Wait, hold on, I need to place this image from Ted 2 here to finish up the title of this post.
Just pretend the bag is filled with the remaining ashes of Toy Story 4 as Ted and Mark Wahlberg go bury it in the harbor so that NO ONE may ever discover it and try to somehow piece it back together again. Okay, on with the real first image of this post.
Toy Story 4 was Pixar’s latest entry in their constantly growing library of more nostalgia based films, rather than new ideas. It was released in 2019 and sure did make some major accomplishments, such as making over a billion dollars at the box office and also winning most animated feature awards, including for the Academy Awards.
Mark Kermode, an observer film critic for The Guardian, stated he enjoyed the movie, as with the growing fears of Mary Poppins Returns that year being an example of potentially ruining a beloved nostalgic based property, he was worried for this film too as he said the last film was the perfect way to end it.
However, he felt reassured that wasn’t the case after watching this film. He stated he “was left with a sense of relief that a treasured memory had not been trashed.” Well, I’m here to assure you the viewers that I don’t feel as much hatred for Mary Poppins Returns as I do for Toy Story 4.
He gave this film 4 stars! He stated that the film find its “mojo” with the return of characters like Bo Peep and her new character role, the newly introduced characters of Forky and Keanu Reeves’s character (Dude Perfect? Awesome Blaster? McClain Dirtway? I genuinely have no idea what his name is as I’m writing this post. All I see is an invisible walking and talking ad for John Wick 3), praising the visual work, loving the road trip story, and also enjoying the slapstick comedy and emotional heartstrings being tugged.
If I could mind control the Key and Peele conjoined Bunny and Duck, I would have them do their usual stuff and just mock Pixar for attempting to create this film and also towards the author of the article by saying his 4 star review should be turned into an opposite 1 star review. Now, let’s get busting down on this movie for the reasons that not only in this “professional” critic wrong, but also what they forgot to put in the article to show the flaws in this “perfect” movie that viewed as, and this is being kind, “the cooldown movie after watching Spider-Man: Far From Home.”
Yes, this is the second time I’ve mentioned in a post that a Spider-Man movie was more worth it than a Disney movie that’s “supposedly” good after watching them both on the same day, BECAUSE IT’S TRUE!
Now, let’s start off with Forky, a character that shouldn’t haven’t even gotten a Emmy winning tv short form series. He’s created by Woody and Buzz’s new owner Bonnie, which not only raises questions on if she’s the witch from Brave from those online Pixar theory rumors (which I don’t believe in myself as that would mean that The Incredibles and The Boys don’t take place in the same universe), but also on why the creators of this movie thought it was a smart idea to show him a rated G flick.
Forky was created from pieces of the trash, and therefore wants to constantly jump into the trash, or any trash or any kind. Sorry to you young viewers who are reading a college rated blog post, but “trash” in Toy Story means “Death”.
Not even kidding. In pretty much all formats of the Toy Story films, being trashed or getting thrown to the trash essentially means to die or on your way to die. And we have Forky, a character who keeps constantly wanting to “go to the trash”, over and over and too many “overs” to put into one paragraph realistically.
So apparently we have a suicidal Spork who’s one of the highlights of the movie from the critic because he craves the sweet release of “trash” and most of his dialogue is essentially about wanting to be “trashed”?
…I know there used to be a rating system of G, PG, and R rated back in the old days before PG-13 was a thing, but can a multibillion dollar company that’s also a subdivision of an even larger multibillion dollar company not actually tell the difference between what should be in a G rated movie and a PG rated movie? Well maybe it’s because they want to try to squeeze a few extra cents more into the box office by making it G rated and throw out all other rational logic to support that decision.
How I love how Puss in Boots 2 is already a better movie than Toy Story 4 if it can produce so many classic memes despite not evening being a full year old by the time I post this post.
Now, let’s move onto the visuals. Before I go harshly breaking into that topic, let’s just appreciate the amazing quality of detail this film has to offer. Such as Woody and Jessie being play with by this random kid on the opening. Kinda cruel for Bonnie to immediately after some tv specials to just give the toys Andy gave to her to some other kid.
…wait…the kid in the photo is suppose to be Andy? Are we sure he doesn’t have a fraternal twin or he was shown offscreen in the first 3 films or something?
…oh boy.
That’s a big problem with the film, the visuals are too good. So much so they actually distort how some of the characters new and old may originally look. Yes, Andy wasn’t that well designed in the first two films, but he looked naturally realistic and well designed enough to look believable in the third film. I barely could recognize at first glance in the trailers when I saw this design it’s so unrecognizable.
Not only can the visuals on the characters make them look unrecognizable, but they make them too recognizable. Everyone was pointing out the dummy henchmen in this film looked too similar Slappy’s design in the 2015 Goosebumps movie. And there’s a 4 year gap between when these two movies release, so essentially Disney essentially be trying to screw Sony over…twice in the same year. The other time be when Disney was firing Spider-Man from the MCU with no more Sony collaboration.
How many times am I gonna have to keep on mentioning Sony’s Spider-Man being in the right on here as opposed to Disney being in the wrong in the same timeframe?!
Yes, the visuals are good, but having visuals looking realistic in an animated movie doesn’t mean a film is good. A road trip comedy for family members has been done for so long that there are actually more mentions of kids wanting to think of the Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip movie. Road trip comedies nowadays don’t offer anything new, especially if you’re gonna try to say that realistic animation is the default reason why a film is worth the watch.
We’ve had unrealistic looking animated films like The Mitchell’s Vs. The Machines and Up have non realistic looking people, but their styles worked better for epic adventures or good use of humor. The slapstick humor is here is pretty boring and doesn’t spark fresh new ways this franchise can breathe new life.
This is an image of an empty water jug. I would like to make a return with a receipt on it because Disney/Pixar expected me to cry bucket loads of tears. I didn’t produce any tears for this movie so I felt like I might as well save money, and if you’re asking me on the figurative comparison example of this water jug or the movie, the answer is “yes”.
Like, why am I suppose to cry? The author said it pulled on emotional heartstrings that it made him cry, so why should I give a care to cry? Because Bo Peep is taken away in the beginning of the movie? Because a little random kid we’ve never seen before is lost at a carnival? That’s as poor an attempt to make one cry as it is to try to convince someone that the 2019 Cats movie is a good film.
Bo Peep being taken in the beginning wasn’t needed. The last film was actually perfect how her story ended. Any toy at any time could be gone, much like real life, and there’s no plot armor protection for everyone. Everyone can’t be around forever, and to take away someone who meant everything to Woody was as tragic as you could expect, but they paid respect for that decision like you would honor and think of a past loved one.
And the random kid lost we see feels like a punch of air against the water. It’s not even held for long until they decide to have her found again, as they just needed a reason why the main villain of the film had a owner who’d want her. Wow, talk about “clever” connected storytelling. The only reason for a lost kid was to give a redemption resolution for the main bad guy of the film. If you ask me, that’s actually more cruel that Disney/Pixar had to play dirty like that.
, oh, oh, I know! It’s because Woody and Buzz say goodbye to each other for the very last time at the end of the movie. That’s what the writer meant by him crying so much by this movie. Oh wait, that’s not it either, because it’s on equivalent comparison to Vin Diesel’s “One Last Ride” quote, as there’s always more distance to drive in a franchise as long as it keeps making money very soulless like. They even confirmed a 5th story film is happening. The goodbye here is about as believable as the Batgirl movie being released to the public.
Yeah, let’s not kid ourselves here, the only reason this movie exists at all IS because of money. They made a billion dollars with the last movie, then bam, they made another billion again. Disney loves to keep making sequels faster than they can make a good story.
Sure, films like Zootopia made over a billion dollars too and is also getting a sequel, but there’s two very different reasons why that’s different from Toy Story 4. One is because they didn’t expect Zooptia to be that big of a hit. Sure it was gonna do well in the box office growth of hundreds of millions of dollars to make a decent profit, but the storytelling and themes are what got people so invested and intrigued by it that much like Puss in Boots 2, it actually performed better than expected.
Secondly, it’s getting a sequel, but that would be nearly a decade worths of time from 2016 to when that releases because good storytelling from the predecessors take time, and that’s something the people in charge of the sequel are planning on doing. Last film dealt with racism and law, and you can’t just automatically jump into something else without making that gradual transition.
Toy Story 4’s story had a transition that was as linear as running a marathon on land and halfway decide you need to bake a 3 layered chocolate cake before getting back to the race that everyone wanted to see in the first place.
Oh by the way, here’s a refresher on that whole ratings thing I was talking about earlier. The bunny and duck constantly have cutaways where they murder an old woman and also one by the end of the film where they turn into Kaiju sized powerful monsters and destroy the carnival in a blaze of glory and try to destroy the humans. Again, a rated G movie.
Not only is Woody’s role just to support everyone else and essentially making him less important of a character, but he’s even sidelined more for…Bo Peep. You know, his love interest from the first two movies and essentially his darling to his own self described cowboy identity. Well now she’s an adventurous and brave feminist representation of girls getting it done and being independent and be so slay about. Now that’s some serious and radical work y’all.
Oh, and she just happened to randomly reunite with toys year later with no logical or realistic way of contacting one another. Again, Woody and Buzz aren’t truly gone if something as illogical of reasoning and simple understandable like this is possible in the world that’s suppose to act realistic enough to ours.
Still, others would also say she’s anti feminism representation, because she acts tough, but she doesn’t do enough justification to make her stand out as a well written and acted women. Could be mainly in past that Disney could’ve been trying to ride the rising woke movement of the MeToo movement and tried to make their women be all aggressively confident and independent.
However, they were still relying on a certain trope to not only that movie, but others as well around that time, as when female writer Nell Frizzell from the British Vogue writes about female leading action heroes or Bo Peep, she states that they “shouldn’t have to be either be a slim, blond, beautiful princess, in the manner of Frozen, or a slim, blond, beautiful ‘badass superheroine’ (always a heroine, never a hero) in the manner of Bo Peep.”
Take these women above for example. Atom Eve from Invincible. Starlight from The Boys. Amy Santiago from Brooklyn 99. And Nobura Kugisaki from Jujutsu Kaisen. These are woman who like to be feminine at heart, but are independent to a normal degree and trying to break down stereotypes that people assume about women or confident women in general who act with power or bravery. Something that Toy Story 4 couldn’t do with Bo Peep.
Oh, and don’t worry, nothing is added onto Jessie and her character development. She’s got none in this movie. They essentially switched the status on Jessie and Bo Peep here, where plain old vanilla Bo Peep went from minor supporting character to main supporting character, and Strawberry Shortcake Jessie went from main supporting character to minor supporting character.
Jessie’s character arc built ever since Toy Story 2 and building more of an identity in Toy Story 3 is out the window. Her biggest contribution in the movie is popping RV tires, and it’s not even in the end of the film, it’s just one of many attempts to delay them from leaving the carnival during the middle of the movie.
Im not seeing a lot of great specifics in the article about Buzz, and pretty much for a good reason. He got Thor 4’d! Or I guess the grammatical way on saying it is Thor Ford.
He’s the dumbest! That’s the nice way of describing his role in the movie. His whole character plot is listening to his inner voice. And no, not metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically or theoretically or any other smart way. He does it literally. Straight. Up.
At least a decade worth of time has passed or a significant amount of time has passed since he appeared in Toy Story 1 to Toy Story 4, but he’s not smart enough to remember his buttons on his body are preprogrammed voice commands of his own voice, which he interrupts as his “inner voice” or his conscious. He presses it every time in this movie when he’s confused about what to do, which is unrealistically a lot of times in the movie.
This is also a logical flaw as well because in the first movie when he realizes he’s a toy, he presses his buttons on his body and they sound off preprogrammed voice recordings, though he doesn’t turn dumb by this. He accepts he’s a toy. So how much time did pass for Buzz to somehow forget that fact? He listens to “inner voice” so much he actually doesn’t help out his friend, even though he should and presses it multiple times to get a different answer to say he should.
And yeah, the reason for this film’s existence once again traces back to money. Jeffery Bricker of Medium says that “That’s the dirty truth behind Toy Story 4. It’s all about the money. The richest film studio in history isn’t satisfied and is getting the gang back together for another Billion or so.”
So, with tons of advertising thrown at it with merchandise and relying on an audience of new young age movie goers who’ve had the time to see all three films, they successfully duped and tricked them into essentially watching one of Pixar’s weakest attempts at a good movie. It’s a good attempt though at clearly showing it’s a money grab though.
Now, you must be wondering like if a film like that is so awful and so soulless, then how did it win the Oscar for best animated feature? Well, there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is because of biased reasons, as the ceremony was broadcasted by ABC, also known as public Disney. They assume most viewers with families have taken their kids to go see Disney movies like Toy Story 4 so they’d expect it to be the obvious choice for winning.
A second reason is because of unofficial legalized bribery. Studios can pay voters through “For Your Consideration” programs and influence their decision making, much like how Rotten Tomatoes have recently been outed as paying critics to give positive ratings on movies. I mean, can you honestly believe that the 2019 Kim Possible movie got a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes but has a 3.7/10 IMDb score and a current 53% google users score and call it valid?
The truth or the matter is money and gifts and perks can make Oscar voters very tempted to vote a certain direction rather than a naturally flowing direction of free choice. That year of 2019 animated films had more misses than hits for sure, but when it came down to it, a lot of people gave more critical and audience liking to films like Klaus or I Lost My Body. They found recognition in popularity online and streaming, but ultimately couldn’t beat the firepower or Disney.
And this isn’t the last time Disney would try to “bribe” their way with biased voters. The year after Wolfwalkers lost to Soul. Year after that, The Mitchell’s vs. The Machines lost to Encanto.
Even this current year of animated movies of 2023, people are saying films like Elemental or Wish, which were critical failures compared to the Disney films Disney is used to having for current day reception standards, have more predicted likely odds of being nominated for the Oscar’s for best animated feature as opposed to amazing movies like Nimona or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem would be, all because of bad popularity and brand recognition.
Luckily, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the likely contender to win the award since its first film won for good reason and how the sequel connected everyone together again to see this one as a cinematic experience, there’s no way Disney can buy their way out of this one. They might next year though if Sony doesn’t allow Beyond the Spider-Verse to be a 2024 release because of the results of the former actors strike. Then yeah, Disney is gonna win the 2025 ceremony with Inside Out 2.
This isn’t just the Oscar’s though, as this can apply to most award ceremonies, including the Golden Globes, which is more biased and less logical when it comes to awards. Everyone knows who’s who on the Hollywood Foreign Press committee, so they can specifically target towards that individual with a campaign nomination marketing plan that’s made to influence the voter with influential material rewards, as long as it tempts them to have their individual or movie or movie team nominated.
Even Denzel Washington stated after winning an another award on air live at the Golden Globes that he said he was told to do so many requirements while doing a luncheon with the committee and ended up winning the award the year he won. And to make it even worse for influenced voting, studios sometimes pay around 10 million dollars for their advertising campaign strategies, on even just on specific movie itself.
It’s the policy of “you need to spend money to make money”. Movies and shows that are acclaimed are nice and all, but if they don’t have any special recognition about them for obtained accolades, then what’s the point in watching? You’d have no way of knowing just how successful a show or movie really was if there wasn’t any system of recognition, so those who try the hardest in the financial area of spending on media end up making the most money when they have brand awareness advertised for award recognition. Being called the “best” in something makes people want to view that product and also more of what the studio has to offer.
Now, who’s to say that Disney for example didn’t try influencing Mark Kermode to make a good article because it’s “Pixar”, and universally the standard association people had with Pixar was “nearly flawless masterpieces”? This author clearly doesn’t know popularity is not as important as the quality of storytelling is actually crucial to making a good film.
If he expects it to be a box office success with unnecessary realistic imagery and the same old schtick that becomes a broken stick and not really focusing on the evolutions and de-evolutions of character development, then that’s truly biased and not willing to accept this film is a mess and has flaws.
I’m not even gonna take the time to dig deeper into writing a more hopeful concluding message than that. The writer doesn’t dig deeper into the movie for a article review and doesn’t appreciate film or media culture in general. He’s stuck living in the past where the toys won’t grow as the movie audience evolves past him and his “professional” opinion.
Though hopefully the 5th movie will be the last time Pixar tries to be greedy money grabbers with Disney and stop trying to make more theatrical releases of the Toy Story movies and leave well enough alone, while it still has a chance of being remembered more fondly upon. Unless something comes around first that indicates the chance that the 5th movie has lost their audience members and have run out of ideas on how to make another theatrical release film.
Hey, remember when I was talking about the de-evolution of Buzz earlier ago? I wasn’t just referring to him as a character, but also his spin-off prequel movie, Lightyear, which resulted in…
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MDST 485 Class Blog 