Prepare Your Tissues: The New ‘Toy Story 4’ Trailer Hints At An Emotional Farewell (Again)
Ready to be reduced to a blubbering wreck?
For an animated series of children’s films about, uh, toys, the Toy Story franchise can be markedly intense.
The first film was about jealousy, the second about realising you are not special or unique, and the third about how fucked up it would be if you and all of your friends were incinerated to death in a massive furnace.
Anyway, if the new trailer for Toy Story 4 is anything to go by, the franchise isn’t loosening its grasp on existential horrors. This new one appears to be about the isolation, loneliness and wantonness of creation. Fun!
How much mileage you get out of the below trailer will vary entirely on your tolerance for new character Forky, voiced by Tony McHale. He’s a plastic fork granted sentience by Woody and Buzz’s owner Bonnie. And all of the marketing materials have made it clear that Disney reckon he’s the film’s biggest drawcard — that neurotic utensil has been everywhere, from the teaser trailer to the merchandising line.
Which is a bold move: it’s one thing to get audiences excited for the fourth instalment in your long-running franchise by focusing on a new character, but it’s another thing entirely if that character is a warbly-voiced fork.
After five years of arms length skepticism to the very idea of TOY STORY 4 existing I’ve officially become That Person constantly scouring the internet for leaked merchandise images in an effort to decipher plot details. https://t.co/oxdyAlJKPp
— Downtown Griffy Newmz (@GriffLightning) January 25, 2019
Advanced looks at the film have also leaned heavily on Bo Peep, who has been given a new bad-ass makeover, complete with distinctly fetching cape. Looks like she’s going to try and tempt Woody into a life of freedom and adventure — and, if Tom Hanks’ comments concerning the bittersweet, teary finale of the film are anything to go by, she might well succeed.
“Sometimes change can be good,” Bo Peep says at one point in the trailer. Presumably, it’s preparing our hearts for the emotional smooshing awaiting us when Buzz and Woody decide after decades together, it’s finally time to say their very last goodbyes.
Toy Story 4 hits Australian cinemas on June 20, so prepare to have a complete existential breakdown then.