Pixar's Love Story for Disney

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2019)

The "Toy Story" series has always had a clever double meaning that references itself. The first initiated the revolution in computer animation, but its narrative was fundamentally reassuring of a continuation with hand-drawn cartoons. Traditionally, at least, animation involves a series of still images, invented as opposed to recorded (as with live action), projected as motion pictures--thus, alternately inanimate and animate and created from nothing. Likewise, the "Toy Story" series features inanimate toys coming to life in the shadows. Like Forky in this fourth installment, from raw materials--in fact, trash--life, movement is created. Moreover, the sequels may be read as partially reflecting the sometimes-tumultuous history between Pixar and Disney.
"Toy Story 2" (1999) was a mess: originally planned for the small screen, like Woody's "Howdy Doody" type TV puppet show, and subject to the merchandising strategies of Disney, and so we get a store full of Buzz Lightyears... and Barbies. Presciently, there's even a memorable reference to "Star Wars," another future Disney property. In the last installment, "Toy Story 3" (2010), the first after Disney's acquisition, took a dark turn and, inevitably, the message becomes one of growing up and giving your toys away--in this case, Pixar being the toy and Disney the recipient. "Toy Story 4," by contrast, is a love story. Superficially, it's between Woody and Bo Peep, as well as the usual one for children and their toys and adults and their nostalgia, but there's a hidden romance here involving Pixar and Disney.
This is an extensive adoption of Disney's business practices. It mostly takes place in a carnival, or amusement park--alluding to one of the company's most profitable and well-known divisions, theme parks. Additionally, people keep talking about the conclusion to the "Toy Story" series, but this franchise could conceivably continue indefinitely. Even if it were only on, say, the recently-started Disney+ streaming service. Disney is the champion of the franchise era of movies: Marvel and its cinematic universe, Star Wars, live-action and CGI remakes of its classic cartoons, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, the Muppets, Pixar and Disney's own animated pictures, the Alien and Avatar juggernauts and everything else 20th Century Fox... plus Mickey Mouse. The Disney name itself is the strongest brand in the industry. Good properties aren't left to die. Toys may change hands, be lost and found. Like Forky, trash is recycled. As with Bo Peep, broken parts are mended, and with Woody and Gabby, taken from elsewhere and otherwise stuffed and stitched back together. Antiques are rebooted and remade. Disney doesn't like to leave good toys on the shelf or in the closet for long.
You may choose to see only what you're intended to, like the human characters within the picture, oblivious of the toys' movements. Feel free to enjoy the manufactured cloning of human emotionalism, appeals to childhood nostalgia, or even the funny quips and Pixar Easter eggs, as CGI emotes and Randy Newman sings sentimental in the background, or look in the spaces where they suppose you unmindful to their machinations--where toys breath life and a conglomerate conspires for your affections. "Toy Story 4" is about us loving Disney. Disney wants you to love them, to hold them close, to take their merchandise home, play their games and enjoy their amusements... at a price, of course.