I have loved Toy Story for most of my life, which is impressive because Toy Story has spent most of its life emotionally attacking me. These movies are not just about toys — they are about the horrible little fears children cannot name yet and adults spend the rest of their lives pretending they have outgrown.
The first Toy Story explores the fear of being replaced by someone better than you. Woody is not jealous because Buzz has wings and a laser. He is jealous because Buzz makes him feel obsolete in the one place he thought he was safe. Toy Story 2 navigates the fear of missing your true calling, of discovering that the life you chose may have cost you another life you were supposed to have. Toy Story 3, instead, narrates the fear of becoming irrelevant, of being loved deeply and then outgrown anyway.
That is why those movies worked. They were funny and beautiful and full of plastic people falling out of windows, but underneath all of that was a clean emotional nightmare.
Then Toy Story 4 came out, and while it is gorgeous, it felt like the franchise had begun circling the same emotional airport. Once again, the question was whether a toy still had purpose after the child moved on. It was moving, because Pixar can make a fork have an existential crisis and somehow get away with it, but the theme was too familiar. We had done relevance, and we had already cried about it. It was a topic that had already taken enough from us.
Now, the final trailer for Toy Story 5 is here, and I am already nervous, because it looks like the series may be doing the same thing again. Only this time, it has added a tablet, which means the movie might not merely be afraid of irrelevance. It might instead be here to explain that technology is bad, that children are bad for liking it, and that parents are bad for allowing it into the house.
I have not seen the movie yet, and admittedly, it may be wonderful (Pixar has humiliated my skepticism before). But right now, the trailer makes me feel like I am about to be lectured by a toy chest.
The First Three Movies Knew Exactly What They Were Afraid Of
The brilliance of the original trilogy is that each movie has a different emotional pressure point. Woody’s fear in the first film is not the same in the sequel, and Andy leaving for college in the third movie is not just a bigger version of Buzz showing up. The movies age because the fears age.
As a kid, you understand Woody not wanting to be replaced. As you get older, Toy Story 2 starts to hit harder because the idea of choosing one life and losing another becomes less abstract. Then Toy Story 3 arrives like a Pixar-branded ambush and makes every adult in the theater think about boxes, endings, and the terrible fact that love does not freeze people in time.
These were not sermons. Rather, they were personal stories with specific emotional injuries — which is why they got away with being so brutal. They were not telling the audience what to think, and they were quietly finding what you were already scared of and putting a cowboy hat on it.
Toy Story 5 Looks Like It May Be Repeating The Relevance Fear Again
The official setup for Toy Story 5 has Bonnie’s toys facing a new threat: Lilypad, a smart tablet toy voiced by Greta Lee. The trailer frames this as a battle between old toys and new technology, with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the others trying to survive a world where kids may be more interested in screens than in traditional play.
It’s a real subject. Kids and screens are the source of real parental anxiety, and I am not pretending Pixar invented the idea that children enjoy tablets. Any parent who has watched a child silently transform into a tiny gambling addict in front of a glowing rectangle understands the concern.
But for Toy Story, this also feels dangerously close to the same old question: What happens when children stop needing us? The difference is that the first three films made that fear personal, while this version risks turning it into generational scolding. Instead of Woody wrestling with jealousy, purpose or grief, the franchise may be pointing at a tablet and saying, “This is why playtime died.”
That is a much less interesting fear.
Pixar Can Still Surprise Us
To be fair, this is Pixar. The studio built an entire masterpiece around a rat wanting to cook and another around the emotional life of sadness. Andrew Stanton is directing, Randy Newman is back and the returning cast includes the voices that made these characters feel less like brand assets and more like old friends who happen to live in a plastic bin.
So maybe, the movie will be smarter than the trailer. Maybe Lilypad is not simply evil technology. Maybe the film understands that children using screens is not a moral failure, but another version of the same old problem every Toy Story movie has faced: Children change, and the things that love them have to decide what to do with that change.
That would be interesting to watch, and worthy of the series. But the trailer is making me nervous, because Toy Story used to be great at turning universal fears into personal stories. Toy Story 5 currently looks like it may turn a personal story into a lecture about screen time.
I hope I am wrong. I would love to be wrong. I want to walk out of Toy Story 5 embarrassed that I ever doubted it.
But right now, from the trailer, I am worried that Pixar forgot what made these movies hurt in the first place. The toys were never afraid of technology. They were afraid of losing the person they loved.
That is a much better story than an iPad villain.
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