Toy Story 5 opens June 19 at 4,425 theaters, and it arrives carrying a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. That is technically the lowest score this franchise has ever earned, and it is still a number most studios would trade their entire slate for. When your floor is 94%, you are operating in a different category than everyone else.
Andrew Stanton directed this one. The man who made WALL-E, the most formally adventurous film Pixar has ever released, brought that same instinct to Toy Story 5. If you remember WALL-E, you remember a film that spent its first act with almost no dialogue, trusting the audience to feel its way through the story visually. Stanton does not make safe choices, and that sensibility shows up here in ways that elevate the material beyond what a fifth sequel has any right to be.
Jessie is the lead, and it is something the franchise should have done a long time ago. She was always the most emotionally complex character in this world. Her abandonment backstory, her fear of being put back in the dark, her fierce protectiveness of the toys around her. All of that has been building across four films, and now she finally gets to be the one driving the story rather than reacting to someone else's arc.
It took the studio three decades to realize what was right in front of them. Joan Cusack has been giving one of the best vocal performances in animation since 1999, layering vulnerability and defiance into every line, and Pixar kept centering other characters. The fact that they finally corrected course does not erase the wait, but it does validate what longtime fans of the character have been saying forever.
The film opens wide, the reviews are strong, and the conversation is already shifting from do we need another Toy Story to this might actually justify its existence. That is not an easy pivot for audiences to make with a franchise this legacy loaded.
If you are bringing kids, bring tissues too. If you are going alone, same advice. Stanton knows how to locate the emotional center of a story and stay there without flinching. He did it with WALL-E, he did it with Finding Nemo, and the early word suggests he found it here with Jessie.
Pixar has been on uneven ground for the past few years. Some of their best work got buried on streaming. Some of their theatrical releases underperformed. Toy Story 5 feels like a statement of intent, a reminder of what this studio can do when it puts the right character in the right hands and trusts the audience to show up.
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