Today I went to watch Toy Story 5 in theaters with my family, my wife and our two kids. I have to say that when the movie started, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Most franchises don’t do well even on their first sequel, let alone the fourth. It’s a Pixar movie, so I know that the quality of their sequels is far better than most, but it’s still a fifth, so I couldn’t help but be concerned about the quality of the movie we’re about to watch. It took me a bit to warm myself up to the movie because of that concern. But it turns out I needn’t have been so concerned.

The messaging was completely on point, timely, very well delivered, and was told in a way that only Toy Story could. You know from the trailers that it’s about toys versus screens. It’s delivered in such a way that there are a lot of great life lessons that can be learned from it for parents and children. Again, in a way only Toy Story can, because we have this attachment to the toys from Toy Story across 30 years. (Yikes!)

I think it’s fitting that the series that brought computer-generated films to the world is the one to tell this. The story is about the effect screens have on our lives, especially children. Toy Story is a movie–which we watch on a screen–and it was targeted towards children. They could have easily shied away from this topic because it could damage their own brand, but they didn’t. They used their influence on families and children to try and help improve the situation for everyone. Hat’s off to everyone involved in making this happen.

Not to say that I think that watching Toy Story (on a screen) did anything to ruin my childhood or anything like that. I think that it did the opposite: Toy Story inspires imagination from a young age. And that is what their goal was in this movie as well. The series continues to carry that torch in such that it uses the technology available today to inspire imagination like it always has, but for a new age.

I have more to say about screens and childhood in the future. For now, suffice it to say we don’t regret raising our kids with minimal screen time, and that is coming from a software engineer that makes his livelihood working on the very computers that sucked away my childhood. Yeah, there is a lot to unpack there. Check back for more on my thoughts on the subject.

I was worried about how they’d reintroduce Woody in a natural way after leaving at the end of the last movie. But I think that they brought him back in the best way possible. They gave new characters more time on screen instead of being all about him, but they still made if a key player so we wouldn’t miss him. And they did Buzz right. I never was very happy with Buzz in the fourth one. He seemed too lost. I know what they were trying to do. Buzz didn’t know this, but the 4th movie was setting up Buzz to be the new person in charge without Woody around. Buzz isn’t entirely sure he can do that yet, so the movie has to have Buzz find himself. I understand the plot. I just never felt it really clicked because Buzz was always a leader and very sure of himself in the other movies. He knew exactly what he was doing (except the part where he realized he was a toy and he wasn’t actually a Space Ranger in the first movie). He’s always been very action oriented, and in the fourth one he’s just kinda lost. In this one, Buzz was the secondary character that wasn’t in charge of everything, but he wasn’t backing down from anything either. He wasn’t unsure of himself. I really liked how Buzz turned out in this one.

Sequels often struggle with finding the right balance between introducing new and novel characters and concepts to make the movie fresh, while keeping the essence of the existing characters and story. I think they managed to pull it off well in this installment. I was very impressed that they brought in all the elements that made it feel like a Toy Story movie without feeling overdone, while introducing enough new elements to make it fresh but not foreign. My hat’s off to the writers and the animators. 

It doesn’t feel like it has been long enough from the announcement until now to have produced such a fine film. I don’t remember how long it’s been since I heard. Two or three years? I know that feels like plenty of time, but to get a story like this right with all the pressure of 30 years of history this must have been on someone’s mind for a while. And then when it felt right and the moment was right, it came. Of course, it has been 7 years since Toy Story 4 came out (crazy, right?) so they’ve had time to figure it out.

And that is how Pixar gets sequels right. They don’t force or rush them. (Yes, something could be said about Cars 2. I can understand why people didn’t like it as much, but I still enjoyed it.)

This one was the right movie at the right time for the right audience, and I will definitely be watching it again once it comes out.