Watching Goodbye Through Different Eyes
Why Toy Story means something completely different as adults.
Films: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, and Toy Story 4
I didn’t expect revisiting Toy Story to affect me quite so deeply.
Perhaps that’s because, for the first time...
I wasn’t watching it as a child.
Or even simply as an adult.
I was watching it with my daughter.
And somewhere between watching her imagination come alive and revisiting these characters myself...
I realised the films hadn’t really changed.
I had.
There is something extraordinary about watching a child experience Toy Story for the first time.
Every new character.
Every new environment.
Every adventure.
Every impossible idea.
To them, it simply expands what they believe is possible.
Watching my daughter laugh, wonder, and become completely immersed reminded me why these films became classics in the first place.
They encourage imagination without ever talking down to their audience.
And perhaps that is one of Pixar’s greatest gifts.
Children don’t simply watch these films.
They carry them into the way they play.
But adults watch something entirely different.
Not because the films changed.
Because life did.
For years I thought Toy Story 3 had the perfect ending.
And perhaps it still does.
Because it reflects something almost all of us eventually experience.
The moment life quietly tells us it’s time to let go.
Childhood.
Home.
A career.
A friendship.
A chapter of life that helped shape us.
Andy doesn’t stop loving his toys.
He simply reaches a point where holding onto them is no longer possible.
That goodbye hurts because it feels inevitable.
We’ve all lived some version of it.
Then came Toy Story 4.
The older I’ve become, the more I think it explores a very different kind of goodbye.
One that is somehow even more confronting.
Because this goodbye isn’t forced upon Woody.
It’s chosen.
For perhaps the first time in his life, he steps away from the identity that has always defined him.
Not because it was wrong.
Not because he failed.
But because he recognised he had changed.
And so had the world around him.
That feels remarkably adult.
I wonder if so much of growing up isn’t learning to accept endings...
But learning to choose new beginnings.
There are moments in life where we don’t lose what came before.
We simply realise we’ve become someone capable of carrying those experiences into an entirely different chapter.
The past isn’t discarded.
It’s honoured.
Then built upon.
Watching these films again, I found myself thinking less about toys...
And more about people.
How often we hold onto identities that no longer fit us simply because they once defined us.
How frightening it can be to step into something unknown, even when we know it’s right.
And how difficult it is to recognise that moving forward doesn’t always mean leaving something behind.
Sometimes it simply means allowing everything we’ve learned to become part of who we are next.
Perhaps that’s why these films resonate so differently now.
Children watch Toy Story and discover possibility.
Adults watch Toy Story and recognise themselves.
The most unexpected part of revisiting these films wasn’t the nostalgia.
It was watching my daughter fall in love with them in exactly the same way I once did.
While I found myself reflecting on endings...
She was only seeing beginnings.
And perhaps that’s the real magic of Toy Story.
One generation is learning how big the world can become.
The other is learning that life never really stops asking us to grow.
A final thought
Perhaps growing up isn’t leaving our inner child behind.
Perhaps it’s allowing that child to quietly walk beside us into every new chapter we choose.
I’ve been capturing some of these reflections more regularly over on Letterboxd under The Resonance Impact.
This is beautiful. The shift from watching Toy Story as a child (pure possibility) to as a parent (seeing endings, growth, and chosen beginnings) is something I felt too.
Toy Story 3 and 4 hit completely different when you’re no longer the kid in the room.
Your line about the inner child walking beside us into every new chapter is one of the best things I’ve read about these films. Thank you for this. Beautifully written.