So with the Summer of Toy Story long gone and the pain of Toy Story 3’s ending finally dissipating away, its time to analyze these three films and truly pick out which of these three masterful films honestly stands the tallest. Now, all of these three films I have scored 10/10 as they achieved the highest marks in storytelling, direction, and overall satisfaction and quality fit for generations to come. But, when you dig deeper, they all have their different strengths and with enough analyzing, we can determine which one I think is the best.
Now, here’s the point system:
First Place: 3 points
Second Place: 2 Points
Third Place: 1 Point
There are 10 categories for which I will be ranking these films in. They range from larger categories like directing and editing and boil down to smaller categories like the musical score and cast of characters. Here we go:
Category #1: Writing
Winner: Toy Story
Runner-Up: Toy Story 2
Toy Story wins because of sheer originality. While its technically not the first film to explore a concept of a toy coming to life (Pinnochio and Child’s Play anyone?) it was the first to truly explore the unique concept of just what seemingly lifeless objects do when nobody else is looking. This fun concept explains why we constantly lose things, or other things pop up in random areas of the house. While we are used to the idea now, back then it was a very fresh idea---and gave Toy Story an Oscar nomination for original screenplay. By the way: Toy Story is the first film in the history of animation to nab that honor.
Category #2: Humor
Winner: Toy Story 2
Runner-Up: Toy Story
Toy Story 2 was hands-down the funniest of the three films. One-liners snap and crackle around every corner, every character has their fun chance to shine, several hilarious scenarios and running jokes are played-out, and to top it off all the pop culture references were light, loose, and don’t date the movie in the least bit. This was probably one of the more underrated aspects of Toy Story 2, it was straight-up funny.
Category #3: Heart
Winner: Toy Story 3
Runner-up: Toy Story 2
This is a no-brainer. I went to the midnight premiere of Toy Story 3, and I must say I was emotionally drained by the time the final frame had finished. Random strangers were holding each other, the manliest of men were driven to tears, and the entire audience was barely breathing during the now-infamous furnace sequence. No Toy Story accomplished such a feat. Toy Story 3 was the most emotionally-charged movie of the trilogy and arguably the most heart wrenching from any animated film since Grave of the Fireflies. Oh yea, I am going that far back.
Category #4: Musical Score
Winner: Toy Story
Runner-up: Toy Story 2
Toy Story 2 and 3’s music were basically retreads of the original score by Randy Newman in the first installment. Not saying it’s a bad thing, but the original has to win in this category. And on another note it has the best piece of orchestrated music in the trilogy, which was the moment in the climax when Woody and Buzz are flying above the clouds and trees in a surprise dramatic twist.
Category #5: Best Songs
Winner: Toy Story 2: When Somebody Loved Me
Runner Up: Toy Story: You’ve Got a Friend in Me
The original Toy Story’s flagship song is the recurring song throughout the franchise and the Pixar brand. That being said, it doesn’t hold a candle to the emotionally-driven and incredibly personal When Somebody Loved Me by Sarah McLachlan. Those few minutes of beautiful singing, light piano work, and light strings perfectly explained Jessie’s backstory and why her hatred against humans existed. Few songs can exemplify an entire backstory but this sad gem did just that and more. How it lost to the still-decent-but-not-as-good “You’ll Be in my heart,” I will never understand why.
Category #6: Best Editing/Pacing
Winner: Toy Story 2
Runner-up: Toy Story
Toy Story 2 flowed the best of the three movies, although the original isn’t far behind. Toy Story 2 immediately treated us to an action sequence and ten minutes in the themes of immortality and growing apart from people are presented. Toy Story 3 may have had more heart, but it took quite a bit longer for it to take off. Toy Story 2 was quicker, and gave us more to see in a tighter amount of time.
Category #7: Animation
Winner: Toy Story
Runner-up: Toy Story 3
The original Toy Story set the bar for all animation by becoming the first full-fledged computer animated film. It was leagues ahead of anything we had seen, its hard to imagine this film came out at the same time as Pocahontas. The sequels did a superb job in terms of details, lighting, and special effects but we have to give this category to the original that started it all. The last time we saw an animated movie drive itself leagues ahead of the competition in terms of said animation was Sleeping Beauty way back in the 50s.
Category #8: Directing
Winner: Toy Story 2
Runner-up: Toy Story
John Lasseter may have seen better days before he went Cars-crazy, but the man was a fantastic director back in the day as he knew how to time the laughs and tears at just the right moments, while throwing in well-placed action sequences and deep moments that hit the adults while skipping over the kids. Toy Story 2 was the best example of his technique, as it has the best mix of heart and humor, and neither element tries to overwhelm the other at any given moment. Toy story 3 had a great script, but it could have really benefited from a better director like Andrew Stanton or Brad Bird.
Category #9: Ending
Winner: Toy Story 3
Runner-up: Toy Story
There are no words to describe how perfect this film ended. That being said its value will diminish severely if they ever make a fourth installment. I hope not. In the meantime, just watch it, and you’ll understand why it’s easily the best in the trilogy. And one of the best emotional moments in the history of Pixar animation.
Category #10: Cast of Characters
Winner: Toy Story 2
Runner-up: Toy Story 3
In Toy Story 2, every character had their memorable moment, had their chance to shine, and had their perfect one-liner. Already expanding upon the nice cast of the original, Toy Story 2 treated us to Barbie dolls, Rock em’ Robots, an adorable dog, Woody’s Roundup crew, a second Buzz Lightyear, and a delirious Emperor Zurg. And while these new characters are appearing, the likes of Hamm, Mr. Potato Head, and Rex deliver some of the funniest secondary character material from any animated movie. They became the humor side of the movie while Woody has to face his past and face his friendship mortality with Andy.
Overall Points:
Toy Story:
22
Toy Story 2:
23
Toy Story 3:
15
Bottom Line: The first two in my opinion are far better than the third installment (although Toy Story 3 was indeed a grand film that deserved all its praise and the Best Picture nomination) but I have to hand it to Toy Story 2. Quoting another writer, the most unoriginal part of Toy Story 2 was its title. Toy Story 2 was the first film to truly utilize and perfect the modern-day Pixar formula: for every laugh there should be a tear. And while not all Pixar movies do it as successfully as others (*cough*Cars*cough*Cars 2*cough*), Toy Story 2 was the first to branch off this old-school Disney idea about mixing in the heavy emotions while blending in plenty of humor and a great cast of characters to move the story along. Toy Story was Pixar getting their feet wet, and Toy Story 2 was them diving in and embedding themselves further into animation history. I love all three movies to death for all different reasons, but in my opinion you can’t top Toy Story 2.
That being said, this is one of the greatest movie trilogies in the history of film.
Pixar, leave it that way.
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