Toy Story franchise sells out.

Rating: 3/10 (9 December 2019)

I'm a lifelong Toy Story fan. I had been aggressively looking forward to the fourth installment for years, since the day I first learned it was in development back in early 2015. Saw it opening weekend and walked out feeling I had been robbed. The film starts out wonderfully in the first few minutes, it goes back it in time to the glory days of TS2. Then it switches to present day where it dramatically collapses under its weight. I was always a bit cautious of this film's production given how TS3 was the definitive closure to the series and the perfect send off to all the characters I grew up with and cherished so much. However I had genuine faith and allegiance to Disney that they would do no harm to Pixar's most beloved franchise. Most of all, I had faith in John Lasseter. Say what you want about him as a person, but the man is a creative genius. He literally put Pixar on the map, and nobody understands the lore and essence of the Toy Story franchise better than Lasseter. Plus I truly do believe that he cared about these characters like family, and wouldn't have wanted to make another installment unless it felt necessary and that there was a remarkable story to tell. I understand that Lasseter's original vision for the film was fundamentally different. He was scheduled to co-direct with Josh Cooley and wrote a film treatment with Pixar's Andrew Stanton. The first was originally to be released in June 2017 before being delayed to June 2018 and eventually June 2019. Lasseter was fired from the project in mid 2017, while Rashida Jones & Will McCormack (the film's original writers) withdrew in late 2017, citing "philosophical differences". This is where I believe things started getting fishy and the film went from being a passion project by the creators of the franchise to a film by committee.
Sigh... this movie just gets it all wrong. From the the pacing to the thinly-veiled and dramatically unconvincing plot to characters & scenarios that only exist as macguffins, to classic characters being sidelined in favor of new ones that are hollow, one-dimension and can't stand their own ground and are un-riveting/ off putting to the audience. So many character decisions that contradict their decisions/ideologies from previous films. There's one character in particular whose personality and character development from the previous films is completely obliterated for no justifiable reason, and its just depressing for fans to witness. There are some pros tho: the setting (which funnily enough they don't make the most out of), the stunning visuals, Annie Potts' performance of Bo Peep. Also it was fun seeing Woody and Bo reunite. Some may argue that the film existed to complete Woody's arc, but I beg to differ as I believe his character arc had perfectly reached its end in TS3. But the worst of all, the ending. The pseudo-emotional ending felt completely contrived, unfeasible, flat and too short. Overall Toy Story 4 felt like a soulless cash grab unfortunately and just doesn't resonate like the previous ones do. The only positive to come out of this is that it made me appreciate TS3 on a whole new level and everything it stood for. Now THAT was the real ending to the series and was the lighting in a bottle that Disney shouldn't have tried to recapture. But in a way they did though, since this film made over a billion worldwide. Unfortunately Disney always gets the last laugh.