Toy Story 5 opens today, more than 30 years after Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of Andy’s toys first changed animation forever.
When the original Toy Story arrived in theaters on Nov. 22, 1995, it was the first fully computer-animated feature film. It also became the beginning of one of Disney and Pixar’s most valuable and emotionally durable franchises. Over three decades, the Toy Story films have grossed around $3 billion at the global box office, while Disney says the broader franchise has generated $16 billion in revenue over the past 30 years.
That is the business story.
The emotional story is even bigger.
Across five films, Pixar has used toys to explore jealousy, friendship, abandonment, obsolescence, growing up, letting go, and, now, the way screens compete with imagination. What began as a buddy comedy about a cowboy doll and a Space Ranger became one of the rare film franchises that grew up with its audience.
That makes ranking the Toy Story movies harder than it looks. The original changed the industry. Toy Story 2 proved the concept could deepen. Toy Story 3 brought a generation to tears. Toy Story 4 complicated what many thought was a perfect ending. And Toy Story 5 arrives with a new question for a new era: what happens to toys when childhood itself is being reshaped by technology?
So with the fifth film now in theaters, here is one opinion on how all five Toy Story movies stack up.The strange thing about ranking the Toy Story movies is that even the weakest entry is still better than most animated franchises ever get
5. Toy Story 4 (2019)
Toy Story 4 is beautiful, thoughtful, and occasionally wonderful. It gives Woody a more personal ending, introduces Forky, deepens Bo Peep, and features some of the most gorgeous animation Pixar had produced up to that point.
It is also the entry that feels most like an epilogue.
That is not a fatal flaw. The movie has real ideas about identity, purpose, and what happens when your original reason for existing no longer applies. Woody’s decision to step away from the child-centered life he once believed in so completely is moving, especially after spending three films watching him define himself through loyalty to Andy and then Bonnie.
But Toy Story 4 also has to fight the shadow of Toy Story 3, which already felt like the perfect ending. Because of that, the fourth film can sometimes feel less like an essential continuation and more like a beautiful argument for why the story did not have to stop.
It is still a strong movie. It just feels the least necessary.
4. Toy Story 5 (2026)
Toy Story 5 arrives with the hardest job in the series: justifying another return after two different endings that both felt final.
To its credit, the movie finds a real reason to exist. The new story shifts the emotional center toward Jessie and Bonnie, while introducing Lilypad, a smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee, as a threat to traditional play. That is a smart contemporary evolution for the franchise. The question is no longer just whether a child will outgrow a toy. It is whether play itself can survive in a world of screens.
That gives the film a sharper cultural hook than Toy Story 4. It also allows Pixar to engage with real anxiety for parents and kids without turning the movie into a lecture. Jessie taking on a larger role gives the film a fresh emotional perspective, and the tech-versus-toys conflict feels true to the moment.
Still, because it is so new, Toy Story 5 needs time. The best films in this franchise gain meaning through repeated viewings and as audiences grow with them. Right now, it feels like a smart, worthy, and emotionally alert sequel. Whether it becomes a classic chapter is a different question.
For now, it lands above Toy Story 4 because it feels more urgent. It is not simply asking what happens after the toys move on. It is asking whether kids still know how to play.
3. Toy Story 5 (1995)
The original Toy Story is the one that made everything possible.
Released in 1995, it introduced Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Andy’s room, and the central miracle of the franchise: toys have secret lives, but their emotional lives are deeply human. The film’s technological achievement was historic, but its real power came from the fact that it was not merely a technology demo. It was a buddy comedy, an identity crisis, and a story about jealousy, fear, and friendship.
Woody is not immediately noble in this film. He is insecure, territorial, and terrified of being replaced. Buzz, meanwhile, is not just a toy that thinks he is real. He is a character whose entire worldview collapses once he learns the truth about himself. That emotional arc is still one of Pixar’s great early achievements.
The animation has aged, as all breakthrough technology eventually does. Some textures and human characters look primitive compared with what Pixar later achieved. But the storytelling remains clean, funny, and beautifully constructed.
Toy Story ranks third not because it is lesser. It ranks third because the two films above it took the foundation it created and pushed the emotional possibilities even further.
2. Toy Story 2 (1999)
Toy Story 2 might be the cleanest sequel Pixar has ever made.
It expands the world without losing the intimacy of the original. It gives Woody a past, introduces Jessie and Bullseye, brings in the idea of collectible value, and asks whether being preserved forever is better than being loved and eventually left behind.
That is a devastating question for a movie about plastic toys.
Jessie’s backstory, set to “When She Loved Me,” remains one of the most heartbreaking sequences Pixar has ever made. In just a few minutes, the film captures the pain of being adored, forgotten and stored away. It also reframes the entire franchise around the inevitability of loss. These toys are built to be loved by children, but childhood always ends.
The genius of Toy Story 2 is that it does not collapse under that sadness. It is still hilarious, fast, inventive and full of adventure. Buzz gets to lead a rescue mission. Woody faces a real temptation. The airport climax works. The jokes land. The themes deepen the first film rather than repeat it.
It is almost perfect. It is also the film that made Toy Story feel less like a single brilliant concept and more like a world that could sustain real emotional growth.
1. Toy Story 3 (2009)
Toy Story 3 is the best film in the franchise because it understands the full emotional cost of the premise.
By the third movie, Andy is grown. The toys are no longer worried about being replaced by a cooler toy. They are confronting the end of their purpose. That shift gives the film its enormous emotional power. It is about aging out of childhood from both sides: the child who has to leave and the toys who have to let him go.
The daycare setting gives the film a strong new world, and Lotso is one of Pixar’s most effective villains because he turns abandonment into ideology. His bitterness is not random. It is the dark version of what every toy fears becoming.
Then there is the incinerator sequence, which remains one of the most intense moments in any Pixar film. The toys do not escape through cleverness or courage. For a moment, they simply accept the end together. It is terrifying, quiet, and deeply moving.
And then comes the ending.
Andy giving his toys to Bonnie is not just a handoff. It is a ritual of gratitude. He names them, explains them, and, in doing so, honors the imaginative life they gave him. Woody’s final goodbye to Andy works because the entire franchise has been building toward that moment. It is not only about toys. It is about childhood leaving the room.
That is why Toy Story 3 remains the high point. It brings the story to its most natural emotional conclusion while still feeling generous, funny and alive. Other entries may be more historically important or more visually advanced, but none delivers a fuller sense of closure.
Toy Story 5 may grow in stature over time, especially if its technology themes continue to resonate with parents and kids. But for now, Toy Story 3 remains the franchise’s emotional summit: the film that best understands why these toys mattered in the first place.
The Geek is a working screenwriter, director and screenwriting instructor.
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