“Well, whatever happens, at least we’ll all be together.”

“For infinity and beyond.”

I haven’t revisited Toy Story 3 since elementary school, and to say that it hit me hard would be an understatement. As I’ve been rewatching a lot of Pixar movies throughout the last couple of months (even though I stopped for a while), one thing that I’ve come to realize is that these movies are amazing when you are a kid, but somehow even better as an adult. Toy Story 3 is no exception to this at all, and honestly, I think the age I’m at right now (nineteen) is the perfect age for this film.

This movie is set quite a few years after the first two Toy Story movies, where Andy has now finished high school and is almost an adult, about to head off to college. Revisiting this so many years later, after I had also already graduated from high school, evoked in me a feeling of nostalgia that really went beyond what I was even expecting. I am at the point in my life where I’m starting to really think about and cherish my childhood, and that’s the experience that Toy Story 3 provides. When you are a kid, you never really realize just how much you will miss that part of your life until it’s over and you move on to adulthood.

Nostalgia isn’t the only aspect of Toy Story 3 that makes it great, either. All of the movies have this central theme about purpose and the need to be wanted by others, and here it’s at its most prominent and powerful, I would say. Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang are so relatable because even though they are toys, Pixar has made them such incredible characters by having them go through experiences in life that harken back to our own lives. The original Toy Story is about friendship, Toy Story 2 is about accepting change, and Toy Story 3 essentially expands on the second movie even further by exploring the very sad but real reality of change, but also the beauty of it all. Change is inevitably always going to be hard, but it’s a necessary step in life and is more often than not for the better.

Not only is this theme seen with the main batch of toys, but it’s also used with the central antagonist, a pink teddy bear named Lotso, which easily makes him one of Pixar’s best villains, if not the very best. What makes him one of the Pixar greats is that he is a character that is undeniably evil and someone you despise, but also someone with a very tragic past that gets you to understand where he’s coming from, even if literally everything he does is wrong. His past is very similar to Jessie’s, in fact, but what separates the two from each other is that Lotso is the version of the character who is unwilling to move on from his past.

Then there is the third act, which made me an emotional wreck. This part of the movie, in its entirety, practically takes all of the themes and powerful story elements built up from the rest of the movie, and escalates the emotional drama up to eleven. It’s surprisingly dark for an animated kids’ movie, let alone one that has a G-rating, but it is also kind of one of those things where you mainly pick up just how deep it is as an adult, something that revolves back to what I said at the beginning of this review, with Pixar movies really only getting better with age. I watched this film, along with the other Toy Story movies, numerous times as a kid, and I remember the third act being this really tense and, dare I say, thrilling crescendo, but this time it was almost completely just an emotional experience for me. I can’t even imagine what people who essentially grew up with Andy, meaning they were close enough to the same age as him when the first two Toy Story movies were released, felt when they watched this long-awaited conclusion in theaters when it was also released, and when they were still close to Andy’s age. I would have almost undeniably been bawling my eyes out.

Practically everyone already knows the ending to Toy Story 3, especially since Toy Story 4 exists, but I won’t go into details anyway, just because I always try my hardest to avoid spoilers, even if it’s probably not all that necessary at the end of the day. Anyways, I’m not sure how I will feel about Toy Story 4 when I rewatch it, as I haven’t seen it since the only time I saw it in theaters, but the ending to 3 really only reinforced to me even more how unnecessary another sequel was. This trilogy has one of those, as corny as it sounds, “sacred” endings, where it really is probably just best not to follow it up, as the future of this story is best left up to the imagination, instead of giving definitive answers. While I’m sure I will like Toy Story 4 on rewatch, and I am pretty confident Toy Story 5 will be good as well, I’m also pretty sure my thoughts on this will remain the exact same.