Toy Story Analysis

When Pixar's Toy Story came out in 1995, everyone could relate to Andy and the Toys that played a major role in his life. The liveness of each toy was a great reflection of how real a toy is to a child, no matter how inanimate it can be. All this, thanks to the power of the human imagination. Furthermore, the animators of Pixar used their own imagination to bring toys to life in a movie, not letting the laws of physics entirely get in their way. The bending of the laws of physics is a commonality in animated movies because it makes scenes more visually appealing and helps better convey messages to the viewers. Pixar mastered this technique in the newly developing 3d entertainment medium, with their movie Toy Story. While trying to convey the emotions of warmth, laughter, and terror, the distortion of reality lent more appeal to the movie; specifically in regards to time, energy output, and malleability of shapes and characters.
Time is distorted to evoke certain emotions throughout the movie. In the opening scene of the movie the main character, a toy named Woody, is flung around by his owner Andy who's exalted with joy to have Woody as his toy. As Andy tosses his cowboy doll into the air, sending him doing flips, the trajectory lasts four seconds when in real life Woody would have been in the air at the very most for only two seconds. The toss is made to seem to happen in real time because as Woody is flying you hear Andy's voice speaking at normal speed. In other other words, it was not meant to seem to be in slow motion because otherwise Andy's voice would have been slower too, and therefore much deeper sounding. The slowing gives a happier feel to the scene. If it had been animated at the speed that corresponds with reality it would have been too fast for the viewer to enjoy and would have evoked less happy of a feel. Interestingly, the same effect is applied later on in the movie but to give a feeling entirely opposite to that previously mentioned. When Buzz is perched atop the guard rail he makes the leap to find out whether he really can fly or not. He stalls mid air for three seconds when in reality he would go straight down. It is as though the gravitational pull of the Earth periodically shuts off just at the right moment. The movie concludes with Woody and Buzz Lightyear making a successful escape from the antagonist and all thanks to the sudden functionality of Buzz's wings. As they reach for the skies they break off from a rocket and start free falling. At that point Buzz deploys his wings and they end up gliding to safety. Although the higher the speed the higher chance you have of obtaining lift with a smaller wing area, this scenario is pushing it a little. The combined weight of Woody and Buzz relative to the amount of lift provided by the wings is much too great. Realistically they would have plundered to their deaths.
The force required for certain actions were not consistent and for the most part were fake. When Buzz is determined to prove to his new friends that he can fly he instead relies on a sequence of accidental propulsions from the objects in the room. One of them included a ramp that sent him flying to the ceiling which made for a ridiculous path of action. The height of where he starts along the ramp is less than half the height of the ceiling which makes his propulsion upwards to an impossible height. Not enough energy was stored to send him downward with enough force to bounce up to the ceiling. Without the laws of physics he would shoot upwards and continue forever. Newton clearly stated that this would happen only if no force was acting on it. With just gravity he would simply attain the height to which he started and then go back down. However, both gravity and air resistance are present in this case so in reality he would have only gone up to the height of which he started at. For this scene to have been made possible he would have had to have kinetic energy built up from a height higher than the ceiling. Further on in the movie you have a great exaggeration of force to make the scene more dramatic. Woody, jealous of Buzz Lightyear, causes a pin up board to topple over sending thumb tacks flying in Buzz's direction. The tacks dart into the wooden desk on which they both are standing. This action is unlikely because the tacks are not traveling fast enough to have enough force to penetrate the surface. It would also be unlikely that the thumbtack's pin would be pointing down as it falls towards the ground. Due to air resistance the top heavy part would be falling faster than the pin and therefore would hit the desk first. Second the force exerted by the thumbtacks' own momentum would not suffice to dig into the desk's surface. Even at their terminal velocity they would not be able to force themselves into a desk.
To enhance the contrast between inanimate and living things, the animators played around with the malleability of the objects. One of the ongoing themes in the movie is that the toys only come to life in the absence of humans. To portray this, objects were made more stiff looking than usual. When Andy tosses Buzz Lightyear on a hard surface, the toy's limbs do not budge, but stay stiff. Typically upon impact an object with jointed parts will change shape more or less. The first impacting part will slow the fastest and the connecting limbs slow down before impact. Squash and stretch is the number one principle of the 11 principles of animation. Pixar however applied it very little in Toy Story. Most likely they had not used much squash and stretch to maintain the firm look on certain toys. The etch a sketch would not change shape at all whilst moving around. No deforming of any sort takes place when it moves its feet. The etch a sketch for instance waddles around because it has no feet. To swing each foot forward it would have to squash and stretch, but instead it stays stiff. The Russian dolls also bounced about without a squash and stretch. Their displacement was much like a bouncing ball and yet they kept their shape both on the bounce up and down without changing shape even the slightest.
In the world of animation there is a balance between making things look real and defying the laws of physics to communicate a message to the viewer. The Toy Story animators' focus however clearly was to tell a story rather than make it all look the way it should in reality. Defying the laws permitted the movie characters to achieve their short term goals. It would have been more work and less appealing if indeed everything was made to look the way it should. Perhaps the only downfall is the fact that there are a couple of inconsistencies. Such as Buzz Lightyear hanging in the air at one part of the movie, versus dropping like a brick in another part. The movie keeps you so entertained that you do not even have the time to pick up on such details.