Toy Story 4 and Toy Story 5 remind me a lot of Star Trek: Beyond. After Star Trek: Into Darkness, it felt like Beyond was operating on a much smaller, less important scale. It had (necessarily for Star Trek) become episodic. The story was smaller, but it lacked purpose.
Toy Story 4 and Toy Story 5 are smaller than their predecessors, and lack purpose. Like Beyond, they are very competent. But they don’t need to exist.
The original Toy Story trilogy is meaningful because it has a perfect arc: the first film is about coming into existence as a child and learning to deal with others. The second is about youth and finding purpose. The third is about the loss of purpose that comes with age and death. The full circle of life, told in three parts. Each film builds on the last, with incredibly emotional moments that stick with you for a lifetime. (The trash compactor in 3. Jessie’s song in 2. Buzz and Woody gliding together in the first film. “The claaaaaaaw.” Etc.)
Toy Story 5, in particular, really hopes you’re nostalgic for some of these moments. Focussing on Jessie means rehashing much of her backstory from Toy Story 2. “When She Loved Me” is beautifully integrated into the score of this film. Every time that song was called back, my eyes welled up and the waterworks began.
But Pixar doesn’t have to do anything to earn my tears this time around. The emotional wallop of Toy Story 2 has stuck with me since 1998. I can’t hear that song without breaking down. (Merely thinking about that song makes me emotional.)
So halfway through Toy Story 5, I realized that any emotion I felt was a cheap shot; it was a callback emotion. It wasn’t earned. It was manipulation.
Emotional manipulation used to be below Pixar’s purview. Their films were emotionally devastating without having to manipulate you at all. They weren’t cloying or saccharine; they were merely sentimental (in the traditional sense of the word). Pixar’s earliest output had so much compassion for our shared humanity that you couldn’t help but emotionally react to an old man losing his wife, or a couple robots falling in love, or yes, a toy cowgirl getting abandoned by her kid.
I don’t know if Pixar has that same compassion for our shared humanity anymore.
I would love to see them find it again.