Toy Story 3

For pure emotion, there has been no better movie to see in 2010 than Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 3. There are still two months left, so there's every possibility that this final chapter in arguably the best film trilogy to date will be bested. I doubt it, but welcome the opportunity to be even more overwhelmed by every kind of appropriate moviegoing emotion. That said, it's to the credit of everyone at Pixar, especially the great cast, director Lee Unkrich, and screenwriter Michael Arndt that a movie about toys that come to life when humans aren't around is more emotional than every other movie of the year. That the film is animated makes this a bigger achievement for some people. I'm not one of them.

As we get closer and closer to yearly film awards being announced, there will come more and more debate over whether or not a movie like Toy Story 3 should be considered in the same breath as movies like The Social Network, The King's Speech, 127 Hours, and Inception. Why should an animated movie get nominated in an overall category for best movie if they have a Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars, right? I guess I can understand the logic, but I still harbor a naive idea: the Best Picture category should include only the best films in a year. If animated films happen to be among the best of a certain year, then so be it. If anything, live-action filmmakers should see the appearance of a movie like Up, in last year's Oscars, among the Best Picture nominees as a reminder that they can do just as well as Pixar can.

At this point in 2010, the debate seems pretty moot. Even with more common Oscar bait like The King's Speech, Black Swan, 127 Hours, and True Grit opening in the next couple of months, Toy Story 3 has the distinction of being one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time and one of the most financially successful films ever (to wit: the film is only 5 million dollars away from being Disney's highest-grossing film EVER worldwide, with just over one billion bucks to its name), so it not appearing on the Best Picture list would be a massive surprise. Some folks have gone ape over How To Train Your Dragon--which is DreamWorks' best animated film but still nowhere near as resonant or moving as Toy Story 3--but that is perhaps the darkest of the dark horse contenders.

But enough of the film's awards prospects. The Blu-ray and DVD for Toy Story 3 came out this past Tuesday, and watching it all over again on my HDTV inspired me to write this. I've been debating for quite a while the order of the five films this year that have struck me as the best (again, up to this point). In order of release, those films are Shutter Island, Toy Story 3, Inception, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and The Social Network. For a while, I've been switching between Inception and Toy Story 3 as the best of the year. Both are major achievements, because they go so far within the studio system. If anything, Christopher Nolan did more with Inception than Lee Unkrich did with Toy Story 3. Every time a new Pixar movie comes out, we'll see various reports about how amazing the studios in Emeryville are--and I'm sure that's true, from what I've seen. The folks at Pixar have creative control. Now that they're pretty much the definition of Disney quality, there's no studio interference. Christopher Nolan didn't have that luxury. Of course, had The Dark Knight not been a billion-dollar grosser, Nolan probably wouldn't have gotten Inception made the way it got made.

My point is that both films have their merits. Part of me still leans to having Inception as the best of the year so far, if only because the skill in making a coherent script and film out of the final 90 minutes, which could have easily gone over everyone's heads, is jaw-dropping. The final, multi-level kick is one of the truly brilliant moments in film this year. But Toy Story 3 is no slouch. For sheer daring, watch the landfill sequence. Here's when you know a movie is working: as Woody, Buzz, and the whole gang slide ever slowly into their doom, a belching pit of fire, I was shocked at how genuinely powerful this scene was. The rational part of me knew, and it still does, that the filmmakers are willing to do a lot, but they wouldn't kill one of the toys. And yet, as the toys try to run away from the incinerator and Rex slips and falls, I gasped in shock. "Holy shit, they're going to kill Rex? They can't do that!" This was my thought process. The rational part of me was drowned out by the immense sadness and terror of the scene. The climax is as funny, perfect, and cathartic as anything Pixar's ever done, and still manages to come completely out of the blue while making sense.

I don't mean to shortchange the entirety of Toy Story 3 by only focusing on the final 20 minutes (though it goes without saying that the very last scene of the movie is just as tearjerking for being so damn uplifting). From the rollicking opening to the prison break that kicks off the final act, Toy Story 3 closes out the trilogy as appropriately as possible. Woody, as voiced by Tom Hanks, remains one of the most fascinating three-dimensional characters to come out of animation. As noted by Unkrich and others in various interviews, Woody's slavish devotion to Andy, while eventually well-founded, is meant to sound pretty close to insane in the early going. While that might seem frustrating--especially since we all know Woody's going to be proven right--I like the complexity of the idea; Woody doesn't want to let go of the past, even if sticking with Andy is better than staying around in day care. Though Andy has moved on, and the other toys fully accept that if they want to get played with, it's going to have to be with someone new, Woody can't deal with that possibility. If anything, he's the closest to Lotso, the film's villain. Lotso isn't able to deal with the fact that mistakes can happen, with the simple choices humans make; Woody isn't nearly as mean-spirited about it, but when he declares that Buzz and the others are being selfish, it's a cutting and bitter statement. That it's being made in a film ostensibly for kids is even more notable.

Toy Story 3 continues Pixar's most recent streak of the finest in cinema; since 2007, Pixar has made four films that are among the best of the decade, including Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and now Toy Story 3. I do not have high hopes for Cars 2, just as I didn't have high hopes for the first film in that series. However, we already have proof that the people behind Pixar can make satisfying sequels, sequels that equal or surpass the originals. As they've done before, I dearly hope Pixar can prove me wrong. They did so this past June by showing that, yes, Virginia, the final film in a trilogy doesn't have to suck or just be OK. It can be a classic.