Finally here!

Greetings!  Enjoying the relatively consistent update schedule so far?  Glad to hear it.

By the way, unfortunately today’s comic will be significantly delayed.  I let the drawing and scanning get down close enough to the wire that my computer pooping out on me would be a major issue (which is exactly what happened).  If the needed repair is as simple as I think,  I’ll have the strip posted sometime this evening.

This would be a great time to look into the RSS feed for the strip.  It’s a good way to make sure you don’t miss an update if something interrupts your regular reading schedule.  Hopefully in the future it won’t be something like this.

But seriously; I really appreciate your reading the strip regularly; and I’ll get the comic up ASAP.  Sanford’s grumpy in it, which makes it seem strangely appropriate.

It was the best of Toy Story movies, it was the worst of Toy Story movies.  Oh, by the way, spoiler alert?

It was the best of Toy Story movies, because it did everything right the second one did right.  It took the things you liked about the first two Toy Story movies and upped the emotional ante.  When it was exciting, it was super exciting.  When they had to figure a problem out, they had to come out with a detailed, intricate plan.  When the characters were in trouble, they weren’t just going to get lost, they were going to meet their complete and total demise.  When you cried (or almost cried), you didn’t look self-consciously around the theater and wonder if it was just that the song sounded sadder than it really was.  You knew that everyone there who was a human being was right there with you.

OK, I’m going to get in a lot of trouble for pointing out that there might be a way that this was the worst movie of the three, since by and large it’s the best one (provided you’ve seen the other two).  But the reason the first movie worked is that it takes a fun, fairly original concept and explores it pretty completely: Toys have lives of their own, lived in context of relationships with each other and their owners.  By this third movie, they’ve explored it so fully, that a couple of elements seem to lack the originality that other Toy Story elements have.  I think there were only two disappointments in the movie:

Lotso: Rejected by his owner, he helps himself sleep at night by rejecting the idea that being owned isn’t what really matters; and he uses manipulation and psychological games to gain position and prestige to replace the love he once knew.  Oh, wait, I’m sorry… I was thinking of Stinky Pete, the prospector from Toy Story 2.  I argue that if Pete had access to two rooms full of naive toys, he would be little different from this supposedly new and original villain.  You might argue that Lotso’s history differs him from Pete, who never had been owned.  Perhaps, but put Jessie’s history with Pete’s worldview, make him more grandfatherly and sinister, and you’ve got Lotso.  Lotso really put the toys in some very exciting jeopardy, but I never found him to be very compelling in and of himself.

Demo Mode/Spanish Buzz: This is the one element of the story that (a) I hoped they wouldn’t do, (b) they did, and (c) I still wished they hadn’t at the end of the movie.  I had a long discussion with some of my friends about this, and although we disagree, I maintain that you can make Buzz both exciting and funny without having to constantly find some way to make him delusional like he was in the first movie.  Plus, I feel that the plot points involved were a bit of a stretch.  Movie number three is pretty late in the game for nobody to have ever known about his demo mode, and if Buzz was manufactured in the mid-90s, how realistic is it that he’d even have one?

But don’t let my focusing on those two elements make you think that I didn’t enjoy the living daylights out of this movie.  Toy Story continues to be the quintessential Pixar, and this is probably the best of all possible endings to what is surely some of the best of Pixar.

Let me wrap up by focusing on an element that I think helped the movie immeasurably: New Andy.  I know that the redesign of the characters was partially out of necessity, but Pixar seems to be saying, “OK, everybody.  It seems that we’ve learned how to make human characters since Toy Story 2, so let’s pretend you never saw what is now in comparison ‘1970s Animatronic Robot Andy’.  Here’s New Andy.  Let’s shake hands on the idea that this is the Andy you’ve known all along.  Um… also, his mom is Mrs. Incredible now.  Just for fun.”

Every year to observe Independence Day, I listen to both volumes of Stan Freberg’s United States of America albums.  If you can find them, I heartily recommend them.

Happy Birthday to my brother on Tuesday!