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For nearly 30 years, the Toy Story gang has kept coming back for “one more adventure” as Pixar finds new ways to break our collective hearts by showing Woody and the gang adapt to the changes going on in their kid’s – first Andy and then Bonnie – life. Change and growth are so intrinsic to the DNA of the franchise that it is starting to get awkward that Pixar and Disney seem so reluctant to let Toy Story move on.

We know that Disney has mandated that Pixar focus on safer bets like sequels, which require less marketing because they feature established characters and settings. And that formula clearly works, if the absurd box office of Inside Out 2 is anything to go by. With Toy Story being the most famous and iconic Pixar franchise, it makes sense they’d go back to that well again. But the more they bring Wood, Buzz, and the gang back, the more forced and counter-intuitive it feels.

It isn’t that I don’t find the Toy Story films magical and enthralling; it’s that the last two Toy Story films have been about the importance of moving on and accepting change. Woody specifically seems to chronically unlearn that lesson in each new installment. Andy goes to college in Toy Story 3 and, like a parent, Woody has to accept a world where the kid he has spent his whole life looking out for doesn’t need him anymore. It is a relevant and touching lesson that gets promptly disregarded in the next film as Woody obsesses over looking after his new kid, Bonnie. 

By the end of Toy Story 4, Woody realizes that he wants a life outside his kid, to be happy with the toy he loves and have his own adventures. Again, it is a beautiful message that was a solid capstone to the character’s journey of self-realization that mirrors every parent’s journey shockingly well – which is immediately undone by the promotional image released during D23 of Woody alongside the old gang (again) in Toy Story 5 looking on in horror as Bonnie becomes a screen addict like the rest of us.

I find myself so painfully conflicted by this upcoming movie. I think it is a great subject that many parents (myself included) are trying to navigate. Screens are omnipresent in kids’ lives but the dangers of overuse are becoming well documented, so the toys, returning to their traditional parental role in Toy Story, would struggle not just with being replaced by a tablet connected to the horrors of YouTube but also with how to protect their kid from becoming addicted to the flashing lights and dopamine highs these devices bring.

And yet, the presence of Woody throws me for a loop. Pixar is continually refusing to let a series all about moving on and accepting change… move on or change. Let Woody go have his adventures with Bo. Let someone else (Jessie) step up into the leadership vacuum that Woody’s departure creates. The stagnation of the series is frustrating because it undermines the message the series has built itself on. 

In their reliance on sequels to bolster Disney after a lackluster 2023 at the box office, Pixar is forcing their characters to unlearn and relearn the same lesson every time we see them.

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