Bringing Toys to Life – What ‘Toy Story 5’ Can Teach Screenwriters

Going back to the same conceit over the course of five different films can seem like you might wear out your welcome or dry up the lake of a concept right before the very eyes of your audience. When I talk to people about the Toy Story franchise, a common refrain I hear is, “I hope they don’t make another one.”

The screenwriters and filmmakers (in this case McKenna Harris and Andrew Stanton) have always managed to perfectly capture the essence of what a new installment of the franchise needed, whether audiences realized it or not, and allowed them to leave the theater saying, “OK, fine, this one was great, but they shouldn’t make any more after this.”

Toy Story 5 follows along in that grand tradition of Toy Story films, eliciting that grumbling, having audiences begrudgingly admit that this particular film lived up to at least most of their expectations, touched on all of their required emotional beats, made them cry at various points (seriously, Jessie digging up that time capsule and coming to her realization was perfect), and reminded them what they loved so much about the films in this particular corner of Pixar village.

Toy Story 5 focuses on Jessie the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack), who has had the duties of sheriff passed on to her by Woody (Tom Hanks), who has gone on to a new life to rescue other toys in the wild. Jessie runs the playroom now for Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), and Bonnie’s life gets a lot more complicated with the gift of a Lilypad (Greta Lee), an iPad clone that drains the life and creativity from her, and turns her into a screen-addicting zombie. Since Lily is also connected to the internet and Bonnie’s friends, she’s also communicating with the outside world and sabotaging Bonnie’s personal relationships. It’s then that Jessie takes matters into her own hands, trying to help Bonnie make a real human connection with another kid her age that would be just right for her, one that would fit her personality and allow both of them to use their imagination. It’s not an easy challenge, especially with the highly technological Lily sabotaging Jessie at every turn.

The film is packed full of great lessons and high emotion, but what exactly can it teach screenwriters?

It’s hard to believe that the first Toy Story film came out over thirty years ago. If you were to look to an animated film that came out at the same point in relation to the release of the original Toy Story, you might be looking at Disney’s 1972 Robin Hood adaptation as the closest animated analogue. That’s a long time. In that time, the world we live in has changed a lot, but the rules inside the world of Toy Story hasn’t. Toys still have to stop when a human is looking at them, even when it’s completely inconvenient. That’s not to say there aren’t exceptions to this rule that haven’t been baked in since the very first installment. Toys can keep moving under the purview of humans if it’s in the normal operations of how they function as toys.

In the first Toy Story film, RC, the remote controlled car, continues his functions as an RC car, even though cars and drivers are buzzing around him in plain view, because that’s how he naturally functions as a toy. When we get all the way to Toy Story 5, it’s what makes it easy and convenient for the Buzz Lightyear drones to function without having to stop mid-flight because the gaze of humans might be on the lookout. They are flying drones — that’s how they’d normally operate as toys. As we reach the mid-credits scene of the film and they are floating to the sky as they reach their final purpose and ultimate goal: to bring joy to children. They’re seen by everyone, but that doesn’t mean they have to stop and grind a meaningful story beat to a halt.

That isn’t so true in other areas of the film where the Buzz Lightear Corps are on foot, or riding horses as a makeshift cavalry. When the penetrating gaze of humans fall on them in those contexts, they fall inert whether they like it or not, all of it consistent with the rules the universe laid out from the very first film.

Whether you’re working in an old universe or establishing a brand new and original one in a brand new screenplay, it’s important that once rules for your world have been established, you don’t break them. If you need exceptions, they need to be established immediately. Rules might be bent here or there, but breaking them will break the trust of the audience and that’s something you should never do.

The phrase “surprising but inevitable” is a phrase you hear bandied about a lot in writing circles, and it’s the thing every writer is chasing in their story, on stage, page, or screen. You want every story beat in your script to feel surprising, like the audience couldn’t quite see it coming, but you want it to feel inevitable, as though it couldn’t have happened any other way.

In a franchise like Toy Story, where they’ve taken five bites at the apple, it’d be easy for everything to feel rote and easy to guess, but the writers managed to formulate a story that’s very much surprising but inevitable. It’s not formulaic, per se, but it offers all of the right breadcrumbs that don’t feel obvious on a first viewing, but seen in the context of hindsight are perfectly placed so that when the narrative unfolds again, it’s apparent there’s no other way for things to have played out.

The script is deceptively clever in its ability to use every detail to its advantage when building towards the finale. Whether that’s Jessie the Cowgirl’s backstory and her original owner’s address, the interest in horses from the girl who lives at the house in the present, the seemingly disconnected story about a freight container of modern Buzz Lightyear toys that are shipwrecked on a desert island and seek out Star Command, or Bonnie’s preoccupation with screen time and inability to fit in with other kids her age.

All of those ingredients are put into the stew pot of the screenplay and add up to a climax that offers surprising results. And when you expect characters to make left turns, they’ll often turn right instead, adding further complications that only lean further into all the details that have been laid like so many careful mousetraps. Even the characters of old technology, led by Conan O’Brien as a potty training toy named Smarty Pants, who has a camera and an old GPS map system companion are used to full effect, acting as a bridge between generations of technology, translating between the new tech and the old toys, showing everyone a better way. They also become vital to the old toys, helping find the new technology when they’ve yeeted themselves onto a donation truck as penance for the awful things they’ve done. The screenplay is remarkable in that no small detail of character, setting, or story is wasted as the surprising but inevitable climax reaches its peak and the result is a fully satisfying resolution and denouement.

Part of how this is done for writers is carefully evaluating all of the tools at your disposal in the first two acts of the screenplay, every set up you’ve built, intentionally or unintentionally, and making sure they’re paid off in a unique and clever way by the end—especially in a way that works in harmony with all the other setups, even if they might appear as though they might be at odds with the others at first blush.

For instance, Woody and Buzz riding on adorably Pride-coded horses in their glorious ride into battle. It works because these characters have eschewed toxic masculinity in earlier films and have previously committed to doing whatever it takes to make sure the kids in their lives have what they need to thrive—an example to live by.

Watching Toy Story 5, Andrew Stanton and McKenna Harris aren’t shy about the role technology has in the lives of kids these days. It’s pretty obvious they have an agenda. Artists have agendas. All art has an agenda. Of course it does. And it should. Kurt Vonnegut often wrote about what he called his “canary in the coal mine” theory of the arts. He said artists were the canaries in the coal mine of culture and that we were the first to start choking and coughing and dying on problems, sounding alarm bells about social ills, because we were so sensitive. If artists were sounding alarm bells on things, it’s because we were on those front lines and seeing problems before most others were. Don’t shy away from those instincts.

Toy Story 5 is an excellent film for kids and parents to watch and internalize messages from as they look to disconnect their kids from mindless devices that may well divorce their children from their imaginations. That might not be something you care about talking about in your screenplay, and you might not be talking about things you care about in the context of kids movies, but care about something. Whether you’re doing it in the context of a movie for all ages or just for older audiences, think about how to bury it in the subtext more, but be certain you have something to say. Movies that have nothing to say are pablum. Boring. Nonsense.

Even when people “just want to escape” they still want to be uplifted. They still want to learn something. They still want to feel things. When they say they seek escape, what they mean is that they want to escape the things they’re thinking about in the moment. They want to go on an adventure as part of that escape. Toy Story 5 is able to blend that important moralizing into something that is both on brand and fun. And at the same time offer a teachable moment that was something the screenwriters obviously cared deeply about.

I appreciated it as a member of the audience. It’s something I care deeply about a parent. I have three kids. Two are adults, but one isn’t much older than Bonnie, and I see a definite correlation between the amount of screen time my kid gets and the size of tantrum they are capable of throwing. I also see the correlation between the amount of screen time they get and the amount of imagination they use. There are some exceptions where the two blend, though. If they’re using their tablet to play repetitive hide and seek games or mindless things like Minecraft with friends as we see Bonnie do in the film—they become a totally checked out zombie and often a behavior problem afterward. If they use their tablet to make stop-motion films with their toys and put on weddings and shootouts like Bonnie treats her Toy Story characters? Nary a behavior problem in sight. So, it’s a message that’s personal and relatable to me, and I imagine a lot of parents.

Consider that. What’s the message you care about that you can bring to your script? How can you make it feel universal? How can you make it emotional?

Pixar is excellent at this, and their best films do it. Their films are worth studying to see how they make character changes based on their belief in that central conceit.

Toy Story 5 might not have soared to the heights of some of the other films in the franchise. For some it might be the best installment. It’s definitely a worthy addition to one of the finest and most consistent film franchises in the history of motion pictures and certainly of the last thirty-plus years. Five movies of playing with toys that can make us cry? That’s a pretty good track record.

And the writing has always been on point.

Toy Story 5 is currently in wide theatrical release around the world.

You can find out more about Bryan Young at his website.