!!! ... I like it! It seems very Jessie-focused, which I love since she's my personal favorite of the crew and got sidelined pretty hard in 3 and 4. Hope she gets a lot of moments to shine here. Joan is clearly older here, but it's an older Jessie and the performance is great so far. Very glad to see them in the bulk of the trailer!
I like how there is almost a slight tone of something like an apocalypse film, with Woody and Jessie communicating via beat-up "radios" (walkie-talkies), Woody out there rescuing increasing waves of lost toys as a lone ranger-type hero, and a real existential threat for the status quo of toys and kids. Toys getting thrown out was kind of the worst thing that could happen in TS1-4, but challenging the idea that kids would even want to play with toys at all is unique and interesting for the series.
I also enjoy seeing a new rivalry form between Woody and Buzz within their individual leadership / hero roles they've found. Buzz has also been strangely side-lined for most of the series after Toy Story 2. They just haven't been able to crack a good story for him since he woke up from his delusion in TS1 and stood up strong for Woody and against Pete in TS2. They just made him deluded again for most of 3, and 4 only kinda began to give him a
little bit of agency in a story that was still clearly Woody's. Hope he gets a solid amount of characterization here, as that's definitely a weakpoint for most of the sequels up to now. A non-deluded rivalry is potentially really exciting to me.
In the time since I made the posts on the first page of this thread, I have realized that I absolutely
adore the Toy Story franchise with my entire being, and have come around on this movie quite a bit. It's been awhile now since Toy Story 4, and the tech stuff has only gotten more omnipresent in real life, so my initial worries of a short-sighted Ralph Breaks the Internet-type situation have faded with time. I really hope they can stick the landing here!
I think I'm mostly just excited to see these characters again, where they've been and where life takes them. Making all these sequels could've totally ended up cash-grabby in different hands, but I really love how much the teams working on these films care about getting these characters' right.
Something I love about TS3 and TS4 is how it shows these older characters after their initial "happily-ever-after" moments, still dealing with the daily grind and major life changes, relapses and struggles, new relationships and real loss. It's silly, but it's honestly kinda cathartic to see these characters struggle with life the same way we do; cause we don't get Credits sequences set to Randy Newman songs. Life goes on, people come and go, and growth isn't linear. Especially over these rough past two years, I've really learned to deeply love that aspect of the series, and I'm very excited to see where the team takes these characters next.
Genuinely insane haha.