Toy Story 3 is, despite a number of borderline-hyperbolic reviews near its release, my favorite Toy Story (that would be Toy Story 2, although if we're opening up Pixar's entire catalog, I'm torn between Monsters, Inc., Wall-E, Up, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille). This is totally subjective, but I'm always willing to go on the record and say it's not even the best Toy Story of the (currently) trilogy, falling behind the second film's surprising depth and the first film's savvy story-telling. Toy Story 3 seems to have trouble balancing the conventions of "kids' movies" and Pixar's traditional "themes adults find appealing in an animated movie" narratives.Normally, people don't notice the fact that there are obvious "kid friendly" gags in Pixar movies because the writers, directors, animators, and voice talent sell the broader pathos of the film in such a way that the lingering effect is to remember themes rather than moments. There were a handful of people quick to jump on Toy Story 3 for its "kiddie" moments, like Ken's dress up montage or Buzz Lightyear's "Spanish Mode", but it was largely a reaction to people who totally ignored those moments in favor of the "giving up your childhood and moving on" not-even-subtext-because-it's-right-out-in-front thematic arc.
The problem is that neither side is necessarily wrong, but what both of them seem to be missing is the fact that when Pixar is firing on all cylinders, the arguments almost never happen. Toy Story 3 is not a "masterpiece," nor is it simply a "kid's movie" unworthy of discussion. Its apparent inability to live up to either extreme category leaves the film open to a wide variety of other critiques, but the one distinguishing factor of Toy Story 3 that stuck with me - perhaps more than any other animated film since Watership Down - is the, at times, oppressively apocalyptic tone of the film.
In order to proceed, I will - out of necessity - venture into spoiler territory; there's simply no other way to address the imagery without pointing to a specific sequence late in the film. While much of Toy Story 3 is "about" dealing with a world that no longer welcomes you - in this case, the idea of toys being abandoned in a hostile, unfamiliar environment - including typical post-apocalyptic tropes like the city run by a jaded, bitter, and corrupt tyrant (Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear), this could easily be looked at as the circus mirror-image of Toy Story 2's "abandoned but collect-able" narrative, until Toy Story 3 takes an otherwise benign "peril" sequence and goes positively dark.
The junkyard sequence seems, at first, to be a standard "characters in peril" scene, with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the gang riding down a conveyor belt to the incinerator. The fact that Lotso betrays Woody's trust and flees for safety instead of saving our heroes isn't unexpected, although is it a little harsh considering the film is rated "G." Predictably, our heroes are saved by the space aliens, in a clever call back to their worship of "the crane" from Toy Story, which keeps the film in "safe" territory, but what happens between Lotso abandoning Woody and the others and their inevitable rescue is something tougher to explain to a child than "what happened to Bambi's mother?"
The conveyor belt dumps into a swirling whirlpool of garbage, bottoming out in the incinerator, a fire burning brightly enough that the entire sequence takes on a hellish orange / red tint, the first sign things are going very badly for our heroes. As they move closer and closer to the center, and accordingly, impending "death," the toys have something of an epiphany concerning their hopeless situation, and one by one embrace the fact that they - the protagonists of Toy Story 3 - are about to die. They join hands and silently embrace their inevitable death, and though we know they will be rescued, there is the awkward realization in adults that children in the audience are watching someone face their mortality and give up, content to die together.
Far be it from me to compare a film like Toy Story 3 to The Road, but there is something bleak, something hopeless about that moment. Watching the film alone, I was struck by how apocalyptic, how vaguely nihilistic the entire "incinerator" sequence (up to their rescue) was. That so many of the characters had already embraced a hopeless, loveless future earlier in the film only compounded it, but it's hard not to draw comparisons of that sequence in Toy Story 3 to the moment where Viggo Mortenson desperately considers shooting Cody Smit-McPhee rather than risking losing him to cannibals. And that's rough stuff, especially when one film is rated "R" and the other is a "G."
Toy Story 3 is problematic in that it doesn't integrate the goofy, predictable, pandering "kids humor" with the at times oppressively dark themes, and I must reiterate that this does not immediately disqualify it from some critical consideration. I would assume it won't win "Best Animated Film,' despite its many supporters, because while the film is resonant in some levels, Toy Story 3 leaves itself open to many valid criticisms, and in the end is only "pretty good," at least from where I'm sitting.
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