Toy Story
Few films are as beloved as Toy Story. As it approaches its 20th anniversary, the animated feature about an unlikely friendship between cowboy doll and spaceman action figure still never fails to elicit endless laughter (and sometimes an occasional tear) from its audience of adults and children alike.
But it is more than merely an enduring favorite: The first fully computer-animated feature film is one of the most innovative released in our lifetime, and maybe of all time.
When it debuted in 1995, Toy Story was at the cutting edge of computer animation. While CGI in movies is pretty much commonplace today, moviegoers marveled at the then-revolutionary filmmaking. Personal computers had only just entered the mainstream market in the 1990s; Pixar animation served as a stunning example of digital technology’s potential.
“Watching the film, I felt I was in at the dawn of a new era of movie animation, which draws on the best of cartoons and reality, creating a world somewhere in between, where space not only bends but snaps, crackles and pops,” Roger Ebert wrote in his review of Toy Story, which he gave a perfect four stars.
The world Pixar created both existed outside the realm of reality and imitated it perfectly. For me, as a kid watching Buzz and Woody move around a room that looked as real as mine, the idea that my own toys might come alive when I wasn’t looking became all the more believable.
In the 20 years since the movie’s release, nearly every major studio has made the shift from traditional two-dimensional animation to CGI. Without Toy Story, there would be no Frozen, Despicable Me or Avatar — or at the very least, they’d look considerably less spectacular.
But of course, Toy Story’s magic transcends its technology. Pixar’s first feature film completely shattered the stigma that animated movies were for kids’ viewing alone. As much as a movie about toys’ secret lives appealed to children, the film’s adult themes and dark humor resonated with an older crowd.
In 1996, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Toy Story writer and director John Lasseter an Academy Special Achievement Award. Five years later, it added a Best Animated Feature category at the Academy Awards. Seven Pixar films have won, including the third, most recent installment in the Toy Story franchise.
With Toy Story, Pixar proved cartoons could be more than silly children’s entertainment and took animation, in the words of Buzz Lightyear, “to infinity and beyond.”
