Toy Story Is Pixars Most Reliable Franchise

            Pixar has been having a rough go of it. They went from being the premier animation studio to making some mediocre movies. The animation style of others changed with movies like Into and Across the Spiderverse, but Pixar stayed the same, just bolstering the quality of their animation as they went, but keeping the style the same. Their style still holds up, but there is nothing wrong with trying something new, and their stories have not been nearly as good as they were in the past. Some of the original Pixar movies were 5-star films, like top tier level of film making, but now Pixar movies have been landing closer to 3.5 stars, but Toy Story 5 is more of a return to form with some integration of a different animation style.

            Toy Story 5 centers more on Jessie, but the gang is all here. At the start of the film, Bonnie is sad, because she does not have any friends, so her parents cave, and they get her a device, basically an iPad for kids, Lilypad. Lilypad quickly takes over all of Bonnie’s attention, and Bonnie stops playing with her toys. Jessie calls Woody, and he comes for backup, but at that point, Jessie and Bonnie are gone, because Bonnie got invited to a sleepover, and Jessie wanted to make sure that Bonnie was making quality friends.

            When Bonnie and Jessie arrive, Bonnie’s friends laugh at her Jessie and Bullseye dolls, so Bonnie leaves them in the car and grabs Lilypad. Jessie and Bullseye try to escape so they can keep an eye on Bonnie, but they end up being picked up and returned to Jessie’s original home, and although Emily is no longer there, a new girl is there, Blaze, and despite being around Bonnie’s age, or maybe a bit older, she still plays with toys and has a real imagination, but despite being happy with Blaze, Jessie wants to be returned to Bonnie, so she has to team up with some tech toys to help her get returned to Bonnie and to help Bonnie make a good friend.

            As far as animated movies go, the two that I have the most nostalgia for are the animated Robin Hood with the foxes and Toy Story, so when a new Toy Story film comes out, I still get excited. They did have a perfect out to the franchise after the third one, but I still enjoyed the fourth one, and I still enjoyed the fifth one as well. Also due to my job as a preschool teacher, the movies have stayed relevant. It was very funny watching the third movie again and seeing how they depicted the preschoolers playing with the toys so roughly, because that is undoubtedly how it goes in my room. I do not know how many toys have been broken in my six-year tenure there, but it has been a lot.

            So the main theme of the film delves into being able to play imaginatively verse being turned into a zombie by technology. One of our main ideals at preschool is that the kids learn through play, so we have all of these academic standards, and we are supposed to find ways to incorporate them into to play so that the students can learn, and we are not supposed to use screens, or we are supposed to use them as minimally as possible. Playing on technology stymies creativity, and it also limits personal interactions as well, which leads to less social skills.

            It can be so easy to just hand a kid an iPad or a phone, and then boom, they are consumed with it. It is an easy way to distract them. It can be seen everywhere you go now. Go out to eat, there is a child at a table staring at a tablet. Go to the grocery store, there is a child in the cart staring at a phone. Drive past a minivan, and there is a kid in the back staring at some form of technology. This does not mean that it is the best choice for the kid though. I have heard many creative people like actors, writers, and directors say that they think that creativity is slowly being toned down due to technology. People used to get bored, so they would have to come up with ideas, games, and stories to keep themselves entertained, but now people click on an app and time just zips by event though nothing is being learned or accomplished.

            Toy Story 5 did ride a fine line though. Initially, technology was completely vilified. The tablet was solely evil. Not only because it was taking all of Bonnie’s time, but also Bonnie’s “friends” were not being nice to her in the messages either, but at the end of the day, Jessie needed technology to help lure Bonnie to Blaze’s house. So there are some redeeming qualities, although being able to lure children to a location with minimal information is not one of those redeeming qualities, despite what the movie is portraying. Just like most things, moderation is key though. Also, parental control is key. Bonnie seemed to have free roam over her device with just some minimal screen time restraints, but her family was not paying attention to messages she was receiving or what she was playing.

            One funny aspect of the film was the army of Buzzes. In the opening scene, there is a cargo container that crashed onto a remote island that was filled with Buzz Lightyear action figures. So they build a shelter, a fire, and eventually a boat to escape to the mainland. It reminded me of Castaway, but of course Castaway stars Tom Hanks, who plays Woody, not Tim Allen, who plays Buzz, so there was a little flip there.

            The new Buzzes ended up playing a key role in the end as well. They were able to connect to the iPad, and their upgrade was able to boot up, which turned the Buzzes into drones, so the Buzz toy was now able to fly and not just “fall with style.” Then once the Buzzes helped the toys, they went out and found kids to become their owners to encourage them to play with toys instead of devices.

            Just like other Pixar films, this one was also able to pull on my heartstrings. The whole Jessie storyline going back to the second film is emotional. She feels like she was abandoned by her owner, Emily, so she has some serious abandonment issues. That persists in this movie, but she does receive some closure, when she digs up a time capsule that her original owner buried for her daughter, Jessie finds out that Emily named her daughter after her. After that, more emotional moments were blended in as well as the toys and children found their rightful place.

            Overall, I loved this movie, and it was also a full family experience. It was Zoey’s first time going to see a movie in theaters, and she loved it. She has fallen in love with Jessie, which is awesome to see. My Dad, Sue, and Randy also went, so we had a wide array of ages there, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It is hard to go wrong with these characters. They are all so great, and they have been able to be timeless. It is hard to believe that despite only consisting of five movies, this franchise has spanned four different decades. I give it 4 Stars, and I currently have it in my top five movies of the year. Take your whole family to see it!