MovieChat Forums > Toy Story 4 (2019) Discussion > Woody and Buzz were too incompetent (wea...

Woody and Buzz were too incompetent (weak/pathetic, however you want to put it)

posted 4 years ago by arflexit (2376)
5 replies | jump to latest

While Bo-Peep was way too hyper competent. If you notice they were setting this up right in the opening scene. Like Woody could not lead a rescue his own; basically they specifically go out of their way to increase Bo's competence and make Woody look like an idiot 'you never told me they had names', yeah right they were together for 10 years at that point and he didn't know the sheep had names. They show Bo and Woody come up withe plan right away at the same time; not letting Woody be the one to make the decision. Even her first line of dialogue, "situation?" was way too formal and almost military like. This is nothing like the Bo-Peep of the 1st 2 films.

Now if they wanted Bo to be demonstrate an increase in competence after being a lost toy for many years and Woody being more impressed with her new confidence and abilities that would be fine (and would make sense given her need to learn to survive); but they should have shown her as more like her toy story 1 counterpart in that opening scene and it should not have come at the expense of Woody and Buzz being almost useless idiots when next to her. Why is it that the male characters have to be torn down? Is it not enough to present women as equals; they have to go out of the way to belittle the male characters to create extra contrast? I find this distasteful, and I hate the message it gives to my children (boy and girl).

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I think you are reading too much into it. I don't think they were trying to tear down or belittle the male characters. To me, Buzz and Woody were portrayed in a positive way in this film.

[–] arflexit (2376) 4 years ago

I don't agree. Just look at Woody in that first scene; even before Bo goes through her character change after being a lost toy; woody can't even get on the table without her help. He would not have rescued RV without her quick thinking. Maybe in the opening scene they were closer to equals; but that is not in line with her character in the previous films.

Then later when Woody meets her, he looks silly compared to her; she makes fun of him; berates and belittles him on multiple occasions. All he does is keeps screwing up and she has to save him from his own stupidity.

That is not even talking about Buzz. He is so not confident and unsure of himself. they turned him into a total idiot that has this "inner voice" gimmick. that is in no way how the character was portrayed in the previous films (especially Toy Story 2).

I am not reading too much into it. I was never that invested in the Toy story films; in fact until my kids were born I had only ever seen the first one in the 90's. I enjoyed watching 1, 2 and 3 with my kids and got to take them to the theater to see the 4th. And I was so taken aback by the jarring nature of the messaging. Maybe they did not intent that messaging but there is this anti-boy, all pro-girl mentality so embedded in western culture right now. I have children of both genders and I think this messaging is bad for both of them. Girls get encouraged to an absorb unhealthy level which sets up unrealistic expectations out of life (and puts too much pressure on them to achieve in things they might not want to); and boys get discouraged to the point of entering nihilistic hopelessness (which is why the boy drop out rate in college is so high over the last 5 years). These things are connected you know. Movies don't just exist in a vacuum; they often reflect the values of the time they were made in.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

I agree. There was definitely woke messaging going on here. It wasn’t as egregious as with other movies but they definitely nerfed Woody and Buzz, and buffed Bo, making her a ‘strong independent woman’ 🙄

ie they made her an obnoxious bitch and made Woody weak, dumb and useless, Buzz too.

Also, notice how the white girl was a cold bitch who threw Gaby away, whereas the black girl showed her love. Bonnie was portrayed sympathetically because she was mixed race. Definitely some SJW racism there.

Now, to offset this they had a female ‘villain’, which was good to see, and Bo did admire Woody’s loyalty to the child, so it wasn’t as woke as it could have been, but it was sad to see Pixar succumbing to this twisted ideology and infecting Toy Story, of all franchises, with it.

[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

Yes, the first scene was meant to build up Bo's character, establish her as competent and a leader among the toys, someone who could set up Woody's rescue of the toy car and then mostly stand back while he did hero stuff.

Yes, it was kind of awkward, trying to retcon this secondary character into a power among the group of toys, when in previous films she'd been sidelined. I suppose it makes some sense that her role in the group dynamics would have changed when they all passed to a female child, but it was still a bit clumsy. And it really did involve sidelining Buzz, and to some extent Jessie, they were shown as extremely close to Woody in previous films, best friends really, but he hardly has any scenes with either of them. He can't be shown as having too close a relationship with either for the story to go where they wanted it to go, and yeah, that also felt kind of clumsy.

[–] LeWildPlatypus (765) 2 years ago

The movie wasn't too bad on a rewatch, originally I disliked TS4 as it feels detached from the previous 3 movies.

My main gripe is similar to yours in that Woody and Buzz have been heavily sanitised, compare the sarcastic, smarmy, passive aggressive Woody to the one in TS4 who is the polar opposite. Disney want their characters to be squeaky clean, even the villains!