The toys v tech!
Stand by for fears, tears and adventure warn Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as they return as best toybox buddies Woody and Buzz, ready to fight their newest enemy: Lilypad
2026 Disney/Pixar
- Laura Rutkowski
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"Where’s the robot?” asks the voice we all recognise as Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear, Tim Allen. “That’s a picture of her at three years old with Woody,” Tom Hanks, the voice of Woody himself, jibes at Allen as I show them my third birthday photo holding my new cowboy doll… not the Space Ranger. Hanks continues, taunting, “Cuddly, cuddly Woody, because she’s sensitive and she’s enlightened.” “I get it!” Allen raises his voice in mock annoyance.
They’re playfully bickering just like, well, Woody and Buzz… I tell them I still have that Woody, and Hanks smiles knowingly and says, “Oh, no one throws away Woody… Buzz often gets lost in the hedges outside.” Allen retorts, “Because he doesn’t wear out. He doesn’t get a bald spot or a paunch.”
Both of those things are true of Woody in Toy Story 5. “Someone needs a brown marker,” Trixie the Triceratops jokes when he removes his hat, while the film’s new antagonist, a tablet called Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee, see overleaf), describes him as “Stuffalo Bill”. Hanks describes her character as “one of the greatest evil geniuses or benevolent overlords I’ve ever seen”.
RT’s Laura Rutkowski, aged three with her own Woody toy. Courtesy of Laura Rutkowski
In Toy Story 4, Woody said goodbye to his owner Bonnie and his friends for a new life with Bo Peep, helping lost toys find kids to play with. “Woody’s really embraced the adventure of sticking his neck out and saving toys,” says Andrew Stanton, who has worked on the previous four films and directed and wrote Toy Story 5 with Kenna Harris. “He doesn’t care about keeping himself pristine. He’s not owned by a kid any more. He’s living his best life. The wear and tear is showing, and he’s proud of it.”
Producer Lindsey Collins chimes in, “He’s in his dadbod, owning it. He has a lady who loves him, and he’s like, ‘what?’ We’ve heard – I’m not kidding – that people actually want a balding, dadbod Woody [toy to buy].”
At the end of Toy Story 4, Woody gives his sheriff badge to Jessie (Joan Cusack), who calls upon Woody when her owner Bonnie starts neglecting her toys in favour of the device. “I don’t think Toy Story 2 was able to put a cap on everything that Jessie offered to us in that film. We felt like there was something unresolved,” says Harris. “This film is a big love letter to her character.”
“I knew right away I wanted it to be Jessie-centric. She deserved healing,” says Stanton. “The premise of the movie is: our limited time with others can last a lifetime, but that can go negatively or positively. You don’t realise how much of an impact you have, so you want to be wise with your interactions.”
Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are the voices of Woody and Buzz Lightyear. Getty
“The age of toys is over,” the toys decry, worried about being abandoned and becoming irrelevant as Bonnie attempts to connect with friends by playing games and chatting on Lilypad. Buzz also has a new look in the form of 50 hi-tech edition action figures stuck in play mode who wash ashore from a shipping container.
Toys versus tech is a natural progression for the franchise to take, but Pixar doesn’t take a side, rather framing devices as something that are here to stay, whether we like it or not. Collins says, “At the end of one of our screenings, the parents were like, ‘But what’s the answer, Pixar?’ And we were like, ‘We don’t have it.’ But we helped Bonnie.”
Does Pixar worry about AI in the same way the toys do? “It’s a big amorphous unknown. It’s like saying, ‘What do you think of fire?’ Well, I think it can burn people, and I think it can warm you,” says Stanton.
“We’ve been working with machine learning and advanced technology since the beginning, and it’s constantly changing, so we know there are better ways than others to work with things, but we always have a specific goal with our tools. We want to make life easier for the artists, and make it more inspiring and useful for them, so they can keep talking to each other – it’s not to exclude them or remove them.”
Were Hanks and Allen surprised Woody was back after his and Buzz’s emotional goodbye in Toy Story 4? “I thought 3 was the end of it,” says Allen – the third film ended with the toys’ original owner, Andy, who was going to keep Woody and take him to university, deciding to hand him and all of his other toys to Bonnie.
We had moments where we were undone emotionally
Tom Hanks
“We’ve had more than one moment where we were in a recording studio and we were undone emotionally and had tearful drives home,” says Hanks. “People would ask, ‘How’d that go?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, we said goodbye. I can’t believe it’s come to an end in the blink of an eye like that… Who am I?’ We have these existential conversations.”
When it came to Buzz and Woody seeing each other again, Allen suggested they needed an appropriate scene for their reunion. “I love script and I love storytelling, and I sometimes ask questions. I said [to the filmmakers] that I had such a hard time saying goodbye to this man in 4 that you’ve got to have a moment where they connect and Buzz sees that he’s back. That moment is simple and short, but it happens.”
In 2025, Toy Story, the first feature‑length computer‑animated film in history, turned 30, and Pixar celebrated its 40th anniversary in February 2026. The franchise has been a part of the cast’s lives for a very long time, but when Hanks and Allen first met in 1995, it went a bit like Woody and Buzz’s first encounter. Allen recalls that Hanks ate chips off his plate at lunch. “I come from a huge family, and you don’t do that, and it was really annoying. He was like, ‘Oh, lighten up.’ It wasn’t funny to me.”
Hanks laughs about it now adding, “It was quite a meet-cute, I think. What, you’re so important that I can’t touch your French fries? What, are they made of gold? I’m sorry.” “Just eat them, take them…” Allen sighs. Hanks bats back, “You want some of my coleslaw? Go ahead, use your fingers, I don’t care.” Now Allen is chuckling. “I just don’t order them if we’re eating together.” There’s that banter again. They have clearly moved past the incident.
Jessie and pals try to find a real friend for Bonnie. 2026 Disney/Pixar.
“I always heard that Abbott and Costello [American comedy duo made up of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello] didn’t really like each other, or didn’t have anything to say to each other,” says Hanks. “That would be tough. I think he’s [Allen] a fascinating guy to listen to.” “The actual friendship in Woody and Buzz came from a connection when they finally get to be buddies,” says Allen. “I do definitely respect and like this guy [Hanks].”
Hanks adds, “Somewhere between films one and two, I said, ‘Oh, I see what has to happen. We actually have to go there.’ Inside the recesses of my inner self as an actor, I said there is an emotional place that if it’s not here right now, if I don’t get to it, it won’t be in the movie. There’s an emotional task that is going to cause me all sorts of loss of sleep and self-loathing: Did I get there? Did we get there? Did it work?”
Toy Story is the most-viewed film franchise on Disney+ globally, has 11 Oscar nominations and four wins; the first four films have grossed over £200m in the UK and Ireland; and since 2020, Disney Store has sold enough Woody, Jessie and Buzz figures to fill Wembley almost seven times over, so you could say it worked. Not to mention the tears shed over the storylines and what the characters mean to audiences.
“We’re in this cuckoo business, and on one hand, you can’t imagine doing anything else, but on the other hand it’s like, ‘Do you have as many sleepless nights as I do?’” muses Hanks. Sleepless nights about Woody and Buzz? “Yes, and everything that comes with it. We both realised that to two- or three-year-old kids somewhere, us being in the same room with them is a big deal, and you cannot discount that.”
“It invites gratitude and humility, and I’m honoured,” says Allen.
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“It’s like, ‘Young man, young lady, your investment is appreciated,’” adds Hanks. He could be speaking to my three-year-old self as much as he’s talking to children whose first Toy Story might be this fifth one. “They should just call this the next Toy Story, as opposed to putting a number on it,” says Hanks. In that case – to infinity, and beyond!
Authors
Laura Rutkowski
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