10 / 10
Toy Story is a 10. The 1995 original is the first feature film animated entirely on computers, and the surprise is that the technology is the least interesting thing about it. It’s a buddy comedy about jealousy, obsolescence and what a toy is for.
Toy Story 2 in 1999 is a 9, and it’s close. Toy Story 3 in 2010 is an 8, a darker film that most people remember for one sequence near the end.
Woody and Buzz are my favorite pairing in any animated film, and the first Toy Story is as close to flawless as a comedy gets for me. What I like most is how petty it lets Woody be, and how much it trusts kids to follow a story about jealousy. The sequels come in a little lower, and the first film is the one I’d hand anyone who thinks animation is just for children.
John Lasseter directed the first two and Lee Unkrich the third. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen carry all three. Between them the films made well over $1.9 billion and turned Pixar from a hardware company into a studio.
Toy Story (1995): 10/10
Woody is Andy’s favorite toy and runs the bedroom. Buzz Lightyear arrives as a birthday present, doesn’t know he’s a toy, and takes the top spot without trying. Woody’s attempt to get rid of him strands them both in the outside world. The script is tighter than most live-action comedies. Every joke pays off, every character has a want, and the two leads have a real argument at the center of the film: Woody knows what he is and resents it, Buzz doesn’t know and is happier for it.
It cost about $30 million and made roughly $394 million. It’s a 10 because nothing in it is wasted, the animation still reads clearly thirty years on, and the story would work as well in live action, and that’s the test.
Buzz and Woody
Tim Allen plays Buzz as completely sincere, and that’s why the character is funny instead of smug. He believes he’s a space ranger on a mission, and the scene where he finally watches a television commercial for himself and tries to fly out a window is the most painful thing in any Pixar film until the third act of Toy Story 3.
Tom Hanks makes Woody thoroughly unlikable for a stretch, and that’s the brave choice. Woody lies, he’s jealous, and he pushes Buzz out a window. The film makes him work his way back. That stretch where Woody is the bad guy is the bravest thing in the film to me. Most family movies would have softened him within ten minutes, and this one lets him stay petty long enough that his turnaround means something.
The two of them together are the reason the series lasted. Most animated pairings are a straight man and a clown. These two swap the role depending on the scene.
For Writers
The first film makes its hero jealous, petty and a liar for most of its running time, then makes him work his way back. Readers forgive a protagonist almost anything if the story treats the fault seriously. When you write, give your lead a flaw that costs somebody else something, and don’t excuse it. Find the worst thing your protagonist does in your draft. If the narrative apologizes for it, take the apology out and let them make amends through action instead. Readers believe what characters do, not what the narrator says about them.
Toy Story 2 (1999): 9/10
The sequel was originally planned as a direct-to-video release, then rebuilt almost from scratch in about nine months when Pixar decided it wasn’t good enough. What came out is nearly as good as the first film. A collector steals Woody, who discovers he was the star of a 1950s television show, with a horse, a prospector and a cowgirl waiting to be shipped to a museum in Japan. The film’s question is whether being loved and worn out beats being preserved and never played with.
Jessie’s song, When She Loved Me, is two minutes of a toy being outgrown, and it’s as sad as anything in family film. It’s a 9: a shade broader than the first, with one sequence that outdoes anything in it.
That song wrecks me, and it’s the reason the second film comes so close to the first. The rest of it is busier and a little broader than I’d like, but those two minutes are as good as anything Pixar has made.
Toy Story 3 (2010): 8/10
Andy is leaving for college and the toys end up at Sunnyside Daycare, run by a strawberry-scented bear who turns out to be a prison warden. The middle section is a proper prison-break film, complete with a reconnaissance sequence and a night escape.
The last twenty minutes are the reason the film is remembered. The toys end up on a conveyor belt heading into an incinerator, they stop struggling, and they take each other’s hands. It’s the most frightening thing Pixar has filmed, and the rescue that follows doesn’t undo it.
It won the Academy Award for best animated feature and made over a billion dollars. It’s an 8 for me: the darkest of the three, and it ends the story properly, but it has more machinery than the first two, and during the prison-break stretch I find myself wanting to get back to Andy.
For Writers
The incinerator scene works because the toys stop fighting and accept it, something no family film of that scale had risked before. A moment of real acceptance hits harder than any amount of struggle. When you write your bleakest scene, consider letting your characters stop resisting for a beat before rescue arrives. Write the version where they give up. If it frightens you to read it back, keep it. That fear is the reader’s too, and it’s what they’ll remember.
The Technology
The 1995 film was made when no one knew whether an audience would sit through ninety minutes of computer animation. Pixar solved the problem by choosing subjects the technology could handle: plastic, smooth surfaces, hard edges. Toys, not people. That constraint is why it still looks fine. The humans in the first film have aged badly and the toys haven’t, because the toys were what the tools could do well. By the third film Pixar could render anything, and the animation is technically far beyond the original without being more expressive. The first film’s limits pushed it toward better choices.
The first film holds my eye better today than the third does, for all the extra horsepower, because every shot in it was designed around what the tools did well.
For Writers
Pixar picked toys because plastic was what their tools could render convincingly, and the constraint produced the better film. Working inside your limits often beats fighting them. When you write, identify what you do well and build the story around those strengths, instead of forcing scenes you’ll struggle to execute. List three things you write better than most people. Then check your outline gives each of them at least one major scene. A book built on your strengths reads as confidence, and readers feel it.
As a Trilogy
Fifteen years, three films, no weak entry. That’s rarer than the Toy Story name makes it sound, and it comes from each film asking a different question: who am I for, what happens when I’m outgrown, and what happens when it’s over.
There’s a fourth film from 2019 and a fifth on the way, and the trilogy ends cleanly at three. Andy hands the toys to a younger child and drives away, the ending the story had been building toward from the first scene.
Ratings again: the original is a 10, the second a 9, the third an 8. All three are worth watching, and the first one is a great film that happens to be animated.
Craft Note
Craft Note
Each Toy Story film asks a different question about the same characters: what am I for, what happens when I’m outgrown, what happens when it ends. That’s why the series never repeats itself. When you plan a sequel, change the question instead of raising the stakes.
Is the Toy Story trilogy worth watching?
Yes, all three. The first is a 10, among the best-structured comedies of the 1990s in any medium. The second is a 9 and nearly matches it. The third is an 8 and closes the story with more darkness than anyone expected from a family film.
Start at the beginning, watch them in order, and stop at three. The trilogy gets a 10 from me because the first film has nothing wasted in it and the other two keep asking new questions instead of repeating the old ones. The later films can do what they like. The story I care about ends with Andy driving away.
