But for me - and many others who I know from my generation - Toy Story 3 offered us this very form of closure.
I was about five-years-old when the first Toy Story was released in cinemas. At such an age, the world was still a wondrous place of beauty and harmony. My life was not yet bogged down with commitments, expectations, lack of self fulfillment ect. Everything was still exciting and colorful. I lived for the moment and even the simplest of activities were a joy for the mind. Activities as straight forward as going to the cinema to see a film with my mother and father.
Me and my immediate family all went to our local multiplex to watch Toy Story upon release. This was an age for me when such days out were as exciting as one's birthday or going away on holiday.
Me, my brother, my mother and my father adored the film to pieces. It was an utter treasure of a feature. Over the years, its quality never withered with age. No matter how often we watched it on our VHS copy, we still found it to be as funny, engaging and heart breaking as it was on that very first day at the cinema.
It was a film packed with wonder and sheer imagination. A film where life and heart were crammed into the most domestic of home environments (such as a child's bedroom). A film that demonstrated the importance of companionship and love.
Not long after we saw the film, me and my younger brother collected all the toys of various characters. With our actively infant imaginations, we convinced ourselves that they required our love and affection in the name of their happiness. We liked to dream that they too were alive, just like in the movie, and that to stop loving them would cause great pain to their souls.
So we divided the toys between us. We had to make sure that all of them received equal amounts of attention and admiration. It was a task which we both achieved fruitfully.
In a bizarre and ironic way, we learned the power of caring, sharing and love through the merchandises of a multimillion dollar franchise. Oh the mysteries of the universe.
Then, at the age of nine, Toy Story 2 arrived in cinemas. Me and the family took yet another trip down to our local multiplex, hoping to be awarded with wonder and excitement once again. By this stage, venturing the the cinema was not as exciting as it was when I was five, and it was also a trip which we as a family didn't do as often as we once did. However the offer of another Toy Story lured us back like a family of moths to an alluring flame.
The beauty of the first film was still there, but this time there were themes of loss, change and abandonment weaved through the narrative. This made the tale even more heartbreaking than the preceding film; reminding me and my brother to hold on to the love of our precious toys.
It was a story which taught us that childhood and love are such fragile treasures in this world and that we must cling on to such beauties for dear life.
After that message was delivered to us, Toy Story vanished from cinema's world stage. Before we even realized, an entire decade has raced on by. Not only did the messages of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 become lost to the cold winds of time, but me and my brother both grew up.
In those ten years, Toy Story did make several appearances in my life, but never in the same way that it did as a child. It turned out, that the film had a masterful story structure. The Eight Sequence Structure to be precise. This meant that when I took up screenwriting for both my undergrad and postgrad degrees, the film was dismantled before my very eyes. Every beat, scene, strand of dialogue and character was studied and dissected meticulously under a metaphorical microscope. The story of my childhood became a technical blueprint for my weekly seminars.
Naturally, I was more than happy to abandon the childhood frame of mind; now that I was an adult working toward a degree in screenwriting. I didn't care about pulling this story apart. I was all grown up now. If this film had the perfect eight sequence story structure to obtain knowledge from, then it was my obligation as a screenwriting student to extract such techniques for my own creative needs.
But in 2010, for one night only, I was allowed to do something rather magnificent. The release of Toy Story 3 was a once in a lifetime invitation for me and many others. It offered us both the chance to temporarily revisit our childhood whilst simultaneously offering a form of closure to it.
For the first time in eleven years, all those characters from my happier days were back on cinema's world stage. Their personalities as colorful as ever, their humor as sharp as it always was, and their universe as wondrous as it was the first and second time round. Toy Story was back and as great as it had ever been.
The film was a majestic doorway; offering us one more peak into an enchanting realm that no one had seen since 1999. After all the monstrous chaos that had taken place in our world since then - September 11th, The Iraq War, Guantanamo Bay, the 7/7 London Bombings - those brilliant, clever, daft and hilarious toys bounced back into our rainy lives to remind us of happier times.
But something had happened. Not with the story - that was as excellent as ever - but something was definitely different from last time round. Some of the characters - such as Bo Peep - had vanished, Andy's toys were all locked away in darkness, and the humans (including Buster the dog) had all aged considerably.
How could this be? Reality had leaked into this fantastic realm also? Like childhood, this fable had been poisoned by the progression of time. How could the authors of such fictional beauty do this to us? The happy endings from part one and two were no more. We were now in a new territory altogether. This was the world of Toy Story after those happily ever after moments. How could they show us such a world?
But not so fast, because before you know it, our heroes are at it once again. They don't care that their universe has also aged with time, because they are going to pull us right back into their mischievous ways to deliver us loyal viewers another grand adventure. For the third and last time Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang are going to give us a story which we haven't experienced for a hell of a long time. It is long overdue, but it doesn't matter anymore, because it's finally here.
Yet the story may be back, but this is still undeniably the end of an era. Time has brutally invaded this narrative. Andy is going to college and our precious toy's lives will never be the same again.
This is it.
Which is where the film delivers its ultimate and beautifully humane gift.
Closure.
Through the eyes of Andy, we are given a final chance to say goodbye for the last time. Before he finally passes on his beloved toys to their new owner, he plays with them before setting off on his own adventure into the adult corridors of college.
Here is the swan song for a story that began almost twenty years previous. It is a farewell to the children who loved it before finally growing up and it is a farewell to the parents who once loved it alongside them.
It is also a promise to the children of today. A promise that these toys shall live on and that more adventures may very well happen for this new audiences' own eyes in the near future.
In the summer of 2010, Toy Story 3 allowed us to return to our childhood years for two hours only. When time was finally up, it didn't just dump us on the side of the road in a flood of self-pitying tears, it allowed us all to express one last godspeed.
It would have been perfect if I'd have managed to drag my mother, brother and father - who loath the cinema these days - to see this film with me; however the final viewing experience was as close to perfection as any cinematic experience will ever be for me.
Thank you Toy Story. I loved you as a child, and for this final farewell gift, I shall love you for the rest of my days.
Goodbye x
No comments:
Post a Comment