Identity Crisis: Toy Story 3.

Rating: 10/10 (16 August 2010)

What if somebody come up and tell you, "hey, I need to tell you that all your life up to today is just a series of unhealthy obsessions"? For me, that might just be the case, which gave me a perfect reason to see Toy Story 3, a masterpiece of identity crisis.
In Toy Story, Buzz Light-year needed to cope with the fact that he was made to pretend to be a space ranger to entertain kids, though he personally believed he's really a space ranger. In Toy Story 2, Woody and his new friends needed to decide whether to stay with Andy though they fully realized what would happen when Andy's done with them. Toy Story 3 has a strong premise that this day actually came. It's even worse that Andy's mom pushed Andy to make a tough final decision about his beloved toys. Andy struggled, and decides to take only Woody to the university as a monument for all his toys and childhood times. He packed the rest of toys in a bag and decided to put them aside in the attic, yet the reality took another road right into the most menacing adventure the toys ever faced. Not knowing which toy will meet his/her demise in this last episode in a trilogy, we laughed, and we sobbed through the movie. And will they make it home? I will let you to find out in theater if you haven't seen the movie yet. Spoilers alert.
Granted that Pixar has this magic to make a bunch of CGI plastics talk and act so lively that, we feel they are more alive than our daily lives. Granted also is the suspension of disbelief, when you can actually hug and play with these characters in human sizes in Disneyland. It should be cool to shake hands with Woody, telling him "you are one of the sheriffs I admired". Disney has made these dreams come true over the years when kids cried upon the send-off of their beloved cartoon hero/heroine. However, after Toy Story 3, you should be clam that your kids learn to accept what was coming so peacefully. That's how intrinsically satisfying Toy Story 3 was. I don't have kids yet, but I pretty much grew up with this series (Toy Story was released when I was 9). Believe me that I am grateful to see such a grand, deep send-off, so heartfelt.
Though experienced movie-goers probably can recognize Losto as the villain within the first looks, I still think about his causes. I want to know how he actually felt. I'd like to know if put into his shoes would I do any better? See, Losto was abandoned so casually by the family he was in, that after quite a heck of journey through the wildness he only found out he's "replaced" by an identical bear. Suppose toys really have hearts and feelings, this agonizing pain would be unbearable. Though I doubt the same situation would ever happen to me (which was described in "The Sixth Day"), I definitely can see the trend that the definition of a "good man" is rapidly collapsing into good worker, good husband, etc. And even the definition of a "good worker" is collapsing into efficiency, accuracy, etc. In 10 years, the measure of a "good man" will never be the same again. The point is, mass-manufacturing of desirable skills and traits had seen their successes, yet something important about human is lost in translation. The toys, in any era, are disposable. Today with mass-production, toys are naturally considered highly substitutable. Toys' lives only last until that particular owner is done with them. If that's the way this world works, then toys are only pitiful shadows of another flawed species, us.
In my opinion, that's why we'd better believe we have souls rather than just a series of complex chemical reactions in brains (according to Watson and Crick). Otherwise, we are just more complicated toys with better mechanics, which function until the day of breaking. And, that's the way Lotso looks at his kind. What Lotso has inside him instead of a "soul", as I see, is an angry "ghost", or something different, unspeakable to Woody and his friends. That's probably why the joker toy described Lotso as a "monster". In fact, by believing he and his kind is nothing more than mechanic trash, one like Lotso can really become so. C.S. Lewis once said in his book "The Problem of Pain" that souls exist in relationships, like we only get a grasp of an animal's soul when we are its human masters. For toys, you'd believe toys have souls because they have a heartfelt relationship with Andy. For us however, everyone needs a relationship with his or her creator, who made sure in the beginning of this world, that we are not disposable mechanics, but living humans in the image of him.
In the end, yes, we may face our demises in many ways, be it in furnace or in soil, on sickbeds or streets. Yes, we may not find every sentimental value, every romantic relationship everlasting. But beyond all the present ugliness and darkness there is a purpose made for us. A great man once said, "To truly love a person is to look on him/her in the way God has ever wanted." Beyond Andy's needs of toys, beyond Molly's needs of toys, beyond Lotso's hierarchy of toys, beyond Stinky Pete's version of hygiene eternal lifein a gallery, and even beyond mom's eagerness to see her boy growing up, Andy made this deliver once and for all, thus delivered our beloved toys out of their seemingly destined ways of getting loved and dumped again. They won't last forever, but they won't lose faith in each other again. We won't live forever either, but are we ready to look on ourselves in God's way? You know, right now, he is smiling at you from somewhere.