An Open Letter to Sheriff Woody, Toy Story.

Dear Sheriff Woody, you bastard,

I am writing to express my displeasure regarding elements of your most recent picture, Toy Story 3. Mostly what I want to say is "How Dare You?"

Now I don't have kids myself but I have friends with kids, and friends who are kids, and I would rather show them Soylent Green than your most recent so-called children's movie.

If I had kids, after we'd seen your movie, I would have sat them down and said this to them, after they'd stopped crying:

"Kids, your mum and I love you very much, but we have to talk about the movie that you've just seen. I really didn't want to show it to you, but your mum thought that if we hid it from you then it would gain some sort of thrill that it really shouldn't have, and you'd probably see it at someone else's house anyway.

You know that, if anything happened to you that was anything like that movie, we'd find you. We'd turn the world over looking for you and we would NEVER. GIVE. UP. Even if we were falling down into a pit, like they did in that movie, we'd never lie back and wait for it all to be over. WE. WOULD. NEVER. GIVE. UP. You know that, right?

You may have heard about that father who cycled around Europe looking for his son? We'd be cycling, running, we'd hack into Anonymous and set up roaming flash mobs looking for you and we'd find you so fast, your milk wouldn't have a chance to get warm.

But it's important for you to know something else. You can't ever give up either. What they showed you in that movie was wrong. When you think that all is lost, you can't just sit there and hope for the big crane in the sky to save you. Even people who are really keen on the big crane know that the big crane helps those who help themselves. You always keep looking. You always keep fighting. You never give up.

But there's something else in there that I need to talk about. You know the bad bear? The one who we thought had changed and then he was bad again? The people who made that movie want you to believe that bad people stay bad. I want you to know that redemption and forgiveness are two of the greatest things we've ever used our big, human brains to think about. Ok, so maybe it was silly to trust the bear, but that doesn't mean he's always going to be bad. Maybe it means that you wait and see what he's going to do, but he may work it out in the end. The bear made bad choices. It doesn't mean that he always will."

So, how dare you, Woody, tell my pseudo-kids, and my friends' kids, that it's ok to lie back and wait for the end? What kind of crap is that? This generation inherits the crap of post-industralisation and, however you slice it, that's a crap sandwich with lots and lots of crap. They are going to have bring their A game all the time. Forging on, fighting for their own future and never, ever, giving up and waiting for it all to get better.

How dare you, Woody, even vaguely hint that bad is forever, and that redemption isn't worth hoping for, and that forgiveness is only for the good?

You don't need to be owned, you don't need to give in and you always hope for redemption, because a world without charity and the hope of a better future is a world that may as well get burnt to cinders. But, even then, some of us will still be standing there, with hoses, fire extinguishers and blankets, trying to put it out.

Because we never, ever give up.

Yours Sincerely,
Angry of Frewville.