How Toy Story Scarred My Childhood

Toy Story 3 was awesome. Epic in the traditional, non-overused-on-the-Internet sense. It made my dad (and everyone else in the theater) cry, and it kept Evan's attention. Both difficult things, at least in terms of movies. I'm probably going to see it again, it is That. Good. As it should be, taking 11 years...

The first movie kind of scarred me, though. Not "scared", emotionally scarred. I cannot remember the period of time in my life I had not seen Toy Story. I cannot remember ever owning a humanoid toy. These are related. The eyesss, they watch. Every toy (minus stuffed animals) is alive and has feelings and actions and can, if mistreated, effectively KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP (or, y'know, so I thought. Past tense). I only extended this to dolls/plastic things, because they were the only type of toy in the movie (and if I was forced to either live in fear of or get rid of my massive collection of stuffed animals I would die).

3 fixes this logic. Thank you for that, movie. A film managed to make me feel almost guilty over the treatment of my inanimate possessions. Not exactly guilty, but curious. Knowing that these things have an opinion of me is nervous-making. I think I was a pretty okay (if strange... I didn't even really play with them--or other kids for that matter, probably explaining my aversion to social activities--I slept with a mountain of them... stuffed animals, I mean. And you probably knew that but now I'm just distracting myself in this parenthetical statement...) owner, but it's more just the "having an opinion of me" part.

Aforementioned hoard has dwindled, but I still have ones I've either won or been given as gifts. I don't know why I feel compelled to keep gifts, but I never win things. They (Shalom, Orange, Cupcake, Oliver, and Mei... I still know the exact dates/occasions I won them, too.) are my trophies, dammit. I know "never" is disproved by that list, but consider that I will never win an actual sporting trophy in my life. And that those five are the work of 8 or 9 years of carnivals.

At first I thought that 3 was the darkest/most depressing of the trilogy, but the other two are pretty on par with it. Holy. Crap. But that's what makes these movies compelling, there are things you only notice upon repeating viewing years apart. Other example: I honestly thought the movie Drop Dead Fred was a fever dream until a few months ago. I saw it at my cousin's house (I think), while I was sick and falling asleep sporadically. I was young and impressionable and only aware of the psychotic leprechaun. (Imagine what would happen if Willy Wonka took amphetamines with Mountain Dew, was allowed to swear, and was placed in functioning society. Bwahahaha.) But Google knows everything, so I was able to plug in seemingly random words and come up with an actual movie. Re-watching, fully conscious: Childish (still really funny, I'll admit. :P), yeah, but sad. Not, "Let's pity the obviously mentally ill woman" sad, but sad. My explanation makes no sense.

EDIT: It's being remade. >:P At least Russell Brand is English...