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Toy Story, which over the years has become the shared memory of different generations, meets audiences once again with the series’ new film, Toy Story 5. Hitting theaters in Turkey on June 19, the film is directed by Andrew Stanton, known for animations such as Finding Nemo (2003), WALL-E (2008) and Finding Dory (2016). The voice cast includes Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Wallace Shawn — present since the first film — joined by names such as Conan O’Brien, Keanu Reeves, Greta Lee and Joan Cusack.
Some thinkers call “getting used to it” humanity’s greatest curse. Even when we aren’t the ones who created a problem, we have always been the ones left to bear its consequences. The people who reign over this earth have had to adapt to every apocalypse that befalls them — and, in much the same way, to get used to yet another “miracle” they created long ago. This miracle, remembered by some as an apocalypse and by others as the advance that carried humanity to a higher point, was nothing other than technology. Returning to today, our present climate no longer has a direct, mutual rivalry with technology. We lead lives in which the needs tied to technology are shaped by competition within the industry. Innovations once kept at a distance have, for a while now, been sleeping right beside us. Technology no longer comes to us; we find ourselves going to it.
We’re talking about a new world that grows the more it’s accessed, regardless of age, and deepens the more it grows. It’s a deep pit in which a child or an older person can just as easily get lost — or find themselves. Toy Story 5 sets off from this hierarchy of consumption. Eight-year-old Bonnie, influenced by her peers, asks her family for a new-generation tablet called “Lilypad” in order to make friends. Whether this novelty entering the home is a solution, or will lead to a bigger problem, is determined by what little Bonnie wants from a friendship.
Growing Up Together
When we look at this great success — stretching from the title of the first-ever feature-length animation made entirely on a computer in cinema history, to becoming a cultural phenomenon 31 years later — Toy Story is, without doubt, a series with an important place for each of its viewers. Just as the series has grown up alongside its audience, the themes it contains continue to advance as parts of that growth. Perhaps the series’ biggest difference from other major commercial brands is its ability to carry that same magic to everyone, from a small child to an adult who has aged but grew up with the first film. We’re talking about a togetherness that transforms along with us both as we grow and as we watch — one with the character of a familiar comfort zone.
While it’s quite difficult these days for a film to have an aspect that appeals to all generations, Toy Story, with its singular effect, has for years held a privileged power that reaches beyond that. This effect also has a connection to the concepts we’ve learned over the years alongside the characters. Throughout the series, we can speak of countless explorations of love, of humanity’s existential crises, of what friendship is, of the meaning of growing up and of what a home means. Toy Story 5, alongside these themes, comes before us with perhaps the most current and modern perspective.
Toys are objects that exist through the human mind and imagination. Just like the other belongings that are ours, they too become pieces we grasp through our minds. They can touch and resemble everything beyond their appearance. The existential crises, the search for meaning and the problems concerning relationships found in the series’ earlier films are handled in a way almost indistinguishable from the intention with which an object is used. This can be explained as a structure that advances on a plane equivalent to an object’s usability, adorned along different themes.
Toy Story 5 brings an electronic tablet into its equation through this concept of “usability.” Children spending time with various games on a screen, pushing their imagination aside, actually amounts to a mental reset of this act of “usability” as well. This is precisely one of the situations that spurs the other toys into action, Jessie above all. The narrative is built around a motivation that stands against the suppression of imagination and wishes to shield Bonnie from today’s digital damage.
From the Past to the Present, to Infinity and Beyond
While Toy Story 5 creates nostalgia for fans of the series, it also aims to offer a perspective on today’s necessities. Since the world is no longer what it was over the series’ long span of years, since the audience has grown over time, and since the series serves as a bridge between generations, its creators move with an awareness of these changes. They try to build a narrative shaped through friendship, the traces of the past and what is passed from generation to generation. They blend this with the desires born of children’s relationship with technology.
The Lilypad, bought after Bonnie’s request, settles in among the children as a tool for sharing, status and making friends. This new-generation relationship causes problems on a level equivalent to the partial fun it provides, unless taken to the extreme. The film touches on points such as how technology can create isolation through intense addiction and can make a person unhappier than they were before. The Lilypad — which we might introduce as a frog-shaped tablet — is positioned as an antagonism against the toys. It becomes the greatest obstacle before the imagination, which in this film is depicted in a pastel drawing style for the first time.
Jessie, who took over the sheriff position from Woody in the previous film, is at the very center of the story this time. Moreover, the traces of the character’s past carry a rather important dimension for the story’s progression. We see that the fear of abandonment Jessie experienced through her previous owner is also experienced by the new characters we meet in the same space. At this point, the film doesn’t veer into a mere conclusion like “Toys get abandoned and technology takes their place.” It tries to approach all potential factors with causes and effects on similar planes.
For example, we see that devices like an old toy camera or a potty-training gadget can also grow old and be abandoned. In short, the fact that the old surrenders to the new at certain points is depicted through different characters and cause-and-effect. Jessie, at the main body of the film, stands out as the narrative’s chief healer. She grapples with a set of realizations that extend first on Bonnie’s behalf and then to her own traumas.
The Telling of a Trauma
It’s worth touching a little on the attitude of Jessie, the film’s most important character, and her methods of coping with the past. Indeed, we can say the film has an important psychological subtext at the character level. In the film, we witness Jessie experiencing an existential harmony and a secure attachment through her first owner, Emily. This is handled as an avoidant trauma reflected in the character over the process that ends with her being left in a donation box after Emily loses interest in her toys. These repressed emotions surface after Bonnie loses interest in the toys following the Lilypad; they practically turn into a triggering element within a psychological frame. What Jessie goes through largely overlaps with post-traumatic stress disorder. The film, with its flashback scenes, more than underlines this unresolved problem. It even leaves the character directly in the room where the trauma occurred, offering a space of confrontation in every sense.
Before moving on to the confrontation, I should mention that the Lilypad’s position under the guise of a trigger plays a rather critical role in the character coping anew with her traumas. After the abandonment she experienced with her previous owner Emily, Jessie sees the Lilypad as the reason that will get her placed in the donation box again. To deal with this situation, complete with emergency plans, she calls Woody and explains. Indeed, she has panicked while standing before the triggering element. In an over-aroused state, she searches for various solutions. She sees the Lilypad as dangerous for Bonnie, because — a subject frequently handled throughout the series — she wants to protect her own “existential value.” She thinks that when she isn’t played with, that is, when her owner’s imagination isn’t at work, her purpose in life will be left wanting.
Jessie’s maturation and awareness come about when she returns to the space of confrontation. When she goes back to her previous owner’s house with Bullseye, she learns that someone else now lives there. She returns to the room where little Blaze — who is now energetic, positive and continues to value toys — stays; that is, to that first space where the trauma occurred. This room consists not merely of clean, beautifully decorated walls. It means a memory to which Jessie returns, along with all her fears, anxieties and sorrowful times. The character even points, as a representation of this memory, to the marks on the ceiling, the crack in the glass and the swing tree in the garden ahead. Memory itself still lives here, with its bad and good recollections, just as on the first day.
The Healing Power of Confrontation and Acceptance
Coping with traumas first requires certain acceptances, realizations and constructive processes that the individual forms toward themselves and their surroundings. Here, the first of these acceptances takes place through outdated digital toys. Jessie encounters a potty-training device abandoned like herself, a camera that constantly speaks of the past, and an old location gadget. Although the main factor that brings Jessie back to this space is the Lilypad, we see that this encounter turns into a healing process as her prejudice against digital toys is broken. For Jessie builds an empathy with them through herself. She sees the pain of abandonment they’ve experienced and feels that, just like her, they have a need for existential value. As I noted earlier, Jessie — the film’s healer in every sense — brings the potty-training device (Smarty Pants) back to life with a battery she finds. One of the points where the first stages of coping with trauma are established is precisely this part. This solidarity actually becomes an indicator of the empathy that begins between Jessie and the Lilypad. The character comes to understand that not only the toys, but the Lilypad too, will one day be left alone with this state of becoming obsolete.
Perhaps the most important of Jessie’s moments of confrontation in this traumatic environment is the tree she goes to in despair, remembered from playing with Emily in the past. This is in fact a behavior, again full of longing for the past, in which the character takes refuge under her helplessness. The buried box found beneath the tree is full of belongings from Emily’s past. In a photograph among these belongings, it turns out that Emily named her daughter after Jessie. The photograph becomes the greatest factor that repairs the value mechanism behind the character’s years-long trauma. Learning this truth isn’t limited to a momentary happiness or a smile. It means the reevaluation of all the negative emotions and false beliefs created by abandonment. Jessie, who thought Emily had abandoned her with negative feelings, gains a new awareness with the truth she learns and enters a process of healing.
It’s worth noting that Toy Story 5 doesn’t approach the Lilypad through “technophobia.” Which manipulation weapons technology possesses is emphasized in many scenes. What problems it can cause in the service of ill intent is also reflected. But in the film, technological devices reason thanks to their algorithms. Therefore, they have a more limited use than the emotional capacity of the other toys. For this reason, for a long while they act with a stubborn attitude rather than rationally; after all, they consist of feedback and commands. But toward the finale a breaking point occurs. The unhappiness Bonnie experiences after her friends mock her on social media causes the Lilypad to begin blaming itself as well. This appears almost like an electronic system throwing an error. Although these parts are handled a little quickly in the film, Lily blaming herself and throwing herself into the donation box means there is another character pushed into Jessie’s situation.
The other toys and the technologically capable Buzz figures rescuing the Lilypad is like a cooperation born between the new and the old. Jessie’s prejudices toward technology — along with the healing process she enters — give way to an embracing attitude. Toward the finale, imagination coming back to the fore through the friendship between Bonnie and Blaze means a resolution in harmony with Jessie’s healing and her healing role. The concept of friendship, the series’ main theme since the first film, is thus underlined once again on this occasion.
By focusing on a character who has been part of the series for years, Toy Story 5 leaves a letter across generations — to today’s problems through her past, and at the same time to the viewer who has a bond with the series’ past. Emily naming her daughter after Jessie allows Jessie to rebuild her values, while becoming a symbol of a genuine and emotional example for the audiences who grew up with this series. One can speak of occasional pacing issues and moments where the story becomes scattered. On the other hand, the arrival of sequels to series with such a large audience can be criticized by some with various arguments. But in the case of Toy Story, plenty of emotion about being human and growing up still lives, just as on the first day. The memory box Jessie finds actually belongs to us and to the memories between us and the series. It calls out to us in the first voice we heard, but this time from another stage of life, like this: “You’ve got a friend in me…”
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