No film franchise has ever had a good fifth instalment.
In fact, Chapter 5 is usually a series death knell.
Consider the evidence, which does not include reboots or prequels: Dirty Harry took his undignified final bow with The Dead Pool; Die Hard ended with the dire A Good Day To Die Hard; Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was a franchise low point (and hopefully a swansong); the Pirates of the Caribbean series careened downwards since the first instalment and crashed with Dead Men Tell No Tales; Harrrison Ford deserved a better send-off than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny; and whoever thought Jason Bourne’s perfect trilogy needed two follow-ups, concluding with the rickety Jason Bourne, needs to stay in movie jail.
Talking of perfect trilogies, Pixar achieved just that in 2010 with Toy Story 3, which was the pitch-perfect conclusion to their flagship series which launched the animation studio’s film division in 1995. It was thrilling, nuanced, gave audiences the greatest on-screen villain since Hannibal Lecter – Sunnyside’s charismatic, tormented and genocidal Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear – and had a finale so emotionally resonant that any dry-eyed viewer could legitimately be carted into a dimly-lit room to fail the Voight-Kampff test.
Failing to appreciate their achievement, nine years later and with dollar signs in their eyes, Pixar delivered a fourth chapter – a pseudo-epilogue featuring a suicidal toy and some daringly horror-coded moments. Bold as it was as a story about personal growth and coming to terms with life’s many endings, it still had an air of redundancy about it and couldn’t live up to the previous three films.
However, another sequel was inevitable, as Toy Story 4 grossed over $1 billion worldwide… And it’s with a heavy but hardly shocked heart to announce that Toy Story 5 proves the fifth instalment rule.
That isn’t to say it’s a bad film. It’s certainly better than its predecessor and does contain some of the series’ signature charms. It just feels like a slightly deflated exercise in recycling, as there are only so many times you can say goodbye to our favourite toys before it starts feeling like a studio-mandated emotional ambush.
Toy Story 5 sees the series return to Bonnie’s house. Jessie the cowgirl (Joan Cusack) is now sheriff and leads the toys as they face a new existential crisis: technology.
Unable to make friends, as kids are no longer playing with toys anymore, the lonely Bonnie quickly turns into an iPad kid when her parents cave and buy her a tablet named Lilypad (Greta Lee).
Addicted and forgetting about the true joy of “play”, Bonnie’s toys grow anxious about the tech invader and Jessie hatches a plan to save the young girl. However, this leads her to be separated from the others and having to confront her lingering trauma. It’s up to Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and the gang to rescue her.
Co-written with Kenna Harris and directed by Andrew Stanton, Toy Story 5 has the advantage of being extremely topical. It deals with screen addiction, social isolation, and the superficial bonds created in a supposedly “interconnected” age. Adding to this timeliness is that more countries are considering social media bans for under 16s – most recently the UK.
Commendably, the script never lumps Lilypad into the straight-up evil category and thereby doesn’t fall into easy binaries of “tech = bad” and “old school = good”, allowing for more nuance regarding the evolution of human connection. That said, the narrative comes to a disappointingly mild conclusion, almost as if Harris and Stanton lost their nerve and decided that their tale about intrusive and potentially harmful tech worked better as mildly advisory, as opposed to meaningfully cautionary.
Counterbalancing this disappointing aspect – as well as a noticeably weaker first half featuring a multitude of Lightyears – is the decision to give Jessie front billing.
Finally taking over from the Woody-Buzz double-act, her quest to help Bonnie find a real friend provides some tear duct teasing moments. Toy Story 5 also harks back to that heartbreaking ‘When She Loved Me’-scored montage in Toy Story 2, and delves into Jessie’s lingering abandonment pains. But here again, the resolution doesn’t hit as hard as it should have, and a lot of the emotional closure feels rehashed from the previous films.
Still, Joan Cusack is a treasure. More of her in films please.
It’s undeniable that even a weak Toy Story film is still a good one. This fifth story touches upon some treasured series themes like growing up, the power of imagination and loss, and it’s hard to argue with the warm-hearted climax. But as one forlorn toy puts it, “the age of toys is over”, and judging by Toy Story 5, the enchantment provoked by Pixar’s previous adventures doesn’t go to infinity and beyond anymore.
When that happens and the film feels like a Best Of compilation for a new generation which doesn’t answer the question “Did we really need a new Toy Story?”, maybe it’s time to finally grow up, put the toys back in the box, and rewatch the greatest Pixar.
Ratatouille. It’s Ratatouille. And if you disagree, you’ll only be proving 1995 Buzz right when he said: “There seems to be no sign of intelligent life anywhere.”
Toy Story 5 is out in cinemas worldwide on 19 June.