Forget the trail blazing animation, memorable characters, and wondrous worldbuilding; if there’s one thing Pixar excels at, it’s doling out emotional pain for customers who keep coming back for more. That’s quite the calling card for any film studio, let alone one ostensibly aimed at children, though the younglings tend to sidestep the carnage. Attunement to sadness, anger, and loneliness arrives at an early age, but it’s hard to imagine a 7-year-old fully grappling with Up’s well-deep sense of loss, or Coco’s marigold bridge of familial connection. Those tear duct assaults, along with countless other examples, have always been aimed at the caretakers in the audience, a mode of operation that owes both its genesis and throughline to the Toy Story franchise. Woody, Buzz, and their rapscallion armada of playthings may be fitted with visual markers that appeal to upstart eyes, but their actions and motivations have always been more adult, particularly in light of their owners. All they want is the time, attention, reverence, and affection of the up-and-comers, a wish list that’s all but impossible to check off when an ever-expanding worldview outs them as being washed up. Who could relate?

As if existentialism and the omnipresent fear of irrelevance weren’t already central enough to the saga, Toy Story 5 arrives with its own patented version of an oncoming apocalypse. Replacing sirens and scorched earth with silence and screens, the film sees Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the kiddo to whom Andy bequeathed his toys to at the end of the third installment, struggling mightily to connect with her peers. Her status as the lone grade schooler without a glowing rectangle to call her own ends when her parents buy her Lilypad (Greta Lee), a tablet-like device intended to forge community with her peers that ends up turning her into a pixel-addled zombie overnight. As the newly minted leader in the toy box, it’s up to Jessie the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack) to fight back against the digitized crisis, a mission that sees her revisiting the sight of her own traumatic past.

That neither Woody (Tom Hanks) nor Buzz (Tim Allen) came up in the above synopsis isn’t an error; the franchise icons, along with every other tertiary player we’ve met along the way, are pushed out to the narrative margins. It’s a novel choice by director Andrew Stanton and his screenwriting partner Kenna Harris, speaking to the quintet of films’ admirable reluctance to simply rehash what’s come before. In a less optimistic reading, it also hides the fact that many of the vocal performers from the 1995 original are now dearly departed, and the remaining crop aren’t exactly sounding virile. As the lone veteran with a sizable part to play, Cusack’s intonation comes under the greatest scrutiny, and while recasting such a singular drawl is unthinkable, there’s a distancing factor in hearing the voice of a 63-year-old crawl its way out of an ageless doll. Presumably looking to beat audiences to an obvious punch, 5 makes innumerable jokes at its geriatric characters’ expense, coming after Woody in particular, and most are dead on arrival.

Which marks quite the contrast from Toy Story 4, a flick that prioritized its funny bone and relentless thematic ambitions over holistic cohesion at every turn. Following the immensely satisfying conclusion of Toy Story 3 doomed that (extremely good) movie from the get-go, though Stanton and Harris clearly blame its middling reputation on clutter rather than sequencing. 5 runs a tighter ship, investing in Bonnie and another human girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris) to differentiate itself from the pack. Describing it as a feminist text would be overstating matters (real ones know that was that previous chapter), but the triumvirate of gals at the tale’s center do offer a patient rejoinder to the antic boys-being-boys energy of the four preceding offerings. In an alternate universe, it all might have felt fresh, but Disney has been drifting toward the attitudes and interests of the fairer sex for a while now.

There’s no faulting the Mouse House for returning to their more feminine origins, which date back nearly a century, but it does highlight some recent points of comparison that allow the mind to drift. Buzz’s clumsy, continuously thwarted desire to propose to Jessie is nearly identical to a subplot in Frozen 2, and the increased prominence of Bonnie in an otherwise fantastical world feels lifted from Inside Out 2’s recalibration around Riley. Given its runaway success, revisiting certain aspects of director Pete Doctor’s feelings-centric sequel was probably unavoidable, but Lilypad, and her position within the yarn, are too iterative of Anxiety to pass without comment. As an insurgent whose steadfast belief in their own way of doing things results in lessons learned by all parties, you’d think they shared space in a computer animated womb, an arrangement that’s far less palatable when corporate interests get involved. 

Monolithic entities like Disney shouldn’t be expected to speak truth to Big Tech, but 5 has only itself to blame for the wifi briar patch it’s ensnared in here. Coming hot out of the gates, the film’s first act encroaches on a Wall-e level of dystopia, with narcotized eyes in the thrawl of screens as far as the eyes can see. It’s persuasive and frightening, which makes the eventual pivot toward nuance all the more difficult to take. Whittling away at Lilypad’s forward-facing antagonism is par for the course, but the flick’s entire closing section relies so heavily on internet signal strength and bluetooth compatibility that it can’t help but scan as an endorsement of app updates as a balm to all of today’s problems, social or otherwise. Movies are allowed their opinions regardless of their maker, but the late breaking glass-half-full paradigm rings hollow when the opposing argument has already been made so convincingly. To paraphrase another public declaration that soft-peddled doom by painting disaster with snake oil positivity, there are good toys on both sides.

Then again, it’s not like any of us have the answers. Brave New World’s soma is here for us all, a tidal wave of cyber succubuses determined to smother men, women, and children alike, degrading our ability to interact in good faith, slightly expanding and greatly shrinking our perception of reality. These are woebegone times, and that’s before accounting for the eternal plight of a parent toy, cursed to pin all their hopes and dreams on a generation that’s destined to outgrow them. This series has always mined existential dreads, be they inadequacy, fear of being forgotten, or outright obsolescence, yet we keep coming back for more candy colored punishment. Toy Story 5, whether intentionally or not, amplifies the daily melee by stacking another end times framework right on top of the one that the franchise has made more and more imposing over the course of decades, daring you to cry uncle. The movie may be good, bad, or somewhere in between depending on the viewer, but that pain is real. This is entertainment for masochists, and it smarts accordingly.