There is something truly remarkable about watching Toy Story 30 years after the film’s release. Although CG animation has come a long way in the intervening years, the story remains undeniably compelling, in part because it’s much more adult than you might expect from an average kids’ movie.
The film is set in a world many children have imagined at least once, one in which their toys come to life when they aren’t around. Specifically, it follows Woody, a toy who has long been his owner Andy’s favorite, as he finds himself supplanted by a new toy who doesn’t even know that he’s not real.
Although it’s a movie about talking toys, it is also, like many Pixar movies, about what it means to find yourself being replaced, which is why it resonated with both children and adults at the time.
Toy Story became a total phenomenon upon its release in 1995. The movie heralded an entirely new style of animation and ushered in the birth of Pixar as animation’s chief architect. 30 years later, animated movies are living in the world created by Toy Story, and we’re left wondering whether it sent us down the right path.
Toy Story was revolutionary, but what has it wrought?
When Steven Spielberg made Jaws, do you think he knew that 50 years later, the summer movie season would be dominated by things like Fantastic Four: First Steps? Probably not, and that wouldn’t have been a reasonable thing to expect.
The same is true of Toy Story, a movie that virtually killed off hand-drawn animation thanks to its enormous success. The success of Pixar following Toy Story, coupled with the floundering of Disney’s hand-drawn animated movies, led to a complete pivot to CG.
Now the dominant mode of storytelling, CG is used across everything from YouTube videos to Elio, a movie that premiered in theaters this summer.
CG animation has produced some absolute masterpieces, including more than one from Pixar themselves. The world would be poorer without movies like Wall-E and The Incredibles. What the last few years in animation have taught us, though, is that there’s an abiding desire to move away from the Pixar style, which dominated animation for more than 20 years.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the first movie that made people start to wonder if mainstream American animation could be more than just what Pixar had established as the mold.
That move has been largely a positive one. If you go back and watch older CG animation, you might notice how quickly it becomes out of date. The Incredibles remains a great movie, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a great-looking one. Hand-drawn animation might have seemed stale, but it never had that issue.
Cinderella is 70 years old and still looks amazing. Toy Story ushered us into a more aesthetically impermanent world, and the result has been movies with great stories that can sometimes become painful to look at after just five years.
Pixar’s storytelling formulation became a little mathematic
In addition to fundamentally changing what animated movies look like, Toy Story was also the start of another trend that came to dominate the medium for years to come. Namely, the movies all started to seem kind of the same.
Pixar’s go-to move was to personify some non-human and then tell a moving story about their need for purpose, love, or family of some kind. They’re all about exploring a world, whether that world is a secret rat society, a spaceship, or a world where cars can talk.
There’s a reason this has become such an enduring formula for the studio. For a long time, it worked. The movies that Pixar made were profitable, acclaimed, and beloved by children and now by adults.
At some point, though, things became a little bit mechanical. What had once felt like an engine of creativity became something that felt more rote and predictable, and the movies stopped earning the consistent praise they once had and the consistent box office returns.
It’s been 30 years since Toy Story, and in that time, Pixar has made some true classics. What are they making now? The Incredibles 3, Toy Story 5, and probably another Inside Out.
To their credit, Pixar gave Elio a shot, but that only seemed to reaffirm the core fact that it’s not the studio it once was. Pixar can’t make all of their stories sing, and kids are not going to be sucked into every new adventure.
Toy Story is no longer the dominant cultural touchstone
When Toy Story hit theaters in 1995, The Jungle Book was 28 years old. It was closer in time to the release of that animated classic than we are to its release. Animation, and the kids that are often its primary audience, have moved on. Pixar loomed large in the imaginations of millennial children and was still an important touchstone in the lives of many members of Gen Z.
Now, it’s just one studio among many, and Toy Story, even with its immense legacy, is now more of a classic than the main event. Toy Story 5 is still likely to make a bunch of money, but the influence of the Toy Story franchise is not as seismic or significant as it once was.
Toy Story changed the world, but we might not be living in the world it built so much anymore. What comes next remains to be seen, but movies as special and seismic as Toy Story don’t come along every day.
Toy Story returns to theaters for its 30th anniversary on September 12, 2025. Visit AMC’s website for ticket information.
