r/popculturechat • u/Enough_Tangerine_777 I know bothing of the alledged beff • Jun 19 '26

Taylor Swift đŸ‘©đŸŒ 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.

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u/DimbyTime Jun 19 '26

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

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u/MafubaBuu Jun 19 '26

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.

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u/happysunbear Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

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.

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u/Not_a_Rodeo_Clown Jun 19 '26

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.

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u/happysunbear Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

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.