The Toy Story franchise may have left us with an all-time touching moment at the end of Episode III, but alas, the story is not finished. Woody, Buzz, and friends are back this upcoming summer with an all-new adventure, and while this isn't exactly a trailer per se, it is our first good look at our old friends ahead of their impending return. You can watch the teaser below...
You really have two options to do a teaser like this correctly. The first option is to show real footage from the movie. While I can't guarantee you this isn't real footage from the movie, I certainly wouldn't bet on it. The second option is to create something new that captures the spirit of why we all loved the original in the first place, and this teaser does that really well. It captures the incredibly close relationship between the toys and how they sometimes feel like family. Then after doing that, it captures the dysfunctional and sometimes combative relationship between the toys, which also makes them feel like family.
Also, there's a talking spork.
Our beautiful and harmonious moment with our old friends is broken up by a screaming spork with pipe cleaner arms screaming "I Don't Belong Here." Needless to say, he doesn't. We've never seen this guy before and this little glimpse doesn't really give us much clue who he is or how he's going to fit into this brand new story. He's not exactly what we were expecting.
According to material released by Disney, this new little guy is named Forky, and as he appears, Forky is a craft project created by Bonnie, the little girl that became the owner of all our toy friends at the end of Toy Story 3. It seems that Forky is dealing with something of an existential crisis. While Bonnie will apparently treat him like a toy like all the rest, Forky, as a spork, doesn't feel like a toy. He wants to fulfill his purpose as a spork but has now been given this new role as a toy that he's not sure how to handle. He doesn't really want to get involved in whatever the other toys are doing but finds himself being pulled into the adventure whether he likes it or not. Forky is being voiced by Tony Hale.
Every indication we've been given up until now has been that the adventure of Toy Story 4 will deal with a search for Bo Peep, a character who was missing in Toy Story 3 for reasons that were never made entirely clear. We know that Annie Potts is reprising her role as the character, which would seem to be confirmation of this at least to a degree.
However, there's no indication of that story in this teaser. Bo Peep isn't among the toys dancing around together and she's not referenced in any way. Clearly, this teaser isn't looking to give us much story, but it's created even more questions than we had already.
Along with the new trailer, we also got a new poster to tease the upcoming film.
Toy Story 4 was originally supposed to arrive earlier this year but now is scheduled to hit theaters this summer We'll update you as more information becomes available and assumedly, we get a real trailer.
