Toy Story 4
June 30, 2019
By NZB3
No spoiler warnings; That was your spoiler warning.
Toy Story 4 did not make my young alibi happy. A sophisticated kid, he blames the director and the writers for the choice to break up the gang. Woody the cowboy toy does something he is not happy with.
As for me, I respect the choice.
Woody has been on a journey throughout these Toy Story films since 1995. In the first film he faced the crisis of Buzz Lightyear being the new favourite; Worst enemies became best friends. Great stuff, great life lesson, great story arc.
Toy Story 2: Woody faces the moral dilemma of the Baby Boomer. Do you put your life’s energy into your kid (‘Andy’, whose toys these are) or seal yourself in a tidy wrapper? Do you preserve yourself with your set as a collection, a generation preserved, or expend your resources risking wear and tear (Woody’s arm came off during play, prompting the existential crisis) because the purpose of a ‘toy’ is to be played with?
Note: Woody makes the right choice. In real life the Boomers elected to put their resources into themselves and neglected their children.
“…as in real life the Boomers are too selfish to pass the torch or housing stock or territory or even back off and be grandparents. They want to be young forever and live forever…” – 2014: The Lego Movie
“New Zealand Boomers locked in their welfare at everyone else’s expense long ago; Their nests are feathered, they own everything. …The wealthiest generation in history AND they locked it down. How?”- The Boomers: Kiwis vs Frogs
Toy Story 3: Woody and the gang are discarded by their now grown up kid, Andy. They are retired to a sort of old folks home for toys where they are roughly treated as communal property. Like some Boomer without a family to care for them in elder years they tried to be young again and instead found hell. Upon escape, they finally choose to die with dignity and the toys clasp hands as a great conveyor belt takes them to cremation (Another Boomer path not taken in real life.) But heaven (‘The Claw’) rewards their virtue and they return home to ‘parent’ a new generation. Andy gives the toys affectionately to a new girl, Bonnie, who loves them.
Toy Story 4
In this film Woody is a helicopter grandparent. Not played with, he puts all his energy into making sure Bonnie has what she needs like some anonymous guardian angel. It’s exhausting and unfulfilled. Woody even gives up the love of his life even though other toys, women, are the new Mayor and Sheriff in charge of being the toys/parents for Bonnie. Several essential life lessons of independence are postponed for the little girl because Woody takes unilateral control.
Like many parents today, Woody has ego-identified with himself as a parent and doesn’t know who he is unless he’s questing to rescue RC cars from the gutter or Forky the Spork from the trash. Woody’s journey in the film is finding an independent life of his own beyond the gang and the Kid. Woody finds his old flame, Bo Peep, and the ability within him to bequeath and bestow, to trust to others¹. It’s a worthy moral but a really hard one to sell to parents and especially to kids!
My only complaint was the weird sub-plot involving Woody giving up his voice box to a terrorist female doll. Going with the theme of passing on some sort of patriarchal authority from Woody to the females (Mayor, Sheriff Jessie, Bo Peep. Bonnie herself) comes this malevolent thug. Initially the terrorist dolly girl kidnaps Forky to ransom for Woody’s voice box.
Although Terrorist Dolly never apologies, Woody the disposable male makes a voluntary organ donation of his speech box. There’s some sort of analogy for this 1950s woman never having a voice from the day she entered the workforce and it’s only right that she take Woody’s so he hands it over and forgives all. He even risks everything to help this cannibalistic terrorist find a new home; Nobody even blinks at this but it was insane.
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1 The lesson the Boomer generation refuses to learn
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