In Toy Story 2, we find our toys just where they were left four years before. They haven’t aged a bit. Andy, though, has aged. Off to cowboy camp, he hopes to take Woody with him, but his arm, loosened from the last adventure, comes undone.
Andy wants to fix him, but as his mother reminds him, “I’m sorry, honey, but you know… toys don’t last forever.” Woody gets left behind for the summer and so, he naturally wonders, has he been left behind forever?
In this essential question, we probe Pixar’s philosophy. Like toys, we don’t last forever, either. We hope that we’ll be remembered in the work we do, the company we keep, or the children we raise, but will we be?
That’s the sort of question that has preoccupied the souls of writers since the times of Homer. How tempting it is to want to be rolled up and stored for all time! We can’t be frozen in place; we must go on. For us, the only time we stop moving is when we’re six feet under. Toys don’t suffer the same limitations. They can be passed from generation to generation. A child’s love is ageless, even if the children aren’t.
Stolen away by the geeky perpetual man-child, Al McWhiggin, Woody and the Roundup Gang have the promise of the kind of immortality that evaded the conquistadors searching for the fountain of youth – zip lock. Woody and the Roundup Gang are off to that ancient homeland of fetishes, Japan. There, they will be preserved in a toy museum for all time.
Woody still loves Andy, but Stinky Pete the Prospector puts it in stark terms.
How long will it last, Woody? Do you really think Andy is going to take you to college, or on his honeymoon? Andy’s growing up, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s your choice, Woody. You can go back, or you can stay with us and last forever. You’ll be adored by children for generations.
Later, Stinky Pete reminds Woody that “Children destroy toys. You’ll be ruined, forgotten, spending eternity rotting on some landfill.”
As with all genuine Faustian bargains, Woody is tempted by Stinky Pete’s vision. Only Buzz, who has come along with the other toys to rescue Woody, convinces him of the kind of hell he would live.
Woody: I have no choice, Buzz. This is my only chance.
Buzz Lightyear: To do what? Watch kids from behind glass and never be loved again? Some life.
Ultimately, Woody rejects Stinky Pete’s offer, tell him, “I can’t stop Andy from growing up. But I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Love – or intimacy – is best cultivated, one on one, and not through crowds. It took the love and friendship of his friends to rescue him from the abyss, but Woody came back. Toy Story 2 reminds us that society jettisoned the Western – and toys like Woody – once the Soviets took space, but we did not jettison the cowboy’s virtues – that loyalty and truth might be preserved, even if we are not. We seek a life worth living, even if it is all too short.
But such a life is only worth living when it is shared. Buzz realizes this and tells the denizens of the toy bin, “Woody once risked his life to save me. I couldn’t call myself his friend if I weren’t willing to do the same. So, who’s with me?”
They all step forward.
Hollywood often shuns the cultivation of the excellent. How refreshing, then, that friends won’t leave one of their own behind.
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