little lamp and girly figurine? evidently not since she doesn’t even want her Barbie. Peeps absence makes sense for the writers though: she’s made of porcelain – she couldn’t have gone on any of the adventures. she would have chipped, cracked and shattered in day care even if she was put on display somewhere and would have been destroyed beyond recognition at the trash dump so the choice was to either cut her out completely or repeat Toy Story 2’s formula of having her at the beginning – miss all the action – and then bookend her there at the end again. It was sad to see her go but my better judgment knew it was for the best. 🙁

Toy Story continued its Star Wars theme in this regard in that the farm boy who lost everything and then gained everything (Luke/Woody) looked like he would end up with the girl only to have a rivalry that later turned into a friendship with the space traveler (Han/Buzz) who ended up being the unlikely one to find love in the end.

Oops. Ima STFU before I give any more of my observations away…
Come see my video review of this in the fall 🙂

UPDATE: well bust my buttercups… I spit my apple juice out and leaned in close to the screen like a CSI detective as I found out that Sid Phillips is in fact in Toy Story 3 after all… behold. he is the garbage man who drums on the mailboxes as he comes to pick up the trash at each house. I still would have rather had this pointed out or better yet – have him see Woody on the ground and freak out in terror, but at least he is there and we can see what he’s up to: sporting a goatee, his childhood skull shirt and a lucrative career in waste management… very under-the-radar, Pixar… So far I think i’m the only one on the planet to have caught this, so when it becomes a more widely known Easter-egg in the movie (it’s not THAT hidden, after all, but no one that I know of has commented on it anywhere): remember where you saw it FIRST….