"That's terrible!"
September 24, 2012 1:39 PM   Subscribe

Remember that great scene in "Toy Story 3" when the toys were about to fall into the incinerator? Well, a couple of siblings with a copy of Final Cut Pro decided to make the movie end there, with the toys going off to a fiery end - then showed it to their mom, who had never seen the film, and told her that was the real ending. [slyt]
posted by jbickers (119 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Kids these days!
posted by mazola at 1:40 PM on September 24, 2012


a couple of siblings horrible monsters with a copy of Final Cut Pro decided to make the movie end there, with the toys going off to a fiery end - then showed it to their mom, who had never seen the film, and told her that was the real ending

FTFY
posted by asnider at 1:41 PM on September 24, 2012 [13 favorites]


I'm begging these guys to make "Shutter Island" their next project.
posted by davebush at 1:44 PM on September 24, 2012 [6 favorites]


The first time I saw TS3, for a moment, I thought Pixar was about to pull off the ballsiest, bravest stunt in children's animation, ever. A stunt that would never be topped in a million years. And then they chickened out.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:44 PM on September 24, 2012 [33 favorites]


Oh man....
posted by cavalier at 1:45 PM on September 24, 2012


eh, they already backed themselves into a corner with Attic Mode once the consequences of immortal sentient toys with deep emotional attachments started to become more apparent.
posted by The Whelk at 1:45 PM on September 24, 2012 [6 favorites]


Warning: shaky camera work plus random squeaky noise may be annoying to people with eyes and ears.
posted by Outlawyr at 1:45 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


(think about all the toys that NEVER GET PLAYED WITH, they just sit there in their boxes GOING MAD. The junkyard is deafening with their screams)
posted by The Whelk at 1:46 PM on September 24, 2012 [11 favorites]


BP, you are far more optimistic than me. I just counted down to the deus ex machina.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:46 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


Lost: A plane crashes. Credits roll.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:46 PM on September 24, 2012 [11 favorites]


I thought Pixar was about to pull off the ballsiest, bravest stunt in children's animation, ever

You do realize that they're a subsidiary of Disney?
posted by Egg Shen at 1:47 PM on September 24, 2012 [4 favorites]


My daughter's best friend is a young boy her age (4 yrs). About a year ago he pulled me aside and said very seriously, "Has she seen Toy Story 3 yet?" I said, "No, not yet." He got this pained look on his face and said, "You shouldn't show it to her. It's a very sad movie. She will cry. Don't show her."

Perhaps when she's old enough to watch Old Yeller....
posted by zarq at 1:49 PM on September 24, 2012 [14 favorites]


Oh man based on the description I was expecting Woody to take one long look at Buzz before their faces just start melting into hideous skeletal shapes and then a quick cut to the teddy bear bursting into flames as he runs around in terror. But this is good too.
posted by 2bucksplus at 1:50 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


I'd like to own a version of Happy Feet with this ending.

Wait a minute, no I wouldn't.
posted by klausman at 1:51 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


Egg Shen: " You do realize that they're a subsidiary of Disney?"

Disney produced both Old Yeller and Bambi.
posted by zarq at 1:52 PM on September 24, 2012 [13 favorites]


You have to appreciate a mom who calls her kids douche bags.
posted by maudlin at 1:53 PM on September 24, 2012 [6 favorites]


Hilarious. And evil.
posted by Artw at 1:54 PM on September 24, 2012


He got this pained look on his face and said, "You shouldn't show it to her. It's a very sad movie. She will cry. Don't show her."

He's right. I mean, it's all happy in the end, but man is it a rough ride -- especially during the incinerator scene.

I've never cried during a movie, but three scenes have made me come very close: the execution of John Coffey in The Green Mile, the introduction to Up, and the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3. I think it speaks to Pixar's storytelling ability that two of the three movies that nearly made a grown man cry are cartoons that are marketed as children's movies.
posted by asnider at 1:55 PM on September 24, 2012 [12 favorites]


I have a friend who immensely disliked TS3 for being such a blatant tear-jerking heart-string manipulator of a film.

I think she'd like this.
posted by cornmander at 1:55 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


Ugh, Bambi, seriously wtf. My two year old was watching a copy of Bambi my parents gave us and she comes barreling into our room one day, bawling, hollering about how some "mean goat" beat up Bambi and "pushed him down." (The scene where the two young bucks fight over Bambi's girlfriend, which Bambi wins, but a two year old would never notice--yes, I taught her about deer after that.) The hunt scene where Bambi's mom is shot just baffled her. She had no idea what had happened.
posted by resurrexit at 1:57 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've never cried during a movie

What what is wrong with you have you never seen The Notebook maybe
posted by shakespeherian at 1:59 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


I've frequently discussed that end scene with people, especially with parents of small kids. The consensus seems to be that kids don't quite get it. Not that they don't understand what's happening, but they just figure they will be saved like in everything else they've ever seen.

I think it speaks to how much credit people give Pixar that we just might see the characters of the most successful animated series of all time die in a fire.
posted by lattiboy at 1:59 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


Disney produced both Old Yeller and Bambi.

But in the days before toy merchandising and sequels.
posted by Egg Shen at 1:59 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


hippybear: "I still think that Wall-E should have ended with EVE repairing him after he breaks down, him being reactivated, and being just a mundane robot with no personality, just going off to do his garbage compaction thing, with nothing beyond the scope of his original programming."

Apparently, you're also interested in ripping my goddamn heart out of my chest, throwing it on the pavement and stomping it until blood and tendons run down the street and into the fucking gutter.
posted by Apropos of Something at 2:02 PM on September 24, 2012 [32 favorites]


The movie is a hazy memory to me, but I distinctly remember the REAL ending of Toy Story 3 being unspeakably sad (but maybe only for adults, and maybe only adults at a certain time in their lives.)
posted by naju at 2:02 PM on September 24, 2012 [13 favorites]


Holy freaking spoiler above the cut, Batman! =(
posted by andreaazure at 2:03 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


asnider: " I've never cried during a movie, but three scenes have made me come very close: the execution of John Coffey in The Green Mile, the introduction to Up, and the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3. I think it speaks to Pixar's storytelling ability that two of the three movies that nearly made a grown man cry are cartoons that are marketed as children's movies."

I've completely avoided Toy Story 3. Still haven't seen it. The scene in TS2 when they show Jesse's story, paired with that Sarah McLachlan song just killed me. The introduction to Up did too. A friend had lost his wife to cancer just a month before, and another friend's wife was also dying of cancer. I don't normally cry at movies, but both scenes hit me hard.
posted by zarq at 2:04 PM on September 24, 2012 [4 favorites]


They actually lopped off the last two minutes of Wall-E where the optimistic humans have returned to Earth and set about trying to rebuild society but end up succumbing to the toxic gases and piles of disease-ridden refuse which cover the planet and they all die agonizing deaths and the last shot is of Wall-E building colossal towers of little cubed corpses.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:05 PM on September 24, 2012 [24 favorites]


When I was a kid, a friend and his parents took me to see The Lion King. To temporarily get my mind off of the fact that my dad died the previous month. Er.. yeah, let that sink in.
posted by naju at 2:06 PM on September 24, 2012 [30 favorites]


Lost: A plane crashes. Credits roll.

And yet, somehow, it is still stretched out into five excruciating seasons.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 2:07 PM on September 24, 2012 [15 favorites]


I liked TS3 a lot but How To Train Your Dragon was my favorite animated movie that year.
posted by kmz at 2:08 PM on September 24, 2012


Egg Shen: " But in the days before toy merchandising and sequels."

Sure, but from a sheer "this is TOTALLY appropriate for little kids!" perspective, there's nothing that beats seeing the mom killed of a child they are clearly meant to relate to, or watching a dog they've spent a couple of hours watching bond with a kid like them be put down with a resonating gun shot.

See also, Mustafa's death in The Lion King.
posted by zarq at 2:09 PM on September 24, 2012


andreazure, if a movie's been out a few years, it's not spoiler protected anymore.

I once knew a guy who refused to let his kids see Bambi. Not because the mom dies, but because the movie was anti-hunting.

Also my brother once brought a dead deer home and told me he'd shot Rudolph (I was five). That and Bambi probably did make becoming a hunter unlikely.

I am with those who have come to resent having my heartstrings repeatedly tugged by Cute Characters in Peril. Deer, toys, babies, kittens, whatever; enough already.
posted by emjaybee at 2:11 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


No spoiler warning?
posted by DU at 2:13 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


emjaybee: " I once knew a guy who refused to let his kids see Bambi. Not because the mom dies, but because the movie was anti-hunting. "

There was apparently an uproar when the movie was released. Hunters were upset that it made them look bad.
posted by zarq at 2:13 PM on September 24, 2012


Jesus, the scene was traumatic enough as it was! If you thought the movie should've ended with everybody getting melted, you have a charred little lump of charcoal where your heart should be.

He got this pained look on his face and said, "You shouldn't show it to her. It's a very sad movie. She will cry. Don't show her."

That is so, so sweet. With kids like that, perhaps there is hope for the youth of today.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:13 PM on September 24, 2012 [8 favorites]


"OK. Who else cried when Old Yeller got shot in the end?"
posted by Windopaene at 2:17 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


With kids like that, perhaps there is hope for the youth of today.

Nah. Check in on that one in 10 years.
posted by Jimbob at 2:17 PM on September 24, 2012


Spoiler alert if you've somehow been living in a cave and haven't actually ever managed to watch Battlestar Galactica, in which case I and everyone else on the internet is supposed to humor you for being so very, very late in the game.

* * *

I do this myself to the ending in Battlestar Galactica (the recent one, not the discofantastic original). In my version, it goes:

"I laid out the cabin today. It's going to have an easterly view. Should see the light that we get here...when the sun comes from behind those mountains—it's almost heavenly."

[sweeping music and crane shot]

"It reminds me of you."

[pull back and ROLL CREDITS.]

No fucking dancing robots in store windows, no IT WAS EARTH ALL ALONG, no mitochondrial Eve, no cheesy cameo from annoying chinless Ron Moore. I'd rather end up crying than pissed that I spent dozens of hours on a cinematic journey that crashed headlong into a pile of cliches that most half-decent sci-fi writers learned to avoid in the sixties, for chrissakes.
posted by sonascope at 2:19 PM on September 24, 2012 [11 favorites]


it's all happy in the end

What?! No it's not. Giving up your toys, saying goodbye to the beauty of childhood? How is that happy? Intensely bittersweet. Not happy.

I loved reading one feature on Toy Story 3 which described Pixar as full of people who never gave up their toys. Now that's happy.
posted by shivohum at 2:20 PM on September 24, 2012 [6 favorites]


Jesus, the scene was traumatic enough as it was! If you thought the movie should've ended with everybody getting melted, you have a charred little lump of charcoal where your heart should be.

It would have given every blatant heartstring-tugging, “put the heroes in peril just to save them predictably” scene cachet for years. If Disney/Pixar was willing to pull the trigger on the entire Toy Story cast, who would be safe? It would be a new world of market-driven family movies, and it would have been amazing. Woody and Buzz could have died to usher in a new era of genuine tension in filmmaking.

But I guess the actual ending was pretty good too. Should've cut the incinerator entirely, though. Waste of friggin' time.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:21 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


I still think that Wall-E should have ended with EVE repairing him after he breaks down, him being reactivated, and being just a mundane robot with no personality, just going off to do his garbage compaction thing, with nothing beyond the scope of his original programming. Maybe that makes me a heartless bastard, but the whole "reawakening" bit in that movie has always rung false to me.

My sticking point on the ending was that there was no way 95% of the colonists weren't dead within 6 months.
posted by figurant at 2:24 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


I was actually wondering if the scene was going to end with the toys being melted down (yeah, I know, they were being incinerated) and somehow made into new toys that would still have a little bit of the spark and soul of the original toys in there. Obviously I didn't have all the details worked out, but I'm confident that Pixar could have pulled that off if they had wanted to.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 2:24 PM on September 24, 2012


"OK. Who else cried when Old Yeller got shot in the end?"

Love the Stripes reference.

That aside, I don't get people who don't cry during a movie. Somehow you're so detached from the emotion of every movie you've ever seen that you don't cry? "I'm a grown man. I don't cry." The fuck?

Those people are the real weirdos.
posted by grubi at 2:26 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


sonascope: "no IT WAS EARTH ALL ALONG"

Only, it pretty obviously was Earth all along. You can tell the new Earth is geographically our Earth as soon as they see it. The only difference is you prefer for the timeline (is this our deep future and they're rediscovering an older Earth than the one that nuked itself?) to remain a mystery instead of being jammed down your throat. That's perfectly understandable. The last scene was just hamhanded, nothing more than that.
posted by Plutor at 2:28 PM on September 24, 2012


Mufasa's death in The Lion King.

Oh man, totally and completely. I remember watching this when it came out (I was twelve) and balling my damn eyes out in the dark theater with all my friends next to me. Those heartless bastards weren't even sniffling and I could just feel their eyes, laser-like on my weak, childlike grief.

So then the following week my whole family decided to go see Lion King at the drive-in. When the death scene was about to roll I conveniently ran out of popcorn and left to get a refill. When I returned to the car my tough-ass US ARMY dad was surreptitiously wiping his eyes with a snack bar napkin. #malebonding

These days I have no shame and just let the tears flow free. Why, just the other night on a long evening flight from Brazil I was watching Men in Black III and there's a scene at the very end, as ham-fisted and manipulated as the whole thing was I still couldn't help myself, racking sobs in the middle of Economy Class.

Other shows at which, incongruously, I have cried:
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Spiderman 3
A couple of episodes of Gilmore Girls
Aliens
posted by Doleful Creature at 2:31 PM on September 24, 2012 [8 favorites]


In the BSG world I see, they never left New Caprica and Baltar was eventually assassinated by the resistance.
posted by adamdschneider at 2:31 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


Holy freaking spoiler above the cut, Batman!

Yeah! And what's with not including spoiler alerts for Bambi and Old Yeller!
posted by KokuRyu at 2:32 PM on September 24, 2012


The hunt scene where Bambi's mom is shot just baffled her. She had no idea what had happened.

Back in the mid-ish 70's, Disney re-released Bambi to the theaters. A friend and I, being animation fans, decided to take-in a mid-week matinee. The theater, of course, was packed with small children and their mothers. My friend and I looked at each other and understood that we had blundered into an amazing social experiment.

We sat there in the dark, watching the movie, knowing what was to come. The kids, for their part were kids. Noisy, chattering, asking about the bunnies and Bambi and everything. Then, we came to the scene we were waiting for...The action builds, the kids are chattering-away, oblivious...Then......Bang.

You could hear a pin drop.

The theater went silent. Then...sniffles...and little worried voices..."Is Bambie's mommy dead?"

If high-fives had been invented then, my friend and I would have surely exchanged a couple. It was an amazing movie moment for us.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:33 PM on September 24, 2012 [10 favorites]


But I guess the actual ending was pretty good too. Should've cut the incinerator entirely, though. Waste of friggin' time.

I agree. It's quite horrible, especially for younger kids, but as a rule TS3 was very dark for no particularly good reason. I think we've only watched it a couple of times at our house.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:34 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Return of the King - Theodon says "I know your face" and my aorta just snaps right off.
posted by Ber at 2:36 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


Why, just the other night on a long evening flight from Brazil I was watching Men in Black III and there's a scene at the very end, as ham-fisted and manipulated as the whole thing was I still couldn't help myself, racking sobs in the middle of Economy Class.


This is a Known Plane Thing. I never cry at movies. I might get swelled up but outright sobbing is just never happened. Unless I'm on a plane. On a plane all bets are off. I don't know if it's stress, the helplessness, the constant self-medication or the recycled air but you get me on a plane and you put on LITERALLY ANY MOVIE and I swear to you I will be a sobbing pile of snot-filled sadness. ANY MOVIE.

I once tried to avoid this by just watching Archer episodes but no that damned wee baby Shamus! NNnnngh ehhh ngggggghhh
posted by The Whelk at 2:37 PM on September 24, 2012 [17 favorites]


Only, it pretty obviously was Earth all along.

I'm actually referencing an old "don't let this happen to you" itemized cliche from every book or article about writing science fiction going back to the seventies.

If you don't place Earth where they place it, it could be a recovered, post-nuked Earth that preceded the not-actually-Earth Earth and Kobol, which would explain the breedable human stock tromping around and would make for a nice circle of life. It could be in our past, but when? It could be parallel, or some magical flim-flam, or just a mystery. The urge to explain everything (as opposed to why I hated Lost, which was that there were never explanations because they were winging it the whole time) just kills the ambiguity that's behind a lot of great work. Your mileage may vary, of course.
posted by sonascope at 2:38 PM on September 24, 2012


sonascope the wound will never heal if you keep picking at it trust me I know.
posted by The Whelk at 2:38 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


"BUSTED...

WHAT!?!?

I hate being, like, the Mom to these kids!
"
Amen to that sister.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:43 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


If the movie had ended here, it wouldn't be made, and if for some reason it was made, theaters wouldn't show it. So, uh, good decision.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:43 PM on September 24, 2012


Oh, it's healed. IT REMINDS ME OF YOU—the rest is a bad dream, like the film version of Lost in Space, The Trial of a Time Lord, and every live action version of Seuss (except sorta Five Thousand Fingers of Dr. T, which isn't great, but I'll give it a pass because I forgive Hans Conried most of his sins). I just wait for the line, wipe my eyes, and *click* back to the Netflix menu.

Now, one of these days, when I find a brilliant film editor to help me do my revisionist silent film edit of The Black Hole with Ernest Borgnine and every fucking stupid robot line redacted—then I'll stop picking at a scab.
posted by sonascope at 2:47 PM on September 24, 2012


Dear Shitbird:

You're out of the will.

No love,

Your Ex-mom

P.S. I thought I'd take this to the grave, but you remember when your girlfriend in high school decided that she was a lesbian? And broke up with you? And you stayed in your bedroom for a week, trying to muffle the sounds of your crying? Well, guess who turned her on to women. Damn, she was fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:48 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


Another good prank is to go to a video store and switch out the All Dogs Go to Heaven DVD with Plague Dogs.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:49 PM on September 24, 2012 [7 favorites]


Also, I cried at the end of Philadelphia. Yes, I was that guy.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:51 PM on September 24, 2012


My husband told me never to watch Toy Story III (he'd seen it with one of our adult children -I think I was out of town or something.)

He knows me WELL.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 2:51 PM on September 24, 2012


The Return of the King - Theodon says "I know your face" and my aorta just snaps right off.

I don't even really like the LOTR movies that much any more, but "I would have followed you my brother. My captain. My king." still gets me. As does the one truly worthwhile scene in the interminable end of ROTK: "My friends, you bow to no one."

But the number one movie scene still guaranteed to get me to cry: "Play 'La Marseillaise'. Play it."
posted by kmz at 2:55 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


My daughter's best friend is a young boy her age (4 yrs). About a year ago he pulled me aside and said very seriously, "Has she seen Toy Story 3 yet?" I said, "No, not yet." He got this pained look on his face and said, "You shouldn't show it to her. It's a very sad movie. She will cry. Don't show her."

What wonderful empathy for a four-year-old. That's a fantastic kid, there.
posted by davejay at 2:56 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


The entirety of The Color Purple. I refuse to see it with anyone else just so they don't have to see my fat face crying.
posted by grubi at 3:00 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


I seem to be nearly alone among my friends in thinking that Toy Story 3 was the weakest of the three TS movies. It's good, don't get me wrong, but by the supremely high standards of the rest of the series? Not so much. The incinerator scene was part of that, because I just didn't believe for a second that Pixar was about to kill off the entire cast of their movie in a hideous way.

Now, if one of the toys was dangling off the edge over the fire, that would have been some real peril, because Pixar aren't above doing really horrible things to at least one character per film. (As are Disney in general, actually - cf. Mufasa, Bambi's mother, etc.) All of them? Not going to happen, so there just wasn't any tension there.

(Incidentally, my sister has maintained since seeing the film that the edit in the FPP is indeed how the film should have ended, except that it should fade to black as they entered the incinerator and you'd just hear Woody's long-drawn-out pullstring voice as he melted. "Yoooouuuu'rrreeee mmmmyyyy ffaaavvvoooouurrriiiittteee ddddeeeeepppuuuuttyyyyyyy....." It's a little worrying.)
posted by ZsigE at 3:04 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


Amen to Color Purple. Best movie ever!! Such a deep, meaningful tear jerker. And Braveheart..... Marin's death kills me every time.
posted by pearlybob at 3:04 PM on September 24, 2012


I liked the ending of Toy Story 3. The previous movies had sort of set up the glaring question of what would happen when Andy grew up and moved out and didn't play with his toys anymore - they had also established that this would be a Bad Thing for the toys.

I like that the movie not only answered that question in a way that provided for a happy ending, suggesting that the characters will always have someone to play with them, but also managed to fold in a story about growing up and the bittersweet process of saying goodbye to childhood.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 3:04 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


What?! No it's not. Giving up your toys, saying goodbye to the beauty of childhood? How is that happy? Intensely bittersweet. Not happy

I should have qualified that: I meant that it was happy for the toys because they get to go on bringing joy to a new child who will hopefully love them as much as Andy did.

As a viewer, it was intensely bittersweet, but I assumed that a 4-year-old wouldn't really interpret it that way. I mean, what is a 4-year-old nostalgic for? The good ol' days when they still breastfed?
posted by asnider at 3:07 PM on September 24, 2012


I loved the incinerator scene. Sure, I knew that they would get rescued, but I love the pathos of any scene where characters are convinced they are heading into certain death and come to some kind of grim and beautiful acceptance of their fate. If you've watched 'Blackadder' you know what I'm talking about here.
posted by Paragon at 3:18 PM on September 24, 2012 [3 favorites]


I once knew a guy who refused to let his kids see Bambi. Not because the mom dies, but because the movie was anti-hunting.

A friend of mine told the story of how he went to see Bambi in the cinema with his dad, a passionate hunter. Cue the moment that Bambi's mum is shot and dad's first reaction is a loud and well meant "great shot", followed by two seconds of horrified silence and the crying of some fifty little kids...
posted by MartinWisse at 3:21 PM on September 24, 2012 [30 favorites]


On the subject of Bambi: the fact that I barely have any recollections of it seems to indicate a moment of such extreme trauma that my brain, in an act of self-preservation, has wiped it from my memory.
posted by Doleful Creature at 3:24 PM on September 24, 2012


Giving up your toys, saying goodbye to the beauty of childhood?

Also: you've now caused me to remember that I nearly cried twice during TS3. The incinerator scene is so in-your-face that I ended up remembering the emotion associated with it more vividly than the emotions associated with the final few scenes. I've only seen it once; clearly I need to watch it again.
posted by asnider at 3:33 PM on September 24, 2012


Also: did anyone else notice how similar the junkyard scenes are to The Brave Little Toaster?
posted by Paragon at 3:36 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


On the subject of Bambi: the fact that I barely have any recollections of it seems to indicate a moment of such extreme trauma that my brain, in an act of self-preservation, has wiped it from my memory.

That's really too bad. It's easily one of Disney's most visually beautiful movies.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:41 PM on September 24, 2012


The incinerator scene is so in-your-face that I ended up remembering the emotion associated with it more vividly than the emotions associated with the final few scenes. I've only seen it once; clearly I need to watch it again.
posted by asnider at 12:33 PM on September 24 [+] [!]


No-one has mentioned the fucking awesome Deus Ex Machina (literally! LITERALLY literally, not the other kind!) of the little green alien's claw being 'the one who decides who stays, and who goes'.

I mean that's some high end shit right there.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:51 PM on September 24, 2012 [7 favorites]


"OK. Who else cried when Old Yeller got shot in the end?"

Nah, I'm pretty sure Travis shot him in the head.
posted by sourwookie at 3:58 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


No-one has mentioned the fucking awesome Deus Ex Machina (literally! LITERALLY literally, not the other kind!) of the little green alien's claw being 'the one who decides who stays, and who goes'.

Imagine if it had ended the other way, though. What if the Pixar folks had basically thrown up their arms and said, "We've made billions — we're not cashing in on your childhood and your nostalgia any longer." The toys meet Thanatos, the implacable god of entropy. And then the scene fades out, the credits fade in, listing Diderot's Jacques le fataliste, Paul Davies' The Last Three Minutes and Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War as inspirations. That would have been an audacious middle finger at consumerism, far surpassing Wall-E. Especially as Toy Story 3 was probably written with an audience in mind that included the young adults and teenagers who had grown up watching the first two movies — it could have been a pretty subversive, thought-provoking way to end the series. Ah, Pixar, you could have made Art.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:40 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


My sticking point on the ending was that there was no way 95% of the colonists weren't dead within 6 months.

They've got a ship full of friendly, intelligent robots to help them. And someone helpfully stacked most of the rubble into these huge cubes.

Sure, I knew that they would get rescued, but I love the pathos of any scene where characters are convinced they are heading into certain death and come to some kind of grim and beautiful acceptance of their fate. If you've watched 'Blackadder' you know what I'm talking about here.

The last episode of WWI Blackadder is one of the greatest shows in all of television. They give us that uproarious, amazingly disgusting bit with Baldrick making coffee. (While the officers are talking in the foreground you can hear him "making" it in the background, and I still can't hear the word "cappuchino" now without wincing.)

Then at the end they had THAT happen. It's the last episode of a Blackadder series, you know it's coming, but they had never played it for real emotional impact before, and they even gave Blackadder himself a human moment or two, where he finally just stops trying to get away at any/all costs and just gives in to inevitability. It never fails to turn on my personal waterworks.
posted by JHarris at 4:45 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


[...] as he was being shoved into the crate, he looked up at Charlotte and gave her a wink. She knew he was saying good-bye in the only way he could. And she knew her children were safe.

  "Good-bye!" she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him.

  She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that has visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.


THAT'S ALL FOLKS! DRIVE HOME SAFE. REMEMBER TO TIP YOUR WAITRESS.
posted by Kinbote at 4:47 PM on September 24, 2012 [18 favorites]


"How does it feel to have trolls for kids?"
posted by azpenguin at 4:55 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


Now, one of these days, when I find a brilliant film editor to help me do my revisionist silent film edit of The Black Hole with Ernest Borgnine and every fucking stupid robot line redacted—then I'll stop picking at a scab.

Blasphemy. Roddy McDowall's awesome plus 1970s robot awesome = super amazing awesome! And everybody knows there's no such thing as too much Borgnine.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:05 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Kids In The Hall did my favorite pair of endings to Old Yeller.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:15 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


Ursula Hitler, your homework is to watch this and meditate on what wrongness is.
posted by JHarris at 5:16 PM on September 24, 2012


This is what needs to be done to fix A.I.

I was tipped off before watching it that "When the boy falls into the ocean, stop the DVD, that's the end of the movie. You're done." So I did that, and was left with a gripping powerful movie.

A few days later, I watched the rest, Then I was left with a stupid movie.

I'm glad I got to watch the good movie.
posted by anonymisc at 5:23 PM on September 24, 2012 [7 favorites]


Kinbote, you bastard. I have to pull myself together and go to work now.
posted by arha at 5:27 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


Only, it pretty obviously was Earth all along. You can tell the new Earth is geographically our Earth as soon as they see it.

This really offended the geo-nerd in me. You can just about get away with unchanging coastlines over 150K years, continental drift isn't much over that scale and who knows, we could have been in a similar interglacial, but DON'T give me that Sahara desert shit. That that she-hat done changed a lot over the last 10K years, never mind 15 times that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:39 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wall-E is the only movie that had ever made my husband cry.
It was at the very end, when they're replanting, and the earth's regrowing, and peter gabriel is a-playing. he looked over at me with big wet sparkly eyes, and said, in this profoundly amazed voice: "I'm... I'm crying!"
one of my favorite moments in cinematic history.
posted by changeling at 5:42 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]




(Okay, having actually bothered to look it up finally, apparently the evidence indicates that there was extensive desert in North Africa 150k years ago. Not coextensive with the modern Sahara by any means but there definitely was some.)
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:47 PM on September 24, 2012


Ursula Hitler, your homework is to watch this yt and meditate on what wrongness is.

Seen it. Come on, you telling me that movie would've been better with less Borgnine? He was the truffle in that turd.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:48 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


These kids are assholes.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 5:58 PM on September 24, 2012


The theater went silent. Then...sniffles...and little worried voices..."Is Bambie's mommy dead?"

I went to see The Prince of Egypt at a matinee with a friend when it first came out and the crowd was mostly kids with their parents. When God sends the Angel of Death to kill all the Egyptian first born, the little kid behind me asked his mom (in one of those cutesy little kid voices): "Mom, why did God kill all the babies?" So glad I wasn't that mom at that moment.
posted by Falconetti at 6:06 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


"Mom, why did God kill all the babies?"

Parents, listen up: this is a tipping point, choose wisely.
posted by Doleful Creature at 6:43 PM on September 24, 2012 [7 favorites]


"Mom, why did God kill all the babies?"

"Don't worry, kid, there is no god" would get me kicked out of the theater, I suppose?
posted by maxwelton at 6:43 PM on September 24, 2012 [6 favorites]


This summer I spent a week at a beach house with assorted family and their toddlers, and to keep the mass of rugrats entertained when not swimming, a movie was playing on the living room TV pretty much all the time. Because I am clearly related to horrible people, the movies the kids chose to watch on repeat were Toy Story 3 and Up, over and over and over.

The parents had played the movies so many times they were immune and indifferent to them; the kids were playing and not really paying attention to the background noise. I was the only one to ever walk into the living room, yelp "OH GOD" and skitter out again, because the toys are descending to fiery hell or the cute young newlyweds are having a miscarriage for the sixth goddamn time in two days. OH GOD CAN'T WE WATCH CINDERELLA OR READ MOTHER GOOSE OR SOMETHING TODAY
posted by nicebookrack at 6:55 PM on September 24, 2012 [7 favorites]


I took the whole family to see TS3, in 3D even, and we got out and every kid basically said, "Meh." Maybe we're just dead inside.
posted by mecran01 at 7:08 PM on September 24, 2012


also frak you, real Toy Story 3 ending, frak you to heck, "The Velveteen Rabbit" hurt me first and you can't hurt me worse, and you will pry my tattered childhood bunny from my cold dead elderly hands.

Random Preschooler Kid is not interested in my threadbare handmedowns with probably toxic levels of lead in the plastic, anyway. Beloved, well-worn objets d'amours stay in the family.

Going now to console myself with epic TS3 fanfic and schadenfreudesque thoughts of how Andy will spend his thirties plus thousands of dollars on eBay in regret as he reassembles his vast nostalgia trove for his own kids. Look at your life, Andy, look at your choices!
posted by nicebookrack at 7:09 PM on September 24, 2012 [5 favorites]


When God sends the Angel of Death to kill all the Egyptian first born, the little kid behind me asked his mom (in one of those cutesy little kid voices): "Mom, why did God kill all the babies?" So glad I wasn't that mom at that moment.


I usually quietly keep my atheism to myself at my church--yeah, long story--but a couple of weeks ago some of the parents were discussing how to decorate the new nursery area, and they--like almost every single church in the country--were leaning toward a Noah's Ark theme. I asked if it would be okay if I hired an artistic friend to do a very detailed flood scene--one that included families crying for help and clinging to debris, holding their infants high above their heads for as long as possible, wailing in terror as their eyes fix on the ark that is forever closed to them while the bloated corpses of valued livestock swirled all around them, rising and falling in the devastating torrent.

They decided to go with a "Jesus, the Good Shepherd" theme instead.
posted by Alexander Hatchell at 7:10 PM on September 24, 2012 [17 favorites]


They decided to go with a "Jesus, the Good Shepherd" theme instead.

The good shepherd? My Bible-fu is a bit rusty; is that the part where Jesus drives two thousand pigs to a watery grave? </derail>
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:34 PM on September 24, 2012


There's only one movie that can always make me cry. But it gets me so hard that I've teared up just thinking about writing this comment. Just two little phrases:

"I not gun."

"Superman ..."

oh jesus here comes the waterworks
posted by Bookhouse at 7:43 PM on September 24, 2012 [16 favorites]


That was a pretty epic prank. I'm rooting for mom getting some payback sooner rather than later.

re: Old Yeller and Bambi (and the Lion King, etc.) - at what age do parents usually discuss death with their kids? I knew that animals died and stuff by at least age 6, and I knew that a grandparent had died before I was born (suicide when my dad was a pre-teen) and had a grandparent overseas die when I was 8 or so.

When kids see these movies where Bambi's mom or Simba's dad dies for the first time, do they understand the implication? I can't remember being phased when I saw Bambi's mom get shot down the first time, it sucked, but well, she's dead.

I know it's different for every kid, but I have to wonder if the generation that grew up when Bambi was new might have been exposed to death more frequently and more viscerally than the current cohort? Maybe like non-vegetarians who don't like to think about where the meat that they're eating comes from.
posted by porpoise at 8:11 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]


Up

I'm still kind of amazed that Disney let that one hit the theaters. I mean, first there's miscarriages and fucking eminent domain and society's heartless grinding of the elderly poor and then the protagonist goes on a Whimsical Balloon Adventure only to meet his childhood hero and then his childhood hero TRIES TO MURDER HIM

seriously I ask you
posted by Doleful Creature at 9:46 PM on September 24, 2012 [7 favorites]


Oh yeah and Russ's dad is a goddamn no-show at the award ceremony. Yay for everyone!
posted by Doleful Creature at 9:47 PM on September 24, 2012


TWF, that wasn't a Disney cartoon, though I do see your point. On that thought, I was watching the old 1960s adaptation of H.G. Wells's Time Machine and noticed that the hero goes forward into the future, notices a cannabilistic power imbalance due to evolution (an amoral force of nature) and decides that the only solution to that world's problems is genocide.
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:26 PM on September 24, 2012


Up

I'm still kind of amazed that Disney let that one hit the theaters.


Up is the last movie that Pixar made before Disney's Pixar took complete control of the production teams. Pixar had changed the entire perception of CGI animation and became the first of the medium to do serious storytelling. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Monsters, Inc., Ratatoulli, Wall-E and Up pushed the envelope everytime. By the time Up came to theaters, the idea that a CGI animation film could spent the first 10 minutes exquisitely ripping your heart out was as shocking as it was uniquely Pixar.

In contrast, Disney's leadership has given us Toy Story 2 (commissioned), Cars 2, Toy Story 3 and Brave (which while enjoyable, was just a well-done Disney Princess movie). The sequels to Monsters, Nemo, Incredibles and Toy Story are hardly going to break bounds in the future. Disney's movies are made first and foremost to sell merchandise and, despite the Pixar team's best efforts at storytelling, it shows.

Personally, I'm putting all my hopes in Dreamworks, which obviously values the stories in their original films. How to Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me were far more complex that I expected them to be.

/the incinerator scene was only disturbing if you have never seen The Brave Little Toaster. To this day, I anthropomorphize inanimate objects as scared, unloved creatures, especially during donation times.
posted by Vysharra at 11:30 PM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]


Final Cut Amateur, more like, amirite?

Seriously though, this seems like a fail to me. The mom immediately suspected shenanigans, and the reveal wasn't terribly remarkable, from what I saw.

Would have expected more of a WHAAAT!?!? reaction from Mom there.
posted by ShutterBun at 11:38 PM on September 24, 2012


I think it's pure bollocks to think that art can only come from an unhappy ending. The endings to both Toy Story 2 and 3, and 3 more than 2, are both happy but bittersweet, and ending a movie with a complete downer is not all that would stand between them being 'good art' and 'not good art'.

And, they're kids movies. Good for adults to watch, sure - I've been babysitting my two-year-old niece recently and she has been cycling through the Pixar movies, wanting to watch first one, then another, on repeat, and when those films are of a quality of A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. I've had no problem doing so. But showing her some 'No Exit'-style kiddie snuff movie?

Tragedy does not equal better, and in this case definitely doesn't mean 'appropriate for the targeted audience'. I thought Toy Story 3 earned its ending, and that there's some who thought they toys could die in the incinerator is instead testament to getting caught up in the movie.
posted by gadge emeritus at 1:37 AM on September 25, 2012 [1 favorite]


I mean, what is a 4-year-old nostalgic for? The good ol' days when they still breastfed?

My cousin and his 4-year-old son have a deal in place - for every 15 minutes of 'screens' (telly, Xbox, iPad) at the weekend he has to do five minutes of 'school'.

Last time I visited we were doing a bit of maths after a strenuous bout of Xbox tennis when, frustrated by a tricky sum, the kid turned to me and said, 'Jack, remember when I was little? We could just play, and play, and play...'.
posted by jack_mo at 1:46 AM on September 25, 2012 [7 favorites]


BTW, if you're really inclined to spare your children or youthful wards the glurgey endings of nearly everything these days, get a copy of All Mine To Give and show it to 'em for Christmas instead of the usual pap.

This, of course, is why no one asks me to babysit anymore.

Well, that and The Plague Dogs.
posted by sonascope at 5:42 AM on September 25, 2012 [1 favorite]


First of all, downer endings do not equal art. If they did Revenge of the Sith would be the greatest movie ever made.

Secondly, if you've been paying attention the 'real' ending of Toy Story 3, the tearful farewell to the toys, is clearly a dream. Andy uses Jessie and Bullseye's real names--which are not the names he uses for them when he discovers them in his room at the end of TS2, and which he had no way of finding out. And then the camera pans up and the sky is his bedroom wallpaper.

It's not a coincidence it came out the same summer as Inception, is what I'm saying.
posted by Hogshead at 5:51 AM on September 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


and which he had no way of finding out.

Google?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:59 AM on September 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


This is a Known Plane Thing. I never cry at movies. I might get swelled up but outright sobbing is just never happened. Unless I'm on a plane. On a plane all bets are off.

Dear Wes Craven,

If you're looking for a way to make a suitably harrowing sequel to Red Eye, make it about a thoughtful young man taking a flight with a compulsory showing of House of Sand and Fog (don't forget to have them pipe the audio in over the intercom!) and have him seated amongst all the people around whom he is most loath to show weakness.

I'll relinquish any rights in perpetuity in exchange for 15% of grosses.

Cordially,
psoas
posted by psoas at 6:41 AM on September 25, 2012


Plague Dogs

Oh god. Watership Down is bad enough.
posted by Artw at 7:16 AM on September 25, 2012 [2 favorites]


For those few people in here complaining that they were never going to kill the toys so the incinerator scene was pointless or annoying, I posit that you're missing the point. The point isn't whether or not they die; it's that for a moment they think they're going to, and they hold their hands and close their eyes and accept it. Whether or not they die doesn't matter, compared to that moment. And then, in that moment of acceptance, the're saved. It's a beautiful scene.
posted by Rinku at 7:23 AM on September 25, 2012 [4 favorites]


Blazecock Pileon: " Imagine if it had ended the other way, though. What if the Pixar folks had basically thrown up their arms and said, "We've made billions — we're not cashing in on your childhood and your nostalgia any longer." The toys meet Thanatos, the implacable god of entropy. And then the scene fades out, the credits fade in, listing Diderot's Jacques le fataliste, Paul Davies' The Last Three Minutes and Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War as inspirations. That would have been an audacious middle finger at consumerism, far surpassing Wall-E. Especially as Toy Story 3 was probably written with an audience in mind that included the young adults and teenagers who had grown up watching the first two movies — it could have been a pretty subversive, thought-provoking way to end the series. Ah, Pixar, you could have made Art."

One of the things I really liked about the Harry Potter series (in novel and movie format) was the way the stories gradually grew darker and more complex, as their protagonists and presumably their readers aged. The first novel was appropriate for most ages. The last three were not. The movies weren't true to the books in all details, but they made a concerted attempt to preserve what they could, and the later entries in the series were clearly aimed at an older audience.

I tend to think that deliberate progression confused moviegoing parents who had not also read the books. I went to showings of Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows and noticed parents bringing children who couldn't have been older than 7. These children might have handled the first two movies well, but the more recent ones would likely have been nightmare fuel.

Similarly, with the first two Toy Story films, Pixar created an expectation for their audiences that the characters and storylines would be child-friendly and appropriate. Parents would likely have brought their children to the movies expecting they would have a certain type of experience. Such a drastic shift would have been likely to cause an uproar.

It might have been fascinating to watch, but realistically, very few movie studios would risk losing an established, built-in audience like that for a sequel.
posted by zarq at 8:08 AM on September 25, 2012


anonymisc

The theater I was in was hit by lightning just as you see the little car flying across the ice. I had no idea what it meant, but though I had just watched a rather good movie, if a little sentimental for Krubrick.

If that happens again when I'm watching a good movie with a terrible ending, I might just have to put up an alter to Zeus in my apartment.

I then was stupid and watched the ending. I'm still annoyed with myself for doing that.
posted by Hactar at 10:34 AM on September 25, 2012


For those few people in here complaining that they were never going to kill the toys so the incinerator scene was pointless or annoying, I posit that you're missing the point. The point isn't whether or not they die; it's that for a moment they think they're going to, and they hold their hands and close their eyes and accept it. Whether or not they die doesn't matter, compared to that moment. And then, in that moment of acceptance, the're saved. It's a beautiful scene.

It really is. And the music behind is fucking bananas. It is ice-cold thick banana shake mental.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:27 PM on September 25, 2012


Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish: Google?

At which point Andy would have discovered his toys were worth a million bajillion dollars, that being the entire theme of the second movie, the conflict between financial and emotional value.
posted by Hogshead at 2:53 AM on September 26, 2012


Only if he found information specifically about the toys, instead of the show.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:47 AM on September 26, 2012


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