How 'Toy Story 4' Reined In The Dystopian Implications Of The 'Toy Story' Universe
Dani Di Placido Senior Contributor
I write about film, television, pop culture, and other fun stuff.
A legion of Buzz lightyears, destined for the landfill.
Universal Images Group via Getty Images
My kids really loved Toy Story 4, meaning that my week has been spent drifting in and out of the Toy Story universe, as the previous films in the franchise play and repeat, endlessly (the original film has proved to be the most rewatchable, thus far).
As a parent, you repeatedly rewatch kids movies and tv more far often than is psychologically healthy, but Toy Story, unlike Minions or Paw Patrol, has a surprising amount of depth.
In fact, there are some alarming heavy implications in the Toy Story universe, the repetitive themes of love and subsequent abandonment highlighting the inevitability of, as Stinky Pete puts it, "spending eternity rotting in some landfill."
The plastic inhabitants of Toy Story don't view life as worth living unless they're being played with by a child, a magical experience which, presumably, invokes the surreal alternate reality we see during the opening sequence of Toy Story 3.
Lost, abandoned, broken and rejected toys are shown to live desperately sad, lonely lives, their artificial bodies burdening them with a hellish near-immortality, warping them into bitter control freaks like Lots-o'-Huggin'-Bear, and Stinky Pete.
In the godless Toy Story universe, there are surely billions of sentient plastic creatures helplessly buried under mountains of rancid garbage, watching their bodies slowly erode, desperately praying for a quick death. The tiniest fraction of their cruelly prolonged lifespans are spent being happy and loved, until, inevitably, they spend the next couple of thousand years alone, smothered by waste.
Woody, a toy manufactured in the fifties, is very fortunate indeed to still have a place in the toy box, and it's why he spends four movies obsessing over being forgotten, or thrown away. Few kid's films, aside from notable exceptions like Bambi or The Lion King, incorporate death into their storylines, for obvious reasons.
But with Toy Story, the landfill limbo is always around the corner, the original cast of toys shrinking throughout the series, the implication being that the missing members of the gang are either smashed to smithereens or thrown in the garbage.
Thankfully, Toy Story 4 really reined in that dystopian undertone, reintroducing one of the aforementioned missing members, Bo Peep, as roaming independently, always just out of sight from humans, like a fairy made of porcelain.
While Toy Story depicted movement during waking hours as somewhat risky and subversive, Toy Story 4 features toys scrabbling all over the place, running, jumping and talking directly to people, barely managing to conceal their secret.
The film also features an exclusive club composed of elderly toys, the kind made of wood and metal, the implication being that toy retirement is a real option, if one really wants to postpone the dumpster.
Choice is a major factor in the liberation offered by Toy Story 4, with Bo stating that she spent years stagnating, gathering dust in an antique shop before simply walking off the shelf, and into a brand new world; it's taking the leap that proves the difficult part.
Thus, Toy Story 4 twists the dystopian hellscape into something surprisingly optimistic, a story which actively encouraging proactiveness and independence. Toys might be hardwired to obsess over children, but if they can accept that playtime isn't going to last forever, they can live a life of freedom.
That's a pretty positive message, one that softens the bleak undertone of the previous films. Not that this was an issue that needed to be addressed; most kids obviously are not going to bother thinking about all this.
But their parents might, if they find themselves watching the first three films back-to-back and wondering, whatever happened to Wheezy?
Dani Di Placido
I'm fascinated by storytelling, in all its myriad forms; mythology, fairy tales, films, television, and urban legends.