Few film franchises inspire as much anticipation as Toy Story – but even Pixar wasn’t prepared for the reaction to the trailer for Toy Story 5.
When it dropped, fans were stunned to see the ravages of time laid bare on its characters, particularly for cowboy sheriff Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), who was revealed to have… a bald spot.
As it’s been 31 years since the first Toy Story film introduced us to Woody and the likes of Buzz (Tim Allen), Rex, Hamm and Slinky Dog, perhaps audiences shouldn’t have been so unprepared for this change.
Still, the reveal sparked reactions from shocked to impressed, to eventual acceptance.
‘Oh, I heard!’ new star Greta Lee, who plays Bonnie’s new tablet Lilypad, tells Metro of the fan reaction to Woody’s need for a brown marker, as her character suggests. ‘But it’s so cool that it’s the passage of time – they’re really going there.’
But what was the reaction from Hanks himself to this when he first read the script?
‘Tom’s okay with it!’ Toy Story 5 producer Lindsey Collins confirms, chuckling, to Metro.
‘With Tom, I just told him this is what’s happening,’ notes the film’s director and co-writer, Andrew Stanton.
He adds: ‘Tom just couldn’t stop laughing.’
It’s not the only change Woody has experienced, as he’s shown to have developed a little softening and expanding around the waist while out living in the wild with Bo since Toy Story 4, helping abandoned toys find owners.
‘He’s in his dad-bod era!’ Collins jokes.
Plus, he’s pushing the boundaries of his style by experimenting with a poncho – and his old playroom pals waste no time in teasing him about it.
But Stanton reveals there was, of course, a much deeper reason behind exploring Woody’s ageing in the new movie, after admitting that the team at Pixar were ‘running out’ of things that Woody hadn’t been up against over the years.
‘He’s been through a lot, and I wanted the pressure taken off him having to have some huge major inner development. But you live long enough, you realise your life has chapters, no matter what. Things shift every four or five years, and some are great shifts, some are minor shifts.’
In Toy Story 5, Woody’s shift is to his ‘been outside, been retired’ era where he doesn’t care so much to keep up his appearance for a child.
Stanton adds: ‘It’s just showing the wear and tear of how free and excited he is to be in his new stage of life, helping other toys, that he doesn’t care that he’s lost a string, he’s worn off on the back of his head and he’s let the dust settle a little. ‘
But the filmmaker – who was Pixar’s second-ever animator hired, and also directed Finding Nemo and WALL-E – also recognised the fertile ground for humour with reactions.
‘I also enjoyed the idea of when he comes back for the reunion with his old family, it’s like when you come back for Thanksgiving dinner – the old habits come in right away, no matter how long you’ve been apart, and I knew there would be some sibling rivalry with Buzz.’
But even knowing the creative possibilities Woody’s ageing offered, both were taken aback at the magnitude of the fan reaction, with a wide-eyed Stanton exclaiming that he ‘didn’t expect it to be so huge’.
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Of course, some remarks came from traumatised millennials who were kids when the first film came out and shocked to see the decades passing for beloved characters from their childhoods, while others praised the franchise for having the film embrace – and normalise – baldness.
‘I love that everybody was protective of him, everybody was like [gasp] “Pixar!”,’ Collins smiles, noting that there was a little ‘upset’ at them ‘daring’ to make Woody vulnerable like that.
‘But it was okay! I loved [the decision].’
And again – as we all should all know by now with Pixar, it’s never just for the gag.
‘It’s the embodiment of the reason these movies still work is because we don’t shy away from time passing. That’s what makes these movies work on every level, is that we embrace time,’ Stanton argues.
And with rave first reactions for Toy Story 5 already dominating discourse on social media, ahead of the official review embargo lifting, it appears that Pixar continues to hit a homerun with its Toy Story movies – with this one even more poignant than fans might be expecting.
While there were rumours of Toy Story 3 being the final film in 2010 before Hanks said that number four was it in 2019, we’ve still made it to another sequel with no sign of Pixar scraping the bottom of the barrel for inspiration on Toy Story. The threat of technology and Wi-Fi enabled gadgets for kids seems so natural for these films, given its prevalence today, that it’s almost surprising it wasn’t touched on in the previous film.
Stanton is happy to correct any assumptions that this could be the final Toy Story film this time around, though.
‘Who knows who’ll be at Pixar or who’ll be running it [in the future], because it’s different names of people on every one of the films. I just wanted to correct the thinking that I had always had since three of – three was the end of the Andy years, but the rest coming are the Bonnie years, and if it keeps going, there should just be the natural growth of Bonnie to another child,’ he points out.
‘As long as you’re honest with time and honest with how toys get handed off to other kids, it should always have a chance to be rejuvenated. So we just want to believe it’s possible.’
It sounds like they’ve learned from previous statements to prematurely suggest the end of a franchise before it goes on to break box office records and become the highest-grossing movie in the franchise, as well as bag an Oscar – just like Toy Story 4 did.
Toy Story 5 is in cinemas from Friday, June 19.
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