‘Toy Story 5’ Breaks The Wrong Kind Of Record For Pixar

Movies

Toy Story 5 Is a Pixar Sequel That Actually Finds Its Purpose

The new movie wrestles with an existential threat to the franchise—and triumphs.

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Dana Stevens

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June 17, 2026 1:31 PM

Pixar

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Toy Story 5 begins with a delightfully silly action sequence: A shipping container full of Buzz Lightyear figures washes up on the beach of a tiny atoll. Emerging from their factory-sealed boxes like so many sea turtles hatching from eggs, these puzzled astronauts are in essence newborn orphans, with no elders to school them in plaything culture or language. They can communicate only by using the handful of prerecorded phrases they all share, and though they are united in their tireless commitment to their mission, they lack the knowledge or experience to have any idea what that mission might be.

The Buzzes’ noble yet clueless search for their lives’ true purpose—to find children whose loved toys they can become—is a subplot that intersects with the main story only late in the film. But the profound questions posed by these gag-filled, mostly wordless scenes echo throughout Toy Story 5 . If the meaning of a toy’s life is to belong to a child, and to share the joy of creative play with that child and with one’s fellow toys, then what about the rest of us, the ones not made of stuffed fabric or cast resin? Do we have a mission on Earth beyond what came with our factory programming, and if so, how do we map our way to that unknown star?

Part of the magic of the Toy Story series is the playful seriousness, or serious playfulness, with which the movies have explored the concept of play itself. Each installment has found a new perspective on the relationship between a child’s imagination and the physical objects that are that child’s toys, whether they’re branded action figures like the stranded Buzzes or just a spork with glued-on googly eyes. (Reviews of Toy Story 4 were, by the high standards of this franchise, somewhat divided, and while I’ll concede it’s the weakest in a stellar lineup and didn’t strictly need to exist , I was and remain a staunch supporter of Team Forky .) Over the course of 31 years, we’ve seen a vast range of experience from the toys’ point of view: What is it like to be lost? Stolen? Displayed on a shelf? Demoted in the hierarchy of playtime favorites? Outgrown? Donated? Found once more? Passed on to a new generation of children?

With this fifth installment, Andrew Stanton, who has co-written all the movies to date (this time with Kenna Harris) and directed such Pixar classics as Finding Nemo and Wall-E , helms a Toy Story for the first time. The premise recalls that of the original movie, updated for the age of digital media: Once more a child’s high-tech new toy threatens to eclipse its older, analog counterparts. In 1995 the cutting-edge novelty was represented by Buzz Lightyear himself, with his electronic features and flashing lights. But Buzz (voiced as always by Tim Allen) seems as old-fashioned as a rag doll next to Lily the Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee), the frog-shaped interactive tablet who upends the toys’ lives when their owner, 8-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), gets her as a present.

After Lily’s arrival, the toys find themselves forgotten in dusty corners as their owner becomes entirely absorbed by this transfixing new device. Bonnie is a shy girl who has trouble making friends, and at first it seems as if the ability to connect to other kids online will serve as a shortcut to meeting them in real life. But a group chat she joins with three girls from her dance class—all addicted to their own Lilypads—leaves Bonnie humiliated after they mock her for still playing with toys.

At the end of Toy Story 4 , the gang’s longtime ringleader Woody (Tom Hanks) departed for a life as a freelance toy, helping lost or abandoned playthings find new children to belong to. Now Woody’s onetime deputy, cowgirl doll Jessie (Joan Cusack), wears the sheriff’s star; as Bonnie’s former favorite, she is especially annoyed by the perky digital rival who has replaced her in the little girl’s affections. After a series of misunderstandings, Jessie and her trusty cloth steed Bullseye wind up stranded in the bedroom of another girl, Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), who lives on a farm outside town. The toys call in Woody to help devise a plan to rescue the lost dolls and, if possible, save Bonnie’s brain from the all-too-familiar fate of being overly online.

What’s most heartening, and most surprising, is how consistently this latest installment in a venerable franchise makes an argument not just for its existence ( Quentin Tarantino’s preferences no…