The Toy Story franchise returned to theaters this weekend, with the fifth installment, Toy Story 5, releasing on Friday.
This time around, the story is focused on Jessie, the lovable cowgirl, as she tries to navigate the infiltration of technology into her child's life. Jessie, Buzz, Woody, and the gang of toys have to battle Lilypad, a tablet set on pushing them from play time and into a box in the garage.
As part of the story, a gaggle of fresh-out-of-the-box Buzz Lightyear toys trek across the countryside to join up with Star Command — in this case, Jessie — and it leads to a wonderful homage to a Disney classic from 1942. The group of Buzz Lightyears stumble across a deer and a rabbit, something which was a purposeful nod from the writing and directing duo of McKenna Harris and Andrew Stanton.
For true fans of Disney's deep catalog of iconic animated movies, the scene was extra emotional. As the Buzz Lightyears mingled with the stand-ins for Bambi and Thumper, a familiar song played. Stanton recommended they use "Love Is A Song," the beautiful theme from Bambi.
“We had the scene boarded — the Buzzes all in nature, meeting these animals — but we didn't have a track in mind and something wasn’t really clicking,” explained Harris. “Andrew [Stanton] was like, ‘This is an homage to Bambi. What if we put in the music?’ We said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘No, no — the track.’ And he put it on the scene and suddenly all of us were just... it immediately became the full form you see in the film.”
“It started as a nod and became a full homage,” said Lindsey Collins, a producer on the movie. “We were just like — commit. Got to commit. And the surrealness of 50 Buzz Lightyears in a scene from Bambi is like, ‘What is happening?’ That storyline always needed to feel like you didn’t know where it was going. Every scene had to lean into the surrealness of it.”
The Bambi nod is far from the only Easter egg or homage to previous Disney and Pixar projects, but it's a sweet one.
Toy Story 5 has been a massive success so far, expected to bring in a total of $312 million in global ticket sales. That's good enough for the highest grossing film in blockbuster-heavy June, beating out Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day, Masters of the Universe, and Scary Movie 6 in just one weekend. It has also already passed the surprise success of indie horror flick Backrooms ($300 million), which released in May.
On top of the monetary success at the box office, Toy Story 5 has also been met with critical acclaim. The latest installment scored 94% from critics and 95% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning all five movies in the franchise have earned above 90%.
The newest installment of the franchise returns the voice talents of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Keanu Reeves, Tony Hale, and Wallace Shawn, while adding Greta Lee, Craig Robinson, Bad Bunny, and the very funny Conan O'Brien—as a talking potty training device—to the mix.
Toy Story 5 is in theaters nationwide now.
