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I guess, but I also think we all generally like Toy Story ok, and whether we think it should be on the list or not, we all know it's popular, we know it's a fine enough story, we know it has cool voice actors, and there isn't much else to nitpick on it... so might as well focus on the AFI criteria and other Pixar films. haha Has anyone seen Toy Story 4 yet? I prob will go see it this week, maybe tomorrow. What are your non-spoilery impressions?

This may not be entirely fair to what is a quality movie, but until Who Framed Roger Rabbit gets a mention on the AFI list, I don't really see the point of awarding a spot to Toy Story. Not only is it weaker than its successors, but it's inclusion is based on the fact it more or less started a new trend in animation. That may be well and good (and even impressive), but how about the movie that no one has dared replicate in over thirty years (or at least well) (with deepest apologies, Cool World)? I know it's not a competition here, but similar to Andy, the film community seemed to stick the better/smarter gift in the closet in favor of something new, shiny, and about half as remarkable.

And of course, there’s Jim Henson’s The Christmas Toy which came out in 1986. The plot is about a favorite toy that is afraid he’s going to be replaced at Christmas. The egotistical new space toy doesn’t realize she’s a toy...

x

The Boys help RON FUNCHES host an Intro to Hollywood Handbook episode.

So, I was only recently introduced to HDTGM, but I got Stitcher Premium and have now listened to all 215 episodes (watched Serenity last night and listening to 216 today) in a matter of a few months. I decided to wait until I had listened to them all before joining the forums, so here I am. Now I just need to get used to waiting for new episodes.

Yea I'm stoked for Woolf for that reason. Not only have I not seen it, I haven't one clue what it's about or who is in it or even when it was made. I usually have a good sense of these things, even if I haven't seen them... but for this one, I feel like a total blank slate. I'm gonna try to leave it that way until I watch it

For the record, the AFI ballot had Toy Story and Finding Nemo as the only Pixar representatives.

I’m excited because it’s been awhile since I haven’t seen the movie being covered, and now there are TWO coming up! I bought Virginia Woolf and Bringing Up Baby when they were on the cheap, but I’ve held off on watching them until they were going to be covered on the show.

oh boy I can't wait to hear the ep and what you guys think about Bringing Up Baby. I watched it last summer not realizing it was on the AFI list, and I'm still a bit surprised by that -- not in a bad way, I do like it a lot. In my Letterboxd review, I called it "the most nutballs movie of all time" or something like that. Curious what I'll think re-watching it through an Unspooled lens.

Oh man, it freaked me out when I was a kid - lol And just so you don’t feel you’re alone, trust me when I say there are other films that we’ve covered that I would definitely kick off before Toy Story. There are a few movies left to go that I would boot too. I love Toy Story, it’s just not the Pixar movie I would choose. If I had my druthers, I’d pick something else, but I don’t really mind it being here either.

Nice deep cut! I had never heard of this, and the trailer sort of terrifies me. I absolutely agree that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? should be on the list. (Another film with a few anthropomorphized objects. Few things disturbed me as a child more than the shoe dip death scene in Roger Rabbit and the junkyard scene in Brave Little Toaster. So clearly, I'm the right demographic for Toy Story?) But again, my list would have both. I mean, of the first 52 films we've done, there are roughly 15 of them that I would just boot from the list based on a lack of quality, so the what-about-this-film arguments don't sway me, because even if I agree, they don't diminish the quality of Toy Story in my opinion.

Craptown ladies pushin’ brown, all the doo doo day

You're right, I give you that one. I had ruled them out because the story is that the inanimate objects are inhabited by human souls, so it's less about "what would this object do if it could walk and talk" and more about "what would a person do if they became this object" which I acknowledge is a very thin line. But looking back, they probably did enough object-based puns to qualify in that regard. I also thought about the carpet in Aladdin, but I ruled that out too because it's not fully anthropomorphized, in that its inability to talk separates it from the rest of the characters. But maybe you're right, that "not having to invoke magic" should be my criterion if I'm going to stick with my statement.

Just a small nit pick, though I agree overall, Disney certainly anthropomorphized inanimate objects before Toy Story, particularly Beauty and the Beast comes to mind. Unless you're thinking they were the first without having to invoke magic...

I agree with Cameron H on this. I recently just watched Toy Story and realized I hadn't watched it from start to finish before. It came out when I was in high school, so I never really caught onto the fever and am just catching up now. Anyway, I just don't think it's that great of a movie. The animation is different, but not great. There are plenty of first technical achievements to be lauded, but this doesn't need to be on the list. If we're comparing this to all other American film (and we are), maybe top 150 or 200, and certainly top 100 in animation, but not overall. I'm pretty scrupulous and would definitely appreciate more backgrounds and points of view versus more men making movies about white dudes learning how to be white dudes.

No, I think we all get that. And if the list was for the most Innovative films, no one would disagree. I think the issue is that the list is one of semantics, specifically with the words “Greatest Films.” I think most people equate the word “great” with “best” or “most enjoyable.” Granted, that’s not necessarily what the word “great” means, but if that isn’t what was meant, then I think we can all agree we could knock off at least 25% of the movies on the list. Do we need two Marx Brothers then? Or three Chaplins? If we’re looking at just being the first, or most innovative, then we need to put The Jazz Singer back on and probably replace Intolerance with Birth of a Nation. Instead of Sophie’s Choice and Shawshank Redemption we should have Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. And we should definitely have more movies from POC and any(!) female filmmakers. I guess what I’m saying is until the AFI is consistent with what exactly they want the list to be, we have to interpret it the best that we can as individuals. Personally, when I think “Greatest” I think “Best.” In which case, if we’re talking about CG animation, I want the most fully realized and most enjoyable movie represented, and not just a lesser quality movie simply because it was made first.

Remind me to vote for this in December plz

There's no way to sugar coat this; this candy I made is terrible

As a programmer, I have a thick skin for software nonsense in movies. So when Mr. The Rules was explaining the twist I was ready for some strained metaphors, and it wouldn't be too interesting to hear about the painstaking process of a thirteen year old googling "how to program a game". However, one metaphor that drove me crazy was this bit that Mr. Rules shoehorned into his Catch The Tuna explanation: "The lighthouse. Light/dark. One/zero. The fundamental process." I understand that "ones and zeroes" is a 75% of what people know about computers, sure. What I don't like is how it misconstrues lighthouses! A lighthouse doesn't blink on and off. Even in the background of that scene it's clear that the light is always on while it rotates in a circle. So it doesn't have two states of "one/zero" at all. You could argue it has at least 360 states, one for every degree of rotation, or more depending on how high-fidelity the kid has made the graphics in his MILF-banging simulator.

Why does this movie not know how cars and traffic work? He drives a car with a right-side driver's seat, but since the movie is set in Florida, everyone still drives on the right side of the road. Plus, toward the end of the movie, after he decides to go through with the murder and rushes back to the boat, he stops at a traffic light that turns red-yellow-green, and I've literally never seen that in real life, but the movie makes a point of showing this to us. On the other hand, one of the best video game world shout-outs is when he gets in the truck and tries to back out and turn around, but ends up having to do about a seven-point turn to get turned. Video game cars can be hell to handle, but any gamer knows that you just hold brake and gas together and do a donut to 180 in a car.

Does the boy kill him self at the end to be with his dad?

Correction: The kid did not make the game, but was modding it by adding in characters that represented his dad, mom and stepdad. That's explained when nerdlinger gets to Dill and tells him about the game being basically a bunch of minigames set within this island world, with fishing being one of the more popular ones and the favorite of the son. But with the son modifying the game so that he could play out this fantasy, the game was trying to combat that kind of intrusion by doing things like having the nerdlinger give Dill a uber-fish finder, the son of the store owner coming back to town because he was "lucky," and even Djimon's character paying some locals to beat the stepdad up so he didn't come to the boat. With modding, it can be done so much that the game becomes unplayable because it get's bogged down with extra data and items that it didn't forsee being a part of its coding, and what this kid was doing was basically loading a code from Grand Theft Auto complete with murderous spouses, escorts, drunken tourists, and the ability to kill, into a game of Club Penguin, and the code of the original game was trying to level itself out as to not become unplayable, before whatever gobbledeegook about the kid being god was said to nerdlinger and he decided to help out Dill. As for the various M. Night clues there were quite a bit of them, and they were pretty easy to see knowing the twist beforehand. Things like the opening scene being an aerial run over the ocean up to Dill's boat was a bad opening cutscene, the camera pans were laggy changes in camera angle due to the modifications to the game, the side mission of finding Diane Lane's missing cat, the offering of better bait or equipment were microtransactions, and how all of the townspeople are NPCs in that they just talk solely in mission prep dialogue to the fact that there are only really maybe 10 people on the island and never more than 4 on screen at once. Even scenes where Dill isn't present like the ones with the mom and stepdad in the hotel are pulled from expansive sandbox games like GTA and Assassin's Creed where expository scenes are shown to the player outside of their character to give them a bit more backstory before moving forward in the game. What I found funny was that this movie is basically a film version of a second opinion that was read during the Jack Frost episode where the writer wrote that they put a snowman together in the hopes their dead dad comes back like the dad in that film. It's like Stephen Knight heard that and thought, "I can make that movie but I'll update it with video games."

Totally! I’m mostly confused about why they continued to want to promote it even after it was done and plainly dumb. I suppose maybe they just already had their schedules open and ready to go on Fallon or whatever and they were annoyed that they had to make other plans.

There's a lot to unpack in @Cam Bert's post, and I agree with most of what he says (/you say. I used the third person here because the second person felt confrontational, but the third person feels a little condescending? Suffice it to say that I mean neither of those emotions ), even if I still reach the conclusion that Toy Story should be on the list. (Maybe I just think it's a better movie than everyone else here?) I particularly agree with the absurdity of token genre representation, and I'd say further that it goes beyond just genre to include companies or filmmakers as well, like how we have a token Buster Keaton film and a token Fred Astaire film. One of the worst examples of how stupid the list is with regards to this tokenism is that Birth of a Nation was #44 on the 1998 list and Intolerance wasn't on it at all, and then Intolerance became #49 on the 2007 list and Birth of a Nation got removed completely. It certainly has the optics that voters felt a D.W. Griffith film was a must, but then realized how racist Birth of a Nation was between 1998 and 2007 and had to sub it out for their next choice. I absolutely think that this tokenism is wrong for the list, and I would say that it even goes against the criteria that AFI developed for this list (however flawed you think those criteria may be, which I'll get to later). After all, the AFI criteria all ask you to consider the film, not the filmmaker. D.W. Griffith's historical significance is not what should be considered at all, nor the significance of Disney as a company, or the significance of CG animation as a subgenre. What should be considered by the AFI criteria are the merits of Birth of a Nation, Snow White, and Toy Story as individual films. I didn't think Snow White was a good film (even weighing the historical significance), so I voted no. I think Toy Story is a good film (even separated from its "historical significance"), so I voted yes. So to this tokenism point: would people feel better about having Toy Story at #99 on the list if, say, WALL-E and Toy Story 3 were both also on the list? Next, to point B, which I think relates really well with point D -- should being the first of something important make it a good choice for the list? Again, even by the AFI criteria, the answer is no, since historical significance is only one of the five things that jurors were instructed to consider. Unfortunately, I think jurors weighed this criterion too heavily, which is how The Jazz Singer ended up on the 1998 list. Yeah, it was the first feature with synchronized sound. But I don't see any merit besides that, and I think the jurors were right to bounce it off the 2007 list. But I'd also say the same thing about Snow White. So in that sense, I again agree that being the first CG animated feature is not enough to warrant inclusion, and is at most 1/5 of what is needed. I want to push back just a bit on pieces of his other two points (respectfully of course, because I do think he laid out a wonderful argument all-around). In point A, he argues against the idea that the first film in a series/franchise should get preferential treatment. In my other post, I argued why it should get at least a little preferential treatment. I won't rehash everything again, but in short, the work done in introducing a new world with 100% new characters is something that a sequel gets to take for granted. Can you tell Toy Story 3 without Toy Story? Without changing a millisecond of content, if Toy Story 3 had been released in 2010 as The Toys or Toys Inc. or A Toy's Life and Toy Story and Toy Story 2 never existed, would it still be a great movie? I don't have a definitive answer, but my instinct is no. Toy Story created a fantastic universe, and Toy Story 3 told the best story within that universe. I think the former is the greater achievement. Next, cultural impact. I think his argument that the push to CG animated features was more an inevitability than a brilliant insight or gamble is one I hadn't considered, but it's really true. So I'm willing to set aside the importance of the "first CG feature" tag. But I just disagree with the statement that Toy Story affected culture no more than any other animated film. What other animated film franchise spans 25 years like this? (I'm not counting direct-to-video sequels, sorry Land Before Time.) I think Woody and Buzz are by far the most recognizable Pixar characters, even with the higher marketing push put into Cars. They're probably the most recognizable animated film characters of the last 25 years, with only maybe Shrek as competition. And to compare with Die Hard, in that so many action/terrorism films are thought of using Die Hard as a reference point, I think that's a better comparison than was intended. Every time someone talks about an inanimate object as having human feelings, you hear "sounds like a Pixar movie." "I feel like my copy of War and Peace is judging me for not reading it yet." "That sounds like the next Pixar movie." But when Pixar gets cited for anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, it might get overlooked that the only Pixar franchises that feature this are Toy Story and Cars. And the Pixar guys should get credit for basically being the only game in town in anthropomorphized inanimate objects. No Disney film before had ever done it, and as far as I know, the only animated feature to do it at all before Toy Story was The Brave Little Toaster, which was also made by the original members of Pixar. (I'm torn on how much mentioning The Brave Little Toaster helps or hurts my argument. On one hand, it shows that Toy Story was not as groundbreaking in anthropomorphized inanimate objects as I'd like to be able to argue it was, but on the other hand, it reminds people that much of the plot of Toy Story 3 was a clear ripoff of Brave Little Toaster.) But my point is, just like people make the connection of "Die Hard in a bus", so too do people make the connection "Toy Story but with books" or "Toy Story but with food" even if they often attribute it more to the studio than to the film, which I sort of see as a synecdoche. I'll end by going back to the AFI criteria, which are critical recognition, major award competition, popularity over time, historical significance, and cultural impact. AlmostAGhost questioned whether a self-proclaimed list of greatest movies should be using these criteria, as their relevance towards a movie's greatness is perhaps questionable. But three of the five criteria are about a movie's greatness! Critical recognition asks, did critics (at the time and over the following years) think the movie is great? Major award competition asks, did industry professionals (at the time) think the movie is great? Popularity over time asks, do fans (over the following years) still think the movie is great? All of this is meant to imbue this inherently subjective process with as much objectivity as possible. If we just wanted people to vote for the films they liked the best, we'd get a different list. (We have a list like that; it's the IMDb top 250 and it says that Shawshank Redemption is the greatest film ever made.) Now, the purpose of this podcast isn't to revote based on all five criteria, but more to update the film in context of the last three criteria, since popularity over time, historical significance, and cultural impact can all change vastly in hindsight. And in that regard, Toy Story is absolutely one that deserves to be reexamined, since we're as far removed from the 2007 list as the 2007 list was removed from the release of Toy Story. Only looking back 12 years, it's hard to judge the staying power of something, but I mostly understand why the AFI would put it on the list. 12 years later, I think that its cultural impact has only grown, and that it's still a well-scripted, smart, tight film.