![]() Do we like what Lotso has become? No, but we have an understanding of why he became the way he is via the emotions expressed - but the filmmakers were just teasing us with any hope of Lotso's redemption, making the backstory's inclusion a somewhat frustrating experience. Woody could have easily discerned the trouble his friends were in had the other toys recanted their own personal tales - but Pixar opted to include a two-and-a-half minute flashback to give both Woody and the audience Lotso's backstory, creating - at least for the audience - a sense empathy. When the toys divulge Sunnyside to be a place of despair, Woody asks them "how do you know that?" - but rather than giving them firsthand accounts of their own experiences, they turn to Chuckles the clown to recant Lotso's sad story: Its immediate function is to alert Woody to the problems his friends face at Sunnyside since he assumed he left them in good hands. What it does, however, is provide a perspective of how Lotso became the iron-paw ruler of Sunnyside he is today. I say awkward because its function in the story is not very clear considering the outcome. The problem begins with the awkwardly-conceived revelation of Lotso's backstory. As discussed in the previous article, that a film such as The Woodsman was able to take an unsympathetic character in Walter - a recently released child molester who's just served twelve years in prison - and allow for him a measure of forgiveness and redemption begs the question: why couldn't Pixar do the same for a strawberry-scented teddy bear? My concern stemmed from the film's misuse of empathy, choosing to take a tone centered on vengeance or "comeuppance" that is perhaps a reflection of our society in general - but hardly the qualities and attributes one might expect from a spectacle like the Toy Story Trilogy that is catered toward children more so than adults. Upon watching it a second time, I had a better understanding why I felt the way I did and putting it into context - a huge summer family film - left me scratching my head as to what the folks at Pixar were actually thinking with some of their story choices. ![]() While I enjoyed it, as many others in attendance did, I couldn't help but feel something was, well. No, it was something else - something about the movie that left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I remember stepping out into the hot desert heat from the Red Rock Resort Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on the afternoon of Jafter having watched Toy Story 3 - but it wasn't necessarily the heat that struck me. It must have taken hours to get the cast all lined up for this photo.
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