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 Toy Story 4 

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 Toy Story 4 
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Post Toy Story 4
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Toy Story 4 is a 2019 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the fourth installment in Pixar's Toy Story series, and the sequel to 2010's Toy Story 3. It is directed by Josh Cooley (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay by Andrew Stanton (who had co-written the first three films) and Stephany Folsom; the three also conceived the story alongside John Lasseter (director of the first two installments in the franchise), Rashida Jones, Will McCormack, Valerie LaPointe, and Martin Hynes.[2] The film stars the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Madeleine McGraw, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Ally Maki, Jay Hernandez, Lori Alan, and Joan Cusack.

Toy Story 4 premiered on June 11, 2019, in Hollywood, California, and is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on June 21, 2019, in RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema, and IMAX.


Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:08 am
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
Hey I can post without being bombarded by pop up ads again!

Toy Story 4 is a better version of Finding Dory. As in the story never really justifies its own existence, but it is so funny and a Pixar film is always going to have a story full of hearts with characters you want to keep watching. I just wish we got a bit more time with these characters - its mostly the Woody show when it comes to anyone who survived TS3. The new characters are great though. I was dying during two scenes - Birdy and Bunny explaining their plan to get the key and the GI Joe not getting his high five.

One thing I really wish they addressed is, aside from being a parenting metaphor, what is so great about being played with that this sentient species goes through all this nonsense for? The toys have proven they should be free and living among the humans as equals but instead are stuck in this mentally-exhausting cycle of ownership and abandonment. The Toy Story universe needs a Gellart Grindelwald.


Last edited by Flava'd vs The World on Sat Jun 22, 2019 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:13 am
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
They did it again. Pixar is 4 for 4 with this franchise. :D I hope it makes all the money. This is the TRUE END to Woody's story.

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Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:02 am
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
Well they pulled it off, they made a film that deserves every bit to be in the conversation with the first 3. It's both one of the funniest Toy Story films (Forky, Duke, the Bird/Bunny dolls were all great additions) and makes you tear up with Gabby's arc and Woody's ending. Barely a moment is wasted. This feels like a very different Pixar than Incredibles 2 and Finding Dory version, in a good way

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Sun Jun 23, 2019 3:01 am
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
This was cute and fun, with gorgeous animation, but felt like a major step down from the original trilogy. The third movie destroyed me and I was sobbing at the end, while this had an effective ending there was nowhere near that level of reaction here. Key and Peele were the best parts.


Sun Jun 23, 2019 3:47 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
I thought it hit the Pixar sweet spot: effective broad gags with an equal amount of subtle humor; very accessible and inclusive storytelling with an undercurrent of emotional sophistication; and top-flight animation. It pairs nicely with Toy Story 3, too, in the sense the third film functions as a grander-sized finale for the ensemble (including Andy) while this poignantly zeroes in on the end of Woody's hero's journey. I also simply found it more engaging as a film than the third in regard to the plot, the new characters, the settings, etc.

Obligatory list:

1. Toy Story
2. Toy Story 2
3. Toy Story 4
4. Toy Story 3

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Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:25 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
It was pretty good. Definitely below 2 and 3 for me. I need to see it again.


Wed Jun 26, 2019 10:37 am
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
Shack wrote:
Well they pulled it off, they made a film that deserves every bit to be in the conversation with the first 3. It's both one of the funniest Toy Story films (Forky, Duke, the Bird/Bunny dolls were all great additions) and makes you tear up with Gabby's arc and Woody's ending. Barely a moment is wasted. This feels like a very different Pixar than Incredibles 2 and Finding Dory version, in a good way


Loved your video review Shack. Good work. Looking forward to more.

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Sat Jun 29, 2019 12:04 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
Toy Story’s becoming an aesthetic oddball. Since the original’s technical achievements were writ large surpassed by the industry over a decade ago, the viewer experience has increasingly fallen between middling buddy comedy and endeared Disney classic; elevated, slightly, by some hefty generational nostalgia in the third act, here resuscitated without a smidgen of storytelling impetus for the sake of sucking as much money from the formula as financially possible.

If it weren’t so well-written, it’d be tempting to call this a franchise sell-out. Toy Story 3 did the unprecedented: it created a nostalgia-brimmed legacy from what had previously only been a mildly loved product (compared to say, Finding Nemo) by inducing a greater sense of emotional closure than we’d had since Return of the King. Almost like it’d grown-up with its audience, the story matured a parallel between on-screen character separation and that of the viewer’s separation from their own childhood: the amount of poignancy audiences felt (and how much people cried) was probably proportionate to that deeper sense of childhood loss - those unconscious fragments pooled from cherished old memories - most of us have. It was first-tier cinema, and tied the franchise up with a blue-silk bow.

Plot-wise Toy Story 4 is completely unnecessary. Entertaining unto itself, but distinguished from the franchise entirely through similarities done less effectively. Separating Woody from Buzz in the final scene is an obvious re-attempt at the closing affect of the 3rd instalment - the coming of age vibe here replaced by a friendships-sacrificed-for-families trope - only it came from fucking nowhere: Buzz is barely a supporting character the whole film, whereas TS3’s ending tied off an entire trilogy.

And just notice the amount of times Woody defers to the almighty and way-more-heroic-than-he Bo, how little the uber-masculine Buzz shows up, how nearly every uniformed officer and authority-role is female (quite literally), how beta-male or exaggerated every male character is...seriously, if you still think the #metoo thing hasn’t had an impact, Hollywood mustn’t be in your political purview. There’s nearly a dozen instances where Woody makes a specifically scripted point of submitting to Bo’s superiority, one in such a way that were the genders reversed, it’d perhaps be the most inversely patronising dialogue towards feminists in recent memory.

Practically every tentpole release lately seems compelled to make some kind of implied statement in support of Harvey Weinstein’s 50 or so extremely wealthy and powerful victims; a few years in, after feminism was already well established, that seems the movement’s biggest achievement so far: getting executives and producers and (subsequently) writers way more anxious about a political issue than the underlying facts could ever reasonably justify. Here, those politics have trickled down to woke writers wanting to congratulate themselves for making a social contribution, because apparently females in the audience - if changes to gender dynamics from the previous instalment are anything to go by - had been previous starved of relatable self-empowerment content.

That sort of thing has always been part of film’s role in the culture, in a way, but here I think it’s misguided and lazily motivated by greed: several major franchise scripts have had their arcs shifted lately by this, and none of those shifts have actually added anything. Take Toy Story 4 for example: for a franchise so intensely focused on its core friendship between two males in the first 3 films, how did their last farewell end up so rushed and emotionally unjustified? Emphasising female characters in authoritative/heroic roles has been an increasing thing for years (Star Wars: The Force Awakens being the leading entry in pre-metoo awareness examples); there isn’t any actual benefit to changing focal directions in pre-existing products - it’s a lazy way to capitalise by being hipster.

So it’s a difficult one to rate on its own: there’s some pretty funny sequences, one very specific to my own brand of wackiness (see: Big Train, Fast Show, etc.), the antique store setting is excellent, and the visuals are near photo realistic in several places. The #metoo overtones are fairly meagre compared to something like Captain Marvel, but I think still worth mentioning here given they seem to have come at the cost of the franchise’s core property: Woody and Buzz’s friendship, which, in the end, is so gutted of narrative attention that it floats off without them barely looking at each other.

C+


Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:41 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
shitcunt wrote:

And just notice the amount of times Woody defers to the almighty and way-more-heroic-than-he Bo, how little the uber-masculine Buzz shows up, how nearly every uniformed officer and authority-role is female (quite literally), how beta-male or exaggerated every male character is...seriously, if you still think the #metoo thing hasn’t had an impact, Hollywood mustn’t be in your political purview. There’s nearly a dozen instances where Woody makes a specifically scripted point of submitting to Bo’s superiority, one in such a way that were the genders reversed, it’d perhaps be the most inversely patronising dialogue towards feminists in recent memory.

Practically every tentpole release lately seems compelled to make some kind of implied statement in support of Harvey Weinstein’s 50 or so extremely wealthy and powerful victims; a few years in, after feminism was already well established, that seems the movement’s biggest achievement so far: getting executives and producers and (subsequently) writers way more anxious about a political issue than the underlying facts could ever reasonably justify. Here, those politics have trickled down to woke writers wanting to congratulate themselves for making a social contribution, because apparently females in the audience - if changes to gender dynamics from the previous instalment are anything to go by - had been previous starved of relatable self-empowerment content.

That sort of thing has always been part of film’s role in the culture, in a way, but here I think it’s misguided and lazily motivated by greed: several major franchise scripts have had their arcs shifted lately by this, and none of those shifts have actually added anything. Take Toy Story 4 for example: for a franchise so intensely focused on its core friendship between two males in the first 3 films, how did their last farewell end up so rushed and emotionally unjustified? Emphasising female characters in authoritative/heroic roles has been an increasing thing for years (Star Wars: The Force Awakens being the leading entry in pre-metoo awareness examples); there isn’t any actual benefit to changing focal directions in pre-existing products - it’s a lazy way to capitalise by being hipster.

So it’s a difficult one to rate on its own: there’s some pretty funny sequences, one very specific to my own brand of wackiness (see: Big Train, Fast Show, etc.), the antique store setting is excellent, and the visuals are near photo realistic in several places. The #metoo overtones are fairly meagre compared to something like Captain Marvel, but I think still worth mentioning here given they seem to have come at the cost of the franchise’s core property: Woody and Buzz’s friendship, which, in the end, is so gutted of narrative attention that it floats off without them barely looking at each other.

C+


Great points.

The "me too"/feminist agenda is just getting OTT especially for an existing franchise that was all about the friendship of the two male lead characters. Reminds me how almost every senior cop or bomb squad person in the show "Bodyguard" is a female - looking ridiculously out of there depth. :funny:

That said - I enjoyed TS4 overall but it isnt as good as the original trilogy (though Duke and Forky are highlights).

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Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:25 am
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
Ehhh I can’t agree with that. Buzz looks like an idiot the whole movie sure, but Jessie (the franchise’s most popular female character) gets even less to do. Barbie is gone entirely. All of the old characters sans Bo Peep got shafted because their story arcs had already wrapped up in the last one.

Try watching Late Night, shitcunt. Then you might be more forgiving of the comparably subtle wokeness of Disney. :P


Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:33 am
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
The #metoo agenda isn’t overbearing apart from its priority over other things, Woody and Buzz’s farewell especially, but that angle you mention is probably less developed than you might think. Bo Peep’s focus is predominate to the point she’s been upgraded to a major character, so reduced attention on other cast-females doesn’t actually mean anything; the product in its present state, with its casting nearly every authority role, major or minor, as female (Bo Peep’s sidekick, Dolly-the-marshal, literally every uniformed extra, every major human child, etc.); with its portrayal of males as either hyperbolically macho or emasculated cucks or retarded asexuals; with Buzz, the all-American male archetype, suddenly being relegated to the thematic sidelines so Bo Peep can be emphatically reminded over and over how capable she is, and so Gabby Gabby can find her special girl-owner to live out every girl’s ultimate doll fantasy; with these things all being emphasised when juxtaposed against previous TS instalments - there isn’t any question these choices were made. It’s how much you want to care about it, whether it can be reasonably argued as a benefit to the product, or a needless reboot of a finished trilogy made simply to cash-in on the SJW #metoo vibe, which it apparently credits with enough merit to then parallel the same message through its own storylines.

All that stuff, is just...there. From the way you keep interpreting these things it sounds like you mightn’t realise how metaphorically and socially conscious (and double-entendre) writers at this level operate. But the point I’m trying to make isn’t that it’s wrong to cast females in typically male roles - it’s that it was already happening at a rate suitable to the problem it was addressing, and things are starting to overcompensate. That sensitivity of the moment that all good writers have gets hijacked by social hysteria way too easily, basically. Re-organising a major franchise’s thematic gender orientation - TS4 is the closest to a for-the-girls entry a Toy Story film can possibly get, without removing its main character - just because Alyssa Milano got drunk on twitter a while back and thought her over-privileged vagina represented half of the population, doesn’t seem the best way of doing things.


Tue Jul 23, 2019 9:27 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
Meh. Toy Story has had strong female characters throughout, and it's refreshing to see Buzz (Who has basically been relegated to the same joke of dealing with "factory" Buzz the last 3 films, not to say the 2nd and especially Spanish Buzz in the third weren't hilarious) actually having a strong arc. Him not understanding the inner voice, and finally getting to it by the end.

And Boom and Key and Peele were easily the best new characters so I don't see the overly female driven story. Bo Peep especially doesn't even work without Woody's realization of being able to live for himself.

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Wed Jul 24, 2019 1:58 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
There’s no drama attached: recent media either impacted the script becoming more orientated towards young females, or it’s a coincidence. The shift hasn’t made a bad film - no crime has been committed - but it’s resulted in a needless degradation of what was a beautifully finished product as a trilogy, made to profit on the recent spike in appeal to gender convention challenges and strong female role models; the implication being that cultural icons (like Pixar characters) provide a template for the adults kids aspire to become (and subsequently that gender-archetype products like Barbie and He-Man are total social abominations).

Strong female characters throughout the series never resulted in the masculine edges being cut off, or with there being a concerted effort to role-reverse each and every hero and authority role possible; or with Woody becoming pragmatically useless, and Buzz’s marginalisation off-stage as narratively detached comedy relief. Everything in Pixar movies right down to the tiny flecklets of lint drifting over carpet has been carefully considered, so when there’s several instances of Woody making a point of deferring to Bo’s superior capabilities, it becomes a point of analytical interest, where we can then ask: what’s the script/director trying to tell me/what’s being unconsciously communicated?

Bo’s on-screen emphasis as possessing a greater heroism than Woody communicates an intentional message: that girls are just as capable as boys are, able to fulfil any social role they desire, and so any young girl in the audience that might’ve otherwise had her leadership qualities stifled by the stereotypes of Barbie and I Love Lucy and Baywatch can find themselves inspired to realise their own gifted potential without fear of repression from the marketplace patriarchy. That then gets unconsciously absorbed by the viewer, who picks up similar unconscious strands from the culture, which has been shooting them off all over the place lately, and so she suddenly finds herself a bit more entitled to worldly experience than she was before; effectively, from feminism’s point of view, gaining share in the experiences and responsibilities previously reserved for men.

Where this negatively impacts Toy Story 4, is the emotional core; the emotionality of the whole story arc rests entirely on an audience connection to the comradery between its two main characters, and yet that comradery has no development the entire film, so when the farewell comes, their friendship may as well have been a feather. Compared to Toy Story 3, it ends up feeling out-of-nowhere, manipulative, and cheap. Think: My Girl 2, where the success of the original had been built on a single emotional response in the finale, and so in the sequel, where the stakes and characters were entirely different, the writers tried to reinvent a similar emotional spike with a completely different scenario. That’s what I mean by manipulative: creative teams are working as much with an audience’s melancholy and heartfelt sadness, with oxytocin and dopamine, as much as adrenaline; Titanic made 2 billion dollars by conducting these things with the complexity precision of a philharmonic symphony - and Pixar’s reputation of high quality, no-doubt rests on that same mastery of audience.

In TS4 though, it’s a let-down. The timing and level of on-screen intention suggests the shift I’ve described isn’t coincidental, but very much calculated. Forcing the reboot of a high quality, narratively complete product is fine and all - but when it doesn’t add anything, when changes come at the expense of the emotional core and therefore come off as greedily motivated - it’s worth mentioning.

Also, probably should’ve just written one sentence here: if you reckon Buzz had more development in TS4 than previous Toy Story’s, and you reckon the ending farewell justifies itself as well as TS3’s ending did, you’re just wrong. The inner voice thing is an arc unto itself, sure; so was the cockroach in Wall-E. He’s detached from the centrifuge of the story entirely, which wouldn’t have mattered so much if the ending didn’t try to use him for emotional centricity out of no-where. In a nutshell, it’s like the Monsters University/Finding Dory of the franchise (note the creative team isn’t the same either), that pretends to be another sequel in the final moment.


Wed Jul 24, 2019 8:48 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
Lol, ok man, get that college thesis rolling.

Someone adapts Lil Bo Peep who lost her sheep and it's a major agenda for you (Keep in mind Forky is Woody's Sheep as well) I just saw Aliens the other day, what a Me Too film! The Script was mostly written in 2015 with the same plot line. I think the only thing they really excised was a Mr. Potato subplot which went to Mel Brooks after his passing.

There are much better examples this year guilty of that (That 1 minute scene in Endgame etc)

And Buzz. Sorry to say but he really is the Felix Leiter of the series. He's flashier, but by no means more than a secondary character. It's always been Woody's show.

I wish we got more of an impact at the end, but seriously it's hard to top the incinerator and Andy scene. I still remember my date crying her eyes out. It could have been bigger, but I think the subtly in it speaks a lot more.

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Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:02 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
thompsoncory wrote:
This was cute and fun, with gorgeous animation, but felt like a major step down from the original trilogy. The third movie destroyed me and I was sobbing at the end, while this had an effective ending there was nowhere near that level of reaction here. Key and Peele were the best parts.


I saw this like a month ago and have already completely forgotten about it.


Sat Jul 27, 2019 5:56 pm
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Post Re: Toy Story 4
I saw it again finally and I think it’s probably the weakest of the franchise but still miles ahead of any other Pixar sequel. The Woody arc is very strong, but the stakes overall and other characters arcs are just a comedown from the previous 3. I think the franchise needs to stop here. Any more I can’t imagine how they’d not jump the shark.

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Sun Jul 28, 2019 2:50 pm
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