In this blog post, I reflect on the meaning of growth and farewell through the movie Toy Story 3, and ponder together whether the end is truly the end.
When I was little, I went to the movie theater with my mother and uncle. Since I didn’t usually go to the movies, I was very excited and secretly curious about what film we would see. With a fluttering heart, I waited impatiently for the adults to buy the tickets, thinking I wanted to see the movie quickly. Finally, my mother returned with the tickets and handed me one. The ticket bore the large title ‘Toy Story’ and my seat number. Time to go in! The room darkened, and several trailers signaling the film’s start played on the screen. Then, an unfamiliar animation appeared. It was completely different from any children’s movie I’d seen before. The characters moved with forms I’d never seen before. Moreover, the story about toys coming to life, appealing to a child’s imagination, drew me in even deeper. I remember watching it so engrossed that I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen until the end, completely unaware of how time passed. That was my first encounter with ‘Toy Story,’ the world’s first full-length computer-generated (CG) animated feature. In my childhood, ‘Toy Story’ felt like a toy to me.
Time passed, and ‘Toy Story 3’ was released this year. Naturally, I went to the theater to see it, and as I left, I felt an indescribable emotion. The theme of ‘Toy Story 3’ is ‘farewell’. Specifically, it’s about how as people grow and mature, they inevitably part ways with the unchanging things around them. Here, I couldn’t help but marvel at Pixar’s story conception. While the first two films centered their stories around the ‘toy-toy’ relationship, the third placed the ‘toy-owner’ relationship at its core. Honestly, when I heard ‘Toy Story 3’ was coming out, I didn’t have high expectations. I was already grown up, and I went to see the movie with the casual thought that I probably wouldn’t feel nostalgic for my childhood through ‘Toy Story 3’. I was no longer the age to play with toys. So, I thought I wouldn’t be able to relate to ‘Toy Story 3’. But that expectation was pleasantly wrong.
In Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2, Andy firmly exists as the toys’ owner, and that position never wavers. In other words, Andy is the only master for the toys, and no matter where they are, they must return to Andy’s side. Andy, too, cherishes his toys as their owner and wants to stay with them forever. So, no matter what obstacles arise, the toys band together to return to Andy, and the story concludes that way.
But in ‘Toy Story 3’, Andy no longer exists as the unshakable owner. Time has passed, and Andy is now 18, about to leave home for college. Early in the film, the toys huddle together in a dark box, anxious and abandoned by Andy. They worry he no longer needs them. When Andy packs them into trash bags, their fears become reality, plunging them into panic. Woody is chosen as the only toy to go to college, but for the rest, the formula that Andy is their ‘eternal owner’ has been shattered. Consequently, the toys decide to leave Andy, who cherished them and played with them. Thus, ‘Toy Story 3’ foreshadows the separation and growing pains the toys will experience alongside their owner Andy’s maturation.
The toys, separated from Andy, end up at the daycare center ‘Sunnyside’. They view it as a paradise, expecting to spend happy times together with children forever. However, their hopes are shattered. The children there are violent and show no care for the toys. The toys protest to Lotso, the daycare’s manager, and declare they will leave. Lotso then abandons his previous persona and reverts to his true nature as an oppressive manager, locking the toys in to prevent their escape.
Interestingly, Lotso himself suffers from the memory of being abandoned by his owner and harbors hatred toward humans. Thus, he obstructs and torments the toys trying to return to their owners. He denies the ‘toy-owner’ relationship, seeking to reign supreme and dominate the toys. Consequently, he establishes a rule where new toys are subjected to abuse by violent children, while veteran toys are allowed to play with gentle children, turning Sunside into a hellish place.
Here, Lotso is a being who experienced a bitter parting from his owner, a character who makes the toys feel just how heartbreaking and miserable that separation is. Though the toys decided to return to Andy, they must have vaguely sensed the anxiety that they too might end up like Lotso, in the dark corners of the attic, never to see their owner again. Therefore, upon returning to Andy’s house, Woody writes the address of a child who will cherish toys on the box containing his friends. He did this because he hoped his friends wouldn’t be forgotten in the attic, gathering dust, unable to enjoy the happiness of being toys. And he decided to join them, stepping into the box.
Handing each of his toys to the child one by one, Andy prepares to say goodbye to cherished times. Discovering Woody in the box, Andy couldn’t hide his bewilderment. Because Woody was the toy he intended to take to college. But that bewilderment soon turned to loneliness and an understanding of Woody’s feelings. He had always been certain Woody would stay by his side, but now he felt he had to let him go.
My eyes welled up in this scene because the younger me watching ‘Toy Story 1’ and the adult me now overlapped with Andy. I empathized with Andy’s feelings when facing change, when you must let go of the things that remain constant. Wasn’t the feeling I had when I had to send the puppy I raised as a child to someone else’s home because of a move, when I had to discard the notebooks I used as I advanced through school grades, or when I parted with the workbooks I used during my retake year similar to Andy’s? What made this film even more moving was how it showed, at the very end, the process of maturing into the next stage of life through the final farewells to cherished things. Andy bids farewell to his childhood for the last time, while Woody and his friends meet a new owner and dream of new happiness, making the film even more moving.
Watching the farewells in ‘Toy Story 3’ also made me think of my parents. The unchanging toys felt like our parents’ generation, and Andy, who could no longer be with them, felt like us. The emotions parents feel when their children are about to become independent must be similar to the feelings between the toys and Andy. Even in inevitable farewells, I felt that just as the name ‘Andy’ remains beneath the toys’ feet, our names will forever remain in our parents’ hearts.
‘Toy Story 3’ concludes the series brilliantly with its meticulously crafted story and perfectly placed characters. However, the Disney-esque worldview that simplistically divides good and evil was somewhat disappointing. Given that this film primarily targets adults rather than children, I wondered if it might fall short in resonating with younger audiences. Nevertheless, it movingly depicted the farewell to the ‘toys’ that shared my childhood, and I hope it helps us face the many future goodbyes with maturity and happiness.
