In 1995, Pixar Animation Studios made history by releasing the first fully computer-animated motion picture. The release of Toy Story led to not only the meteoric rise of the most acclaimed American animation studio, but also of the best animated film series of all time. These films are incredibly important to me, and with the upcoming release of Toy Story 5, there’s no better time to do an in-depth exploration of the first three movies in the series.
Toy Story (1995)
Synopsis: Woody (Tom Hanks) is unseated as Andy’s (John Morris) favorite toy by the delusion Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). The two toys must overcome their differences and work together to escape captivity of the sadistic Sid and return to Andy.
The journey of bringing Toy Story to the screen was a challenging one. Pixar was founded in 1986 by Steve Jobs, who bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm - yes, that Steve Jobs and that Lucasfilm - and spun it off into its own company, along with co-founders Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. For the next decade, Pixar mostly made commercials for other companies and their own short films, many of which won or were nominated for Academy Awards. Lasseter, a former animator at Disney, was the chief creative officer and directed many of these short films himself. In 1991, Disney signed a deal with Pixar to distribute their first feature film. Lasseter would direct, and a whole host of writers were involved, including Pixar legends Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Joe Ranft, and even others like Joss Whedon. The story took some major twists and turns, including an iteration where Woody was essentially a tyrannical villain. This version of the movie remained in place dangerously close to the release date; luckily Lasseter et al. realized their mistake and reworked the story and character into what it is now. (You can still see some of the “Evil Woody” material here, including voice work by Tom Hanks.)
And thank goodness for that! Toy Story’s status as the first computer-animated movie in history is undeniably impressive; but history-making can only get you so far. To be quite honest, the design and animation are pretty rough. The movements of the characters are stilted and there’s no real depth or texture. Fortunately they decided to focus mostly on toys, where this isn’t as much of an issue, and not on humans. All the prominent human characters are pretty hideous.
Yikes.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Toy Story is great because it has a darn good story with great characters that you love. The jokes are consistently funny, especially the constant side banter from Potato Head (Don Rickles), Hamm (John Ratzenberger), and Rex (Wallace Shawn). The voice acting is iconic (“YOU! ARE! A! TOY!!!”). And boy are Randy Newman’s score and songs great! To me, nostalgia sounds like Randy Newman’s voice. It’s so fascinating that we used to have movies like this: non-musical movies with three or more original songs performed in the body of the movie all by one singer.
And the movie is only 80 minutes long!
It was a smash hit upon its release in November 1995. It outperformed its chief animated rival (Disney’s own Pocahontas) both critically and financially, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of the year (behind Die Hard with a Vengeance). It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Original Score and Song (losing to Pocahontas) and Best Original Screenplay, the first of many for Pixar. John Lasseter was awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for directing the first fully computer animated film.
A strong start for Pixar, but they were just getting started…
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Synopsis: When Woody is kidnapped by a toy collector (Wayne Knight), he has to grapple with his own mortality and decide whether to return to Andy or spend his life in a toy museum with his “Roundup Gang”: Bullseye, Jessie (Joan Cusack), and Stinky Pete (Kelsey Grammer).
After the release of Toy Story, Pixar renewed their distribution deal with Disney and began working on A Bug’s Life and other projects. Disney, which owned the rights to Toy Story, demanded a direct-to video sequel. Lasseter and the rest of the creative team at Pixar reluctantly agreed to make Toy Story 2 themselves, since it would’ve happened with or without their involvement. Disney was impressed enough with the team’s work that they upgraded it to a full theatrical release, which resulted in more money and much more prestige than a DTV release. Lasseter once again directed and co-wrote the story with Stanton and Docter, among others. As with the first film, the story was constantly being reworked, resulting in a substantially compressed production time.
Despite this pressure (or maybe because of it), Toy Story 2 was an improvement over its predecessor in almost every way. I think this one is objectively the best Toy Story movie. Visually, the movie is stunning, especially the opening space sequence. The colors pop and the environments look great. The animation is more realistic this time, even though the humans still leave something to be desired. The story is tighter and the characters are stronger (especially Buzz). The dialogue is funnier, and we get to spend way more time with the side characters like Rex and Potato Head. As an aside, I forgot how much vehicular damage there is in these first two movies. And the music! “When She Loved Me” just breaks my heart, beginning with those first soulful piano chords. Thankfully Randy Newman switched it up and had Sarah McLachlan sing it instead of him.
2 was even more of a success than 1, earning over $500 million worldwide and finishing third for the year, behind The Phantom Menace and The Sixth Sense. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Film, Musical or Comedy (this was still before most award shows had an Animated Feature category), and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It lost to Tarzan, which is pretty egregious because “When She Loved Me” is a way better song than “You’ll Be in my Heart.” (Possibly my most controversial movie opinion is that neither Tarzan nor its music are very good.) Oh well.
1999 was the year when Disney’s renaissance ended, leading to the absolute domination by Pixar over all other studios for the next eleven years.
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Synopsis: Woody and the gang have to break out of a prison-like daycare led by the tyrannical Lotso (Ned Beatty) and get back to Andy before he leaves for college…
After Toy Story 2, Pixar had an absolutely legendary run of original movies: Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up. Most of these movies won Academy Awards; all of them made money. Even the worst of them (Cars) still has droves of die-hard supporters. Once again, however, there were tensions between Pixar and Disney, which led to Disney in 2004 announcing a Toy Story 3 that would’ve been made independently of Pixar. The conflict was solved when Disney bought Pixar in 2006 and made John Lasseter chief creative officer of not only Pixar but also Disney Animation. This gave him the ability to shut down the Disney version of Toy Story 3 and do it at Pixar instead. A new script was developed by Lasseter, Docter, Stanton, and Lee Unkrich - the editor of Toy Story 1 and 2 and the co-director of Toy Story 2. Unkrich would direct, and Michael Arndt was brought on to write the final script. The whole cast returned from the previous movies, including the now-adult John Morris as Andy, and even a brief cameo from Erik von Detten as Sid (who’s now a garbage man).
The result was extraordinary: it’s my favorite animated movie, Pixar movie, and 2010 movie, and it’s also the first movie that I cried at. The emotions are high, the jokes are many and great, and the story is profoundly satisfying. I love that we get to spend the whole movie with our core crew of toys. I love how the third act is a prison breakout and it’s legitimately a better prison breakout than “real” prison movies like The Great Escape. Lotso is a terrific villain: while there’s nothing overtly Christian in any of these movies, Lotso clearly espouses materialism, nihilism, and atheism. “We’re all just trash, waiting to be thrown away. That’s all a toy is!” And again, “Where’s your kid now, sheriff?” after he leaves the gang for dead despite having just been saved by them. As a Christian it’s hard to ignore the Christ-like imagery of Woody accepting his fate, arms outstretched, as he descends into the hellish incinerator. The final moments of the movie, from the incinerator scene to the end, are tremendously powerful and still managed to get me choked up after seeing this movie a million times. Gorgeous music, especially the track “So Long” at the end. If I have any critiques, it’s that the exterior scenes have a hazy, overcast look that I don’t really like, and some of the scenes in the second half can tend to drag a bit.
The film received overwhelming love from critics and earned over $1 billion worldwide. It was only the seventh movie ever to achieve that mark, and it became the top grossing movie of the year and the top animated movie of all time. It received five Oscar nominations: not just Animated Feature and Original Song (“We Belong Together”), which it won; but also Sound, Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. Most people say The Social Network should’ve won that year instead of The King’s Speech; I say it should’ve been Toy Story 3.
In summary, the Toy Story movies are historically significant, artistically brilliant, hugely entertaining, and they’ve left a profoundly positive impact on my life. They’re great for children, great for adults, just plain great.
Thank you for reading this guest post! If you’d like to read a slightly longer version of this post that also includes my thoughts on Toy Story 4, you can check it out here on my publication, St. Luke’s Sketchbook!
I had a great time revisiting these movies and writing this post!
The original Toy Story remains my favorite. My parents took me to see it on December 23, 1995 (which was, coincidentally, my mom's birthday). I was 11 and it was the last movie to define my childhood. It's one of the few movies that I loved as a kid and as an adult. My parents took me to see Toy Story 2 exactly four years later.
I saw Toy Story 3 with my sister and niece. It was significant because my niece was 11 years old, the same age as me when I saw the first film. The movie is about passing things on to the next generation, and I knew how Andy felt: earlier that year, I finally gave away all my video games, the last vestiges of my childhood. My sister sold them at a local swap meet and she told me that a man called up his son about them, then purchased them all. I was very glad to know that another child would be enjoying those games.