TOY STORY 1-4 | Series retrospective
To infinity… and beyond!
In 1995, Pixar Animation Studios made history by releasing the first fully computer-animated motion picture. The release of Toy Story led to not only the meteoric rise of the most acclaimed American animation studio, but also of the best animated film series of all time. These films are incredibly important to me, and with the release of Toy Story 5, there’s no better time to do an in-depth exploration of the first four movies in the series.
Toy Story (1995)
You've got a friend in me,
You've got a friend in me,
When the road looks rough ahead,
And you're miles and miles from your nice warm bed,
You just remember what your old pal said,
Boy, you've got a friend in me…
Synopsis: Woody (Tom Hanks) is unseated as Andy’s (John Morris) favorite toy by the delusion Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). The two toys must overcome their differences and work together to escape captivity of the sadistic Sid and return to Andy.
The journey of bringing Toy Story to the screen was a challenging one. Pixar was founded in 1986 by Steve Jobs, who bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm - yes, that Steve Jobs and that Lucasfilm - and spun it off into its own company, along with co-founders Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. For the next decade, Pixar mostly made commercials for other companies and their own short films, many of which won or were nominated for Academy Awards. Lasseter, a former animator at Disney, was the chief creative officer and directed many of these short films himself. In 1991, Disney signed a deal with Pixar to distribute their first feature film. Lasseter would direct, and a whole host of writers were involved, including Pixar legends Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Joe Ranft, and even others like Joss Whedon. The story took some major twists and turns, including an iteration where Woody was essentially a tyrannical villain. This version of the movie remained in place dangerously close to the release date; luckily Lasseter et al. realized their mistake and reworked the story and character into what it is now. (You can still see some of the “Evil Woody” material here, including voice work by Tom Hanks.)
And thank goodness for that! Toy Story’s status as the first computer-animated movie in history is undeniably impressive; but history-making can only get you so far. To be quite honest, the design and animation are pretty rough. The movements of the characters are stilted and there’s no real depth or texture. Fortunately they decided to focus mostly on toys, where this isn’t as much of an issue, and not on humans. All the prominent human characters are pretty hideous.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Toy Story is great because it has a darn good story with great characters that you love. The jokes are consistently funny, especially the constant side banter from Potato Head (Don Rickles), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), and Rex (Wallace Shawn). The voice acting is iconic (“YOU! ARE! A! TOY!!!”). And boy are Randy Newman’s score and songs great! To me, nostalgia sounds like Randy Newman’s voice. It’s so fascinating that we used to have movies like this: non-musical movies with three or more original songs performed in the body of the movie all by one singer.
And the movie is only 80 minutes long!
It was a smash hit upon its release in November 1995. It outperformed its chief animated rival (Disney’s own Pocahontas) both critically and financially, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of the year (behind Die Hard with a Vengeance). It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Original Score and Song (losing to Pocahontas) and Best Original Screenplay, the first of many for Pixar. John Lasseter was awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for directing the first fully computer animated film.
A strong start for Pixar, but they were just getting started…
Toy Story 2 (1999)
When somebody loved me,
Everything was beautiful,
Every hour we spent together,
Lives within my heart,
When she loved me…
Synopsis: When Woody is kidnapped by a toy collector (Wayne Knight), he has to grapple with his own mortality and decide whether to return to Andy or spend his life in a toy museum with his “Roundup Gang”: Bullseye, Jessie (Joan Cusack), and Stinky Pete (Kelsey Grammer).
After the release of Toy Story, Pixar renewed their distribution deal with Disney and began working on A Bug’s Life and other projects. Disney, which owned the rights to Toy Story, demanded a direct-to video sequel. Lasseter and the rest of the creative team at Pixar reluctantly agreed to make Toy Story 2 themselves, since it would’ve happened with or without their involvement. Disney was impressed enough with the team’s work that they upgraded it to a full theatrical release, which resulted in more money and much more prestige than a DTV release. Lasseter once again directed and co-wrote the story with Stanton and Docter, among others. As with the first film, the story was constantly being reworked, resulting in a substantially compressed production time.
Despite this pressure (or maybe because of it), Toy Story 2 was an improvement over its predecessor in almost every way. I think this one is objectively the best Toy Story movie. Visually, the movie is stunning, especially the opening space sequence. The colors pop and the environments look great. The animation is more realistic this time, even though the humans still leave something to be desired. The story is tighter and the characters are stronger (especially Buzz). The dialogue is funnier, and we get to spend way more time with the side characters like Rex and Potato Head. As an aside, I forgot how much vehicular damage there is in these first two movies. And the music! “When She Loved Me” just breaks my heart, beginning with those first soulful piano chords. Thankfully Randy Newman switched it up and had Sarah McLachlan sing it instead of him.
2 was even more of a success than 1, earning over $500 million worldwide and finishing third for the year, behind The Phantom Menace and The Sixth Sense. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Film, Musical or Comedy (this was still before most award shows had an Animated Feature category), and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It lost to Tarzan, which is pretty egregious because “When She Loved Me” is a way better song than “You’ll Be in my Heart.” (Possibly my most controversial movie opinion is that neither Tarzan nor its music are very good.) Oh well.
1999 was the year when Disney’s renaissance ended, leading to the absolute domination by Pixar over all other studios for the next eleven years.
Toy Story 3 (2010)
We belong together,
We belong together,
You know it's true,
It's gonna stay this way forever,
Me and you…
Synopsis: Woody and the gang have to break out of a prison-like daycare led by the tyrannical Lotso (Ned Beatty) and get back to Andy before he leaves for college…
After Toy Story 2, Pixar had an absolutely legendary run of original movies: Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up. Most of these movies won Academy Awards; all of them made money. Even the worst of them (Cars) still has droves of die-hard supporters. Once again, however, there were tensions between Pixar and Disney, which led to Disney in 2004 announcing a Toy Story 3 that would’ve been made independently of Pixar. The conflict was solved when Disney bought Pixar in 2006 and made John Lasseter chief creative officer of not only Pixar but also Disney Animation. This gave him the ability to shut down the Disney version of Toy Story 3 and do it at Pixar instead. A new script was developed by Lasseter, Docter, Stanton, and Lee Unkrich - the editor of Toy Story 1 and 2 and the co-director of Toy Story 2. Unkrich would direct, and Michael Arndt was brought on to write the final script. The whole cast returned from the previous movies, including the now-adult John Morris as Andy, and even a brief cameo from Erik von Detten as Sid (who’s now a garbage man).
The result was extraordinary: it’s my favorite animated movie, Pixar movie, and 2010 movie, and it’s also the first movie that I cried at. The emotions are high, the jokes are many and great, and the story is profoundly satisfying. I love that we get to spend the whole movie with our core crew of toys. I love how the third act is a prison breakout and it’s legitimately a better prison breakout than “real” prison movies like The Great Escape. Lotso is a terrific villain: while there’s nothing overtly Christian in any of these movies, Lotso clearly espouses materialism, nihilism, and atheism. “We’re all just trash, waiting to be thrown away. That’s all a toy is!” And again, “Where’s your kid now, sheriff?” after he leaves the gang for dead despite having just been saved by them. As a Christian it’s hard to ignore the Christ-like imagery of Woody accepting his fate, arms outstretched, as he descends into the hellish incinerator. The final moments of the movie, from the incinerator scene to the end, are tremendously powerful and still managed to get me choked up after seeing this movie a million times. Gorgeous music, especially the track “So Long” at the end. If I have any critiques, it’s that the exterior scenes have a hazy, overcast look that I don’t really like, and some of the scenes in the second half can tend to drag a bit.
The film received overwhelming love from critics and earned over $1 billion worldwide. It was only the seventh movie ever to achieve that mark, and it became the top grossing movie of the year and the top animated movie of all time. It received five Oscar nominations: not just Animated Feature and Original Song (“We Belong Together”), which it won; but also Sound, Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. Most people say The Social Network should’ve won that year instead of The King’s Speech; I say it should’ve been Toy Story 3.
So that’s it, right?!
Toy Story 4 (2019)
I was a lonesome cowboy,
But not anymore,
I just found out what love is about,
I've never felt this way before…
Synopsis: Woody has to weigh his desire to stay with Bonnie (his new owner after Andy) with his desire to join Bo Peep (Annie Potts) out in the wild as a Lost Toy…
Pixar went downhill fast after Toy Story 3. They had their first really bad movie (Cars 2) and their first financial failure (The Good Dinosaur), as well as a string of sequels that were generally successful but were seen as underwhelming shadows of the previous films (Monsters University, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Incredibles II). Enter Toy Story 4, which, fairly or unfairly, was perceived as an unnecessary cash grab in the vein of those other films - even though it seems to have developed organically from Pixar (unlike the previous Toy Story sequels). Lasseter was originally set to direct (which his career needed after the abysmal Cars 2). The script was developed by Lasseter and Stanton with some input from Unkrich and Docter; the eventual writing credits include Stanton and Stephanie Folsom for screenplay, and six other writers for story. In 2016, Lasseter exited the project; it’s unclear if this had anything to do with the misconduct allegations which ultimately forced him out of Pixar entirely, but regardless, he was replaced by the film’s co-director Josh Cooley. Toy Story 4 is thus the last Pixar movie with any involvement from Pixar’s co-founder John Lasseter.
The movie is wholly unnecessary but also quite good, and I encourage everyone to check it out if you skipped it in the past. The movie explores some interesting ideas like self-worth, the nature of consciousness, and the value of loyalty. I do wish we spent more time with the core gang of toys; most of the movie is Woody and/or Buzz interacting with new characters. I consider Bo Peep a new character since she had almost no screentime in either Toy Story 1 or 2, and she makes a great addition to the world and a great contrast with Woody. The other new characters (played by Tony Hale, Keanu Reeves, and Key & Peele) are pretty funny and memorable, but I think the movie would’ve been more effective if either Duke Caboom (Reeves) or Ducky & Bunny (Key & Peele) were eliminated. I still prefer the overall look of Toy Story 2, but the attempts at photorealism here really work! The lighting, textures, and colors are gorgeous, and it feels like these are real toys interacting with the real world. Unfortunately Randy Newman dropped the ball with the music on this one. If you listen to all the Toy Story soundtracks in a row (as I have, while writing this review), you’ll hear that Toy Story 4 is almost entirely reused music from the first three. And it’s often not even thematically relevant; like why is the claw rescue music from 3 being played at the end of 4 after Woody leaves?
Toy Story 4 was a smashing success, getting great reviews and earning almost exactly the same amount of money as 3. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in an era when that’s no longer a given for Pixar (they’ve only won five times since 2010, and no times since 2020). Since Toy Story 4, Pixar largely moved away from sequels (the trouble is that their original movies haven’t fared much better).
Beyond…
And here we go again! Despite the sufficiently satisfying ending of Toy Story 4, Pixar announced the development of Toy Story 5 in 2023. The only thing that got me vaguely on board (and even now still has me vaguely on board) with a fifth Toy Story movie is that it’s being directed by Andrew Stanton. Stanton, having written all four of the previous films, can reasonably claim to know this series and its characters better than anyone else, including Unkrich, Cooley, or even Lasseter. And let’s remember that Stanton is also the guy who wrote and directed Finding Nemo and WALL-E, which has to count for something. But beyond that, who knows!
Overall series score: 9/10. These movies are historically significant, artistically brilliant, hugely entertaining, and they’ve left a profound impact on my life.
Individual scores:
- Toy Story - 8/10
- Toy Story 2 - 9/10
- Toy Story 3 - 10/10
- Toy Story 4 - 7/10
Value for a Catholic audience: Good!
Randy Newman song ranking:
1. “When She Loved Me” (Toy Story 2)
2. “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” (Toy Story)
3. “We Belong Together” (Toy Story 3)
4. “The Ballad of the Lonesome Cowboy” (Toy Story 4)
5. “I Will Go Sailing No More” (Toy Story)
6. “Woody’s Roundup” (Toy Story 2)
7. “Strange Things” (Toy Story)
8. “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” (Toy Story 4)
A shorter version of this post was originally published here on 100 Movies Every Family Should See.