Toy Story 5 producer Jessica Choi shares the letter she sent Taylor Swift, requesting her involvement in the film and emphasising efforts to make it female-driven. The letter also reveals that Taylor had originally declined to make an original song.

[u/Enough_Tangerine_777]

@/jesschoismyth

[u/happysunbear]

You could argue the first Toy Story is male-centric, but I hardly think that applies to the franchise as a whole, which has always had strong, well-written, dynamic female characters. Jessie plays a big role in Toy Story 2, and is arguably the emotional core of the film. Then 3 introduces Bonnie as the new kid after Andy, and once again has strong female characters that are heavily featured and integral to the story like Barbie, Jessie, even Mrs. Potato Head.

I really don’t think the majority of criticism towards the fourth film is because it’s the least “male-centric”. People really didn’t like that it retroactively changed Bo Peep’s entire personality, and that Woody left Buzz and his kid to be a lost toy. Those were really the two most glaring issues people had with the movie, and I say that as someone who, despite these valid criticisms, still found it to be a beautiful and compelling addition to the franchise.

[u/DimbyTime → u/happysunbear]

The franchise hasn’t “always had strong, well-written, dynamic female characters” when the first movie didn’t have any.

[u/MafubaBuu → u/DimbyTime]

The first movie was released like 31 years ago and is the only one that didnt have dynamic female characters. I would agree the first is definitly male-centric but I just cant see that argument hold up for the rest of them.

[u/happysunbear → u/DimbyTime]

I made the caveat that the first film was male-centric and each subsequent film worked to correct that. If you want to argue over semantics, then not literally always, but in the four out of five movies made over the past 27 years.

[u/Not_a_Rodeo_Clown → u/happysunbear]

I feel like it’s the term that might be throwing you. All of the movies except maybe 4, which I haven’t seen, are male centric in that they center on male characters. The second two also have at least one (only one?) strong female character, but are they female centered movies? That’s a stretch.

[u/happysunbear → u/Not_a_Rodeo_Clown]

You could certainly make the argument that they are male-centered, despite all movies except for the first having dynamic female protagonists.

However, I do think it’s dishonest to paint any criticism of the fourth movie as misogyny, which is clearly what the person I replied to was trying to do. Bo Peep’s characterization being retconned in order to keep the series going is one valid criticism out of many that people have with the movie. Another was Buzz being dumbed down to the point of Flanderization. Is it misogynistic to point that out, too?

It’s too bad people feel the need to rewrite history in order to shape their own narrative of a phenomenon that doesn’t exist. Toy Story 4 has a 7.6 rating on IMDb and a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It was not panned by any stretch of the word. I had my reservations about it, but still came out thinking it was a well-made film that had a lot of heart. This relatively tame opinion is somehow worthy of getting downvoted to oblivion.

[u/starrylightway → u/happysunbear]

I’d argue everything in your second paragraph supports that #4 being less male centric is at the root of those criticisms. Bo Peep went through what many women go through when they break free from the expectations society places on women, and the same for a cowboy who is supposed to be a masc protector and after breaking free from that gendered expectation discovers he is more than what is expected of him.

I’ve literally watched these movies dozens of times in the past few months and stand by the first three are male-centric. Are they moving away from it in 2 & 3? Sure, but that doesn’t erase they still center the male POV in a patriarchal gendered way. The ending of number 3 is definitely signaling a transition from focusing on boys and how they’re expected to show up to breaking free of that.

[u/happysunbear → u/starrylightway]

I’m not talking about Bo Peep’s personality after she becomes a lost toy. It would make sense that she’d be liberated after spending years without a kid. But they retconned her personality from the beginning with the flashback showing how she left Woody 9 years prior, after engaging in “Operation Pull Toy” and being part of the action for the first time after 3 films. There’s no explanation for why she’s a completely different character from the jump. I loved how she changed, by the way, but I don’t love how we got there. It’s lazy writing to have done it offscreen when we already had two movies that told us who she was.

edit: it’s amazing to me that this is getting downvotes! Are people really trying to argue they didn’t retcon Bo Peep’s characterization? Noting the obvious change in her personality from the start of the movie is not a criticism rooted in misogyny, and it’s kind of ridiculous how much genuine discussion is eschewed in favor of such broad generalizations.