My take is that Woody got into the “college” box and saw that Andy had taken his picture with Woody and Buzz as a keepsake so he already had a reminder of their past together. Combine that with Mom saying that we will always be together in our hearts and I think Woody came to the realization that his physical time with Andy had run its course. Therefore, he came up with a way to stay with his toy family and continue their play times with a new owner.
I just got back from taking my two kids to see this. As soon as we got back to the house, my eight year-old daughter went straight to her room, rummaged through her basket of stuffed animals and pulled out the ones that have been sitting at the bottom for well over a year. She’s now sitting with them on the couch in the living room.
Dude… that’s adorable.
Don’t let her watch Saw.
I very much wonder what kind of effect this will have on today’s kids when the time comes to grow up and decide what to do with their childhood toys. An entire generation of girls afraid to hurt their Barbie dolls’ feelings?
I was just about to award Gallant with +2 points for making me laugh with his ‘hurt locker’ comment in the podcast thread when I read this.
Judges ruling: +2 points for you.
-xtien
This definitely. I leaned over and explained that to my 9 year-old daughter. She was really into it, as she’s at the stage where she’s dropping 2 toys that have been her constant companions for the past 6 years or so, and during the past 2 years we’ve watched the first 2 movies. She even said “…Just like me and Doggie?”.
I thought the film was a bit on the melancholy side, with a bit too much smaltz, but I didn’t watch it for me. The adults with us got more of a kick from Spanish Buzz than the kids did.
Saw it at a Drive-In. For the last 5 years, we happen to take a vacation to Cape Cod with another family w/ kids during the week of Pixar’s movie opening when the drive-in shows it, and it’s a highlight of the week.
When I was a kid I actually had a Mr. Cucumber Head.
It was plastic.
Really.
Did it vibrate…?
Pixar does it again. And again.
I swear they are the best movie-makers in the business, bar none.
Spoilers:
The moment in the incinerator when they all held hands to go to their end with dignity together was freaking amazing. And the way they pulled off that ending with the surprise of Woody being in the bottom of the box was superb. Andy’s reaction and the emotion that completely animated character went through was so poignant and subtle and right - it was some of the best “acting” I’ve seen this year. So great. It more than made up for any slight mis-steps in the middle.
Pixar films have made me more emotional than any others by a huge margin. How in the world do they do that? It’s like they are speaking directly to me.
Am I the only one who thought Andy’s behavior at the very end was just a bit creepy?
+1
Toy Story 3 was my least favorite of the last couple of years. On the other hand since I thought both Wall-E and UP! were deserving of Best Picture, that isn’t really criticism.
I really agree with you with about the incinerator scene, which has not been commented on a lot. I fully expected the end scene to leave me blubbering and sure enough it did. However them holding hands as they saw the inferno, reminded of all the buddy, war, and adventure and even the 9/11 moves where they main characters realize they were doomed and sucked it up. But somehow animated Toys in Pixar’s hands evoked more emotion.
Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, and by all accounts that is what Pixar does.
You guys need to listen to the Quarter to Three movie podcast. You’re all wrong, and missing all the facile elements that are inferior to Toy Story 2. How can you like the incinerator scene with the hollow Deus Ex Machina that follows? It’s a horribly flawed film.
I tried to listen but after 15 minutes, I literally feel asleep in front of my computer, as somebody had gone on a weird ass tangent. Podcast’s need editors as badly as my posts.
& forum threads.
I didn’t see that as flawed at all, I thought it was great. I’d forgotten about the little green guys and “the claw” had been referenced earlier in the film. It’s not like the animators decided to include this thing that wouldn’t normally be found in a junkyard, and we’re watching a movie about moving, talking toys, guys. It’s not a huge leap for me to think this is an entirely believable thing that can happen, toys driving a big machine. The claw didn’t accidentally pick up the toys as a last minute save out of nowhere, it was driven by other toys to do it.
Oh, I’m totally kidding, mmalloy. I LOVED Toy Story 3. That podcast was a textbook example of Internet nitpickery gone off the deep end, in audio form. I’m not sure how self-proclaimed “movie buffs” can enjoy films at all when they’re that hypercritical about every detail.
Most of the time, I think they enjoy the hypercritical nitpicking more than actually watching movies.
Personally, I loved Toy Story 3 and thought it was stronger the 2 in a lot of key areas. The story was darker, more poignant and a logical evolution of what we already know about the characters. I choked up at the incinerator scene and really enjoyed the heist aspect of the breakout. Pixar really are the masters of introducing adult themes into kids movies and somehow still making them relevant for all the audience.
There were 2 weak point for me. One was Andy introducing all the toys to Bonnie during the last scene. I get that it was sort of a handover and farewell to the toys we’ve come to love, but it smacks of ham-handed sentiment. I’d grown to love the toys all on my own by this time in the story, so having Andy simply voice out all the reasons we’ve come to know the characters felt like a shorthand for, “Hey, do you know who these people are???” The scene had the right idea, I thought, and it had great animation, but the dialog could have been cut down a lot and still we get the idea of the handover.
The other was Buzz. While I enjoyed his Spanish mode, it somehow crossed my mind that the writers couldn’t figure out what else to do with Buzz, so they went back to the delusional Space Ranger well again, only this time, in Spanish. Buzz somehow had the least emotional growth throughout the story simply because he wasn’t in it. At least in 2, he got to shine by rescuing Woody and leading the pack. Here, he was a punchline and a romantic afterthought.
I can never tell in the movie thread, some people are the weirdest nitpickers about things in here D:
Sorry!
There is a reason I delete every other podcast in my QT3 feed.