Today we’re talking about the 1995 Film Toy Story.
Story
This is a movie about jealousy and mob mentality. It’s a terrifying look into the worst of humanity dressed up as a kid’s movie. The jokes and overall message of teamwork and accepting who you are are nice however.
Score: 0.5
Characters
This is a group or characters that belongs in a grimdark survival horror or maybe a Stephen King film. They are overall unlikable and cruel to each other. This works for the plot, but means that I’m almost cheering for Sid.
Score: 0
Dialogue
The dialogue is quippy and very well thought out. It has an almost Disney-style of multiple levels for adults and kids. It is a little heavy on the exposition, and the gags sometimes last way too long.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
The movie is visually impressive for it’s time, but after almost thirty years I looks very dated. The lighting, liquids, and anything with fur is really plastic-looking, which works for the toys. The humans are weird uncanny valley rejects.
The music and sound mixing were clear and beautiful.
Score: 0.5
Fun
The movie was more fun than it should have been. Despite the despicable characters and forced story, the world building is great and everyone laughed a bunch.
Score: 1
Overall
This has all the wonder of future Pixar movies without the amazingly relatable characters. It’s a first draft for their formula and unfortunately doesn’t land as well as it could. Still fun and looks okay, considering it’s almost thirty.
The players are toys that wake up in an abandoned Santa’s workshop. It’s up to them to save Santa and the holiday season.
Starting – The shop
The Group starts in an old-fashioned woodworking workshop.
There’s paint, tools, wood, and lots of cobwebs.
There’s also a large design table with a fresh pad of paper.
There are two doors. One leads to the outside and the other leads to a small bachelor’s apartment.
Anything they draw on the piece of paper becomes real.
There’s also a large filing cabinet that has letters from
every child in the world along with a list.
There are tunnels that lead to all three buildings. Search of 8 to find them.
Bachelors Apartment
Enemies: None
This is a spartan apartment with cot against the wall and a small kitchen. The kitchen has a large pantry cabinet, a counter, and a wood stove. There are some pots and pans in the cabinet. There’s one set of plates and utensils.
Search 4: They find a hidden panel in the wall with a diary.
The diary says: “We think we’ve figured it out. The clock is the key.” Followed
by either gibberish or code. (Mind 9 to figure out it’s instructions for
winding the clocktower.)
Outside
Enemies: Polar
Bear
Outside the small building is a land of snow and ice bathed
in complete darkness. The only light being the dim reflections of the Aurora on
the snow.
There are two other buildings. A large Clocktower, and a
Stable. There’s also a lake.
When the characters leave a building there’s a chance they are seen by a hungry polar bear. Unless they are actively sneaking, flip a coin to decide.
Stables
Enemies: Feral
Reindeer
These stables are both well kept and well built. There are eight
pens with 7 reindeer. They are well fed, clean, and very friendly. There’s also
a large red sled that seems equally as well taken care of.
The empty pen shows signs of a struggle. Scratch marks and
hoof prints.
The feral reindeer is hiding in a dark corner takes a flip
of 5 to see them.
If they don’t see them, the reindeer attacks as they leave.
Frozen Lake
Enemies: The
Kraken
The frozen lake has one lonely but devoted gardian. The
Kraken is there to protect the pole and stop the toys from escaping.
It is quite gentle with them but firm.
Clocktower
Enemies: None
The clocktower radiates power. It has an ornate brass door with clocks and time imagery carved into it. The words, “You must stop to go” are carved in wood over the door.
The clock face seems to glow from the outside. It chimes
every 15 minutes.
Inside there’s just a staircase going up nearly 100 metres or
just over 300 feet.
At the top there is a room filled with gears but with a
small platform. The platform has a couch and two large levers.
One lever Stops the clock and one will make it go forward or
backward. (This actually stops time or moves it.)
Conclusion
Enemies: Anti-Clause
The entire area was built by Saint Nick an ancient wizard. It’s self sustaining. Before he could use it, however, he was attacked by Anti-Clause and his last action was to cast a spell that would animate a group of toys to finish his mission.
The world is being invaded by aliens. They’ve used their
U.F.O (Universal Freezing Organics) Ray to stop all living creatures from
moving. As toys you are not affected and must find a way to save the world
before the effects of the ray become permanent.
Starting
The group starts in a large cylindrical white room. There’s
a large hatch and a note written in crayon.
I think you’ll do better. Good luck – Sally
There’s a panel next to the door and a small air grate near
the ceiling.
Getting out of the room should be easy. Either ask the panel
to get out, hotwire it, crawl through the vent or break down the door.
Either way it should all lead to the main control room.
Control Room
Inside the control room there are a lot of people and
computer screens.
Just outside the door to the chamber is a little girl holding three heavily armed drones. She seems frozen in place.
There are several adults frozen in a run towards her. They
look horrified.
The computer screens seem to indicate that they were experimenting
to make sentient drones.
There’s a TV on and it looks like it’s paused but the clock is working normally. If they rewind or look online they’ll see that aliens were spotted entering the solar system a week ago. After several days of trying to contact them, the three motherships took positions around the earth and started their Freeze Ray. It look less than a day for the ray to freeze everyone on the planet. The Phlebotinum Institute accelerated their efforts to make drones sentient barely activating the device before being frozen.
Outside the Lab
Enemies: Aliens
and Drones
The game will require the players to figure out where they are and what they want to do. The overall goal should be to turn off the ray, scare off the aliens, or just stop the invasion.
This can be done in a multitude of ways. Let your players be
creative. If they need help here are a few options that you can hint at:
Gain access to the ships and shut off the ray in
hopes humans can fight the aliens off.
Find a way to launch nuclear/secret/etc weapons
against the aliens.
Negotiate with the aliens.
Upload virus / trick / etc
No matter what they choose there should be 3 phases to the
adventure: Plan, execute plan, and final boss.
Plan
Enemies: Aliens
or Drones
In this section they are getting what they need to do their
plan. It could be communication equipment, missile codes, etc.
In most cases the Aliens are the villains and anything they
plan should include a fight with a few of the aliens. They are small, green,
and ride around in flying saucers.
If they need to get into a human facility or negotiate with the aliens, the rogue drones become the main villain. They don’t want to let humans come back. They should only fight 1 or 2 of these.
Execute the plan
Enemies: Aliens
or Drones
In this section they have their equipment and must apply the
plan. This should be a series of challenges and fights.
Try to throw skills challenges that have an average
difficulty of 4 or 5
Final Boss
Enemies: General
The General or Generals (Adjust depending on strength and amount of characters.) and their army want to prevent the characters from succeeding. In this section they must fight their way to the final phase of their plan.
This was Baby Dragon’s second year at Ottawa Comicon. Her first year was mostly napping and being held by everyone who wanted with a little time on my shoulders.
This year however was filled with cool activities, playing, chasing people, and NOT NAPPING.
Dry Erase Crayons
Crayola Wonder Paper and Paints
Toys
Her favourite activity was waving and saying hello to everyone. Other things she enjoyed:
How many of you played with LEGO as a kid? How many of you actually raised your hand reading that?
Personally, I played with Duplo, not LEGO. My other half played with LEGO. We still have a lot of both to pass on to our Dragon, and hopefully she will have as much fun building with it as we did.
Do you want to recapture your joy of LEGO, or if you’ve never lost it, do you want to explore your enjoyment of it further?
Might I suggest travelling to the origin of these super cool toys? Denmark!
Denmark is awesome, and is definitely in my top ten places to visit. There are tons of really cool things to see and do in this country, as well as Legoland. You can contact me to find out more!
You can stay and play in a world made of LEGO. Go to this link and admire the amazing pictures of the LEGO creations. Then imagine how much more incredible it would be in person.
If you are interested in booking a trip to Denmark to visit Legoland. You can contact Jennifer Desmarais through Orleans Travel. jennifer.desmarais@orleanstravel.ca
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