Toy Story 5 | Is Pixar So Back?

Corporate greed or heartfelt storytelling?

“We’re doing a sequel

The studio wants more

While they wait for Tom Hanks to make Toy Story 4”

I don’t know what prophet Disney hired to write this lyric in the opening number of 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted, but I want them to get me some lottery numbers ASAP. I’m sure they had no idea when they wrote this tongue and cheek line that five years later Pixar would release Toy Story 4, generally regarded as the weakest entry in the series and clearly was inspired more by executives hoping to cash in on an extremely lucrative IP rather than creatives hoping to tell a compelling story. This isn’t to say that Toy Story 4 is a bad movie, rather I would say it is painfully average compared to its predecessors.

When Toy Story 5 was announced in 2023, I was a certified Pixar hater. The previous year saw the release of Turning Red and Lightyear, one of which went straight to streaming and the other was one of the biggest flops in the studio’s history. Bob Iger announced that they were once again returning to the Toy Story universe and I just couldn’t imagine what drove the studio to make another movie other than corporate needing an easy win after multiple mediocre releases in a row. Toy Story is a safe franchise and the release of Toy Story 4 proved that audiences would still watch Woody and the gang go on adventures even after the perfect ending that Toy Story 3 gave the series, so why not make another one? In my mind, I was thinking “Surely Pixar isn’t capable of scrapping together another good story for Andy/Bonnie’s toys? Can’t we just let the franchise rest?”

As it turns out, Pixar did in fact have a good story in their back pocket and coming out of seeing Toy Story 5 this weekend, I was shocked that the movie was actually…pretty good! Sure it had issues and was by no means perfect, but it capitalized on a strong premise to tell a strong story with a good message, expanding on ideas introduced in the previous films and ultimately delivering a strong sequel and worthy entry to the franchise.

Right off the bat the movie wastes no time showing you that not much time has passed since the previous entry in the franchise. After a confusing opening sequence featuring a gaggle of Buzz Lightyear toys, the movie jumps into a sequence of Bonnie playing with Jesse, Buzz, and all the other toys from the view of her imagination (much like the opening of Toy Story 3). The animation style is unique to this scene and the other imagination scenes in the movie, with a vibrant color palette and blurred edges, almost like a watercolor painting. The success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse clearly has changed the animation industry into not being afraid to experiment with unique art styles, with a similar shift happening at Dreamworks in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

The movie then introduces the main tension of the film: Bonnie can’t make friends because she doesn’t have a tablet like the rest of the neighborhood (and possibly the world? It remains unclear). To rectify this, her parents buy her a tablet called Lilypad, who serves as the film’s main antagonist. Lilypad immediately sucks Bonnie into a zombielike trance that is all too familiar to modern parents, becoming an iPad kid. Jesse, after being left in charge of the gang after the events of Toy Story 4, tries to stop Lilypad only to go on her own journey to reunite with Bonnie after being lost. This causes the movie to follow three main storylines: Jesse and Bullseye coming to terms with the relationship between tech and toys, Buzz and Woody trying to stop Lilypad’s more and more desperate attempts and making Bonnie a friend, and a bizarre plot involving the group of Buzz Lightyear’s seen in the opening scene (still thinking they are the real Buzz like in the first movie) trying to reach “Star Command”.

This is where the movie starts to fall apart for me. On one hand, it is great to see Buzz and Woody reunited and share significant screen time together, a major dynamic which I think the previous movie failed to utilize. On the other hand, the random storyline of the cluster of Buzzes working their way through the world really made me think that they were just introduced to eat up screen time and really broke up the story in a negative way. The whole movie just starts to feel disjointed and while entertaining, you’re left wondering what the point of it is.

To my surprise, the movie actually brings everything together in a coherent and clever way in the third act and delivers a satisfying and emotional conclusion to the whole story. I won’t get into spoilers, but the ending has Lilypad go through a redemption arc, Bonnie makes a friend, and the tech learn how to work with the toys instead of replacing them. Overall, I left the theater surprised at how much it felt like a Toy Story movie, and couldn’t help but think that this was exactly what I wanted Toy Story 4 to be.

The film could also be surprisingly mature at times, exploring themes like cyberbullying and peer pressure. As a father, I recognize that there are plenty of different ways that parents tackle the growing role of technology in the lives of their children, which is why I was a bit shocked at how close the conclusion came to my own opinions on how technology should be handled with kids. The negative effects of social media are exposed more and more every day, and it seems that Pixar is taking a pretty firm stance against it by showing how quickly Bonnie got bullied when exposed to the internet. Bonnie’s parents actually disable the messaging on her tablet after learning about the bullying. Some parents may be more inclined to outright ban all technology for their children growing up; if this describes you, you may be left unsatisfied that all technology in Bonnie’s house isn’t burned at the conclusion of the film (Do the toys have souls in this franchise? A question to be explored some other day). Personally, I think Lilypad joining the group as a kind of photographer is a satisfying happy-medium, both for her character and for the message the movie preaches.

Ultimately, Toy Story 5 is a surprisingly solid entry into the franchise. I liked the newcomers more than I thought I would (I rolled my eyes so hard when I learned Conan would be voicing a potty training toy, but it turns out he was a very funny and welcome addition to the film). There are some good Star Wars references like they threw in in the first two movies and there are some great shots that directly hearken back to the original movie, perhaps as some nostalgia bait but it made me smile nonetheless. This marks Pixar’s second success of the year, coming in after Hoppers managed to become a sleeper success and also worth watching if you haven’t seen it. Given that Pixar has put out good movies with three of its four latest feature films (we can forget Elio happened, but Inside Out 2 before that was also great), one can’t help but ask the question: Is Pixar so back? I hope, dear reader, it is.

Finally, my four year old daughter, Olivia, would like to share her thoughts on the movie.

“My favorite part was when they were trying to find the cowgirl. I would see it again, I liked it actually. We got a lemonade and popcorn. A part of the movie, I was coughing badly so dad asked if I wanted to drink some lemonade to make me feel better cause there was a little left. But there was a part with Woody in it! And Buzz! And the cowgirl! And toys that could talk! And a piggy bank that could talk! And a dinosaur that could talk! But they could only talk when she wasn’t there. And they can make themselves talking and make themselves not talking, its pretty cool. You might have to see Toy Story 5 (this last sentence was said to my wife).”

So true, my friends. So true.

Editor’s Note: Thank you, Olivia!