Toy Story 4

This franchise has quite literally spanned my entire existence so far. The first film came out when I was one year and eight months old. Obviously I didn't see then, and I'm not sure when I did exactly. It's a classic.

This film franchise, I think single-handedly made an entire generation of kids way too sentimental about their toys. The amount of people roughly my age who also thought that their toys got jealous of each other, needed to "see" or "breathe", and had a lot of trouble getting rid of them is probably even higher than I think.

At first, I was upset that this movie was going to exist, and I think a lot of other people were too. The third was a perfect end, why do we need more? And then they revealed it would've a romance between Woody and Bo Peep, and I thought they had gone off the deep end. I was still going to see it, obviously, how could I not, but I was a little reluctant about it.

I was completely wrong. Okay, I was mostly wrong. Quite frankly, the actual plot of this film is completely unnecessary, and I'm not sure why they felt that any of what happened needed to happen. The crucial aspect of this, is that it offers this strange sort of closure that I didn't know I needed. I didn't need to see Woody reunite with Bo Peep; I was fine without that in my life. What I did need was Woody moving on, and I didn't even know I needed it.

*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS ***

Looking back on the franchise, it makes sense now that there was a forth movie. We were all seeing ourselves as Andy, as the person that didn't want to give up his toys and move on. That isn't quite who the story is about though. The story is about Woody, and to a slightly lesser degree the other toys, but primarily it's about Woody. Sure, the third movie was a great ending... for Andy. Andy grew up. Andy got closure. Andy moved on. Woody didn't. Woody was still constantly focused on getting back to Andy, still considering himself Andy's toy, and then he'd given up.

Throughout this movie we see him struggling with that. It almost seems at first that he's struggling to accept not being the favorite toy, but that's not really it at all. He is struggling to accept that the one person he spent his whole existence devoted to doesn't need him anymore. He tries to pour all of that into Bonnie, but Bonnie is just a little kid who isn't anything like Andy. Woody can't let go, instead of accepting a backseat role where he might have to think about what he's lost, he tries to fix everything for everyone else, and it all just kind of falls apart.

Bo is important. Their romance wasn't necessarily a crucial plot to me, but she is an important character because she is the one who knocks some sense into Woody and makes him face the facts that Andy gave him up and doesn't need him anymore. She made him look at his own behavior and his own feelings and see that he's mourning what he lost. He is willing to give up so much, just to get back a tiny bit of that feeling of being needed again.

*** SPOILER END ***

I'm sure that for kids, this is an adorable movie, with cute new characters and a fun plot. For those of us that grew up with these movies, it gives this incredible emotional closure. It's not just about Andy moving on and growing up and giving away his old toys. Now, it's about learning to be your own person, not relying on how much you can give away of yourself to be worth something, and doing what you need to do in order to be happy. It's the ending we didn't know that we needed, because he didn't know he needed it either.