And gadgets: "Toy Story 5" challenged tablets and smartphones
The current topic is the fascination of modern children with gadgets, leading to loneliness, Internet bullying, social phobia and other problems. A return to old characters and places, awakening nostalgia among adult viewers who remember the birth of the series in the mid-90s. Lots of action, chases, humor and lyrics, beautifully drawn characters and backgrounds, flawless animation. Toy Story 5 has high ratings from critics and viewers and a good chance in the Oscar race. She seems perfect in every way. Or is it just my imagination? Izvestia watched the film and shares their impressions.
What "Toy Story 5" is about
The fourth decade of the Toy Story series forces children and parents to drop everything and rush to the nearest cinema. Pixar once invented a formula ideal for family cinema, which combined the children's idea that all toys are actually alive, and the nostalgia of adults for a time when they could completely immerse themselves in the world they invented.. A world where cowboys were friends with dinosaurs, Indians teamed up with transformers, and beautiful dolls fell in love with space rangers and discussed it with talking potatoes.
Anyone can connect to this story and its characters. Everyone had their own favorite toy, one that you couldn't part with even while you were sleeping. Everyone at some point had another, newer one, and this is, after all, such a drama, such an event! The "generations" of toys changed, but they could mix and create the most bizarre ensembles. Some were given to other children or sent to boxes, some remained gathering dust on the shelves. But absolutely all of them were connected to very important parts of our soul. That's why, no matter how old we are, we understand from the very first seconds what every film in the Pixar series is about.
The fifth episode immediately delivers precise blows to the audience's pain points. A shy girl named Bonnie is growing up, and she can't even make friends with her twin neighbors. And Bonnie is tired of tinkering with her toys all the time, she wants to communicate. Then the parents decide to interrupt the total digital detox and buy her a LiliPad tablet, like all the children in the neighborhood. Bonnie abandons her usual toys and switches to electronic, where there are chat rooms, arcade games, sandboxes and, most importantly, unlimited opportunities for communication, which she missed so much. Now she, like all the children in the world, hangs in front of the tablet screen for days. And at this time…
Meanwhile, her toys, led by cowboy Jessie and space ranger Buzz, are fighting with a talking arrogant tablet. They want their Bonnie back, but they see that their days are numbered. Neither she nor any other children need them anymore, because they have lost the war for children's attention to gadgets. Forever. Even if the glorious cowboy Woody rushes to the rescue, even if fifty Buzzes who escaped from the warehouse are running through the woods, the past cannot be brought back. The children have become zombies, and their parents, who are buried in their phones, don't seem to mind.
What's Wrong with Toy Story 5
Do I need to add anything to this description? "Toy Story 5" makes itself a must-see by its very choice of theme, because modern parents are constantly fighting for the attention of a child who was once given gadgets. The film provides an opportunity to look at this addiction from the outside. For example, when a child comes to visit friends, and all the children sit down with their gadgets. They seem to spend time together and don't play pranks, but for some reason, friendship doesn't strengthen from this. The strokes here show both online harassment and the toxicity of chat communication, the constant humiliation of newcomers and anyone who is unable to respond to online aggression. There are also fake interlocutors who provoke the child into various bad deeds. The authors of the film insist that children's apathy increases from the screen, their communication skills decrease, their mobility drops to zero, indifference, irritability, and despondency arise.
It seems that what could be better and more witty than putting a child in front of a big screen and showing him how bad it is to sit in front of a small one. But really, is this problem really that different from the one that confronted the characters in the very first Toy Story? There, Woody the cowboy, a favorite, perhaps because a recording with a cry about poisoned water in a well was "sewn into it," fought for the attention of a child with cosmonaut Buzz, who had more replicas, and the light bulbs turned on. Even then, it could be said that their functions deprive the child of the right to fantasy and "invent" a game for him. Of course, Lillipad offers even more opportunities, but the essence of the problem has not changed that much.
The film tries to prove to us that it is necessary to minimize the presence of gadgets in the family, but it does not explain how a child can stop feeling marginalized in this case. Rather, there is a way out — to find another such marginal, but is it socialization? Are we trying to pour new wine into old wineskins? Don't we look like Woody the cowboy, who brags and tries to hide his bald spot and his tummy that no longer fits under his belt?
All this, of course, is subtly felt during the viewing, and there is a risk that the child will grab his gadget again after the movie, and if someone picks up his old favorite toys, it will be the parents. Pixar's blockbuster cartoon is so saturated with nostalgia that it is more suitable for grown-up children than for current ones. In addition, he is deliberately devoid of any risky moves and themes, because Pixar was burned by the commercial failure of a solo film about Buzz (by the way, very interesting), and "Toy Story" still claims to be the maximum worldwide box office.
Therefore, there will not be much of what is very difficult to talk about with a child. For example, how to protect yourself in a chat from pedophiles who get to know each other under the guise of children, or how to behave in the case of online bullying, how to rid a child of complexes during online communication and make the gadget help him cope with phobias, rather than multiply them. Pixar screenwriters are moving away from this, their recipe has not changed in more than 30 years: take your old toys in your hands and try to come up with some kind of adventure with them - and the problems will solve themselves. But they won't decide, we understand. And the kids seem to feel it too when they watch.
Perhaps it is wrong to demand revelations and solutions to all problems from the Pixar giant worth 250 million dollars. We used to expect breakthroughs from this studio, including semantic ones, but Pixar and Disney are already going rough enough to rush into the embrasure today. The truth is, Toy Story 5 is a really great cartoon, and it went great on child addictions. But it seems that it's better to leave the franchise alone, and let the fifth part be a farewell and a reminder that it's better never to return to the old places.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
