SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses plot details for “Toy Story 5.”
Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” doesn’t open until June 19, but fans are clamoring for every snippet released by the studio.
Beloved toys Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Jessie, Rex, Forky and the rest of the gang are back in the franchise’s fifth installment. The story picks up a few years after the fourth film, and things have changed. Aside from the new toys added to the mix, the biggest shocker is how Woody has aged. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like much, until everyone’s favorite pull-string cowboy toy removes his hat and reveals he is balding.
Voiced by Tom Hanks, the character still sports his trademark shirt and jeans. This time around, Woody has a red poncho and has visibly aged. He’s also gained a little weight. Speaking at a press preview in Anaheim last month after screening the first 30 minutes of the film, Andrew Stanton explained that Woody is simply loving his retirement. “He has a new purpose of not being devoted to one kid. He’s out in the field and not worrying,” Stanton said.
Stanton continued, “The bald spot symbolizes that he’s just worn out from not trying to take care of himself so much anymore — just doing whatever dirty work needed to be done to save a toy.” He added that the idea came during a gag session about older toys. Co-director McKenna Harris revealed that there were a few more gags that didn’t make it into the film. “We wanted to make him insanely sun-bleached, but that didn’t make it,” Harris said.
The latest installment brings the franchise into the modern age with the introduction of Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee). All the kids are glued to their tablets and screens. Bonnie, now 8 years old, and her friends use their devices to interact with one another via group chats and online games. Lilypad becomes the film’s main antagonist as the toys grapple with her. Are they in danger of facing extinction now that kids don’t spend as much time with their toys?
Stanton, who has spent half of his life on the franchise, clarified that Lilypad isn’t a villain.
“She is to the toys because they’re understandably intimidated,” Stanton told Variety. “She’s just the next phase in Bonnie’s life. She’s built like a toy in the sense that she wants to help the kid go forward, but she’s got very different skills and zero experience, whereas Jessie has nothing but experience and is probably unprepared for what to do.”
Harris explained that there were discussions within the studio about whether or not Lilypad should be a villain. “Lots of people at the studio wanted her to be a villain, and it was so hard to strike the balance because I think we all come in with such loaded emotions towards devices. At the end of the day, it never made sense.” Harris emphasized that the filmmakers wanted those feelings to be anchored in reality. “We’re not getting rid of these devices, no matter how hard we try. I’m always going to have my phone. I’m probably going to be partially addicted to it. So it felt right for the toys to have to grapple with that nuance.”
Finding the right person to voice Lilypad was a tricky process. Producer Lindsay Collins explained, “She’s got to be not likable, but also warm and appealing.” Lee was perfect because she struck that balance of being both. “The voice needed to not cross into ‘Oh, I don’t like her. I don’t want to listen to her anymore,’” Collins said.
Here’s what else we learned.
Jessie’s Story
Bullseye and Jessie with Lilypad
Pixar
There’s a new sheriff in town, and it’s Jessie. The fifth film places her front and center.
“Toy Story 2” revealed Jessie’s backstory that her owner Emily abandoned her. In the film, Jessie finds herself returning to her former home. Except, Emily doesn’t live there anymore. There’s a new family in the house, and the person living in the house is a young girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris).
Stanton admits that when he was asked over five years ago to write the film he said, “I wasn’t sure if I was interested. I basically said, ‘Let me go off and write something and let me see what I would want to see as a fan.’” In writing her story, he need some things needed addressing, one being that she had earned the right to run that room. Stanton jokes he also wanted to see 50 Buzz Lightyears washed ashore — purely for shallow reasons. He also wanted to address devices eating away from play time and what that would mean. Those ingredients stayed, and when Harris joined other aspects came to the front of the story, like going back to her old address and the issue of friendship.
Jessie’s storyline promises to be an emotional one as she is forced to reckon with some memories of the house, Emily and issues of abandonment.
Conan O’Brien as Smarty Pants and the other tech toys
Jessie, Smarty Pants, Atlas, and Snappy.
Pixar
Late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien is one of the new additions to “Toy Story 5.” O’Brien voices Smarty Pants.
Ever since casting the first film, Stanton has maintained a standard for voice casting: “Was it a memorable voice? Does it complement the character?” O’Brien was their first choice, and practically their only choice. It was a no-brainer.
Once he said yes to voicing Smarty Pants, it paved the way for them to cast the other voices that would make up the tech trio.
“I said, ‘I want somebody that’s low on one voice and somebody who’s high on the other because they’re always going to be talking together. I want it to be easy to know who’s talking when,’” Stanton explained. This led to the casting of Craig Robinson (Atlas) and Shelby Rabara (Snappy).
Smarty Pants was designed to help with potty training. His look drew inspiration from a toilet paper roll, and the toy’s digital display reflected toilet training iconography.
Production designer Bob Pauley explained that Smarty Pants, along with Snappy (an older digital camera) and Atlas (a hippo-shaped geocaching toy), were older devices. “With Smarty Pants, Bonnie would have had that potty training device when she was two or three, and that device could have been made five or eight years before that,” Pauley said.
In his design, Pauley added, “We wanted to build some nostalgia into that, so it’s not competitive in the way the tablet is. It has a low-res LCD screen like Snappy.” Once voice casting was complete, Pauley and the animators tweak the designs to complement the voice. Smarty Pants has a yellow handle as a nod to O’Brien’s hair color.
Blaze
Blaze
Pixar
Meet Blaze. She too enjoys her screen time, and has forgotten her old toys. But, she’s a kid who rides a real horse and keeps her animal in the stable. Her passion for horses is made clear when Jessie accidentally finds herself at Blaze’s house – it happens to be Emily’s house, Jessie’s old home. Emily has moved.
The introduction of Blaze marks a technological advancement for Pixar. Animator Matt Nolte was the lead character designer. “Part of the goals of Blaze was making her super cool, and someone that Bonnie would kind of look at, and if they met, would an aspirational figure,” Harris said.
But if they were going to accomplish everything and bring Blaze to life, authenticity was key. “We had a Black colleagues at the studio who kept us honest to whether or not her hair was feeling – the way it would feel, especially when it came to scenes that you might not see of her waking up early in the morning, and what might those curls look like and consistently along the way, it was just making sure the tech can nail that authenticity.” Harris adds, “She’s so cute. I love her so much.”
VFX supervisor Thomas Jordan added new innovations at Pixar in lighting and rendering allowed for the team to developa system for creating and animating fine detail curls. He explained “Each curve or curl knows about one another, so that they can bounce and collide off of each other, as well as interacting with Blaze’ shoulders and clothing.” He added, “Future Pixar films will be able to have a greater variety of hairstyles and diversity because of this new hair system.”
Bonnie’s Imagination
Pixar
In previous films, audiences have been given a look into Andy’s imagination during his playtime. Each time has been cinematic. This time, it’s about the Bonnie years.
Harris explains, “We’re introducing her as this character that you really need to care about, because ultimately, she’s the stakes of the movie. And so how do you fall in love with her, but also get this peek into how her brain works?”
In the scene, Bonnie creates a wedding day sequence with Forky and Karen getting married. Visually, it’s ephemeral and artsy. Harris says, “It looks like Bonnie handcrafted it and made it. But most importantly, it shows off how crazy chaotic she is, and random,” Harris says, referring to how Bonnie loves drama and turns the wedding into a chaotic moment. Again, it was reflective of her imagination.
Harris says there’s a deeper meaning to the scene. “It’s showing that she might be missing something, that she wants someone to share such a funny, awesome thing with.”
Collins adds that thematically, it was important to celebrate the imagination. “Part of the job of this film is to talk about the importance of protecting and celebrating imagination, especially in the face of technology.”
With this scene, the filmmakers took liberties with the look, and by doing so, she says it, “Further kind of emphasizes how fun it is, how great it is, how special it is to be inside your imagination.” It’s the flip side of device distraction, which becomes a contention point later in the film.
50 High-Tech Buzz Lightyears
Buzz Lightyear
Pixar
Pauley says it’s the first interaction with tech, and these are the new high-tech Buzz Lightyear toys with new digital chest displays. Even his joints have had a metallic upgrade.
Pauley explains that the idea of creating a shipwreck was fun. “It takes you off guard. You’re expecting the start of ‘Toy Story’ to be a particular way.”
But it raises the question, “Is he on the moon?” “Where are we?” “Where are the Buzzes?” Pauley says, “We didn’t want to confuse the audience and say, ‘This is our old Buzz.’ You start in the box, it’s a high-tech Buzz, you see his screen, and it’s weird.”
As they start to explore their surroundings, Pauley says he had fun with the environment. “The jungle is kind of like ‘Apocalypse Now,’ with beautiful lighting that was accompanied by harsh light coming in between.”
Jordan adds, “There’s a scene where the 50 Buzzes have their helmets and their lights on, and they all come up from the bottom of a lake. It just looks cool. That is definitely something we’ve never seen in a Pixar film before.”
Animating Lilypad
Bullseye, Jessie, and Lilypad.
Pixar
Jordan explains bringing Lilypad to life required two types of animation: one for her eyes, face, hands, feet and her body. “That was more traditional animation,” he says.
But there was a separate animation process going on with her screen. “The animators don’t have control over what’s on her screen, so when they’re animating her, her screen is black. So they have to pantomime what they think might be on there.”
Pauley says it wasn’t enough, so his team gave the animators a virtual pencil where they could sketch onto the screen to help them pitch ideas for what type of thing Lily might be doing at that moment. He says, “After the animation was done, a different group goes in and creates the graphics for what you see, whether it’s the pond, her version of an operating system, or all the different apps that are on there, or maybe she’s texting with friends.”
Composer Randy Newman Returns
Randy Newman, who composed the previous films, is back to score “Toy Story 5.”
Stanton declares himself “Team Randy” before anyone knew who the composer for the first film would be. Fast forward to the latest film, Stanton says, “He’s got this right level of romanticism and cynicism.”
Newman landed an Oscar nomination for best original and for scoring “Toy Story,” plus he won original song for “We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3.” Could this be Newman’s year? Stanton admits being biased to Newman’s work, and says, “Some of the best stuff I’ve heard him do was on this movie.”
Collins teases, Newman gets the “chance to go really big in this film too. He gets to do big Western cues.”
On the Use of AI
Stanton says the work of “Toy Story 5” was the work of artists and not AI.
He explained, “We’ve had machine learning since the beginning of Pixar as far as figuring things out for you occasionally, but it’s always been to make the tools work better. I have no interest in doing anything but working smarter, faster with another artist.”
Harris echoed the sentiments, “Pixar is a technology company first, and so things are changing. Pixar is figuring out how to change along with it. But as far as our process on ‘Toy Story 5’ went, we had to figure it out ourselves, mainly because ultimately, what you’re seeing on screen is the work of a lot of awesome artists.”
