4. Growing Up With Andy in Toy Story
When
Toy Story debuted in 1995, Andy was really a character of fleeting thought. And the same went for the wonderful sequel in 1999. It wasn't until 2010 with the release of
Toy Story 3 that us kids finally got it: we were Andy. It was always easy to associate with the protagonists of Woody, Buzz, Jesse, and the like; after all, they and their friends were in the spotlight. But let me just say that growing up with Andy and seeing
Toy Story 3 in theaters, the summer you, yourself, are headed off to college? That's really a cinematic experience you don't forget. I saw it with all of my friends of same age and it may have been the most surreal, heartbreakingly wonderful film I've ever had the pleasure of watching in a theater. We were a special demographic that the filmmakers
knew were going to be out there, and when it hit us, it hit us hard. It's that ability to capture that kind of magic that makes Pixar's films so withstanding. And while we're on the subject, we grew up just like Pixar did. We were the audience Pixar started making films for and we were happy to stick by them. Not to say that the hand-drawn animation classics like
Aladdin and
Beauty and the Beast weren't worth our time, but I never saw
Aladdin or the majority of those (save
The Lion King) in theaters. The big time classics had already come and gone. I got to relive them on VHS and DVD, but Pixar just continued to get better and better. And for that, I couldn't thank them enough.