Toy Story 5 opens today. The marketing spent months selling you Woody and Buzz. The director spent an interview telling you the film is Jessie’s.
Andrew Stanton, in a MovieWeb interview published ahead of the June 19 release, explained why Jessie is the true center of the film: “She was so ready to be the next leader of the toys in the room and so it was always on my mind from the minute I got brought on to Toy Story 4 — I made sure that we passed the badge on so it was official.” Tim Allen, who voices Buzz, confirmed it to WIVB: “It’s a lot about Jessie.” Tom Hanks returns as Woody. Both men are now supporting characters in the franchise they built.
The film’s premise, Toys vs. Tech, places Jessie at the center of a battle over a child’s attention span. Eight-year-old Bonnie gets a frog-themed tablet named Lilypad, voiced by Greta Lee, and drifts away from traditional play. Stanton described the film as “a realisation of an existential problem: that nobody’s really playing with toys anymore.” Woody’s resigned line in the film says it plainly: “Toys are for play. Tech is for everything.”
