In ‘Toy Story 5,’ time — and tech — catches up with the toys

Woody is going bald.

Thirty years on from the 1995 original — the first feature to be animated entirely by computer — the franchise’s leading man takes off his hat in “Toy Story 5” to reveal a thinning crown.

The wear, it turns out, is finally showing. Tom Hanks, back for a fifth turn as the pull-string cowboy, leaned right into it.

“Woody’s been through an awful lot,” Hanks told Korean reporters via livestream Monday, joined by longtime series regulars Tim Allen and Joan Cusack, newcomer Greta Lee and co-director Kenna Harris.

“I actually kind of like that out of all the toys, because he’s made of organic matter, he’s got stuffing inside him, so he shows signs of aging.”

Hanks pitched the character as the elder statesman of the toy box.

“I view him as the seasoned veteran out of all the toys,” he said. “Walking into the recording studio, I had a greater responsibility than every other cast member.”

The franchise has aged in step with childhood, and childhood keeps changing — these days, faster than ever. Kids now reach for phones and tablets well before they reach for toys, trading playtime for screen time.

So it follows that this installment sets Jessie (Cusack), the cowgirl who now runs Bonnie’s room, against Lilypad — a frog-shaped tablet, pulling the child away from her playthings for good. It might be the closest thing the series has had to an existential threat.

“They did a beautiful job of that journey, and the pain of that journey,” Cusack said of Jessie’s arc. “Having an advocate like Jessie, who says your job is to have fun and make sure a child gets to play and laugh and giggle with the right friends — that’s such a complex thing to solve in a film, and they did it.”

Allen, meanwhile, had plenty on his plate. The 50 high-tech Buzz Lightyears that wash ashore are all him, and the actor said he had a blast.

“It was a laughing festival for me, not so much for the studio,” Allen said. He kept improvising as he cycled through the Buzzes. “Every now and then I would ad lib what one of the others was saying, and some of it I can’t do in front of children.”

The bigger shift in Buzz, he teased, is emotional. “He’s smitten with one of the other characters. He’s constantly tripping on his affection for Jessie.”

Lee, who greeted the press in Korean, joins the cast as Lilypad — a part she called a dream come true, having admired these actors since childhood.

The character, though, is less a villain than a mirror of how kids live now; the directors, she said, told her to find the device’s human side.

“As an actor, I couldn’t begin to think about how I’d personify a device that was actually very intimidating to me,” she said. One image stuck with her: a neighborhood at night that “looks like a zombie apocalypse,” everyone slumped alone on a couch, lit by a screen.

Co-director Harris, who spoke in an earlier session, made a point of not writing off technology as the enemy.

“If we could just say technology is bad to our children, wouldn’t that be easy?” she said. “Lilypad wants good for Bonnie, just like the other toys.”

“Toy Story 5” opens in Korean theaters June 17.

moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com