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System Update Available: Toy Story Comes for Tech Time

What even is a toy in 2026? It used to be that there was a very clear distinction between toys and other kinds of entertainments for kids, but that has gotten much more blurred in the last couple decades, especially in the era of widespread digital technology. Toys still have their function of course and the toy industry still flourishes, but it seems kids are being introduced to devices like smartphones and tablets earlier and earlier, competing for their attention and entertainment with the more traditional “child’s playthings” as one cowboy once described them.
Honestly, it is a very interesting theme to tackle with a Toy Story movie in this modern age -really the only theme to tackle that would be compelling for the franchise at this point, which has a pattern of exploring themes of adolescence, growing up, and even existentialism through the vantage point of plastic dolls and their relationships to the children who play with them. Every Toy Story movie after the first has to some degree reckoned with the inevitable notion of moving on and the ambiguous fates for toys as their owners grow up. Toy Story 5 invests itself with the opportunity to interrogate that concept in the most tangible, challenging way yet.
Director Andrew Stanton provides a sturdy hand to guide this endeavour. One of Pixar’s original architects and director of two of its best classics (Finding Nemo and WALL-E), he was also one of the key writers on the first two Toy Story movies, and returns to that role on this one as well, which does bear a few of their hallmarks. But while he goes above and beyond in some respects, his movie falls a bit short in others.
One of his better choices though is his change of protagonist. This is the first Toy Story movie in which Woody (Tom Hanks) is not the main character -in fact he doesn’t even have an arc in this installment. Instead, the focus shifts to Jessie (Joan Cusack), who has been underutilized by the franchise after her breakthrough introduction in Toy Story 2. It is through her lens primarily that we get this story of tech invading the home of the toys’ owner Bonnie when her parents buy her a child’s tablet to help her make friends -most other children her age in the neighbourhood having given up toys for touchscreens. The interloper Lilypad (Greta Lee) obviously comes into conflict with the other toys who don’t approve of the changes she brings about in Bonnie. A sleepover gone wrong soon results in Jessie and Bullseye going missing and being taken back to the farmhouse once occupied by Jessie’s former kid Emily many years ago. Meanwhile, Woody answers a call to come back, teaming up again with Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) to find Jessie while Buzz works through his nerves to propose to her. Also, there is a little army of newer Buzz Lightyear toys finding their way to a north star they interpret as Star Command.
It's a more convoluted premise than in previous Toy Story movies, this film noticeably suffering under its multiple axes of focus, from Jessie's unresolved trauma to Buzz's romantic inclinations to yet another journey of a version of Buzz discovering purpose as a toy. And ostensibly at the centre of it all is an existential crisis around the future of toys amidst the tech revolution epitomized by Lilypad -something that is delineated at times by these other priorities. Yet Stanton and company pull relatively few punches in how they feel about the effect of tech on kids. Every house observed by both Jessie and Woody is lit by the humming light of digital screens, the neighbourhood kids who Bonnie is obliged to befriend are mere zombies to their tablets -we even see Bonnie's own burgeoning addiction. But the movie doesn't actually do much to define the ills of "screen-time" -we don't see any of these kids accessing the internet beyond a rudimentary chat and messaging platform -largely the Lilypads consist of games to which kids have little tangible reaction. As a non-parent I may be missing something, but there is a lack of nuance to the conversation the movie purports to be having that ultimately results in its messaging ringing a bit shallow. We all know it is a good argument, but it is quite poorly made here.
Likewise, the movie notably entertains the subject of play -and for the first time in the franchise's history extols community and friendship as a part of that; again, it is something that rubs against the preponderance of tech in children's lives, making them less social, more insular, and out of touch with each other's feelings (hence the pile-on mockery of Bonnie's love of toys). And it's good to see the movie address another reason kids might give up toys: peer pressure and the desire for maturity. In her role as children's avatar, Bonnie features more heavily in this story than either she or Andy did in any previous iteration and it works well -especially as the movie contrasts her to Blaze, the farm girl Jessie winds up with for a long section.
It is refreshing that Jessie is the star of the show on this one, and that the movie ties her established abandonment issues into her arc here in an organic way. And that balloons out into the larger themes of the future for toys. Jessie's relationship to Bonnie is distinctly maternal as well -that of a concerned parent. And of course, in concert with this, she plays a much more active role in Bonnie's life and choices -just in general the degree to which toys manipulate their owners here is pretty extreme, often acting in place of the children's own agency and it is disconcerting in a way Stanton hasn't thought through. That said, Jessie's heart is never in doubt -Cusack plays it tremendously; and the story for her that began in Toy Story 2 rounds out to a lovely catharsis on the eternal mark of childhood joy and imagination.
Among other things, this beat emphasizes too a palpable sense of age for her and the other toys. They are at this point quite old, something played for laughs in the Woody bald-spot gag, while also tangible in a less-intentional way in some of the voice actors' performances. Yet it further contrasts the toys and the tech in an old vs. new framework. It's cute to see the familiar characters and hear their voices on occasion, but most of Bonnie's toys -including the gang who've been here since the first movie- are largely confined to the background. The only returning toys that matter are Jessie, Bullseye, Buzz, and Woody. And while Buzz is invested with some personal drama and motivation around his romance with Jessie and sense of duty as her designated deputy, this entry marks the first time in the series where despite his prominence Woody is almost completely incidental. After leaving the toys and concluding his story in the last film, he has no real reason to be here -the circumstances of his return are contrived, and he functions broadly as merely a foil for Buzz. 
Apart from Lilypad, the principal new character is a potty-training digital helper called Smarty Pants, voiced by Conan O'Brien, whom Jessie meets in Blaze's home as a fellow discarded toy. He's a funny addition, but neither he nor Lilypad are strong avatars for the role of tech in children's lives. Lilypad's character arc is essentially identical to Anxiety in Inside Out 2, and it gets to the fundamental problem of the movie not having a coherent thesis. That idea of the future for toys being in jeopardy is never seriously considered past the first act as the issue migrates over to Bonnie's sense of imagination being the defining factor saving them. But there are plenty ways for imagination to be satiated by a tablet -conveniently ignored by a movie that is critical of tech in children's hands though obliged to give it some benefit of the doubt. The film ultimately preaches a message of moderation that suits its specific circumstance but has nothing to offer on the broader issue. As it pertains to toys, that overriding idea is unresolved, the conversation on the mental health effects of tech on kids is veered away from. But of course -it makes it easier for Disney to market real Lilypad tablets to consumers.
Unlike the two previous Toy Story installments, there is no air of finality to this movie which suggests Pixar has every intention to make Toy Story 6. Much like this movie's stance on digital technology, I am neutral on that. This film is decently entertaining, its appropriate shift in focus and earnest, heartfelt thematic tethers carrying a lot of weight -along with its initial commentary on technology and the changing nature of children's playtime. But its abject contrivances and its failures to adequately reckon with its subject are unavoidable. And it showcases clearly the limited steam left in the franchise in spite of a compelling premise; as this movie is a palpable degree of quality removed from Toy Story 4, let alone the much celebrated original trilogy. Toys don't last forever.

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