Summary
➡ The text discusses the impact of the movie Toy Story, highlighting its groundbreaking use of 3D animation and its appeal to both kids and adults. It suggests that the movie teaches viewers that the more attention and love you give to your toys, the more they love you back. The text also mentions some adult humor in the movie and discusses the idea that Toy Story was a major turning point for Disney, leading to a new era of animation. Lastly, it talks about the symbolic use of clouds in the movie and its competition with Dreamworks.
➡ The text talks about the Toy Story movies, focusing on the character Woody. It suggests that Woody sees the kids as gods and is devoted to making them happy. The text also discusses how Woody feels threatened by Buzz Lightyear, who he sees as an outsider coming to take his place. Lastly, it mentions how the movies use toys to explore deep topics like feeling replaced or obsolete.
➡ The writer discusses the deeper themes in the Toy Story movies, focusing on Buzz Lightyear’s journey of self-discovery and the existential dread that the toys experience. They also talk about the evolution of Pixar and Disney, and how these movies appeal to a wide audience. The writer questions the morality of the character Sid, suggesting he might not be as bad as he seems. Lastly, they express concern about the future of Hollywood movies, fearing they might become too watered down.
➡ This text discusses the idea of toys having souls and being sentient, especially in movies like Toy Story. It questions whether toys that are modified or used differently than intended are seen as ‘bad’ or ‘evil’. The text also explores the idea of what makes a toy sentient, whether it’s having human-like features or being a licensed product. Lastly, it mentions the concept of toys coming to life in other stories, like the Indian in the Cupboard.
➡ This text discusses the idea of toys coming to life when humans aren’t around, as seen in movies like Toy Story. It also talks about a theory that all Pixar movies are connected on a timeline, with Toy Story happening before Wall-E and Cars happening after. The text also explores the idea of toys being abandoned by their owners, creating a sense of sympathy for them. Lastly, it mentions the cultural practice of creating small figures or dolls to protect homes, similar to the role toys play in some movies.
➡ The text discusses various superstitions, such as the belief that leaving Hina Matsuri dolls out past March 3rd or stepping on a crack can bring bad luck. It also talks about the evolution of animation, particularly focusing on Disney and Pixar. The writer expresses nostalgia for traditional animation styles, like in “The Lion King,” and feels that the success of “Toy Story” led to a shift towards digital animation. The text ends with a discussion on the clever scriptwriting in “Toy Story,” and how it subverts audience expectations.
➡ Disney movies like Tangled, Zootopia, and Toy Story are made to entertain both kids and adults. The animation style in these films is similar, but each has its own unique elements. The article discusses how the animation in Toy Story was designed to be simple and easy to create, using smooth surfaces and simple shapes. It also talks about how animation has evolved over time, with newer films using more advanced technology and even AI to create more realistic and detailed animations.
➡ This text discusses the evolution of animation, comparing older films like 101 Dalmatians to newer ones like Toy Story. It also mentions the possibility of remastering Toy Story to improve its visual quality. The text then shifts to talk about various creative projects, including video games and comics, that revolve around unique and intriguing concepts. Lastly, it promotes Paranoid American sticker sheets, which feature designs related to cryptids, cults, and conspiracies.
Transcript
Ask about Illuminati center charting me up pizza Is it Disney mind control Is it MKO chapel? I go big man, gonna suck on a star I go big man nobody Pinocchio speaks for no pleasure island but traffickers need to fall in mind captain hook a lost boy neverland saving kiss from Peter pants to thumb meano survive the barracuda nobody means no one, no, I never took another breath we go from real to real cozy is there opening no more field a cook is there I got to learn that cook is there coke to everybody a cook is there open up on a star I come visit nobody no kio dirt is there the show close.
Howdy, everyone. Are we still starting with legal disclaimers? Colt Disney has no affiliation with the Walt Disney Company. All the trademarks, copyright are entirely theirs. This is entirely for educational and parody uses and entertainment only. Please don’t sue us. Thank you. And that’s how we say hello to you. This is Matt here, as always. Is the paranoid american there? Hello. I’m a lawyer now, too, if you couldn’t.
Right, right. With all that funny talk. Yeah. Anyway, today I think we’re hitting one of the biggies. This is one of the cornerstones of the whole shebang now. Right? The feature film debut of Pixar giant massive ip. That’s toy Story and the present, and I guess in 1995 as well. Yeah, this one’s a big one. And I was even saying right before we were starting that we might even have to come back and do Toy Story again.
But you reminded me that we do that about three more times. That’s right. There’s a lot of angles and tangents that I didn’t go as deep on, just because I know we’re going to come back to it and I can get deeper. But I’ve got my own approach today. Yeah, I’ve actually been kind of drowning in Toy Story this year. I hadn’t watched any of them for several years.
But I do my film podcast where we did toy Story three and actually this one, and I finally got around to watching Toy Story four, which it took me quite a long time. That’s the thing. We’ll talk more about four when we get to it, of course. But one of the biggest things that does is justify its own existence, because after three, it just didn’t need to seem to need to happen.
Actually, I don’t even know if I’ve seen all of four, and I definitely haven’t seen lightyear from start to end. I don’t think anyone’s seen lightyear from start to end. I haven’t seen any of it myself. I’ve heard it’s at least bearable from start to end. It might not be good, but I don’t know, is it unbearable like cats unironically? Or maybe ironically. I went to watch cats because I heard how bad it was, right? And I just wanted to see the absolute train wreck.
And I’m telling it’s the only movie in the history of any movies ever that it was so bad. I was getting nauseous and dizzy and just, I don’t know, I felt like anxious. Like I had to get up and do anything other than sit there and watch the cats movie. I’m sure the upcoming butthole cut will make everything better where they digitally react. Although, man, the song. I can’t remember what the very first song first it was like, is this the song? And I was looking at my girlfriend and it was kind of funny at first, and then it just became unbearable.
And not being dramatic. It’s the only movie that’s ever been so bad that I couldn’t even force myself to watch it. I haven’t seen the movie. We did get some folks gave us like free tickets to the musical back in the late ninety s and coming in knowing nothing about it. And I remember my father and I sitting there just like, what the hell is that going on? Because it doesn’t really have, say, a story.
I guess that’s the thing. It’s a musical review. But maybe let’s talk about something where the music is a little better. The story is a little better. That would be a toy story. I guess it is objectively better than cats. I’ll at least go out on that limb. Yes. Objectively better than cats. It seems like a good. You don’t need to be suffering toxoplasmosis in order to be able to sit through it.
So that’s a plus. I was one of the rare people that saw this in 95 actually coming in, having seen the Pixar shorts, or at least some of them in Atlanta at the Woodship Arts center, high museum, whatever. You would have like short film festivals. And I remember when I was a kid we’d see some of them. So I’d actually seen stuff like Tin Toy and a few of the movies listed behind Woody on the bookshelf early on in the movie.
I’d seen a few of those already, so I wasn’t completely blindsided by the vibe. I guess it was still impressive, especially getting in feature film length. That was kind of, of course, a mind blower in 1995. And just to get all the subjective opinions out of the way, or at least the movie level views. How does it hold up to you in 2024? Actually, I just watched four.
Obviously, the animation is night and day. That’s one thing where hand drawn kind of comes out. Because if you look at Fantasia, nothing about it looks particularly archaic. Right. It’s still like the most amazing animation. You look at Toy Story one, you’ve seen everything in the past 25, almost 30 years. And yeah, the animation is a little funky looking, but I think the story and the voice acting and stuff actually all hold up pretty well.
It’s still a very watchable movie for me. Yeah, I’d say watchable servicehold. It holds up in that regard. Although I guess the uncanny Valley effect feels more pronounced now because back when it first came out, everything was much more realistic seeming. This is like the same phenomena as when the Genesis came out and it looked so. Couldn’t believe it. And then the PlayStation one came out and then that was the most real thing.
And nothing will ever get realer than these cutscenes in Final Fantasy seven. And that turned out to not be true either, because it keeps getting better and better. But there was one aspect in this toy story where when they show ropes or when they just show things now that would be trivial for a 3d engine to render the ambient shadows or like a different pattern when it’s up close.
And there was a bunch of instances of that here where the graphics seemed clearly less than a Playstation four, for example. And it just stands out because now it’s so ubiquitous that any sort of generated 3d has these extra little imperfections. That’s a good, reasonable one. Like, you’ll see a rope and the rope is the exact same pattern all the way down. No sort of variations whatsoever. And that’s the kind of thing that just almost.
Some engines just automatically add some of that weathering. Yeah, I mean, they couldn’t do hair, which is one of the reasons that they’re focusing on toys so hard. The early shorts is a tiny smart man, a lamp. Things that don’t really need that level of detail. Yeah. Andy is absolutely terrifying now. When you watch this, all the people are terrifying. All the eyelids. Anyone that blinks their eyelids are always terrifying.
But the freaking army men. Hold up, man. If this movie were just about the little army men, I think it could hold up way better than the regular one. Maybe if they just did. What was. The. Tom Hanks has been a million more movies, wasn’t he like band of brothers or am I making that? Was. He produced it. I think he was in it. He’s in Private Ryan.
Then he produced Private Ryan. I was thinking of saving private if they would have remade saving Private Ryan. But it were just like army figures from Andy. Like Andy’s army figures. And they went over to Sid’s house. But I don’t know. I’m just throwing that. That’s a free one for Disney in case they’re listening. Please don’t do, by the way, they’re not listening because otherwise you wouldn’t be seeing basically again.
I watched it two months ago. I just had to watch it again, or I didn’t have to, but I did watch it again now, and I didn’t feel like I was wasting my time. That’s nice. Earlier this week, I had to watch the movie Bucky Larson for my podcast. That felt like a waste of time, even though I was still doing a podcast on know and I’d never seen that before.
As long as you could actually get through it, then it’s not as bad as cats. I had to get through it. Right. We’ll see. I’m not going to ask anybody out there to watch cats. Actually, please don’t, even if you were planning on it, do anything else. Rip out a fingernail just to go through the experience because the lower the lows, the higher the highs. Oh, no. I’m going to have to watch.
I’m going to have to watch that one eventually. So I’ll maybe think fond thoughts of toy story as I do that. But did you see this in its initial run? I’m pretty sure I did, although I probably saw it when it came out onto dvd or whatever it came out on, too. So I wasn’t in the theater for this one. And I don’t know if I cared about it as much.
But it was fascinating to see the 3d advancing because I was definitely interested in guess that is where they get their four quadrant thing because again, we’ve talked how in the mid ninety s I was not in the market for going to see kids movies for the most part. But yeah, this one was. I remember being kind of like looking forward to it, being excited about it, possibly because I’d seen a little bit of the cg stuff already.
This one attracted, like, adult nerds as opposed to just animation people, because there’s a line that a lot of people draw where they’re like, I’m an adult now. I don’t watch cartoons, even if it’s like got, you know, even if it’s like Akira, they’ll just be like, oh, that’s a cartoons for kids. I don’t know. There’s some animations that are way more adult than really gritty looking video of realism.
It’s a different genre. Yeah, I guess in 2024, maybe anime has climbed out of that hole, but in the still pretty deep in it. And this one had a few little bones that they throw to the adults too. There’s a little implication that Woody is banging Bo peep. And then there’s one where Mr. Potato head takes his lips out and he slaps his ass with them to imply that there’s like a character that’s kissing another character’s ass.
Those ones are kind of funny. There’s like a few other ones too, that they’re crossing on dark and inappropriate. But they don’t say the things. They leave it out, which I kind of appreciate now, this is such a sort of massive bit of the history to look into and decent film to look into. I’m sitting here wondering where we should start because this is one where everyone’s talked about this movie to no end in the first place.
So should we just jump into stuff? Well, I’ve got one proposal and I want to just throw out because there has been a bunch of kind of out there conspiracy reviews of Toy Story and linking it to whatever you want to link it to Mkultra and whatever. I would prefer, because this is, I would say, the first big CG Disney movie that unleashed a whole nother beast onto the world that we’re dealing with today.
That I almost want to pitch this as like the new version of Fantasia. Like this. Is this Disney’s CGI fantasia? Because what they do, bear with me with that. All these toys, these are the Disney proxy taken to that next level. Like these little homunculus, these little digital homunculus now that they can actually invoke spirits into. And what Disney does with Toy Story is they are literally on the screen showing you that these inanimate objects, if you invest know attention to them, then they actually love you back.
And that your attention equals love in their little world. And that if you get bored of them, not only do you throw them away, but you’re like ripping away the only source of love that they have. Like you’re their God. They’re your little people. They’re essentially these little homunculi. And that’s the premise of the movie and it’s what they teach you, but it’s also what really happens in real life to these toys where the kids go back out.
And now it’s like the more attention I give my blood lightyear figure, the more he loves me back and I love him. And I’m investing in this. And I think that, like, for the first time, maybe they kind of like, with intent do a little bit of this in the same way that fantasia creates an actual spell that creates the Disney universe. Here it is just like upping it to the next level.
But now they’re saying our intellectual property, our toys, the things that we sell, they have soul in them. And the more you love them, the more they love you back. And they just kind of like plant that seed and spread it out there. And I think this is kind of like ground zero for that. Something to consider, I guess history wise is it’s not Disney at this point.
This is a different company’s fantasia. If we’re going to follow that thread. The Pixar guys were pretty independent up until the mid 2000s when it’s a fair point, this is whoever created it in Pixar. In this particular case, this is them summoning that digital homunculus avatar and getting people on board and showing that it can be done at a very high level. And this opens the floodgates. So.
Yeah, but all roads lead back to Disney. As case in point right now, today, Disney and Toy Story, I was going to say it was so powerful with this and the couple after Monsters, Inc. And finding Nemo and the sequel to this, even a bugs live if you want. But by the mid 2000s, Disney itself was like, gee, our characters aren’t selling product like they were. Pixar is like, overrunning us, causing them to basically need to buy it.
And then we see in the 2010s, Disney kind of reinvent its own stuff as Pixar. So you can’t really tell the difference between a featured Pixar film and a featured Disney film anymore. And a nice coincidence, Disney also kind of inherits brave little toaster, at least throughout the distribution process. So they have the full spectrum from start to end of the whole entire Toy story lore, I think.
Then add in Star wars and Marvel, and that’s one of the reasons we are having such a look at all of this stuff. And again, I think all of that just again, is the biggest case in point. Like, toy Story is one of those ground zero aspects of this one, because this is a message Disney can fully get behind that. The things that you buy from Disney, and I assume this is only officially licensed.
Like, if you’re buying knockoff crap that doesn’t have souls. And in fact, those might have demonic entities in them that are the opposite of souls. So you don’t want knockoffs. You want official registered just from the Disney store with a know all legit wonder. If you steal Disney merchandise, does that have a soul, too, or is it like a gift card when you have to take it through the checkout? They have to enable it.
You know what I mean? They have to activate it. Otherwise it never works. I wonder if there’s something like that when you purchase Disney products. I don’t actually. I feel like I’ve never actually owned a toy story product, have I owned a pixel? I mean, I’m too old for it anyway. I have my lotso bear, of course, it’s sitting back just behind me. And that’s about it. Yeah.
I mean, that counts. That’s one that does count. That certainly counts. And, yeah, I got it because when my daughter was two and she liked the bear, not understanding that he was evil, so that caused me to buy it. And I don’t think you literally have to go and purchase, like, a physical product. I’m a little tongue in cheek on that one. But just the fact that any of these properties and ips occupy a tiny bit of real estate in your brain and that there are physical neurons that are making connections, that are redrawing aspects of this Disney Ip instead of maybe some kind of historical event or person you should know about, but don’t.
So that, to me, is all the more reason know Disney likes getting behind this. Well, let’s look at some of the images we’re getting in this new ground zero for new ip. I wanted to talk about the clouds a little bit because that’s such a place setting for all of these movies. Okay, go ahead, talk about clouds. Yeah, because we start with the clouds in here. That’s what’s on the walls of Andy’s room, which we eventually leave.
So we get out of that room, but they keep reappearing, even in toy Story four, I think we start or end with them, which, I don’t know, just seems to be like kind of a wispy, spirity kind of vibe they’re invocating the movies with, I guess. And I guess you could put out dreamworks, too, anytime you ever see a Dreamworks intro, it’s also all cloud symbolism. Yeah, they got the boy fishing and stuff, so I don’t have a, like, oh, I know what that means.
It’s just something I’ve observed and actually mentioning. Dreamworks because that’s the main competitor to Pixar, at least if you want to read into it. Not that we ever do that here, but as it starts out, again, if you look at these toys as the homunculus and people are gods to these little things, right? LiKe, this is their world. So us starting the movie out, starting in the clouds, and then the camera kind of swoops down and goes down into this toy world, it kind of is reinforcing that idea that we, the viewers, are these godlike creatures, and here’s what they feel about us.
And then Woody’s kind of our evangelist in this case. I mean, something that’s weird about these movies is, and I think, I hope, I don’t mind mentioning the fourth one a little bit because he starts to kind of come out of that in the fourth one. But for the first three movies, he’s like a zealot. He’s completely 100% behind the idea that these kids are our gods and we have to do what they want and they have to love us.
I also got some of that zealot feel where it’s like there’s a very real aspect of they’re going to come here and take our jobs. And BUz lightyear was this IMmigrant from TAIWAN. He was a Taiwanese immigrant that was coming here to America to take Woody’s job, and that was a legitimate concern for him. Another thing in the, well, not the work print, because that was what I was hoping to see in the work print, but was not the case.
Is the more aggressive woody of earlier versions of this movie, even in animated sequences, apparently, he was a lot more unlikable and kind of evil. It seemed like maybe he did some of this stuff on purpose a little more. I LiKe that. I like COTTON mathers WOODY. That would make this a little bit more. It is. The thing is, Woody is basically the main one. I mean, buz here gets equal billing, but as we go through the sequels, they never quite know what to do with them anymore because, well, we can’t have him bump Woody off of his perch, but let’s give him a weird little side story.
Seems to be most of the sequels. And you mentioned the word print. I just want to give a quick shout out to the mystery shadow person, the little X Files guy smoking the cigarette in the hallway in some Disney warehouse somewhere, because I’ve got someone that’s been dropping all of these insider work prints on me of all the old Disney movies, and we’ve watched a lot of them already, but we’re going to maybe go back through and touch on some things that were in the work prints that didn’t make it into the final movie.
And there might be something interesting in there, but for this one, coincidentally, the Toy story work print did not vary very much at all from the final release version that made it out there. So there’s probably an even earlier version than the work print that we got from our secret cigarette man insider at Disney. And some of them. Yeah. Had, like, animatics and sketches and very different looking stuff.
But, like, beauty and the Beast jungle book, there was a few that have completely different scenes that never even got colored. But you kind of see the interstitial, like, a true work print. But this particular toy story didn’t have that. And wasn’t this one the one that got deleted or that’s the second one. Different one. That was toy Story two. Okay. Yeah, so we could definitely get to that, but I guess we’ll wait for that one.
You’ll wait for when we get to Toy Story two. Yeah. Well, do you want to start making some ticks in your boxes? Yeah, do I ever. I’ll start with the underhanded softballs. Want to. I want to say that this might just be the american in me, but I just have a special place in my heart for Disney movies that have guns in them. Like, actual, real american guns.
Or I’ll even accept, like, a Glock if we want to go back far. Maybe like, an iwi israeli stuff. Anyways, this movie starts out, and the kid is. Or they’re basically playing with guns, which I love. And then there’s a number of other instances of this. They got the army men that have got guns. There’s a spot where the etching sketch, they do a draw. Like, woody basically says, draw.
It’s like a funny play on words. But then the Etcher sketch draws out, like, a cult revolver. So I don’t know. I like that because you see it less and less as Disney movies continue to get produced. It’s almost as if in these magical worlds, guns don’t exist, which is such an attempting and alluring reality for me. Not because I want to live in a gun free world, but it makes me think if I brought a gun into any of these new worlds, you could just be king.
No one would know any. They’ve got all. We got magic, and they’re all thinking about Tinkerbell, and you’re just blasting. So I don’t know. I like it when a Disney movie takes place in a world that has guns. Sorry. And no one shoots the, you know, they’re just there that we know of. And also notice that Woody doesn’t have his gun. He just got an empty holster for the whole.
I don’t. I wonder if that was ever cut. I wonder if there was earlier versions when he had it on him and they were like, that’s a little problematic. We don’t want to sell action figures with guns. Well, eventually, he’s got to put his match in there. Right. Gun would just get in the way in his. That’s my. That was my leading. Uh, and then the other thing, too, that I wouldn’t say this is nefarious.
This is pretty much every Disney movie. But this one, I guess, makes it so much more obvious because these are, again, like, toys. So it feels like they’re already part of our real world and not in some mystical cartoon forest where people talk to animals, where you’ve already got this whole level of separation of disbelief in this movie. Theoretically, even though Sid and Andy look like absolute nightmares, they could be real people.
And when they’re not on, like, again, like, the little plastic army soldiermen, they look real enough that it feels like, okay, this could be a real world that I’m interacting with from behind this movie scene. But what they do is they anthropomorphize all these characters for children watching it so that children can learn about these deep philosophical concepts, like being obsolete and losing the love of your parents, as, like, if someone else is coming in.
And it’s easy when they do this in cartoons, but the cartoons kind of come across campy. And this one, they do it in a very real way. Even watching it in retrospect now, it’s kind of like adult sort of. I don’t even know. It’s like a controversial opinion. Right. Like, whether a new person comes in and they supplant you. I’m not joking when this is about Woody being, like, a zealot and sort of being a xenophobe of this taiwanese immigrant that’s coming in is going to take his job.
Yeah. I was sitting here thinking, if we have had a kind of modern life Disney setting before, because 101 Dalmatians is kind of victorian ish, I guess Oliver and company was for the time period, it was pretty much contemporary. Yeah, that was the closest. But that doesn’t have so much, know, regular life or suburban life. This is the first time, I guess, Disney’s gone to the suburbs is what saying.
Yeah. Yeah. Because then the other one would be rescuers down under, but that one wasn’t necessarily in the suburbs, but it did have. Because they had like, modern computers. Right. Yeah. Well, not just time setting, but also kind of like this setting the audience would recognize. I mean, you watch comedies, it’s going to be in this kind of setting or a lot of action films or in a city or something.
But this is the first time Disney’s really delved in there, which again, could be because this is a different creative entity coming in at the time, so. Entity coming in? Yes. And it’s because it was distribution only. We can’t count brave little toaster two, which was. It was like in a contemporary college campus atmosphere, but it wasn’t really Disney at the time. Yeah. Which I guess this isn’t either.
It’s just hard to think of that because it’s so brood into the mix. So it is now when all things are equal. Unless this is like the most technical game of like, Toy Story is Disney and has always been Disney and will always be Disney, and anyone that speaks otherwise will have the Disney Gestapo stop by and correct them. Yeah, I’m just kind of wondering if this is kind of a new thing, kind of taking over the old thing, because we had the changing of the guards over the past 20 years before this.
Just looking at the company itself. The company itself isn’t doing that. I mean, I guess they’re having the Disney renaissance, so they’re recently doing okay. But I’ve been kind of floundering for a while, except for when Flounder was on. Sorry, I just wanted to own my pun before I got called on it. And I guess on that same note, too, of these anthropomorphized characters and teaching kids these deep topics, there’s one that I really love about this movie, and that’s that essentially buz Lightyear becomes awakened.
And I don’t want to say woke because woke means something different than what it would have meant if I said it like ten years ago. And I guess if you look at the latest buz year or Lightyear movie, he is woke. He’s literally 2024 woke. But anyways, the original version of this movie, to me, it’s like this is him realizing that 911 was an inside job. If you take the soundtrack away and it’s just like, rift tracks and it’s someone else talk, it’s mystery Science Theater 3000.
And you told this was all about buzz Lightyear or learning that the moon landing was faked, right? Like, what do you mean the moon landing is fake? I’ve been there and like, no, you’ve never been there. You’re kind of a clone. You’re like a programmed simulation version of this thing. And at the level that they do it in Disney, because they’ve perfected the formula at this point, and they’re kind of at the height of Pixar.
Sorry again, it’s Disney. I don’t care if it was Pixar or Disney. It’s all the same now. If you can afford to have Tom Hanks as your lead vo, you’re basically Disney. So I don’t. So. But the fact that it gets to that height, I don’t know. I think it’s remarkable. And, I mean, that’s the next level for it. Something else about, really, all of these movies, really, is kind of the weird existential dread of the situation.
Have someone scream at you, you are a toy. That sort of thing that, I think, grows as we get through the movies. And maybe it was kind of in the air at the time, the same kind of weird dissatisfaction kind of creeps in more and more as we get towards the millennium. With 1999 having the most existential, dready blockbusters ever, like, across the board, this was like preparing you for that paradigm shift in some don’t.
I don’t know why I resonate with it so much, but the whole point when Buz Lightyear sees himself on the commercial or, like, another versions of himself and everything everyone’s been telling him all starts falling into place and it breaks, truly mkultra, project monarch style, completely shatters his mind and he turns crazy. And the next time you see him is after the next door neighbor. Sid’s little sister kind of steals him.
Like, she’s playing tea with him, and he’s completely out of it, and he has to be kind of, like, slapped back into reality a little bit. And even after he gets slapped back in, then he’s got the know well not down syndrome, but he feels down for quite a while because he’s had his entire reality shattered. So this is, like, a very adult sort of concept. I don’t know if, like, a seven year old is watching this, and just somewhere deep down, it’s implanting that aspect of, like, at some point in your life, you’re going to learn that everything that you knew is a complete lie, and it’s going to plunge you into a depression if it doesn’t break your brain first.
I don’t know. That’s crazy. I mean, for the basically film made for everybody to watch, because even though, say, like, Terminator two or the matrix, those are r rating Lil mermaid, Beauty and the Beast. This is the G matrix or the PG matrix. Yeah. There’s a certain subset of people that were not going out to see Beauty and the beast, but I feel like there wasn’t anyone that was like, screw it.
I don’t want to see toy Story. Everyone was going and getting whatever this film was offering. Again, this is like peak perfected formula, Pixar. It’s the ultimate four quadrant film. What are the four quadrants? I don’t even know what the four quadrants are. I just hear that’s executive. It’ll feel to everybody, like kids, women, I don’t know what the four quadrants are, but you hear it sometimes. Just the film that’s made for everybody to go see.
I mean, that’s what they’re trying to do now with a lot of the Marvel movies and things like that. And even the animated movies tend to be a little more, like, for everybody now. Or at least they want everybody to go see, which, because they make money that way. Yeah, I don’t know. I kind of hate that aspect of it, too, though. Yeah, that’s populist filmmaking in the way that we’re kind of like, just, here it is.
It’s for everybody. It’s watered down a little bit for everyone. I’m not necessarily saying Toy Story is watered down, but 25, 30 years down the line, a lot of these movies, big Hollywood movies, are just feeling more and more watered down. I would love to see just what the 2024 version of a brand new Toy story reboot would be, or if Toy Story never existed and they redid it today because we’ll never know the first one.
All you would do is compare it to this. Although I’m sure they’ll probably make a live action toy story in the next five years. That’ll be weird. And I’ve got a couple of notes here. These are a little bit silly, but what’s the difference between Toy Story and puppet master? Because they clearly show at a certain point in this movie that buz Lightyear, and apparently all the toys, would be capable of murdering an infant at the very least, probably much more than that, because he pushes this big, heavy toolbox far enough from a high place that it falls and it hits the ground.
And, I mean, if there was a crib under that, your baby’s gone now. So I feel like it’s almost like a veiled threat that buzz lightyear is letting the viewer know, hey, toys are real, and toys can kill you if you don’t buy me yeah. Another thing is for basically all of the movies except for one moment here, and I think there’s a moment in know toys follow this code of being completely hidden from humans, which you would assume is a law of physics, but since it’s a broken a few times, it’s more like a zealous doctrine that they’re following.
Yeah. Every time that I’ve ever seen this employed in a movie, it’s pretty much always not a law of physics. It’s a thing that they have to do. It’s part of their way of survival. And it almost implies that there’s this whole extra backstory that. Because if you don’t, because if the humans find out that we’re actually alive, I assume it’s like they’ll incinerate us or like it’ll be the great toy holocaust all over again.
And they’re trying to avoid that. So that’s the implication, right? Why else are they so terrified of letting humans know that they’re living? Because I don’t know about you, but if I found out that my ninja turtle could actually talk back to me and loved me back, it would have been nuts, dude. We would have been best friends. We would have went and did all kinds of stuff.
And it wouldn’t have been weird if everybody else had that too, right? Have to introduce your toys all the time. That would be freaking annoying. I will say again, I’m a little older than you, so when I saw this, I definitely felt no compunction to go buy any toys. Having seen this. Well, I didn’t either. I guess I’m talking in the place of, I guess what I would consider the main demographic of this, which would have been, I don’t know, five to twelve year olds that aren’t making any purchasing decision themselves don’t really have the rebellious attitude.
They’re sort of not Sid’s age. Right? Like younger than Sid. Yeah. We should talk about Sid a little bit. Every time I watch this movie, I like Sid more. Yeah. What is it that you relate most to about Sid? Is it the mutilating of defenseless toys that have souls that evwe’s proven. Well, he doesn’t know that until they tell him, but he’s an artist. In the late 80s, they didn’t make X Men toys, so we modified our GI joes to be X Men with doing a little bit of painting and stuff.
We weren’t mutilating them and making know. Well, you might want to say homunculuses, I guess. So let’s say. Well, he’s actually rendering these toy souls into weird new configurations. I guess that’s a different thing. But keeping in mind that he does think he’s just dealing with a bunch of plastic. Yeah, he’s an artist. That’s a good point, man. I mean, Sid, is Sid a bad guy if he’s taking these different pieces that are already broken? I guess maybe you think that he went out and he destroyed toys, but he also might have just scavenged and found these helpless appendages and stitched them together and turned them into these new little homunculi so that they can possess a soul and have a little bit of autonomy all over again.
So in that case, he’s sort of like the black market alchemist, right? He doesn’t go and buy the store bought homunculus that’s got all of its pieces, and it follows all the laws and the rules of alchemy. He’s kind of going under the radar a little bit and making his own stuff, like these weird amalgamations of different pieces. And the implication is that he’s somehow the bad guy, or, like, the black magic wizard, but he’s not doing anything different than some of the other characters.
Yeah, he tries to melt head at some point, but how did Woody get formed into the form he’s at now? Right? I mean, he was melted. It was a my buddy doll, right? My buddy, my friend. Was it one or two at the very end where they get melted back into the mold again? Three, maybe? I think it was three. Three was the one at the incinerator. Three was the one at the military school.
I think it was the end of the first movie, child’s play. One. And they send him back to the plant, and he gets. Sorry, you’re chucking. You’re chucking. Okay, I was still on toy Story there. I think you’ve incinerated. Oh, yeah. I thought you said good guy doll or my little. My budy was the freaking good guy doll. It’s not, right. That was the real one. So we had gotten our hands on the camcorder, and we were, like, doing things with my buddy, like crazy stunts, like throwing them down the stairs and filming it, which when you’re.
You were sitting. That’s my point. We were sitting at where this escalated to the point where he had his hairless head and poured gasoline on and lit it on fire. Because kids in the early 90s could still do that. But should they have been? Probably not, but maybe. Although I guess this is where, unsarcastically, hopefully. I really do think that this is like a weird, nefarious, insidious way of this commercial world.
Pixar, Disney, whatever, Mattel, Galube. Galube’s actually gets a pass here. But I think that they’re basically saying that if you use our products in a way that’s other than intended, you’re hurting them. Like you’re causing pain to them, you’re torturing them. And further, you might even be a risk to society if we see you modifying your officially licensed Pixar and Disney toys in a way that wasn’t described in the back of the package.
Maybe someone should look into you. Like, what else do you have to hide? You’re doing things that society sees as sort of unproductive and mean because in a way, right, Sid’s a monster because he’s making his own action figures. So I don’t know, I feel like there’s a very real message being put onto kids that are watching this that’s like, oh, if I want my toys to be pure and have these souls and not the souls of cannibals, which is what Woody assumes that all of Sid’s toys are because they’re cannibalized toys, right? But they assume that they’re cannibals and they’re going to get eaten.
I don’t know. That’s a real message that a real human being that’s age six to twelve might actually be taking away from that movie theater that, oh, I don’t play with off brand toys. Those things are evil. They might be cannibals. They might eat your face. Are you familiar with Howard Finster? The name doesn’t ring a bell. Okay. The thing I can think of that’s he was a folk artist, basically, and I guess probably his most famous bit of work is the COVID for the Talking Heads album, Little Creatures.
If you want to look that up, you’ll get his style. Anyway, he’s been dead for 25 years, but there’s a house in the northwest corner of Georgia, which was his house turned into this insane art display. Know, paintings, weird apocalyptic rantings, a lot of toys taken apart and reconfigured in different ways, except for the weird apocalyptic ramblings. And it’s not like, threatening or dark. It’s very colorful. Someone should look into him.
What’s he doing? Well, he’s dead, but, yeah, he’s an interesting figure. It didn’t work out well for him. If he’s dead, then that’s another reason why you wouldn’t want to tamper with licensed products and use them in ways that they weren’t. He was very old. I think he died before a toy story, to be honest. But that’s kind of why I think with Sid, like here, they have to add the goth and the punisher shirt and all that, and the black, and he’s nasty to his sister.
But yeah, this other guy makes shiny, colorful art with the same mo, basically in real life. Or made it. Well, yeah, if you’re not making art for the beast, then you’re doing art wrong and you’re evil. That’s. You can’t visit the Georgia Guidestones anymore. So you might as well go check out this guy’s house if you’re in that neck of the woods. On this idea that even the amalgamated toys, even these cannibalized toys, have souls and they’re good, at least they’re altruistic towards other toys.
How far down does that go? Like, if you were to take the head off of the little doll, there’s one that’s like an action figure head, and it has a paint roller style body. I think it’s like a children’s, like an Infants toy that they would just roll on the ground for tactile sensation and someone just put, like a head on it. But that thing becomes sentient and it moves around on the little roller.
So what happens if you take the head off of that? Is the head continue to be sentient? Does the soul leave the roller, or is the roller now a beheaded roller? Because clearly, originally the head came from a full body that had arms and legs and everything. So I would assume anywhere the head goes, the soul follows it. But is that the case? Does that mean that you could just have a closet or a trunk full of doll heads, and they each have their own individual souls? I got, I guess, two responses for that.
One being we should also note that these hybrid toys have lost the ability to speak, kind of suggesting they’re like a lesser soul or something. Now, that’s true. They’re now at the level of animals, like very smart animals, but they’re not on this sentient level that Woody and pals are on. Or is it because they’re unlicensed? They’re not like a Disney store purchased toy. I don’t think you could ever buy these things at the Disney store.
I don’t think they marketed these as merch or anything. The other one is, I want to put a pin in that point for Toy Story three, because there’s going to be a whole lot more to discuss concerning that in Toy Story three. Right on. It’s going to think about everything you just said and put it on screen. And then the final one, I guess in the same context of how much can you boil down a toy that has a soul? I guess I’m curious.
Does a toy need to have eyes and like a mouth and ears? Does it have to have human characteristics? Because even the little play school sound record, it’s like a cassette deck and even it is anthropomorphized. Right. So really anything at all. If a cassette recorder can be a toy, then anything can be a toy. And I’m sure this exists. I didn’t google it. I’m just going to assume that it exists.
Sex toy story. That would be a thing, right? When you leave the room, the Dildos come to life. Certainly someone made that in 1996. Someone had to. I know that. No one’s been just sitting on that for two decades. There’s no way. I remember my budy and I, we wanted to write the porn version of Titanic. It’s exactly the same spelling. You just pronounce it differently, get the tit part out.
And now you have a porno title. No change in spelling for Titanic. I’m so slow. I’m not following. What is the Titanic would be the porno version? Okay. I’m sure that also exists. There’s no way that that doesn’t exist. Oh, I’m sure that exists. I don’t know. That’s always a fun hobby. I think of bad band names and porno parody titles. And I wonder, too, what’s the difference between a toy story toy like Woody and the Indian in the cupboard? Is the Indian in the cupboard, like the next level up? If it goes the unlicensed sids, toys that can’t speak, maybe higher functioning animals.
And then you’ve got the toy story toys. What would indian the cupboard be? I haven’t read that since I was eleven, so I’m not going to be able to give you a good. What about the movie? Have you seen the movies? I don’t think. No, I haven’t seen the movies. Oh, you’re missing out. You’re missing out on the movies. No, I haven’t even thought about that particular. Is that a franchise? Because those ones are where they actually allow the human being to see that they’re alive.
Because there’s like a little cup for any spoiler alert for anyone that was about to read the Indian in the cupboard all over again. Close your ears for the next 10 seconds. But he basically puts toys into a cupboard, and when he closes it and locks it and opens it again, they come to life. And anything that can fit in the cupboard, he can bring to life that rings, and it freaks them out, and it freaks him out, and it truly is like real magic being performed and observed, and nobody likes it because it’s so freaking powerful.
And I wonder again, what is it? What are the toys so traumatized over that they can’t ever let people see that they’re alive? And there was another movie that came out Christmas in the 80s called I think, a Christmas story. It was like a Jim Henson’s one that had the exact same premise, where all the toys, whenever the human beings would leave, would all come to life. I think Muppet Babies is essentially a similar one too.
Or maybe no, maybe not Muppet babies. No Muppet babies, where they create their own worlds of imagination and then go into them like an astral projection or something. But what is the great Toy Holocaust of 1978? Right, when a person walked into a room and everyone just worldwide just started burning their toys en masse? Yeah, we can start talking about the Pixar timeline if you want, where all the movies are weirdly connected.
Have you heard about this one before? I don’t know how long the thread goes, but I know at least five years ago, there was at least entertaining conjectures of how every Pixar movie, Wally, Toy Story, all actually fit into the same. Well, I have seen all the references where they each reference another movie that’s going to come out, or the one before it. Oh, that’s the intentional one.
Right? This is the more whack, entertaining one, where all the movies exist on one timeline. So at some point, there’s, like, some horrible apocalypse, and Wally happens, and way in the future, humans are gone, and now it’s cars. That’s where it kind of, like, falls apart a little bit. It’s still fun to think. Buildings and stuff, they don’t need it. They’re cars. So toy story is pre Wall e, then, and cars is post Wall E.
Yeah, way post, Wally. That’s the part of the. Yeah, there used to be websites that would, like, chart each new Pixar movie and try and put it into the timeline. So last time I checked, that was before they made the last ten movies they’ve made. So I don’t know if that still works or not. You could have the great Toy Holocaust fit into that and make, like, a dark twisted Toy Story prequel.
Sometime we have to wait for the copyright to lapse, but it’s possible. As we’ve seen, Woody just barely survives the toy holocaust. They did a favor because the low resolution of the toy story one means that if there ever was a fan made version, they could nail the look. Like, without too much effort, you could nail the whole look. Toy story one. Here’s something. This could hold some water.
I feel like Woody is passed down from Andy’s father, who we never see, supposedly because they didn’t want to have to animate another person. But at the same time, it’s like, well, they could have had a complete Disney family here, and they. They. Is this Disney trying to break up the nuclear family and normalize it? Like I said, the excuse is we just didn’t want to pay to animate another person.
But then you’re sitting there. Disney never had the complete family, and this was, like, one instance where they could have, and it wouldn’t have mattered. That’s another interesting point, because Andy doesn’t die. Of course Andy doesn’t die, but Andy doesn’t have a parent that dies or abandons him at any point in this one. It’s the toys that are being abandoned by Andy. So it’s almost this meta inception version of the Disney proxy theory at this point.
It’s not that the kid loses his authority figure. It’s now that a celestial being exists. That is the kid and his little peon creatures. They get abandoned by this celestial being, and you’re now identifying with a creature that’s been abandoned by its God, which is almost like Disney proxy, to the higher order of. Like, this is like a complete nihilism approach to the Disney proxy. Like, not only did your parents leave you, but everything you’ve ever known is a lie.
You’re being deprogrammed right now, and your God has left you. And more than that, your God has found a new thing that it’s interested in, and you’re going to become completely obsolete. Yeah. And of course, in this movie, they’re moving, so who knows what happened just before this movie starts? And if you imagine the sympathy that a kid might develop, like, oh, no, poor Woody. I can’t believe that Andy’s just going to.
It’s almost like a stave by the bell, like a drama line. Like, oh, I can’t believe that Zach’s doing that to Kelly, but it’s like, I can’t believe Andy’s doing this to Woody. So now the next time the kids at the store and they see the like, they almost feel sympathy towards Woody. Like, oh, I’ll give you a home, Woody, you can come home with us. We’ll take care of you.
I feel like that’s not. There was someone at Disney like, oh, I totally didn’t realize that dynamic. I didn’t realize this was going to sell more things because now these kids have a sympathetic angle towards wanting to bring me home because I’m this abandoned toy that might be given up at any moment by the horrible Andy. Yeah, maybe we’re not quite supposed to like Andy because. Yeah, like you said, the toys clearly love him more than he loves the toys.
Like, if he never does find Woody and Buzz again, he’ll be over it in two. Know where Woody and Buz will not be getting to later movies. The toys that get abandoned or whatever have a giant chip on their. They’ve been. They’ve been truly abandoned by their. Yeah, yeah. Again, existential dread in this movie, man, that has sat with me since the beginning that there’s something. There’s a new strain that the previous animated films we’ve been watching haven’t had.
They don’t really make you question existence in that way. It. And, yeah, I’m just looking through my notes. I had a whole section, but we already kind of talked about it. How stid is like the Alchemist. That’s just kind of like shooting from the hip, doing it on his own and not being successful. And I guess you brought up a good point that emphasizes that. That his creations are these monstrosities that are inferior because they can’t talk and that represents that he doesn’t have the true formula.
Like he is the left hand path black magic wizard. I think a warlock is like a witch that got out. I don’t know all the stipulations between wizards and Warlocks, but he’s the black back alley guy doing it. That’s not sanctioned by the authorities. Right. That makes him badass. Yeah, I mean, come on, if you’re like a twelve year old, whose house do you want to hang out at? Andy’s house or Sid’s house? It’s a good point.
Yeah. Andy’s just got. He’s still got Woody sort of like a duvier on his bed. And I don’t know, it’s a little bit creepy. I actually think that’s way creepier than some of the other implications that Sid’s got in his room. He’s got like metal posters and. Yeah, yeah. Plutonium. Yeah. Shining carpets, as you mentioned. And then what else? The idea that these little toys and these little figures that protect you and watch over you as they do in the following movies, too.
They actually have a more active role where they’re sort of interjecting into human lives and changing the outcomes of these. And they do it in this movie, too, although the consequences are more about how it affects the toys on the toy level and the traffic accidents they caused. Well, I mean, that’s all out there. Just like I said, if they can push a heavy ass toolbox off of a shelf, they can do damage.
Like they can push poison into your drink. So the implication, there’s a veiled threat in there. But, okay, aside from the veiled threat, there’s also a lot of different cultures that did something very similar. And there’s the sympathetic magic version of, like, a voodoo doll. I’m not talking about that. There were ones called, and I’ve got the names probably mispronounced, but Edolas and these were the ancient greek dolls, and they also had versions of these in Rome.
Phoenicians use these, Canaanites use them. But you would basically create these little tiny effigies. And on certain nights, depending on astrological hoohah, you would summon actual entities from the celestial spheres and these different bodies into this little doll. And then you would leave the doll in the house, and the doll would look over your stuff when you were gone. Essentially, he was kind of like your ring camera a little bit.
Well, in Japan, we have a hinamatsuri where that’s Girls day. That’s March 3, which is about two weeks before you’re supposed to get your dolls and set them up in the house, like on a certain display or whatever, for good luck. And kind of one of the weirdest things is you’re supposed to take it down just before the actual holiday. So when it is March 3, that’s the holiday.
But at that point, you should have put the dolls away already. Or else what? It’s bad luck, I guess. How bad? I don’t know, like, breaking a mirror bad. I mean, that could be bad. If you break a mirror, one of those pieces can hit your jugular and you’re dead. I’m talking about the seven years bad luck, but yeah, something like that. Well, you don’t have to wait this whole seven years.
Some people break a mirror and they die immediately. They don’t have to wait that long if you break the mirror the wrong way. So it is safer, probably, to leave out your Hina Matsuri dolls rather than break a mirror. Okay, but I’m talking the superstitious end of it there, right? So, yeah, kind of that thing stepping on a crack while you’re walking down the street, that sort of thing.
Yeah. Shout out to anyone that ever lost their parents to their backs being broken because they stepped on a crack. Wasn’t that there was a movie? Was it warlock? I don’t think it was warlock, but there was a movie when somebody said that and they actually broke somebody. I think they broke their parents back because they stepped on a crack. Yeah. It has to happen at least once in a movie, right? Did you start throwing your fastballs? Yeah, I think it’s a good number of them, because we’re going to touch back on a lot of these for Toy Story two and toy story three.
I think my leading theory here is Pixar Disney fill in the blank. This is the fantasia of movie that literally creates these digital homunculi and puts souls into them. Or at least it shows the viewer. It shows the world, like this digital soul being put into this digital homunculus, which means it doesn’t have to be real. But then once they show the world how to do it, then the world starts putting its souls into the actual toys.
So it makes the fake thing a real thing, which is kind of fantasia all over again. Like, Fantasia establishes the Disney universe. Before there necessarily was a Disney universe, it could arise and fallen a few times and never gotten back up, but it did. And now so many of the characters and a lot of the style and just the overall concept that went to like, that continues to live forever.
That’s going to always be like an ever giving spring of magical life to the Disney universe. Just like Toy Story is always going to be this thing that constantly is like, that’s the reason we can’t have nice things in the way where it’s like, I miss the classical animation. Like, I missed the Lion King and the 2d hand drawn, even if it was digitally assisted, I missed that sort of style.
And Toy Story and the commercial success of Toy Story is responsible. And maybe not the perfect word, but for this new trajectory of every damn movie, now is Toy Story. Yeah, it’s going to be a much better version. It will be interesting when I get to the brief reopening of Disney animation with a princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh. And I like that Pooh movie a lot, but it bombed.
So they kind of, like, re shuttered the doors for doing anything that looked hand drawn at that point. You know what? It is like, it wasn’t the style, man. I’ve saw both of those movies and I didn’t dislike them. In fact, I absolutely am in love with the whole voodoo scene in the princess and the Frog. Like with the black light kind of neon effects. One of my favorite scenes in any Disney movie ever.
Seriously. But they lacked, I don’t know, some of the grit, I guess. And it’s not like I’m not going to point out 101 Dalmatians. I don’t think that was necessarily the best area. But I don’t know, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, little Mermaid, some of those had some really spectacular looking animation, and I guess princess and the Frog did, too, but it was so digitally assisted. I don’t know, it feels like no true Scotsman purist angle where once the cat’s out of the bag, it’s all digital.
It’s almost like you’re looking for flaws in it. But I don’t know, it misses some of the X Factor heart because every one of those movies up until recently kept pushing the bar. Like, even when Toy Story one came out, you were even like, even though I’m outside of the range of Disney, they hit all four quadrants that you know of. Disney knows about all 20, you only know about four, but they hit all of those quadrants.
And it was impressive because it elevated the bar. And I don’t know if the Winnie the Pooh movie or the Princess and the frog necessarily elevated anything. They went back to say like, hey, remember when stuff used to be a little bit better than it was? Here’s that. Remember? And then people were like, maybe I like the new stuff. I don’t know. Now. Yeah, the Pooh doesn’t push the animation ball too far, but I would say that one wins over on really cracklin dialogue, which is way funnier than what we were watching in the earlier poo.
Well, the first Pooh movie is still hilarious. That they make an in joke in the movie about how boring it is. And it’s like, let’s just go ahead and skip over this next part because it’s the most boring thing ever. It’s just like, man, when a movie in the first 20 minutes is telling you that it’s skipping itself because of how boring it is, there’s something true to that statement, something I’ll say for Toy Story.
I mean, some of the earlier Disney movies, as great as Pinocchio and Dumbo are, they feel a bit abbreviated, which was real nice for timing when we were watching them. But Toy Story has 4 minutes of credits and it’s out after an hour 17, which is nice. That’s going to slowly change, of course. Well, you brought up Dumbo and Pinocchio. I mean, those are pretty old ones. I would say that Disney’s issue with being abbreviated has been resolved for the last four or five movies we’ve seen.
Now, I don’t think that was existent. Maybe Lion King ish. It was a little abbreviated, but I don’t know if I want that movie to be any longer than it was. No, I think Toy Story is, like, pretty perfectly paced where it is, I guess, is my point. Yeah. 20 minutes, 15 if you don’t include all the credits and everything. So it’s a nice, tight experience. I don’t want to see a two hour Toy story movie.
Yeah, I’m trying to think. I guess animated movies still don’t tend to break the two hour mark, which is nice, because we were just doing 2001 of space. I see. Yeah. This used to be a long movie. Now it’s just like. I mean, it can still feel long because of the nature of that movie. But time wise, it’s pretty much as long as anything these days. You go watch Lord of the Rings and then go back and watch 2001 Space Odyssey, and it feels like a commercial.
Like a squib. Yeah. And speaking of Kubrick, just so that we don’t leave anything out. Yeah. The carpet in Sid’s house is the same carpet in the overlook hotel in the shining. And then Sid’s launching rockets. Yeah. And he sends launching rockets. So there’s a lot of Kubrick insider stuff in here. And he can’t launch the rocket originally, and he comes up with an excuse that it’s raining and he’ll have to do it tomorrow, and things go a little bit awry.
So I don’t know. He never actually launches the rocket, does he? I mean, Woody does, but that’s different. That’s for the plot and service of the plot. Plot armor. I was just thinking screenwriting terms of that match was so know, because it’s just like, here’s a match. I’m going to light you on fire later. Then it turns out to be, oh, the thing that’ll save us. And then it doesn’t work.
And then there’s plan B. And I was like, that’s sharp writing. I mean, just looking at creativity, obviously, this is when Pixar could crank out a pretty perfect script. Yeah. And this is, like, the subjugation of your expectation. Did I get that word right? But this is about right, like, completely changing what you were thinking was going to happen, just for the same thing to kind of happen, but.
Yeah. And the match is Chekhov’s gun, essentially. And because Woody can’t have a gun, I guess it’s Chekhov’s match. Yeah, but it’s not quite because it doesn’t quite work. In the end, it turns out to be more of the. Yeah, fair, fair point. Or the red herring, I should say MacGuffin’s a little bit different. It’s the red herring. Yeah, it’s very meta. It’s meta inside of meta. So here we’ve got the Disney proxy within a proxy and a guffin within.
What’s the JFK? An enigma within a riddle. Know. Anyways, a MacGuffin. Yeah. I do appreciate though, this kind of is the start of a trade off. Newer, even straight up Disney films like Tangled or Zootopia have things know, it has things engaging for adults. Toy Story is like the first time was like, okay, we will actually allow to fully engage with adults at the same time. All this stuff is going to kind of blend out and become one similar looking thing for the rest of mean.
Obviously there’s differences between watching frozen or tangled or Zootopia, but there’s not heavy stylistic differences. I feel like it all looks like an unreal engine. That is a real. I don’t know if they actually use it. That’s for video games, isn’t it? But yeah, there is kind of a sameness to everything that you wouldn’t get with earlier animation when you have completely different groups of people figuring out how to do completely different things in completely different analog ways.
And it was smart because when the time that this came out, the ability to do complex shading with, again, as you see Andy or any other human that looks just absolutely like nightmares. But when you want to do these simple plastic figures, it works really well. Especially if you give it just a little bit of extra polygons and detail. Because a piece of plastic might actually look like, unnaturally smooth.
And that’s convenient for these early 3d engines where it didn’t have to calculate all these different complicated sort of surface areas and how light would bounce it off. It’s just a smooth ball or it’s just a smooth surface. It makes it a lot easier in order to reproduce that. So it would be weird to see, and I’m sure people have already done it before, but watch Toy Story four and alongside Toy Story one.
But I’m almost thinking that the people working on Toy Story four have to dial back even the easiest ability to make it look even more realistic. Just because Toy Story one kind of established this over the top sort of plastic fresno style, like shading. I think they did basically have to recreate all the digital models for Toy Story two. Like the supercomputers weren’t super enough to just keep them at the time or something.
I’ll check that when we get to two. But I think they actually had Toy Story one. All of that stuff is basically lost because of how much data it was at the time. And I’m wondering out loud without forethought, but the jump to still required a lot of knowledge about 2d animation, at least in terms of that cartoony emphasis of the classic. One is like someone jumping or like a ball bouncing.
When it’s sort of like a cartoon or animation usually overemphasize certain aspects of those. So when a person jumps, you kind of have them almost like meld into the ground a little bit. And then when they go to launch again, you have their bodies stretch out and elongate in a way that a regular human or animal body wouldn’t actually do. But you emphasize it in cartoons and commercials and stuff.
But I wonder how far away we are that no one has to know any of that. You don’t have to know how to draw. You don’t have to know how to do two d. You don’t have to know how to do 3D. It’s all just kind of AI generated. And I don’t know, I think it’ll be interesting because just like 2D opens up the space to do things that you couldn’t normally do.
And then three D, it operates in that same space, but it makes it look more realistic. And now the AI version of that, it kind of like is both of those worlds. It makes things possible that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. To another level where even a regular person sitting down might not even think of some weird. I don’t know. AI is kind of Sid, right? Like someone making a Disney movie with AI and not the approved models, they’re the Sid, right? Creating these weird, like, amalgamism monsters.
Yeah. I don’t even know if this is a possible thought experiment, but if Toy Story was just a 2d animated film with Lion King quality animation, would it be better? Worse? About the same. It would be brave. A little toaster all over again. Just toys instead of appliances. Yeah, I guess that’s the case. It’s cooked in, of course, as Pixar and their game was doing the 3D Stuff.
So obviously that was never going to happen. But just as a thought experiment, I guess it would still be an entertaining movie, but it wouldn’t quite have that weird, resonant power that it’s had. I mean, same question, but if you invert it. So that Toy Story is brave little toaster. Is brave little toaster like the one that explodes and gets popular? Good question. So there is something about the visual where I guess you just blow people away and they’re so impressed.
You can kind of work with that for a bit. I kind of feel that brave little toaster is a superior story to Toy Story. They’re kind of the same story, except for that brave little toaster. They’ve already been abandoned by their God, and they’re in search for their God again, and they get reunited and everything’s happy labor after when that happens. But Toy Story, it’s the threat of their God is about to leave them.
So this is like the pre story. Like Toy Story happens in a way before brave little toaster does, because at least they’re still connected to this young kid. But in brave little toaster, the family moves away. And this is like their summer home they don’t go to anymore. So now the toys are. The appliances are just like. It’s been five years and we haven’t seen another person that’s going to happen.
Toy Story three, isn’t it? We spend all our time in the box in the attic now. Yeah, I think Toy Story three is the one that I think is the most evil, because I remember seeing that one, and it takes that notch up. Not only are you abandoning your toys that love you, and they need your love, and they feel bad if you don’t give them your love constantly, but now it’s like, Anne, they’re going to go to a horrible place and be tortured to death and maybe even go to hell.
Yeah. So, of course that’s a conversation for another time, I guess. Yeah, I guess I’m kind of running out my own steam on Toy Story notes wise. Anything else you want to throw in there? No. If we missed anything major, drop it in the comments because we’ll be covering at least three more of these freaking toy story movies. So if there was anything major we missed, we’ll definitely pick it up on the next ones.
I believe five is in the works now. Oh, boy. They were saying four is in the works for ten years, though, so I guess don’t hold your breath. Man, I would love a modern Toy story. Well, I say modern, but a Toy Story movie made in 2024. But it’s like the nostalgia of toys exclusively. And they kind of did that with small soldiers. I want to see a new small soldiers basically, I guess that’s what I’m asking.
Think I know people that definitely are know small soldiers. Greater than. Even if there’s anyone even asking that question, they should be slapped back into reality. Like Woody is slapping mkultra. Buz Lightyear. Like, the small soldiers is such a superior movie. Toy Story, that is one of the coolest, unsung movies ever been created. I think the premise is awesome. The ending doesn’t necessarily stick, but, man, building up to.
It’s great. They talk about emps. Like, come on. What other kids movies talk about emps and action figures and nanotechnology, essentially. It’s pretty intense. Well, it’s Joe Dante, so it’s like a real filmmaker making it, which is nice, I will say for me, I have trouble rectifying it. You can slap me if you want, but I never saw a small soldier until about two years ago, so it’s kind of hard for me to properly compare the two because I didn’t see it in 1998 or whatever.
I actually saw that one in theater. Yeah. And university by then said small soldiers. That one did not have the reach of Toy Story, which, again, kind of gets to your idea of it being a new fantasia, which I’m not disagreeing with at all. I like that we can hit a new fantasia. It’s kind of nice, but, yeah, this does feel like kind of the start of the real star of the modern stuff.
Little Mermaid was kind of halfway there. Now it’s like, okay, this is a fully modern feeling movie now, except that the animations may be not quite up to snuff. Well, it’s great. It’s just technologically back a little bit. Yeah. I guess if you were to watch Toy Story the day it came out, and then you said, okay, compare this to Little Mermaid. Which one of these seems like it’s the superior animation? I feel like I might be like, oh, yeah, toy story, man, it looks so real.
Yeah. No, we cannot. I did see it opening night, and we came out saying, that’s the best animation ever. Yeah. And you’d already seen all these great animations, but now, in retrospect, it’s like, oh, it’s actually like the worst out of anything we’ve seen up until, I don’t know, 101 Dalmatians versus Toy Story. Where are you at? Yeah, I mean, in this one, they worked with what they had.
I would say 101 Dalmatians. Again, the animation is fine, but they were taking shortcuts there, whereas here they were taking long cuts. They just didn’t have the tools yet to do it properly. Really? It’s a good point. I’ll just point that out because that’s the one that I remember the most. Like, Xerox machine. Like someone didn’t blow the dust off the glass in between you. I don’t know.
I kind of like seeing some of that. But it also feels like that’s worth more criticism than poking at the ambient lighting or the low texture resolution. In Toy Story one. Yeah, toy Story one, they’re having an anime with basically digital crayons. Have they done a toy story one remaster where they just update the freaking textures? I don’t think so. Why the hell not, man? I mean, every 3d game that’s come out in the last 20 years has rereleased a lot of them.
Like the 4K where it’s the same everything, and they just swap out the polygons and they swap out the textures. You tell me that Disney doesn’t have the resources to do this, but they can remake an entire little mermaid movie from start to end? Well, I guess the film snob know, don’t screw with the original. People were pretty grumpy when George Lucas did it, right? Yeah, but does this count if the difference is just that? Hey, you know when we zoom in into the hallway in Sid’s house and you can literally see the blurry pixels because the texture on the wall is so close to the camera? Are you saying they can’t even just update that texture to be.
Doesn’t get blurry when you zoom into it and add a little bit of extra ambient like shadows and. I don’t know, I feel like that gets a pass. I would keep your eye open for that next year. Seeing as that’s the 30th anniversary, it seems like you might sit on it 30 years. Wow, 30 years. Crazy. Make everyone feel a little old. We’re going to die slowly dying.
Yeah, as we’re slowly dying. What are you up to these days? The big one is still chaos twins. Still available at chaos twins. com. Although I’ve got four or five other huge projects, I’ll limit it to the top three. So the top one is paranoidsummer. com. And that’s going to be four different brand new title releases that I actually want to raise the funds for it before summer so that I can release all four of these titles during summer.
But one of them is Lee’s demons, aka Lee Harvey Oswald. Demon Hunter. And it’s about Lee Harvey Oswald actually being the good guy and trying to save JFK from zombies. There’s another one called Mold, which is about a lunch lady that’s tormented by middle schoolers, and she gets her revenge on them by entering an underground world of mycelium and reanimating her cat. And there’s another one. That one’s going to be honestly fun.
That one’s called rising from the ashes. This is about two guys that find out from a magic tatoo parlor that the tattoos they get give them special abilities in the dream world. So they start being able to go intentionally get good ideas for tatoos. Not just, like, a random porky the pig or whatever, but they’ll go and get, like, a gun, or they’ll get, like, an axe, and then they’ll use that to just tear up shop.
Inside the dream world, man, there’s so many other projects, too. I’ve got Lucifer lives in lower Manhattan, which is now on Steam, or at least the coming soon page is on Steam. So go on Steam. Search for the word Lucifer. I think it’s one of the only three games I don’t know. I’m cornering the market in games that have the word Lucifer in them. But, yeah, Lucifer lives in lower Manhattan.
And it’s a game that also reveals two to three plus years of research into the satanic panic, freemasonry, and mkultra in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. There was so much research that I couldn’t afford to draw it all out into a full comic book. I didn’t want to write it into a regular book. So now it’s going to be a video game. So there you go.
And then the third one is nasacomic. com. This stands for never a straight answer. And this is a comic about Stanley Kubrick directing the moon landings. And it’s kind of a blend between the office, because it kind of just takes. The moon landings are being faked for granted, and that’s just always the plot in the background. But the rest of the story is just about the mundane, the horrible things that Stanley Kubrick would put all of the cast through, like how insufferable he was, the fact that people complained that he had bad hygiene, and it was, like, affecting the actors.
And these are all real. This is all real stuff based on Stanley Kubrick’s life. So it’s a love letter to him, but it’s also a fairly critical one. So, yeah, those are just the three out of, like, the 20 that I’ve got going on. Okay. And as for me, I’m basically podcasting all over the place. That’s Patreon podcastio podcast where I also do films and filth, talking about really good movies, really bad movies.
Time enough podcast for the Twilight Zone and podcast 1999 for covering the show space 1999. Have you ever seen that one? I don’t think I have. Space 1999, Martin Landell, Barbara Bain, made by the Andersons, who did Thunderbirds and stuff. But this isn’t the marionettes. This is actual actors. And it’s just weird, metaphysical 70s science fiction. It sounds like it’s up my alley. No, I’ve never seen it.
It’s all on YouTube, like in pretty good quality. So, yeah, you can check that out if you want to. I’ll throw another random one out there. I don’t think it’s by anyone anyone’s ever heard of, but it’s a movie called Lunopolis. I think it’s called Leonopolis, and it’s like a fake found footage documentary from the future, but it’s also mixed with retro style editing. But the first time I saw it, I loved it.
So, yeah, if anyone’s ever seen Leonopolis out there, that’s an interesting one. Okay, well, hey, everyone, be nice to your toys. Or don’t. We don’t care. Well, if you’re not nice to them, then, yeah, you’re actively hurting them because they love you and they want your love back from them. And remember that if they’re unlicensed toys or you’re 3d printing your own, or you’re using knockoffs or handmedowns, they are inferior.
They might even be demonic. The only true way to get a pure soul in your toy is the Disney store tearing a hole in reality. So there you go. That was supposed to play a video clip, but it didn’t. I got a few seconds of the clip. American stickers, cryptid killers we got all your favorite conspiracies. There are no american stickers. They’ll make you smiling. Snicker false magic society all of these and more sticker sheets.
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