I bet nobody saw Toy Story 4 coming our way after that near-perfect ending Pixar gave us at the end of Toy Story 3. When I say near-perfect I really mean that Pixar gave us an open ended ending so that fans themselves may interpret how the Toy Story franchise should/must end according to their books. A lot of fans have come to terms that Andy's time was up and he eventually gave up ownership of his beloved toys to Bonnie. Many had that stinking feeling that it wasn't gonna be the last time we were gonna see Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang in action.
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Naturally when Toy Story 4's trailer came out many months ago, it was met with all kinds of reaction from the masses. Some fans were complaining that the little boy in the trailer wasn't Andy because he looked different. Some fans were left confused and speculated that it could've been Andy's son...and that the gang finally gets passed back to their rightful owner aka anyone from Andy's lineage. So no more Bonnie in the picture right? Oh how we were wrong.
First of all, technological advancements had made the impossible possible. That includes advancement in the field of 3D animation aka the huge differences in animation quality. So you just can't go skipping around and telling people that '1995 Andy' is different than '2019 Andy' because that's what 24 years worth of technology/upgrade tend to do for you. Computer graphics get better obviously.
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Anyway.... back to the movie...
Admittedly I was a bit shocked myself when Toy Story 4 was first announced to the world. I had (wrongly) predicted that Andy was coming back to get his toys from Bonnie but I can see now that I was far off. Bonnie is still the owner of the gang but somehow Woody no longer takes center stage and strangely neither does Buzz.
I loved the fact that they brought back one of the original member of Andy's posse and that backstory at the very beginning served as clarifications for many (yours truly included) who wondered where Woody's girlfriend from the earlier movies went to. I didn't see Bo Peep in Toy Story 3 either so this new movie kinda gave me that closure on Bo's whereabouts during Toy Story 3.
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Funny enough, a new toy is introduced in the movie which coincidently just a simple toy made out of everyday materials by Bonnie. Forky is what he's called.
Forky is technically a spork (a fork & a spoon rolled up into one) but a child's mind only sees what she wants to see, so we just leave it be.
Forky turned out to be the focal point of the movie apart from Woody's epiphany that he was probably better off somewhere where he's gonna be happy rather than spending an eternity in obscurity. For the record, I think Forky is a metaphor for most of us. His life story (all 2 days of it) taught us that even though you perceive yourself as trash, somebody else might see you otherwise and you might even mean the world to them.
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For the first time ever, I got spooked by one of the characters in the whole Toy Story franchise. This is supposed to be a kid friendly franchise! But this guy down here gave me the chills....
I could have sworn this was the same character from the Goosebumps movie. Whatever it is, he is downright creepy. I've always had nightmares about ventriloquist dummy wooden dolls. There's just something way off about them. To make matter worse, there's an army of them in the movie. He is called Benson and there is an army of Bensons chasing Woody and gang in Toy Story 4. To call Benson(s) and Gabby Gabby (the so-called antagonist doll) the villains of Toy Story 4 is inaccurate too since they turned out to be decent dolls at the end of the movie.
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After that cameo in Netflix's Always Be My Maybe, I was rather excited to find Keanu Reeves lending his voice for Duke Caboom, a Canadian daredevil stunt motorcyclist action figure whose action feature wasn't as hyped as mentioned in TV ads. It's just that fascinating to hear the man so feared of in the John Wick trilogy suddenly sounding so needy and uncertain of himself. Furthermore, I can't bring myself to distance the voice from images of Ted (from Bill & Ted) and Neo (from the Matrix trilogy)...which is not bad thing, or is it?
Yes, we Canada!
As per past Toy Story movies, you'll be assured of a tear-jerker ending and Toy Story 4 is no different that those. Although not as onion-to-eyes-inducing level as Toy Story 3, it'll be hard for you not to be emotional about it. Although I find it rather depressing because Woody is no longer part of the gang, I guess it was rather fitting for him to have that ending since he was no longer relevant to Bonnie than he was once to Andy. Plus, he was re-united with a long lost soul mate so I guess everything worked out well for him save for the part where he had to part ways with the rest of the gang.
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I don't recall any of the past Toy Story movies ever having post-credit scenes but neither does Toy Story 4. Well, sort of. It has mid-credit scenes. Yeah, 'scenes' as in multiple scenes that eventually build up to show Forky's love interest. The real post-credit scene however is just a joke that was started somewhere in the middle of the story that needed to have a closure.
In the end, Disney-Pixar didn't drop any hints or clues on whether there'll be more Toy Story sequels but we just can't rule anything out at this point. After all, we all thought that the very emotional Toy Story 3 ending was supposed to be the end of everything, didn't we?
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