Login
Toy Story 4’s announcement was met with trepidation on my part. The prior trilogy of films was as perfect as a franchise could get, including a closure that recalled the very beginning. How many other trilogies managed to be successful picking up after so prolonged a breather? Disney/Pixar risked depleting good will and making the prior films look slack in comparison if this fourth entry wasn’t, at minimum, entertaining.
Well, crisis averted, I guess, as Toy Story 4 is largely entertaining and capable of taking the franchise into new territory, be it with more films or shorts. But a larger part of me hopes that they leave well enough alone as the rust in the joints is very much evident. How many times can Woody and Buzz fight and/or try to remind each other of their true purpose?
Picking up back at Bonnie’s room, Woody is now the largely discarded and forgotten man. The cowboy that prided himself and knowing his place in a child’s ecosystem is about to careen into a mid-life crisis, or whatever the vintage toy version of that would be. Not only that, but we get a reunion with Bo-Peep, and an explanation of where she’s been this whole time, along with the franchise’s best new character in some time, Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves going for broke).
The problem is everything we’ve seen Woody go through on this personal odyssey has already happened before, and with more emotional investment in the previous entries. This is the Toy Story franchise spinning its plastic wheels in the mud desperately trying to escape. Brand fatigue hits different franchises in various ways, and there’s only so many stories of a toy’s obsolescence, and their fear of it, that can be told before it goes a bit thin.
Same goes for several of the new characters who feel like reskin of previous ones. Gabby (Christina Hendricks) is an abandoned toy gone to seed, Forky (Tony Hale) is a cobbled together misfit, quirky toys stumbled upon in an overwhelming setting (Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele), each of them have the mark of familiarity and recall comparisons that don’t serve the fourth entry any favors. In the end it’s still hard to imagine a better sendoff for this franchise than the third film and its tear wringing pathos.
