At the time of writing (21:30 – Thursday, 22 July) Toy Story 3 is currently 8th in the IMDb Top 250 Film List. That’s quite an achievement. But that only tells half the story. Actually it tells a much smaller fraction of the story, hardly any of it in fact. What it does tell, is that Toy Story 3, in most people’s minds, has taken the assured foothold enjoyed by its predecessors Toy Story, and Toy Story 2, and turned the three of them, into possibly the best trilogy of all time.

That’s quite a short paragraph I know, but I feel like I needed to give you a minute to consider that statement. And to only now truly believe, that I am serious (notice how I separated the words ‘I’ and ‘am’ thus to give the sentence more assumed significance). What other great trilogies are out there (not ruined by additional films long after the originals)? Now that that parenthesised sentence has removed entries like Die Hard, Indiana Jones and Star Wars from our minds altogether, other possibilities like the Terminator series couldn’t even get as far as the trilogy before turning to ruins. Only three contenders come to mind. Two are similar in their impropriety for consideration. The Lord of the Rings, and The Godfather sagas are especially well received to this day, achieving combined IMDb scores of 26.1 and 25.7 (/30) respectively, to Toy Story’s comparatively paltry 25. Despite their heavyweight scores however, they are not true contenders... why? Who even wants to watch them? Seriously, who sits down of a weekday evening, and thinks... ‘I know what we’ll watch... The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring!’ Don’t lie to me, you know you don’t do this! You have to plan it, to organise an entire weekend to watch them all together. You need friends, drinks and snacks just to get through them. This isn’t how films should be. You should be able to watch all in one sitting yes (sit through 11.36 hours of Extended Special Edition, then try and tell me cushions serve no purpose!), but you should also be able to flick one on when you’ve only got a couple of hours. You should be able to watch them out of sequence. In this sense, there’s only one real contender. Before last night, I’d have named Back to the Future (and Back to the Future II) among my favourite films, and the trilogy as a perfect example of everything one should be. But in truth... it pains me to say it... but it’s not. The third one just isn’t any good. C’mon, ADMIT IT!!! You’ve been lying to yourself all these years! Up until now, the three Back to the Future’s were the best we had, yes. But Back to the Future III was just poor. I wouldn’t be able to call it ‘bad’, but as a stand-alone film (which is what it comes down to), it just doesn’t cut it. Perhaps if it’d have come first in the series, or even second, then went out on a high note, it would have been better. All this time, I’ve been forgiving Back to the Future III for it’s mediocrity in the same way, and for the same reason I forgave Die Hard 2: Die Harder for being a truly awful film. The others hold it up. Do you think Phil Neville would EVER have made it in professional football without his siblings Gary, and Tracey? No! He’d be working on a market stall like every other fucktard in Bury!

Director – Lee Unkrich. Previously of Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. and Toy Story 2. His way of writing for Toy Story 3 is positively Shreklike in its simplicity. Once the ludicrous, and possibly needlessly complicated method of actually GETTING the toys to Sunnyside (because when writing a Toy Story film, you can’t want the toys to go somewhere and just have one of them say ‘Hey let’s go to Sunnyside’, they’re TOYS… how’re they going to get there, why would they WANT to go? In a normal film you’d only have to worry about how they’d hear about it, but these toys need to really want to go there in order to make such an effort. Perhaps that’s what keeps the film feeling so much fresher than others, this necessary requirement to make everything fit. You can’t just say ‘Is that believable? Yeah… it’s Friday afternoon, what the hell’ I bet 10 of the intervening 11 years between films were spent solely on developing that plot development.
 
Once they get to the nursery… it’s plain sailing.
 
Get rid of some of the shit toys you didn’t really use as main characters, you only introduced them way back when for the one joke (or so you could have a singing penguin send up Frank Sinatra. But you’ve done the Frank Sinatra bit now, so who needs a penguin). Once they’re gone you’re left with only the core, the ‘recurring in more than one scene’ers. Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Rex, Slinky, Mr. + Mrs. Potato Head, and Hamm. Then you introduce a wave of new characters, all classic toys we remember from our childhood that there wasn’t time to write into the first two. Admittedly, you’ve just replaced one bunch of pretty shit, one joke characters, with another bunch of pretty shit characters. Like Shrek, Toy Story uses these characters to make excellent comments about how these toys are like humans ahahahaha… funny funny funny, indeed. But they’re only around for a few scenes, and then they’re gone. Unlike Shrek where these useless, one joke characters are used again, and again, and again, and again. Recurring in more and more scenes in each film until it’s not called Shrek anymore, it’s called ‘The Amazing Adventures of the Hilarious PUSS…. In Booots (Also including Shrek, and Maybe Eddie Murphy will be there)!’
 
As long as Pixar don’t feel the need for Toy Story 4, which the world and his Mrs. knows would be utter toss, yet still the world and his Mrs, and his Mrs.’ kid from a previous marriage go and see anyway. These new characters are only around for the one film, so there’s no need to flesh them out too much. There’s no need to give them all back-stories, or any more than one joke.
 
After the film finished, I was shocked to feel my eyes getting a little bit misty, I don’t think I’ve done that since Bambi! The only film ever to make me cry is Edward Scissorhands (he has to go up to his house, and be by himself for ever! It’s not even like he has the sweet release of death to look forward to, he’s immortal. just because everyone in that town is a dick! Why doesn’t he just move? Gets me every time). But on this day, in this cinema, everyone else was at it too. We almost started balling into each other’s laps (luckily I was in the aisle seat), like we’re on a crashing plane. But the audience didn’t do that. What they did do, was give a standing ovation. A STANDING OVATION! In a CINEMA… in ENGLAND! That’s the first time that’s ever happened in real life surely? And it happened twice! Once at the start of the credits, and once after the little postlude video during the credits (a thing only computer animated films ever seem to do).

The audience knew something. They knew they had just scene the final chapter (I really hope) of the greatest trilogy ever made, and a pretty darn good flick too.