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Instead of prolonging the panic and fight for survival, the scene opts for a meditative melancholy. It's in that adrenaline-fueled sequence that the filmmakers do something that still leaves me speechless a decade after first seeing it. That only becomes more obvious once the prison break turns into a trip to fiery hell and the toys end up inside an incinerator. The point l is that, no matter how you try to frame Toy Story 3's character arcs, there's a sense of loss pervading every nook and cranny of the tale. Many things happen between the toy box and the idea of plushy escaped convicts, but that's the gist of it. The hierarchy of kindergarten playthings is a prison that needs escaping and that's precisely what Andy's old toys do, staging a prison break in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, the mercy of limbo soon proves to be the punishment of purgatory, as they are relegated to the Caterpillar Room with the younger, more brutal, youths, while only a select elite of toys is allowed in the comparative wonder of the Butterfly Room and its slightly older students. While their days as one kid's adored companion are over, the toys may still find purpose in giving joy to other children. That depressing premise is upended, first by Woody's stubbornness, his denial of toy Death, and then by a trip to the colorful limbo that is kindergarten. Getting old is never easy, becoming irrelevant is even worse, but we must accept things for fighting time is a battle that always ends in failure.
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Neither possibility fills them with joy but almost all of them seem resigned to that fate. For our plastic heroes, their future will be either the doom of the attic or a new existence forgotten on a shelf of Andy's new home. As for the toys, they must confront their obsolescence, their lack of importance in this new world of young adulthood. Childhood is over and childish things must be put away, life moves on and it's futile to pretend otherwise.
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From that montage, we cut to the dark interior of the toy box.Īndy, now grown up and getting ready to leave for college, has long ago stopped playing with his beloved toys. The texture of the image is itself an indicator of age, of a moment frozen in time, a moment lost. Still, once the time for plays is over, the film presents us with a montage of the little boy's childhood as captured by home video. What we're seeing is what Andy's imagination conjures when he is spending time with his toys, a representation of the emotion of childish games rather than a strict depiction of their reality. Toy Story 3 opens with a lavish western fantasy, an exciting set-piece that's as action-packed as it is playful.
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The very way the movie starts is a heartbreaking portrayal of the passage of time, an unstoppable force of change that makes even the brightest happiness into an ephemerous thing. The objectives of their creators only go so far, for the experience of the audience is as important as authorial intent. Whether or not they were made with such portentous meanings in mind, it's easy to find meditations on faith, belief, devotion, life, and death hiding within the narratives of these animated classics.
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However, that doesn't mean such readings are unearned. Finding deep adult themes in the Toy Story films has been a favorite past time of many a critic and cinephile since the first movie was released back in 1995. The reason for my morbid remembrance is that few films have ever captured the dreaded feeling that comes with the confrontation of one's mortality as well as the third cinematic adventure of Woody and Buzz. I lived, but I'll always remember the feeling of thinking I was going to die, the fear, and the resigned acceptance of it.Īnyway, let's talk about Toy Story 3 on its 10th anniversary… I couldn't breathe, I was alone and started to lose consciousness from lack of oxygen, gasping for air while the world around me was going dark. It was late at night, I was eating something and a piece of food got stuck in my throat. The third moment where I contemplated my death in a very immediate way is, weirdly enough, the one that still scares me the most. From the most searing pain I've ever felt to internal bleeding after surgery, it all seemed like it was going to end. The second time was considerably less spectacular, caused by gallbladder stones and some incredible bouts of bad luck. The first was in 2011, in Tokyo when the Tōhoku earthquake happened, making me stare in horror as skyscrapers swiveled around me, looking like they could fall at any moment. Have you ever thought to yourself "my time has come to an end, I'm going to die"? I have, in at least three instances.
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