“YOU. ARE. A. TOY! You aren’t the real Buzz Lightyear! You’re… You’re an action figure! You are a child’s plaything!”
“You piece of dirt! No, I’m wrong. You’re lower then dirt. You’re an ant!”
In Pixar’s first two feature length films, Toy Story (1995) and A Bug’s Life (1998), after a violent confrontation, two of the main characters are face to face. One of them berates the other in defense of an age-old system of master and servant, a system that the other character actively denounces because this system gets in the way of his lofty ambitions. In both films, the plot centers on this conflict of those who wish to uphold boundaries and those who wish to break through them.
However, there’s one main difference. In the film's ideologies, Buzz Lightyear is wrong, and Flik is right.
The fact that the films were made so close together and were both directed by John Lasseter makes the comparison even more jarring. It’s the perfect example of what appears to be an internal ideological struggle throughout Pixar’s filmography, a ten-film ping-pong battle between boundaries and boundary-breakers, with neither side having the clear advantage.
These ideas go all the way back to 1987 with Lasseter’s short film Red’s Dream. Red, a discount unicycle in a bicycle shop, spends a rainy night dreaming of upstaging a circus clown, freeing himself of the boundary of needing a rider, and finding success. However, Red awakens to realize that he is neither wanted nor capable of upstaging anybody, and submitting to his fate, returns to his lonely corner, dejected.
The short Knick Knack, made in 1989, followed similar themes, though in a far less depressing manner. A tiny snowman in a snow globe tries to escape the literal plastic boundaries to get some tail, but after several failed attempts grudgingly gives up.
The physical boundaries of these shorts would be transformed into a more metaphysical form for Toy Story. No actual reason is given for why the toys aren’t allowed to move when people are around; it’s simply an unwritten rule that they follow to the letter. It’s not like in Jim Henson’s 1986 made-for-tv special The Christmas Toy, in which the toys would more or less die if caught out of position. When Woody and Sid’s army of mutant toys break the rules to save Buzz, there are no negative consequences to their actions. The toys simply follow the rules because it’s what they’ve always done.
This makes the conflict between Woody, a walking symbol of traditionalism, and Buzz, whose own catchphrase is about reaching beyond “infinity” (the ultimate boundary), all the more ideological. Eventually, it takes forces greater then Woody (a Randy Newman song and the almighty god known as television) to make Buzz submit. Unlike Red and Knack, Buzz does find peace in this much more humble position.
Then A Bug’s Life showed up, and everything was turned on its head.
