Well, partner! This article contains spoilers for Toy Story 5.
Since 1995, Toy Story has been about how children outgrow their toys from the toy’s point of view. The latest, Toy Story 5, explores this across a generation. Today’s kids turn to screens and games and/or social media on them for entertainment. To paraphrase the ring-loving Dark Lord, the time for dolls is over. The age of the tablet has arrived.
Toy Story 5 explores how toys can become obsolete when confronted with technologyand the central POV belongs to the experienced toy being replaced: Jessie (Joan Cusack). One of the most famous sequences in her debut film, Toy Story 2, is the backstory of her music montage. Jessie was once the favorite toy of a little girl named Emily, but as Emily grew up, like all girls, she became less interested in groceries and more interested in make-up, boys, etc. One day, teenage Emily left Jessie in a donation box, and that was the last the once best friends saw of each other. The sequence has no dialogue because all it needs are the painful words of “When She Loved Me” sung by Sarah McLachlan.
Jessie, who is also the leader of Bonnie’s toys after Woody (Tom Hanks) appointed her as sheriff at the end of Toy Story 4, is most resentful of Bonnie’s (Greta Lee) new Lilypad and the threat she poses. While Emily was growing up, Jessie was neglected for years, and she resents the fact that screens make children grow up and escape their imaginations instantly, rather than gradually over the years of childhood.
In Toy Story 5, Jessie’s job is to prove that toys are still Bonnie’s best way to make friends, and this brings her back to the beginning of her own Toy Story.
Toy Story 5 revisits Jesse’s past with horrific results
Jessie still has Emily’s name and address written on the inside lining of her pants, so long story short when she and Bear are found on the sidewalk, the elderly couple takes them to Emily’s old house, not Bonnie’s. Emily has been gone for a long time, and a new family has moved in. Jesse tries to arrange the reunion of the young daughter of the family Blaze (Michael-Michelle Harris) and Bonnie. When things go badly, she despairs, concluding that her fears about her own uselessness were right.
She goes to a familiar spot, the tire swing on the hill where she and Emily used to play years ago. The tree now has a new feature: “Jesse was here” carved into it. After some (literal) digging, Jesse finds a box buried under the carvings. There are effects from the 1980s inside, including a card that reveals who the said “Jessie” is: Emily’s daughter. This revelation restores Jessie’s faith as she realizes that Emily has never forgotten her or the happiness they had when they played together.
Toy Story 2’s When She Loved Me has been making everyone, from kids to parents, cry for 27 years. “Toy Story 5” reveals everything, but without discounting Jesse’s abandonment may have given up on Jesse’s plan to literally reunite with the much older Emily.
Toy Story 4 kept Jessie in a supporting role, and her performance as the main character of the fifth installment seems like a reward. The film that concludes her arc, as shown in Toy Story 2, is the greatest proof admittedly, the uneven Toy Story 5 still holds the heart of the series.
Toy Story 5 is now in theaters.