‘Toy Story 4’ makers explain why this movie is a thing that exists

Can it be all of 24 years since we first thrilled to the adventures of Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the gang in the world’s first computer-animated movie, Pixar’s Toy Story?

Back in 1995, the plot revolved around Woody’s fear that he was aging out and would soon be abandoned. In Toy Story 4, which hits theaters June 21, Woody reveals that he was probably made in the mid-1950s — which made him a mere 40-something in the original movie, but puts him in his mid-60s now. Never mind aging out, he’s lucky his plastic mold is still in one piece. 

So why bring the sheriff (and his posse) out of retirement? After all, Toy Story 3 (2010) ended with as complete and jaw-dropping a finale as you’re ever likely to see. The toys face death together in a furnace, then their owner Andy leaves for college and gives them all away to a girl named Bonnie, explaining their emotional impact on his childhood. Dry eyes when you left the theater were not an option. 

Given that context, we’re predisposed to see the fourth in a series as a shameless cash grab. With Disney’s marketing muscle behind it, Toy Story 4 could make between $105 million and $130 million in its opening weekend, according to Box Office Pro. Disney just announced a partnership with 14 brands that will promote the film. 

No wonder the other animated movie releasing on June 21, the terrifying Child’s Play, starring Chucky, felt the need to have some fun at the Disney-Pixar behemoth’s expense — by murdering Woody on its posters.

“I felt the same way when they asked me to direct,” says Pixar veteran Josh Cooley, who helms the fourth film and co-wrote Inside Out. “Like, ‘I thought we were done?'” 

Indeed, many folks at Pixar — including co-founder Ed Catmull and president Jim Morris — thought they were done. But unbeknownst to them, two other veterans, Andrew Stanton and John Lasseter (whose name, post-disgrace, went unmentioned at the Pixar press day for Toy Story 4) had written a treatment for another movie immediately after Toy Story 3. 

It was batted around internally at Pixar’s brick-lined Bay Area HQ, the team going back and forth for years on whether there was a there there. 

“We are our own toughest critics,” says producer Mark Nielsen. “We love these characters more than anyone. We don’t want to mess anything up.” 

What swung it eventually, he says, was the question of how Woody would react to new ownership, and the likelihood that nothing would be the same in the Bonnie regime. “That’s when we started using terminology that felt movie-worthy” — including the question of how Woody would “pivot emotionally.”

What also got the team excited: the emergence of new toys and old. There’s a delightful new character named Forky, whom Bonnie literally constructs out of trash. Voiced by Tony Hale of Arrested Development and Veep fame, Forky is the closest  Pixar has come to creating a punk character: nihilistic, joyously loud, possibly brain damaged. 

They love Forky at Pixar, where his portrait has pride of place in the cafeteria. Visiting journalists were given pipe cleaners, putty and other kindergarten tools with which to create their own Forkys. It was, I am happy to report, a blast. 

But Forky is far from the only new notable. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele appear in plush form as carnival prizes Ducky and Bunny, who also happen to be the first Pixar characters to use a Star Wars phrase (by way of insulting Buzz). There’s Duke Caboom, a Canadian version of Evel Knievel, voiced by Keanu Reeves, and the villainous Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a talking doll that surrounds herself with even more terrifying ventriloquist dummies. It’s as if they saw the snub from Chucky coming.

But most important for the team — and the one that emerged earliest in the process — was the returning toy, Bo Peep. Technically part of Andy’s sister’s lamp, Bo was seen in the original Toy Story and Toy Story 2 as a brief love interest for Woody. 

Woody and Bo flirted, they blushed, and … well, they’re plastic and porcelain respectively, so not much else happened. 

But in the heartstring-tugging opening to Toy Story 4, we see in a flashback how Bo and her three sheep were given away by the adults; rather than allowing themselves to be rescued by Woody, they accepted their fate. 

When she shows up again later in the narrative, Bo is the very model of toy independence. She’s practical, knowledgeable, carefree — even as she hides her cracked porcelain arms under Band-Aids. Her sense of self-determination is what ultimately causes that much sought-after Woody pivot. 

“Bo is the thing Woody has always been terrified of — a lost toy!” says Cooley. “If he just met any toy on the outside, he’d be like ‘well, I don’t want to deal with that.’ But now it’s, like, the closest person to him. So that was really exciting to play with.”

In playing with the notion of toys as independent self-actualized beings, however, the Toy Story 4 makers are getting perilously close to a question I’ve always wondered about. Why don’t they revolt? Why don’t toys like Bo go form a new independent republic, and work to free their fellow plastic souls from booger-covered fingers and other unspeakable forms of abuse? 

What would happen if a kid like Bonnie came into her bedroom and the contents of her closet decided not to play dead for once? 

After laughing about the unexpected horror movie that could result from that premise — in your face, Chucky! — Cooley dials it back. “We always want to remind the audience that they’re watching a Toy Story film and not a tiny people film,” he says. 

In every frame — and more so in Toy Story 4, the first true widescreen film in the franchise — Pixar has packed in visual clues to the characters’ heights and statuses.  

From the electric outlets and cobwebs in the background (the Pixar team went a little nuts with the cobwebs in Toy Story 4, writing a program just to generate them in true spider style) to the way that Woody runs with his arms flailing, everything here is designed to keep your mind firmly rooted in toyland. 

Woody may flirt with Bo’s independence, but like the family pet, there’s no way he’s not coming home at the end of the picture. 

Sorry, independent republic of toys. Maybe you’ll get your chance in Toy Story 5. Wait, will there actually be a Toy Story 5? Pixar isn’t ruling it out. 

“Every film we make, we treat it like it’s the first and the last film we’re ever going to make,” says Nielsen. “So you force yourself to make it hold up. You don’t get in over your skis. Whether there’s another one? I don’t know. If there is, it’s tomorrow’s problem.” 

In other words, get ready for senior citizen Woody, very probably coming to a cineplex near you sometime in the 2020s. And it too will no doubt rake in hundreds of millions of dollars with playful ease.