Woody and Buzz are back, but their new mission is not about saving Sid’s toys or escaping a daycare. This time, they are taking on the biggest villain of our age: the smartphone. Tom Hanks, the voice of Woody and a knighted figure in British hearts, has called the new film a mirror held up to a society ‘terrorised by its own screens.’
Speaking from the red carpet at Leicester Square, Hanks said the plot wrestles with ‘the quiet horror of a generation staring at a glow in the dark.’ In the film, Bonnie, now a teenager, is glued to a tablet, and her neglected toys plot a daring raid into the digital wasteland to win her back. The allegory is blunt: a child lost to addiction, a family alienated, and a dozen beloved characters fighting for a soul.
Hanks, who keeps a flat in London and picks up the *Guardian* for ‘the real news,’ said the storyline hits hard for parents. ‘We have all sat at a dinner table where someone’s eyes are on a screen instead of on their own mum,’ he said. ‘It is a terrorism of attention. It robs us of what makes us human.’
The film arrives as Britain records its highest ever rates of child anxiety and screen time among primary school children. The Royal College of Paediatrics has called for mandatory school phone bans, and last month a landmark study found a quarter of 14-year-olds spend more than seven hours a day on screens. Toy Story 5 does not offer easy answers, but it does show Woody trying to smash a tablet with a mallet. The audience cheered.
The film’s director said the team drew from personal experience. ‘My own son didn’t look up from Minecraft for three hours. I was terrified.’ He called the film a rallying cry for ‘real play, real conversation, real life.’
Hanks, ever the working-class hero, said he hopes the message reaches the families who need it most. ‘We are not Luddites. My phone is in my pocket. But we have to talk about the cost. The mental health price tag. The dinner tables where no one talks.’
Toy Story 5 opens nationwide on Friday. Rating: PG for ‘profound guilt’.
