Quentin Tarantino loves to share his very honest thoughts on movies. He sparked backlash last year when he insulted Paul Dano and his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood on a podcast where he also berated “stupid book critics” for not calling out Suzanne Collins for the similarities between the Hunger Games and Kinji Fukasaku’s 2000 dystopian film Battle Royale. In that same interview, he named Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3 the second best film of the 21st century, trailing only Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. But that praise comes with a catch.
Tarantino has refused to watch further Toy Story films, convinced they could only mar what he considers a perfect trilogy. Even a direct plea from Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton and producer Lindsey Collins to reconsider isn’t likely to shake Tarantino’s resolve.
After watching Toy Story 4 and 5, I feel like he’s right about the Pixar series.
[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for the full Toy Story series]
John Lasseter’s Toy Story was revolutionary when it premiered in 1995 as Pixar’s first feature film and the first major film made entirely with computer animation. Toy Story 2 followed in 1999, but Pixar had its hottest streak in the 2000 with a run including Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Up that was capped off by the release of Toy Story 3 in 2010.
The 15-year gap between Toy Story and Toy Story 3 is part of what makes the trilogy so perfect. The series begins with the cowboy doll Woody (Tom Hanks) fretting that he’ll lose his favorite-toy status after 6-year-old Andy (John Morris) gets a new Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) action figure. That fear of abandonment is also explored in Toy Story 2, where the gang is joined by Jessie (Joan Cusack), a cowgirl who spent years languishing after her owner grew up. But it’s an idea fully crystallized in Toy Story 3, when Andy heads off to college and gives all his toys away.
I was a little older than Andy when I saw Toy Story and in college when I saw Toy Story 3. I cried watching him wistfully look back at his childhood room while his own mother burst into tears. I suspect plenty of parents who watched the film with their kids got equally emotional. It was a chapter closing and a new story beginning – a perfect metaphor for growing up, but also an invitation to share the things that brought you joy with a new generation.
Toy Story 3 also marked the end of a remarkable streak of Pixar original films, and afterward, the studio pivoted to primarily making sequels and spinoffs of its already established series. The 2019 release of Toy Story 4 followed Cars 2, Finding Dory, Monsters University, and Incredibles 2. Toy Story 4 writers Stanton and Stephany Folsom and director Josh Cooley asked the question what a toy even is when they introduced Forky (Tony Hale), a school craft project made from garbage and googly eyes who longs only to return to the trash. He’s an apt metaphor for a film that has some fun bits but is mostly composed of disjointed pieces and scraps of plot from better entries, like explaining what happened to Bo Peep (Annie Potts) between Toy Story 2 and 3.
There are also some worthwhile ideas hidden in Toy Story 5, like 8-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) being teased for still playing with toys and Jessie complaining that kids using tech seem to grow up too fast. But those concepts are hardly developed because the movie spends so much time retreading beats from earlier films. There’s another flashback to Jessie’s time with her owner Emily, and while that plot has a very sweet conclusion, there’s nothing in this movie that delivers the emotional gut punch of Sarah McLachlan singing Randy Newman’s “When She Loved Me” in Toy Story 2. The swarm of high-tech Buzz Lightyear dolls on a mission to find Star Command is just another version of Buzz encountering a new Buzz model in Toy Story 2. The romance between Jessie and Buzz is cute, especially because it shows the headstrong Buzz being willing to follow his partner’s lead, but I felt like I got everything I really needed from their relationship from Jessie’s flirtation with Spanish Buzz in Toy Story 3.
When asked what he’d say to Tarantino about Toy Story 5, Hale told The Hollywood Reporter, “The thing about Pixar is they wouldn’t tell another story if there wasn’t a story to tell” and explained the importance of addressing the influence of tech on kids. In Toy Story 5, the tablet Lilypad (Greta Lee) is introduced as part of an apocalyptic threat that has turned all of humanity into zombies glued to their screens. But by the end of the movie, Lilypad and a host of other tech toys are part of the gang. The wishy-washy message is something like there should probably be limits on screen time and kids who prefer to play with toys should be able to find other friends who will play with them, but also technology is useful and cool.
The real reason Pixar has kept making Toy Story movies is that it’s a proven franchise that can sell tickets — and plenty of real toys. Stanton says he already has ideas for two more Toy Story movies. They will likely find new audiences of kids and parents, and perhaps the end of this run will be a sendoff that can top even Toy Story 3’s finale. But just as Andy decided it was best to give Woody away rather than bringing his treasured toy to college as a memento, you don’t need to hold onto everything you once loved. Just follow Tarantino’s lead, keep your happy memories, and stop watching Toy Story movies.
