On June 21, for the last time, we will join Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Little Bo Peep and their gang of toys on an epic adventure to save a spork.
While the previous trailers for this final Toy Story outing have mostly been designed to bring tears to our eyes and leave us heartbroken, this one is a fun and goofy callback to this franchise’s golden age and the characters we love – with a few new additions, like the aforementioned Forky the spork, as well as Canada’s Greatest Stuntman, Duke Caboom (Keanu Reeves) and a plushy duo voiced by Jordan Peele and Keegan Michael-Key. Bo Peep herself might as well count as a new addition, considering how much she’s changed since her last appearance in 1999.
The new trailer gives us a lot of great humor but very few plot details, so there’s not exactly a lot to discuss. Woody is taking a leap of faith on the back of a toy-motorcycle, Bo Peep is a daring adventurer who seems to have great proficiency at zip-lining, and Bunny and Ducky ambush an elderly lady – which, to me, is the most interesting moment in the trailer: in all the previous Toy Story movies, the toys have kept their existence a secret, “playing dead” when a human would enter a room – but here we see them literally attacking a lady. I’ll be interested to see if that has any consequences, or if it’s a purely hypothetical scenario, as it’s edited to look like in the trailer. Even if it is, Bunny and Ducky imply in their conversation with Buzz Lightyear that they’ve done “the ole’ plush rush” before – so…how does that work? Do the human residents of this town know about the animated toys waiting to attack? Why does this sound like the premise of a horror movie?
The trailer doesn’t bring much to the table, but it reinforces my tentative faith in this upcoming movie. I’m going to need that faith when walking into the movie theater – endings are the most difficult part of any story. I don’t expect Toy Story 4 to be a perfect finale to my favorite Pixar franchise, but it needs to be better than Toy Story 3. Fingers crossed.
Trailer Rating: 8/10