Most people become wary of Pixar's new work, probably dating back to "Brave". But for me, this kind of vigilance will be earlier. That is to say, after the release of the first "Racing Mobilization" in 2006, I started to pay attention to this studio with a cautious attitude. Fortunately, the following "Ratuitouille" and "Walle" were not too lazy. However, in recent years, they have failed in five or six consecutive works, such as "Brave", "Monsters University" and the famous Waterloo "Home Alone".
While worrying about whether Pixar has lost its creativity, we can also see many other Hollywood animation companies repeatedly proving the fact that no matter how advanced the technology is, it cannot fill the void of content. These phenomena actually confirmed how great Pixar produced the first "Toy Story". The outdated and rudimentary CG rendering and modeling technology 24 years ago can't conceal the perfect construction of its style and atmosphere. From the very beginning of its publication, the first part has assumed the role of leading and subverting.
It is obviously inappropriate to regard 1995's "Toy Story" as a technological milestone. At least the Oscar nomination for best original screenplay can explain some problems-the Oscars of that era were much more reliable than they are now. Even at that time, there was no award for the best animated feature film, and it was only slightly embarrassing to give director John Lasseter a special achievement award. It must be admitted that that period was when a group of Pixar animators led by John Lasseter had the most creative power. Including the screenwriters Andrew Stanton and Jos Weiden, the entire team maintains ample inspiration.
Therefore, "Toy Story" not only marks the arrival of the 3D animation era, but also provides a brand new industrial animation creation idea. This idea can be used for three-dimensional animation, but also for two-dimensional animation. It is certainly not a golden rule, because many outstanding animation artists have also established various style milestones, especially those independent filmmakers outside the system. But this does not hinder the epoch-making and subversive nature of "Toy Story". In the past few years, after the imitators have learned seven or eighty-eight, after people have become accustomed to such a paradigm, the industry benchmark of Pixar has first fallen into a certain predicament, and then the creativity of commercial animation has been exposed on a large scale. Scarce. Don't worry too much, because genre movies evolve in such peaks and valleys.
Therefore, it is actually Pixar's inevitable choice to bring out the "Treasure of the Town Store" once again to the audience. Even though they have come up with decent "Brain Assault Team" and "Dream Quest" in recent years, most of them are still substandard works like "Cars 3" and "The Superman Family 2." Furthermore, "Toy Story" has become a kind of redemption. On the one hand, Pixar is trying to use this to boost itself, and on the other hand, it also hopes to re-establish the audience's expectations, so the best choice is to give the company's acceptance and reputation. A new work has been developed for the series that meets the standard. Therefore, they did not hesitate to push Hu Di's story to the fourth step.
In general, "Toy Story 4" embodies some determination, but it shows more of a stable and winning attitude. It has not completely lost the magic weapon of the first three successes, and its control of the new elements is indeed limited. Overall, I am positive about this work, but it is not good enough to make me look forward to Pixar's next work as before.
The first trilogy once vividly embodies the studio's creativity and familiarity with genre images. "Let the toy come alive" is definitely a genius idea. This idea not only follows the anthropomorphic writing tradition that Hollywood is good at, but also makes the text produce infinite possibilities. The essence of genre films is the similar classification of narrative elements and thematic forms, which also contains knowledge of audience psychology, consumption habits and emotional reactions. In terms of norms, the "Toy Story" trilogy is a typical conservative innovation. It teases a large number of genre elements, disassembles, reconstructs, and mocks them, and finally completes a certain drama and entertainment effect.
With such creative support, there are unique conditions for realizing collage of types of images. It first arises from the characters. The male No.1 Woody is a western cowboy toy, and the male No.2 Buzz Lightyear is a space policeman. In addition, there are various characters such as Barbie, dinosaurs, plastic soldiers, shepherdess, and egghead couples. They are born They have different types and styles. Therefore, we can see dazzling familiar segments in films such as westerns, sci-fi films, romantic films, comedies, action films, and war films. Genre images constantly adjust the narrative rhythm and scheduling methods. Whenever Hu Di and his party get into trouble, such as the bad boy in the first part, the miner in the second part, and the kindergarten in the third part, they all use appropriate horror effects to exaggerate the atmosphere. And every rescue operation is a joke of painless American personal heroism.
This aspect is the most successful place in "Toy Story 4". Especially in the series of adventures at the beginning, almost every transition is a new type of image. Among them, the most impressive one is undoubtedly the antique shop. This time the film did not take care of the acceptance of the so-called "light audience". It started with the horror film technique of Jump Scare, which tested the animation with a relaxed mind. The mental ability of the audience of the film. In addition, "Toy Story 4" also retains the action comedy segment that Pixar is good at and inherited from a large number of silent films in Hollywood from 1910 to 1940. In the antique shop, the light and camera angles at certain moments are also enough to pull us back into the film noir, and the scenes of Buzz Lightyear and Tracee have a fixed set of adventure films and prison escape films. The genre elements are mixed and matched freely, which is pleasing to the eye. The film is fully entertaining in the first half an hour.
However, focusing on these superficial features alone will not allow us to observe the importance of "Toy Story" as an animated film and as a kind of video art. What makes the work more unique lies in its brand-new text structure derived from creativity. This series firstly extended and reversed the power relations of traditional themes. If we temporarily abandon the other components of the film and treat it as a children's film alone, generally speaking, children, as a symbol of innocence and goodness, are always in a state of confrontation and pull with the adult world, and are the weaker party. The writers of children's films use this kind of conflict to advance the emotions of the characters and construct a certain critical theme. In "Toy Story", children have become the masters of the power system and have stood in the same camp as adults, and toys are a disadvantaged group.
This inversion and dislocation brought about two new and interesting phenomena. One is that toys, as a product of personification, are not actually the end of the director's tendency. The movie still focuses on human beings as the final object of discussion. Of course, this is completely reasonable. After all, toys in the real world do not really have high-level consciousness, and the film naturally reveals a neutrality that is biased toward humans. In other words, the ultimate goal of anthropomorphization is to target "people", otherwise the "simulation" will lose its meaning. But the director's cleverness lies in the flow of plots to figure out the differences between people as individuals. Therefore, the story on the surface is about the adventures of toys, including the noble qualities such as friendship and bravery. In essence, it is still about the psychological growth of children, but the children no longer have concrete contradictions, and they rely entirely on toys to establish the profile. The growth curve of the film makes the tone of the film appear to be much gentler, which constitutes a family-style expression.
Of course, we cannot ignore the insights and reflections brought to the audience by the adventures of Hu Di and Buzz Lightyear, but these cannot be directly used as the ultimate interpretation of the film after all. In order to achieve the purpose of exploring children, the four "Toy Story" has actually been rudely dealing with the social relations of toys. No matter how many toys appear on the stage, each character has a very single motivation and goal. Except for the main characters such as Hu Di and Buzz Lightyear, they need to undertake the task of reconciling the narrative rhythm and leading the development of the plot. They must have a rich and reasonable growth curve. , And there are few composite characters on the stage. Even the villain’s motives have always been repetitive, that is, a certain resentment caused by the negative behavior of the owner, from the miner to the third strawberry bear, to the Gaby doll in this game, nothing less. Even structurally, the four movies have a sense of repetitive rhythm. Thus, the film seems to have formed a kind of fugue. In the simple and intense progressive events caused by the conflict drive, we not only keep our eyes on the toys whose lives are hanging by a thread, but also keep our attention on those shots that cannot be accommodated. Humans (adults and children).
The second phenomenon is embodied in the constantly changing relationship between toys and humans. This phenomenon is placed on the axis in the fourth part. The domestic toys headed by Hu Di and Buzz Lightnian Yigan have always upheld the concept of serving their owner Andy well. The conflict in the first part is the fight for favor. The newcomer Buzz Lightyear becomes the darling, and Hu Di's jealousy erupts, triggering a series of dramatic events. In the end, the two reconciled, and Andy, as an "outsider", also completed a certain growth. The contradiction between the last two episodes lies in how toys, as mass-produced goods, should treat the misunderstood sense of belonging and the values after being abandoned. What’s interesting is that even though Hu Di saw his TV commercial and discovered the so-called celebrity status under the guidance of Tracee and the old miner, he is still a firm "royalist" with a strong sense of belonging under his feet. "ANDY" as a support. And the old miners, including the Strawberry Bear in the third part, after being forgotten by the world and their masters, decided to become liberals, standing on the opposite side of mankind. They all eventually showed up as some kind of conspirators, and they even wanted to use human psychology to cause trouble. The fate of these toys is obvious, and it proves the film's position in a certain sense.
But for toys such as Hu Di and Buzz Lightyear, they have also been facing a huge crisis related to the ultimate fate, that is, the problem that they will be abandoned when Andy grows up. Therefore, the third part is the one with the most abundant text. While Hu Di opposed the idea of Strawberry Bear, he actually faced the same problem, but he still insisted on not abandoning the master. The film places this very serious and difficult-to-answer debate under the stimulating adventure experience. In fact, it avoids its core theme, or in other words, low-key handling has become a question of individual choice. So at the end of the movie, when the adult Andy left home, he gave all the toys to the new little owner, Bonnie. As a positive character, Andy, although there is a second move to abandon Hudi, it essentially creates a toy utopia. Now that utopia no longer exists, it will deeply affect the theme of the fourth book.
"Toy Story" has never shy away from describing the complicated changes in the relationship between master and servant, and the dialectical discussion of obedience and betrayal has always been part of the connotation of this series. Of course, no one will prevent you from understanding political innuendo such as monarchy, slavery, class privilege, and institutional violence based on this. However, from the perspective of fundamental expression, the film clearly does not encourage such excessively divergent thinking. To a certain extent, interpreting so many topics about history and politics from a joyful and cheerful cartoon would seem ridiculous and a bit out of date. We have countless better film samples to discuss these. However, by the time of "Toy Story 4", the director inevitably took a step towards this kind of adult thinking. Although the fourth part didn't really change immediately and began to talk about the political system and social symptoms, the work still couldn't get rid of the prevailing trend of catering to American society.
I am not too willing to see such a scene. These waves of gender politics, identity politics, and skin color politics have hindered the normal creative process of American film workers. Obviously, not everyone is affected by it, but from the beginning of the year to now, we have seen extremely directional and extremely abrupt passages in almost any Hollywood A-level production. For example, the assembly of heroines behind Spider-Man in "Avengers 4", such as "X-Women" and "Women In Black", in my opinion, wasting even a second and a line to respond to those ridiculous public opinions is a cause It's unbearable for people who love movies. Although as the plot develops and is affected by these status quo, it is inevitable that I will not immediately associate those voices and propositions. Fortunately in the misfortune, "Toy Story 4" is quite clever at this point, and it is not so offensive.
Therefore, after the film used many types of images to push the entertainment to the climax, it quickly made the film's true core role-the shepherdess debut. At this time, the shepherdess is no longer the meek lamp decoration in the bedroom, but a female soldier who is good at survival in the wild, and her left arm is still mutilated. Her brand-new image is easily reminiscent of Charlize Theron in "Mad Max 4". In the section where Hu Di and the Shepherdess meet, let go of his hands and feet and try the wasteland style again. The shepherdess obviously represents the awakening of female consciousness and the free image that refuses to obey power. Compared with the long-term disciplined domestic toys headed by Hu Di, the shepherdess is so dazzling when she comes out, the lens greedily shows her tenacity, courage, wisdom and independence. The meaning of feminism here is self-explanatory, and it also makes us pay attention to one point again, that is, why there is such a weird character as Cha Cha in this film.
It can be said that "Toy Story 4" was filmed for Hu Di and the Shepherdess. In contrast, many people think that the modeling of Gaby doll is better, but in fact it is still repeating the way of Jessie and Strawberry Bear, which will inevitably make her appear more functional. The mission of Gaby dolls is very clear. One is to provide a type of element, the other is to repeatedly emphasize the bond between the toy and the owner, and the third is to create a driving force for conflict. reason. Gaby doll is like a smoke bomb. Although she got a good ending, the movie has no intention to portray the character's destiny in depth, because this is not the main theme it wants to express. So we see that in the end, under the premise that the director has not forgotten the basic integrity of the work, the film left Gaby very little time and was rather sloppy. Through a series of episodes with little reaction time, Gaby has found his home. But the value of this film is that although it needs to respond to some voices in the society-it shouldn't be for them to respond-at the same time it does not forget the focus of the film. Of course, Hu Di was finally persuaded by the shepherdess to become a wild toy, which will inevitably lead to a more adult-oriented serious interpretation, but the film does not abandon any rationality, and this result has been laid step by step from beginning to end.
At the beginning of the story, immediately after the third part, Andy gave the toy to Bonnie, which actually weakened Hudi's sense of belonging. And Hu Di is not favored in her new home after all, because Bonnie has a set of her beloved toys in terms of gender or external environment, and it is impossible to regard Hu Di as the protagonist. In order to please his master, Hu Di can be said to have gone to great lengths, including constantly saving the cross and causing himself to be trapped. The narrative of the first half of the film is actually very loose, because in our opinion, Hu Di has always been a futile effort. So after seeing the shepherdess, his heart gradually began to shake. Until he gave his voice generator to Gaby Doll, Hu Di had finished saying goodbye to the owner. The sounder is the only means for him to communicate with humans. When this symbol is cut off, there is actually no reason for Hu Di to return to his master. The film not only made an article on the awakening of individual consciousness, but also completed the construction of the arc of the story through the influence of the character's own experience on the character. Therefore, "Toy Story 4" balances the plot design of the characters and the reality beyond the text, and is not too contradictory like other Hollywood movies.
In addition to the text, there is a strong sense of form to support it. Another unique feature of the old trilogy of "Toy Story" is that it still starts from creativity to establish a new spatial relationship and object perspective. This part has basically inherited this feature, but it is relatively weak in execution. Now that we take back the other parts that were thrown away when discussing children's movies, we will realize that "Toy Story" itself is still a family melodrama. But the perspective of toys is different from that of humans after all, it presents a small and huge contrast. Therefore, for such movies, headed by "Toy Story", the movement speed of the lens is quite fast, and all the indoor details are enlarged, forming a novel sense of scenery. Many of the shots of "Toy Story" can't contain the full picture of human beings, only very huge hands, feet or half of the body, and the camera position is only adjusted to normal when necessary. Under the colorful animated images, it is actually full of spatial oppression, and the intuitive feeling it brings to people is the non-threatening nature of toys. For us, this characteristic constructs a set of compact narratives in a small format, and at the same time it continues to demonstrate the unsubvertible power structure relationship between toys and human beings.
Regarding the design of the scene structure in the plot of "Toy Story", I would like to use the concept of a video game to explain it here. This is the "box garden". Of course, not only the "Toys" series tacitly caters to the scene design concept of the game industry, but the implementation is no worse than those of the best spy films and thief films. Hakoi originally referred to the garden-style bonsai. After Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto introduced this term into the game world, it became a level design concept. In many Mario games after 3D, each level is a miniature world that runs independently, which is closed and free. This design gives full play to the depth and drop of the scene, and displays unlimited possibilities in a limited space. It not only allows the level to achieve a certain harmonious beauty, but also brings players the fun of deep puzzle solving and exploration. All you need to do is to play Super Mario: Odyssey and Forward! "Captain Chinobio" will immediately understand. However, whether it is a movie or a game, to construct such a scene, a lot of exquisite detail filling is required, and the space has a clear and reasonable structure, so that players/audiences gradually deepen their understanding and remember during the action. Therefore, every point in space can be reached by at least two paths instead of a single path like the traditional maze.
On the one hand, as a CG animation, "Toy Story" gives people the most direct feeling that is similar to game images. It is not blindly realistic, but emphasizes the novelty of construction, and the image will appear more three-dimensional. However, despite the melodrama model, "Toy Story" has never avoided outdoor scenes, because outdoor scenes are the most effective way to connect each chamber. But no matter where it was, the incident happened in the chambers, and the adventures of Hu Di and Buzz Lightyear were completely unfolded in the chambers. Andy's home, bad boy's backyard, Al's toy city, sunshine kindergarten, garbage dump, and this antique shop. The four movies almost abandoned the panoramic view from beginning to end. The camera position is close to the toy all the way, and a large number of closed composition sub-mirrors gradually reveal the complexity of the scene. We often follow Hu Di's movement, from shallow to deep into the interior of different small scenes, and then more progressive events occur. In a spiral narrative with a strong sense of hierarchy, the box garden design provides an effective process for the characters to reach a certain point through different paths, generate crises and resolve them. The compactness and oppressiveness of the space always accompany it, and elements such as action and adventure form a self-consistent system. The events are carried out in a good cycle, and the plot becomes complete and exciting.
But in "Toy Story 4", the executive power of the main creative team seems to be compromised. The set design of the antique shop is still excellent, but the film lacks the spirituality of the past in terms of lens movement and editing. Instead, when it comes to outdoor passages like Shachi, the film becomes more organized in terms of audiovisual. Perhaps this is because the lens focuses too much on the performance of the characters, but it makes the image itself seem a little dull, probably because of the indoor light and color. In short, in my opinion, antique shops are still not being fully and effectively used, even though most of the most fascinating events occur here. And the passages of Bonnie's home, school, RV, and playground are too fragmented to provide much help to the integrity of the film.
Next, we still have to return to the characters, especially the newly added character Xia Cha. Not only animation, many Hollywood genres are concept-first, they don't understand what "let it go" in the sense of drama. In today's film creation, while the story has been exhausted, the portrayal of the characters has become more and more important. Many people are aware of this problem and try to let the characters drive the narrative. From ancient times to the present, there have been various masters without essayists, and they all know that the difficulty of squeezing classic images out of thin air is unimaginable. However, the characters often form a sense of separation from the concept, because the character is ultimately a natural product, even if he is fictitious, and the concept has a distinct artificial creativity.
Hu Di's arc was perfectly established in the first film, and finally extended and bridged again through two films. However, in "Toy Story 4", Hu Di's character status faintly reveals an embarrassing situation that cannot be said. This is also the necessity for the shepherdess to become the core role. Not to mention Buzz Lightyear, from one of the dual cores in the first and second installments to the auxiliary roles in the third and fourth installments, he has been completely ignored by the script. The biggest regret of "Toy Story 4" is the inevitable violation of the role of Cha Cha. He is an object made by Bonnie out of trash, but he has survived, in essence, through this role, he is hitting the relatively complete logical chain inherent in the "Toy Story" series. There is nothing wrong with this, but it will be very interesting, because it essentially forms a new contradiction that has never appeared in the series. But the subsequent development of the plot eliminated this possibility. Facts have proved that as a character, Cha Cha cannot use its own charm and value meaning to prop up the motivation and purpose of the entire movie, but it can be used as a tool. Even if he arranged a girlfriend for him at the end of the film, it was just a rough round field. If the shepherdess is the film’s clever response to political correctness, then Chacha is a parody reference for the shepherdess, like a victim of an experiment.
As for Brother Tu and Da Ya, they are completely mascot-like existences, and their contribution to the theme and narrative is really very small. They repeated their motives to find their masters, and they finally catered to the identity/gender politics of the shepherdess again. But they are passive all the time, except for gagging, they have been led by the protagonist's team. From this perspective, those complaints are just scratching, without the function of any rich text, nor the meaning of discussion. The problems exposed by the imaginative passages of Brother Tu and Da Ya will be even more eye-catching. These subjectivized shots of objects are actually a way of imitating a certain narrative format, breaking the established power relationship between toys and humans, but what is its significance? If it is just to show some absurd horror comedy, then the number of repetitions and time are slightly redundant, and the comic effect is not outstanding enough. As a result, these illusions not only violate the conviction factor of psychological activity again, but also drag down the narrative rhythm, which is a scene that can be compressed in large quantities.
Although, in terms of the entertainment of the work, "Toy Story 4" is almost perfect. There are the first three jewels in front, and the new episode hasn't dropped too much. However, the era will not stop its own footsteps. It has fallen into anxious and confused image production methods, even Pixar is not immune. Genre creation is advancing in the turbulent flow, and they need someone who can reach the other shore first and drop the rope of life-saving. "Toy Story 4" gave Pixar a small step forward, but it was far from reaching the land. Of course, we don't need to criticize a cartoon too much, because in the current predicament, Pixar has done well enough. But I still hope to see the genre animation break through the pit and develop a new world. In any case, "Toy Story" is Pixar's most valuable brand. Twenty-four years ago, they used Hu Di and Buzz to create a new era of animated films. Will they be able to assume the leading and subversive role again in the future? If Pixar can't, who can?
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