After four films, several of which ended with such emotional finality that audiences had already said goodbye more than once, returning to Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the rest of the gang inevitably carries the suspicion that nostalgia has become too valuable for Hollywood to leave alone. Pixar has built one of the most beloved series in animation history, but affection can become a trap. At some point, continuing a story risks weakening the very memories that make us want to return to it.
And yet Toy Story 5 finds a surprisingly convincing reason to come back. Directed by Andrew Stanton and co-directed by Kenna Harris, the film makes an intelligent decision almost immediately: it does not simply attempt to recreate another Woody adventure. This time Jessie moves much closer to the emotional center of the story, while Woody and Buzz remain important without completely dominating it. The new threat is Lilypad, a smart tablet whose arrival in Bonnie’s life represents something far more dangerous to traditional toys than another action figure ever could. The toys are no longer competing with other toys. They are competing with a different way of being a child.
That distinction gives Toy Story 5 its strongest idea. The original Toy Story was partly about jealousy. Woody feared that Buzz would replace him in Andy’s heart. But Woody and Buzz ultimately belonged to the same universe: both required imagination. A child had to pick them up, invent stories for them, give them voices and transform a bedroom floor into another world.
A tablet requires something different. It arrives already alive with movement, sound, games and endless stimulation. The imagination is increasingly supplied by the device itself.
This could easily have turned Toy Story 5 into a simplistic lecture about children spending too much time looking at screens. Thankfully, the film is usually smarter than that. Technology is not presented merely as evil, nor is the past presented as automatically superior. Instead, the movie asks a more interesting question: what happens to childhood when entertainment becomes increasingly passive, immediate and personalized?
For the toys, this is an existential crisis. Their survival has always depended upon a child’s willingness to imagine.
That makes Jessie the right character to lead this particular story. She understands abandonment in a way few of the others can. Her history has always contained one of the deepest wounds in the Toy Story universe: she knows what it means to have once been essential to a child and then suddenly become unnecessary. Joan Cusack again gives Jessie enormous energy, humor and vulnerability, but this time the character is allowed to carry more of the film rather than simply orbit Woody’s journey. Several critics have likewise singled out Jessie’s expanded role as one of the movie’s strengths.
What I especially appreciate is that Pixar does not forget that these movies work because we care about the toys as characters rather than as technical achievements. Animation technology has advanced enormously since the first Toy Story appeared in 1995. Toy Story 5 is visually beautiful, extraordinarily polished and filled with the kind of detail that Pixar can now produce almost effortlessly. But technical perfection alone would mean very little. The first Toy Story succeeded not because audiences were impressed that a computer could create a plastic cowboy, but because within minutes we believed that Woody could be jealous, frightened, selfish and loving.
That remains the secret of the series. There is also something quietly ironic about Pixar using some of the most sophisticated digital technology in the world to make a film warning us not to surrender completely to digital technology. But perhaps that contradiction actually strengthens the film’s argument. Technology itself is not the enemy. The question is what we ask technology to replace.
A screen can tell a wonderful story. So can a toy. So can a parent sitting on the floor with a child. The danger begins when one form of experience eliminates all the others.
The film is not flawless. There are moments when its themes are stated more directly than necessary, and parts of the story inevitably echo earlier entries in the franchise. Once again, beloved characters confront the possibility of becoming obsolete. Once again, being replaced becomes both an adventure plot and an emotional crisis. The parallel with the original Toy Story—an established favorite threatened by an exciting new form of entertainment—is impossible to miss, and some of the film’s critics have understandably questioned whether Pixar is genuinely discovering new territory or finding new variations on the same old fear.
That criticism is fair. But repetition is not necessarily emptiness, particularly when the world surrounding the characters has changed. Children really do grow up differently today than they did when Toy Story was released thirty-one years ago. The anxiety at the heart of this fifth film therefore feels different even when its dramatic structure feels familiar.
And perhaps that is why Toy Story 5 ultimately works for me. These movies have never really been about toys. They have been about impermanence.
Children grow up. Favorites are replaced. Families change. Bedrooms empty. Objects that once seemed indispensable end up forgotten in closets. Every Toy Story film has found a different way of confronting that truth, and beneath all the jokes and adventures there has always been a surprisingly melancholy understanding that love does not guarantee permanence. Toy Story 5 brings that idea into the digital age.
It may not have the revolutionary impact of the first film, the emotional perfection of Toy Story 3, or the sense of closure that earlier chapters achieved. And I still understand anyone who believes Pixar should eventually allow these characters to rest.
But if another Toy Story had to exist, this is a thoughtful reason for it to exist. The most moving thing about the film is not that the old toys defeat the new technology. It is the reminder that imagination itself requires participation. A child playing with a simple toy creates half the story. That creative relationship—between an object and the person who transforms it into something magical—is something no amount of processing power can completely reproduce.
More than thirty years after Woody first became terrified that Buzz Lightyear might replace him, the toys have encountered an opponent far larger than Buzz ever was. They are competing for a child’s attention. And in Toy Story 5, Pixar makes us care once again about whether they can win it back.
