Running Out of Juice

What is the point of continuing the Toy Story franchise? I get that from a purely financial standpoint, making more Toy Story films does make sense. This fifth film made over a Billion dollars, so clearly people want to see more adventures with Woody, Jessie, and Buzz. But finance isn’t all that matters. As Marvel can attest, you can bleed a franchise dry and then watch as the very market you created collapses out from under you. People will pay to watch bad movies for only so long, and then the brand will be tainted for a long time afterwards.

The Pixar brand used to mean something. The early successes from the likes of Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up all proved that with good stories Pixar could functionally print money. It was their mix of cutting edge artwork and heartfelt stories that drove their films. Yes, Toy Story was a masterpiece of early CGI animation, but the film worked because you related to Woody and Buzz and felt something for their plight. Pixar knew how to tell great stories, but somewhere along the way they’ve become more corporate, more Disneyfied, and the Toy Story franchise is showing that.

Not that sequels are inherently bad. The first three films in the franchise showed us different aspects of Woody’s existential dilemmas, with the old cowboy toy coming to terms with possibly being replaced (in the first film), to learning he might fall apart one day (in the second), and then realizing that Andy would outgrow him. The first trilogy of films has something to say about life, and age, and time moving on, but once Andy handed his toys, including Woody, Jessie, and Buzz, off to the next generation in the form of Bonnie, that pretty well closed that series out. The two made-for-television short films, Toy Story of Terror! and Toy Story that Time Forgot, were both cute, but they were low stakes adventures that weren’t meant to push the franchise forward. Toy Story 4, then, felt like a hollow victory lap that at least had Woody move on, seemingly tying a bow on the franchise.

So what are we doing here, in Toy Story 5. What is the great story that needed to be told to bring all these characters out of the toy box again? That Jessie is an old cowgirl toy who is slowly realizing that Bonnie might one day grow up and move on? Yes, that is the whole arc we just saw already, with Woody and Andy, across multiple films. While this new movie adds in tech-toys and tries to add some more feminine spin to the storytelling (since the films are now following Jessie as the lead toy and Bonnie as the lead kid) the story itself hasn’t evolved. What was once Pixar’s greatest strength, its storytelling, seems to have completely abandoned the company now.

We catch up with Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) as she’s playing with her toys, having Jessie (Joan Cusack) lead adventures with dancing and marriages. But Bonnie doesn’t have any real friends, and while she sees the neighbor kids having fun together, she doesn’t know how to talk to them. Her parents, not knowing what else to do, get Bonnie a tablet, a Lilypad (Greta Lee), so she can bond with the other kinds in her age group. Lily then takes over all of Bonnie’s attention, and starts forcing the young girl to socialize with other girls in her dance class, as a way to prove to the older toys that Lily knows what’s best for Bonnie.

But Jessie, fighting her own version of existential dread, thinks she knows what’s best for Bonnie. The young girl needs a real friend, one that she can play toys with and have fun together. The dance girls just play on their tablets all day and don’t seem very nice. So when Bonnie goes off to a sleepover, Jessie forces her way into the party as well. But when the other girls make fun of Bonnie for having toys, Jessie gets cast aside, forcing her to confront her past demons and maybe learn to let go a little bit so Bonnie can find her own way to do things.

Or, at least, I think that’s the message the film was trying for. Honestly, the movie doesn’t really make a good case for its own message, in large part because Lily is too much of a controlling villain for her to have the same kind of enemies-to-friends arc with Jessie that Woody had with Buzz. When Woody learned he could let go and let Andy play his own way, he was rewarded by Andy then deciding he loved both of his toys, making Woody and Buzz co-leads of the toy room. But Lily is domineering and rude, without the charm to her character that Buzz had when he was first introduced, and she doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Jessie at all. The dynamic is different.

It also doesn’t help that the film shoves Jessie off on her own plotline halfway into the film, sending her (via a nice old couple trying to return a lost toy to its owner) to her old house out in the country where a young girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), is struggling with her own inability to make friends or find her own path through the world. It’s an obvious setup to get Blaze and Bonnie together, proving Jessie was right and the evil tablet was wrong, but it all feels very forced.

Also forced is the point where Lily realizes she’s been too controlling and decides that she’s holding Bonnie back. This is a good character moment that would mean more if it didn’t come out of nowhere for the character. Lily doesn’t get enough time to show she’s really learning about Bonnie or that she cares what her new owner wants or needs. She’s too controlling, too stuck in her ways, for a moment of self-reflection like this to work. She needs development as a character for this to matter, but these films are packed with characters now to the point that no one can really get development as there’s too much going on with too little time to make anything truly stick.

Honestly the best part of the film was the Multi-Buzz, a group of fifty lost Buzz Lightyear toys who all turn themselves on together (in demo mode, of course) and go on an adventure to find “Star Command”. This is a delightful C-plot for the film that never fails to amuse anytime the Multi-Buzz team is on screen. I could have honestly watched an entire film about the Multi-Buzz and ignored everything else in this film because the rest of it barely matters.

We’ve seen this story before. Jessie feels like Bonnie doesn’t need her, only to realize that Bonnie will always need her and that Jessie’s job is to help Bonnie learn and love and grow. It’s the exact same story we got in the first three films, just if you swap out Bonnie and Jessie for Woody and Andy. And it worked then because it gave us a whole arc, and new ideas, and it let these characters grow. But now, this deep in, there is no room for growth, no space for letting the characters breathe so they can find their path. “Toys good, tech bad” seems to be all the message this film has room for (even as it then half-heartedly lets the various tech-toys save the day in the end) and the film feels so weak because it really can’t find a way to tap into the energy of the franchise and find the heart it needs.

The Toy Story films used to be really good. They used to have something to say about time and age and moving on from youth. But now, with Bonnie a young kid who seemingly never grows up, it’s hard to see what more this franchise can really say. If Toy Story 5 is supposed to be the transition away from Woody so that Jessie can be our lead (which it doesn’t even stick as even Woody comes back for another round as a co-star) then I have to wonder what it was all for. This film doesn’t give me any confidence that the next series of films (which there will be as this movie, again, made over a Billion dollars) is going to have the ability to soar to the heights the first trilogy did. And if it can’t do that, why are we even continuing this franchise at all?