Visual Review: Toy Story

For this week’s visual review, I decided to focus on the film Toy Story. Growing up, this was one of my favorite movies to watch. I would always force my parents to put it on no matter how many times I had already seen it. Toy Story was released in 1995 and directed by John Lasseter. The movie includes actors Tom Hanks (Woody) and Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear). The film was co-produced by Ralph Guggenheim and Bonnie Arnold and was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The film is about toy’s that come to life when humans aren’t around. Six-year-old Andy loves his toys, but he loves his toy Sheriff Woody most of all. Woody and all the other toys enjoy being played with by Andy and are always excited to meet more toy’s around Andy’s birthday. It isn’t till Andy is gifted Buzz lightyear, a new flashy action figure, that Woody becomes jealous. Before Buzz, Woody was the coolest toy Andy had, but that all changed after Buzz shows up. Throughout the movie, Woody does some things out of character that cause conflict with the other toys. Toy Story is very different from most Disney films. There are no fairy-tale characters, no extravagant locations, just toys and boy’s bedroom. It recognizes the mind of children and their imagination growing up.

The beginning of the film starts off with a montage of the relationship between Andy and Woody. Within that montage, it shows what Andy see’s in his imagination versus what that looks like in real life. When Andy pretends Woody is wrangling cows, he’s actually spinning two boxes around with childhood drawings of cows. Andy uses these boxes to create dimension and to make his imagination come to life. Andy then slides Woody down the stairwell banister, transitioning to Woody’s perspective, creating a depth of field affect. Disney has been known to experiment with depth of field in two ways. One is drawing a number of frames in perspectival lines and then the other way is by putting those frames in a loop. In Toy Story, the multi-plane animation stand was used to set a variety of elements in the scene, including foreground, mid-ground and the background. Since the film is animated, they made sure they made their animations look three dimensional by placing some things closer to the screen versus others. The use of 3-D computer animation was prominent in this film. 3-D computer animation allowed each image to move in a realistic, dimensional way.

One of the other things I noticed when watching this film is how each individual character has a distinct persona. Woody follows the rules; he’s very loyal and sort of the leader of the group. Rex on the other hand (the toy dinosaur) is neurotic and struggles to create a fearsome roar. Each character has a special identity that allows viewers to identify with the characters more easily. Watching this film now versus when I watched it as a child, was a very different experience. As a kid, I just though the film was comedic and entertaining, whereas today I’m emotionally connected to the film. Toy Story is about growing up. When we’re kids, our imagination is so broad and detailed. We also have the tendencies to do what we want without feeling any sense of judgment. Watching Andy play with his toys brought me back to when I used to do the same thing. You don’t realize how innocent everything once was, until you start to age. Toy Story has a deeper message behind the story. Although the focus is Woody adjusting to Buzz Lightyear, there’s an underlying message of growing up. The toys know there will come a time when Andy no longer wants to play with them.

One of the other things I love about this film is the color scheme and how at moments, the animation looks like real life. The colors in this film are bright and colorful. Andy’s room for example is every child’s dream. His walls are painted baby blue with white clouds scattered across the walls. Everything including Andy’s bed, posters, drawings, etc. are all cowboy themed (proving one of his favorite toys is Woody.) One of the other interesting things about this film is that the animation looks slightly realistic, especially the outdoors. Andy’s home, the bedrooms, their cars all look more realistic than the toys. One of the most realistic things when watching this film was the greenery. At certain points of the scene, the trees all look real. For example, when Woody rescues Buzz and they’re flying over vehicles to get to Andy’s car, the birds eye view makes it look like all the trees and vehicles are very realistic. I loved that certain things in the film were more animated, while others seemed realistic.

In my opinion, Toy Story will always be one of the best Disney films ever made. Not only is the message emotional and relatable, but the concept of the film is original. There isn’t another film out there that is similar or has any relation to Toy Story.