(Penned a while ago)
After being stuck in horrendous traffic last night we missed Inception, although will catch it next week, so my wife and I watched Toy Story 3 in 2D (because 3D is overated and more expensive). It is a really great film and possibly even better than the first although I haven't seen it for a while. Funny, poignant and exciting: this is far more than a kid's film.
The premise is that Andy ages to become 17 and will leave for college on Friday, and the question arises what will he do with his old toys- we learn that a lot of his toys have been sold or donated. He decides to take Woody with him to college and to put the rest in the attic. His mum mistakes them for the rubbish and puts them outside. Thinking they were to be thrown away they jump into Andy's mum's car to be donated to Sunnyside day care centre along with some of Molly's toys. And then the story really begins.
At Sunnyside we learn that after an initial glorious preview that it is run by a tyrannical bear called Lotso who assigns the room with the older, gentler children, to those who have proved their loyalty to him and puts the rest of the toys with the toddlers who abuse the toys. Of particular note he attempts to break up Andy's family of toys to re-allign their allegience to him. Further he utters the line, no owners means no heart break. His paradise is seemingly a psudeo communist one at day care where the children come and go but the toys remains forever, albeit under his control.
This is contrasted with a new family of toys owned by a girl from the day centre (I can't remember her name) who have a wonderful life in her bedroom where they are loved and cared for by her owner. To reinforce this point at the end Andy decides, with a little help from Woody, to donate them not to daycare but to the girl.
So it seems clear that one of the main points is that ownership is better than non-ownership; the toddlers display the tragedy of the commons. Further that ownership is related to being a family which is seen as natural rather than the imposed communist regime. Also if you see the child toy owners as God you could view the film in a sort of feudalist film as whenever the toys deviate from God's appointed king Woody's orders they stray from their masters will and are thus not where they will flourish. Now since there are many child owners it's a sort of polytheistic feudalism.
There are a few points that could be made against this reading. The first arises from the original in which Sid could be seen as a devil vs god (Andy) and as such not all child owners are benevolent. Having said that it could just be an attack on the abuse of power. Secondly and more pertinently, Barbie, in the latest film, spouts that power only derives from the consent of the governed. Now it supposed to be an amusing line but it's backed up later when the Aliens from Pizza Planet eventually control the claw at the end and become co-equals; throughout they reverence the claw- "the claw is our master, he decides who will go and who will stay". And finally in the credits we see Sunnyside as a paradise run by Barbie and Ken showing that if you get the right leader daycare can be really great.
However the main thrust of the film is that ownership is superior to none ownership even if neo-fedualist elements are balanced out by democratic arguments.
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