At the climax of Toy Story 3, the unthinkable seemed to be happening. Buzz, Woody, Jessie, and the rest of Andy’s toys found themselves in a trash heap, riding a conveyor belt toward an incinerator. Although the toys try for a while to find some means of escape, they finally realize it’s useless. And so they decide to face death the only way they can: by holding hands and sharing it together.
Of course, the toys don’t die, plucked from oblivion from at the last minute by the claw aliens. But for those watching Toy Story 3 in theaters back in 2010, it really seemed like Pixar would do it, that they would really let Buzz and Woody meet their end. After all, more than a decade had passed between Toy Story 2 and the third entry. Moreover, their beloved owner Andy had grown up, and passed them all. Surely, there was nothing more to say about our favorite cowboy and spaceman. Surely, they had met their proper end.
That thought is even more front of mind in the first trailer for Toy Story 5. Much of the trailer just features reaction shots of familiar faces: Buzz, Woody, Jessie, Mr. Potato Head, even newcomer Forky. In the final kicker, we see Andy’s successor Bonnie open her new present, an iPad-like device called a Lilypad, voiced by Greta Lee of Past Lives. Have the toys finally become obsolete?
Even if you’re not a parent who has seen your children lose all interest in anything that doesn’t have a screen, the answer has to be “Yes.” The first ever fully-CGI feature length film, the original Toy Story from 1995 both inaugurated Pixar as a major studio but also made computer animation a viable, and now dominant, medium for cartoon movies. But now, it looks far clunkier than any of the traditional hand-drawn animated movies it supplanted.
