Pixar executive attempts to clear up a major plot hole in Toy Story

Pixar have been making beautifully crafted animated films for decades now. They are showing no signs of stopping based on the reaction to their latest release Soul, which debuted on Disney+ on Christmas Day. 

The director of Soul - Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter - has also been responsible for some of the world’s childhood favourites, namely Inside Out, Up, and Monsters Inc.

As expected with famously passionate Disney fans, questions are often raised about some of the narrative choices in each film.

Fans will go to great lengths to make sense of some of the plot holes each film fails to consider, and have been doing dating back to Pixar’s earliest projects.

In an interview to promote Soul, Docter was asked about one of Pixar’s original plot holes, dating way back to the first Toy Story film - if Buzz Lightyear doesn’t think he is a toy, why does he go rigid in front of humans?

Though underwhelming for many, the response may ease the concerns of fans that believe there is a greater reason for every single decision made by the studio.

His answer? Pixar simply don’t think about it that deeply. Most major plot holes identified go ignored, the reasoning being that we aren’t supposed to care about them.

“We went through a lot of discussion on Toy Story, the first one, about like, ‘If Buzz doesn’t know he’s a toy, why does he go rigid when a kid walks in the room?’ We had a lot of explanations and talk about that, too. And in the end, nobody cared”.

Docter was also asked to explain a plothole central to his role directing Monsters Inc. - what were Boo’s parents thinking when she was missing all of that time? She’s out of her bedroom for a lot of the film, after all.

Simply put - nobody is supposed to care that much, because the audience is expected to know as much as the protagonists, monster duo Sulley and Mike, do.

"This is one of these questions that we asked ourselves. And we went through a lot of different machinations of writing scenes. We didn't actually board any, but we felt like, OK, the audience doesn’t need to know this because Sulley doesn't know. And we're with Sulley. So who cares?" he explained.

This could either be a kick in the teeth or a sigh of relief for fans that dedicate a lot of time to finding answers to these unexplained questions. Maybe a bit of both.

Plans to expand the Toy Story universe in 2022 with a live action Buzz Lightyear film might help answer more questions that other films in the franchise have created.

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