(Pixar Short) Geri's Game

Since the early 1980s, Pixar Animation Studios had made a number of short films. Most of them consisted of bringing inanimate objects to life, as the central characters. That is until 1998, when "A Bug's Life" had been theatrically released in theaters, with the Pixar Short "Geri's Game." Not only was Geri's Game the very first Pixar short to be released theatrically attached to a feature film, but it was also the studio's first short film revolving around a human character.
The story of Geri's Game, is probably one of the most simplest of stories for a short film. An elderly man, Geri, sits in a chess park, in Autumn. He sets up his chess board, with all pieces perfectly alined. He sits down and makes the first move on the white side, happily and gently, and waits patiently for his opponent to make the next move. We find out that Geri is sitting in the park, playing chess, by himself. He slowly gets up and walks over to the other side, takes his glasses off, and makes the second move on the black side competitively and aggressively. He gets up again, puts his glasses back on, and makes the next move on the white side. Geri's light side wears glasses and behaves friendly, while his dark side doesn't wear glasses and behaves aggressively. Back and fourth, he plays against himself, until his dark side begins to knock all of his light side's pieces, until he is left only with his king piece. Horrified that he will loose the game, Geri has a heart attack and falls to the ground. Dark Geri looks under the table to see if Light Geri is ok, but Light Geri gets up and spins the chess board around, so that he has the black side pieces and Dark Geri has the one white piece. Not knowing the heart attack was fake, Dark Geri still thinks he has the upper hand and will win the game. But Light Geri quickly puts Dark Geri in check mate with the black pieces. Dark Geri is astonished at how he looses. Light Geri asks Dark Geri for what ever they bet upon, and Dark Geri pulls out his false teeth. Light Geri puts the teeth in his mouth and begins to snicker with a snidely grin on his face, showing us once again that the whole time Geri was playing chess by himself.
As simple as the story was, the short's writer/director Jan Pinkava, left the audience with a clever interpretation of the message the short teaches us, and that is, "No matter how hold old a person gets, they will always have a vast  and child-like imagination." Most grown ups, today, would see this and believe that the old man, Geri, was nothing more then senile, hallucinating and going mad. But never the less, Geri's game was a tale about an old man's imagination and a battle between good and evil. The way Pinkava had interpreted the battle between good and evil, was presented by the different colors of the Autumn leaves on the trees in the background. When it was a shot of Light Geri, the leaves would be a honey yellow. And, when it was a shot on Dark Geri, the leaves would be almost a maroon red. The leaves were able to subtly show the audience, children and adults, who was the good guy and who was the bad guy.
The overal message of the story, was indeed a good testament to the very essence of the legacy that Walt Disney left behind, after his death. A legacy that lives through his cartoons, his theme parks, and his films.