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Toy Story 5: Pixar’s battle against the devices Steve Jobs built · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Friday, July three, twenty twenty six. Just when Anthony
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  Speaker 1: Albanezi thought he'd appeased Labour's big critics on tax reform,
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  Speaker 1: now the party itself is coming for more change. There'll
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  Speaker 1: be a push at this weekend's New South Wales Party
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  Speaker 1: conference for the government to clamp down even harder than
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  Speaker 1: originally planned. Australians are struggling to pay their power bills
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  Speaker 1: as cost of living pressures mount, and the number of
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: people falling behind is higher than it's been at any
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  Speaker 1: point in the past five years. Those exclusives are live
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  Speaker 1: right now at the Australian dot Com dot au. It's
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  Speaker 1: the kids movie bringing Adults to tears. Toy Story five,
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  Speaker 1: produced by tech giant Disney and rich with the DNA
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  Speaker 1: of Apple's late founder Steve Jobs, is in cinemas and
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  Speaker 1: it's a devastating takedown of technology's influence on childhood. I've
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  Speaker 1: brought in our technology editor Jared Lynch to help me
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  Speaker 1: make sense of all the big feelings, and just like
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  Speaker 1: in the movie, there is a heartwarming conclusion. I promise
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  Speaker 1: Jared's here in just a moment. Jared Lynch is The
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  Speaker 1: Australian's Technology editor, and like me, he's a parent of
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  Speaker 1: the very young and knows the agony of taking a
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  Speaker 1: very young person to see a movie. Jared, there's one
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  Speaker 1: particularly traumatic movie you and I have seen recently. It's
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  Speaker 1: Toy Story five, the latest installment in the beloved franchise.
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  Speaker 1: Texan veeded our house too. I don't know, Jesse. Toys
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  Speaker 1: are for play, but tech for everything. I'm moving Barney
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  Speaker 1: to this cafe. So what's Toy Story five all about?
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  Speaker 2: Well, we didn't think we were going to see another
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  Speaker 2: Toy Story after even Toy Story three. I mean, it
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  Speaker 2: was the perfect trilogy. As Quentin Tarantin I said, you know,
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  Speaker 2: why would you want to make any more? But you know,
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  Speaker 2: it's the franchise that keeps on giving, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: give it a couple of years and they said, yep,
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  Speaker 2: we've got Toy Story five, and it hit screens a
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  Speaker 2: few weeks ago. And it's different to the previous Toy
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  Speaker 2: Story installments in that you have the toys facing a
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  Speaker 2: new enemy, which is a computer screen, an iPad like device,
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  Speaker 2: and it's a direct commentary off the anxious generation. I
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  Speaker 2: don't know how many times they say it in the
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  Speaker 2: first ten minutes of the film, the age of toys
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  Speaker 2: are over. As they show everyone on their phones on
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  Speaker 2: their iPads, It's like enough, we get it where parents
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  Speaker 2: were living in it, right. We feel guilty when we
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  Speaker 2: pick up our phones our iPads in front of our kids.
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  Speaker 2: We don't want to go to the movies and bank
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  Speaker 2: see it up there in lights. In that respect, I
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  Speaker 2: think we're seeing a toy story that isn't really aimed
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  Speaker 2: at the child anymore, but adults who were children when
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  Speaker 2: the first Toy Story aired thirty years ago.
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  Speaker 1: The Toy Story franchise is such an interesting kind of
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  Speaker 1: exploration of childhood. I think there's fear is at the
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  Speaker 1: center of it, and the fear of change. I think,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it's in the big tradition of the toys
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  Speaker 1: come to life. You know, that's the story of Christopher
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  Speaker 1: Robin and Winnie the Pooh and so many stories throughout literature.
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  Speaker 1: What happens when the lights go out and the toys
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  Speaker 1: are left to themselves. But in the Toy Story movies,
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  Speaker 1: the threat to the toys. There's always a threat in
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  Speaker 1: Toy Story one. The threat was a technological toy coming along.
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  Speaker 1: Buzz was battery powered and super cool.
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  Speaker 3: Hello, whoa, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa?
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  Speaker 1: Did I fright?
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  Speaker 3: You didn't mean to?
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  Speaker 1: Sorry, howdy.
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  Speaker 3: My name is Woody and this is Andy's room, Local
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  Speaker 3: Law Enforcement.
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  Speaker 1: What's about time you got here? I'm Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger,
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  Speaker 1: Universe Protection. My ships christ landed here by mistake. And
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  Speaker 1: the more simple toys like Woody and the Slinky Dog
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  Speaker 1: and the money walks Pig were terribly threatened by bars
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  Speaker 1: until they learned to accept him. Then the threat became
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  Speaker 1: the kids are growing up and they no longer want us,
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  Speaker 1: you know. So Andy is becoming a young man and
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  Speaker 1: no longer wants his toys. So technology has kind of
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  Speaker 1: been looming at the edges of the toy story franchise
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  Speaker 1: for a while now, but now they've really thrown themselves
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  Speaker 1: at it, and they've made the villain of the story
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  Speaker 1: this iPad, the lily pad. It always comes back to
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  Speaker 1: optimism toy story. There's always a happy message at the end,
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  Speaker 1: and this is a bit of a spoiler, but in
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  Speaker 1: the end, the iPad turns out to be more of
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  Speaker 1: a helper than a villain in the world of Bonnie,
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  Speaker 1: this little girl in terms of helping her find the
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  Speaker 1: right friend. But along the way she has to deal
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  Speaker 1: with other kids' addiction to devices, doesn't she. That's the
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  Speaker 1: real scary part. Bonnie is herself an innocent kittie likes
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  Speaker 1: playing with toys, but she's the only one left.
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  Speaker 2: Definitely, And I think the main message is technology is
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  Speaker 2: a tool. At the end of the day. I think
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  Speaker 2: people are quick to condemn the screen, but they're not
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  Speaker 2: thinking about how they use it themselves. And that was
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  Speaker 2: a pretty powerful message throughout the film. There was also
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  Speaker 2: hidden messages throughout, and that goes back to my point
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  Speaker 2: about saying that this movie was really for the adults
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  Speaker 2: who were children when the first Toy Story movies came out.
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  Speaker 2: They're having a dig at working from home. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: parents sitting there on zoom calls phones in, Oh god,
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  Speaker 2: what are we doing? Clear, it's just nuts. Toy Story
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  Speaker 2: does a great job in encapsulating that miln esque eight
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  Speaker 2: you know, where will I be when I'm a hundred?
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  Speaker 2: How old will I be when I'm a hundred? Or
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  Speaker 2: you'll be ninety nine?
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  Speaker 1: Pooh?
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  Speaker 2: You know the end of Pooh Corner.
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  Speaker 3: Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you understand?
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  Speaker 2: What? Oh? Nothing?
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  Speaker 3: Come on?
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  Speaker 2: Where anywhere?
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  Speaker 3: So they went off together. But wherever they go, and
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  Speaker 3: whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted
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  Speaker 3: place on the top of the forest, a little boy
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  Speaker 3: and his bear will always be playing.
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  Speaker 1: This is the audiobook of AA Milns The House at
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  Speaker 1: Pooh Corner, starring Stephen fryars Pooh and Judy Dench as
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  Speaker 1: the narrator, published by Hodder Headline.
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  Speaker 2: That's the most heartbreaking ending you can get, which is
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  Speaker 2: what Pixar continuously does. And it comes down to connection.
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  Speaker 2: Technology can help us connect with each other, but at
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  Speaker 2: the end of the day, we have to be in
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  Speaker 2: the driver's seed of that. And if you look back
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  Speaker 2: on the Toy Story films, you can see that Fred
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  Speaker 2: running through, whether it be Buzz or whether it be
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  Speaker 2: in Toy Story two, when Jesse is cast aside, well, if.
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  Speaker 1: You knew him, you'd understand. You see Andy, let me.
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  Speaker 4: Guess, Andy's a real special kit and to him you're
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  Speaker 4: his buddy, his best friend.
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  Speaker 1: And when Andy plays with you, it's like, even though
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  Speaker 1: you're not moving, you feel like you're alife, because that's.
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  Speaker 4: How he sees you.
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  Speaker 1: How did you know that? Because Emily was just the scene.
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  Speaker 1: She was my whole world.
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  Speaker 2: That Fred is a constant. But I do feel it
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  Speaker 2: was just a little bit over egged in Toy Story five.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you find it too didactic?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I always believe in showing rather than telling,
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  Speaker 2: and I think they could have been far more economical.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I was surprised. Pete Doctor was an executive
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  Speaker 2: producer of Toy Story Peak. Doctor is obviously the screenwriter
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  Speaker 2: and director of Up, which is one of the best
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  Speaker 2: Pixar movies when it comes to showing not telling. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: look at that four minute montage at the start where
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  Speaker 2: you're seeing someone's entire life. You're seeing grief rendered and
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  Speaker 2: hardly anything's explained. You feel it before you see it,
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  Speaker 2: and that was one of Pixar's greatest strengths. And it's
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  Speaker 2: not just Toy Story and The Devil Wears prior too.
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  Speaker 2: They did it as well about AI's coming out to
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  Speaker 2: get us. It's going to gobble us all Up. I
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  Speaker 2: mean that was just like, Yeah, I get what you're saying.
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  Speaker 2: Then Wang bang again and then Whang Bang again just
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  Speaker 2: modern cinema and afraid now.
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  Speaker 1: You mentioned Pixar. Tell me about Pixar, and it's actually
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  Speaker 1: a very important company in the history of tech, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a great irony that if you look
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  Speaker 2: in Toy Story five, the villain is the iPad. When
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  Speaker 2: the man who created Pixar into the cinematic powerhouse that
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  Speaker 2: it is today is the same man that herald the iPad,
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  Speaker 2: dreamed it up the iPhone, the iPad. And of course
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  Speaker 2: I'm speaking about Apple co founded the late Steve Jobs.
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  Speaker 2: He was booted from Apple in nineteen eighty five. The
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  Speaker 2: Border directors fired him. He was probably thinking what am
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  Speaker 2: I going to do next? He always had an itch
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  Speaker 2: that he was trying to scratch, and that itch was
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  Speaker 2: buying Pixar from Lucasfilm, another cinematic powerhouse known for its
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  Speaker 2: special effects in graphic designs. Found it by George Lucas.
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  Speaker 2: They had a computer, the Pixar computer, and Steve Jobs
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  Speaker 2: bought it for ten million dollars with the view that
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  Speaker 2: he was going to market it to the scientific community,
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  Speaker 2: sell these high end computers. The problem was, though were
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  Speaker 2: terribly expensive, the market was very small, and then he
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  Speaker 2: John Lassiter, who he mentioned earlier, got in his ear
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  Speaker 2: and said no, no, no, Steve, No, I've got a
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  Speaker 2: better idea. Let's make free D films. And he said, well,
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  Speaker 2: that's an idea. And they started small with these little shorts,
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  Speaker 2: and they got bigger and bigger and bigger until the
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  Speaker 2: first Toy story just blew everyone away. And of course
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  Speaker 2: Steve Jobs was an executive producer off that first Toy store,
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  Speaker 2: which a lot of people forget about that, and then
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  Speaker 2: he was made a billionaire when he sold Pixar to
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  Speaker 2: Disney in the mid two thousands. But by which time
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  Speaker 2: he was back at Apple and he was already hard
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  Speaker 2: at work dreaming up the iPhone and the iPad, and
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  Speaker 2: as they say, the rest is history.
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  Speaker 1: I remember reading an interview with a bunch of the
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  Speaker 1: tech CEOs, including Steve Jobs, when he was still alive,
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  Speaker 1: about what they allowed their children to do in terms
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  Speaker 1: of access to devices, and universally they said no devices.
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  Speaker 1: That was a really important moment for me as a parent,
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  Speaker 1: realizing that these people who are the inventors of these
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  Speaker 1: devices don't allow their kids near them.
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  Speaker 2: There's this new TV series which actually depicts Silicon Valley
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: life the Life of the Founder in the Valley, which
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  Speaker 2: is one of the most sheltered, wealthiest enclaves in America,
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  Speaker 2: and it's called the audacity.
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  Speaker 1: People act like we took something, as if we didn't
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  Speaker 1: build everything they touch. But where's our parade?
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  Speaker 2: And there is a scene in that where a teenager
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  Speaker 2: tells another what are you doing on your phone?
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  Speaker 1: Your parents gave you a smartphone? Smarts worse than hard
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  Speaker 1: drugs twice as addictive.
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  Speaker 2: Doesn't are you parents here work on tech stuff?
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  Speaker 1: Arm stealers don't give their kids land.
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  Speaker 2: Mane, which goes to your point about the silent edict
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  Speaker 2: in Silicon Valley, which is, no, we're not letting our
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  Speaker 2: kids use the tech we make. And in Steve Jobs's case,
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  Speaker 2: he wasn't completely anti tech. It was more about balance
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  Speaker 2: and his words were that we limit the use of
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  Speaker 2: technology and hope. He prioritized conversation and talking about history
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  Speaker 2: at the dinner table rather than being on the screen
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  Speaker 2: all the time. It's easy to pop a screen in
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  Speaker 2: front of a kid when you just want to have
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: that time to do the dishes, type that last email,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: or fight with the robot vacuum cleaner, which incidentally, that
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  Speaker 2: was also in Toy Story five, I'm on a digress.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: I've got a funny relationship with robot vacuum cleaners. I
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  Speaker 2: don't know how many times I've parked them aside and
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: then got the old oats mop does a better job.
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  Speaker 1: I live for your reviews of devices, though I imagine
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  Speaker 1: my mental image of your house is that it is
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: just crawling with robot vacuums and you know, robots doing
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  Speaker 1: the dishes for you. Jared Shortley, you're doing these reviews
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  Speaker 1: all the time. You're getting all these devices sent to you.
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  Speaker 1: Do you hang on to them and any of them
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  Speaker 1: proviewsful in your actual life?
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  Speaker 2: My wife doesn't think, so she goes, how many of
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  Speaker 2: these tech things have you got? And they've sort of,
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  Speaker 2: you know, they start very well and then they just
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  Speaker 2: fall to bits. I mean, if you think of the
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: best tech invention, it was the wheel. A lot of
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: people laugh when you say that, but try and imagine
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: life without the wheel now. But then you see a
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: lot of these gadgets that are produced today, and they
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: just make our lives more complicated. And I think, going
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  Speaker 2: back to Toy story five, the smartphone, the tablet, they
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  Speaker 2: gave us the world in our pocket at an instant that, Claire,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, the life admin that we have now as
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  Speaker 2: a result of these little devices, it's just made it
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  Speaker 2: far more complicated. I mean we were talking about this
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  Speaker 2: the other day. If you just want to organize a
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  Speaker 2: playdate for your kid, it becomes like this, lessening diplomacy
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  Speaker 2: via group chat. If you want to buy a ticket
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  Speaker 2: to the movies, you've got to go on your phone.
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  Speaker 2: You've got to say human, well, yes, I am a
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  Speaker 2: bloody human, and then you go through all these steps
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  Speaker 2: and then would you like popcorn with that? And back
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  Speaker 2: and forth, back and forth. Check you're in box to
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  Speaker 2: see if the tickets have come through. Yes, they have
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  Speaker 2: got through. Then you've got to open your phone. The
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  Speaker 2: whole administration of life has been outsourced to this little
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  Speaker 2: computer that sits in our pocket.
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  Speaker 1: And that's the difficulty as a parent, isn't it. You
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: have to spend a lot of time on your phone
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  Speaker 1: just organizing children's lives or organizing the family life. But
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: for them looking at you, staring at a little screen,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: you might as well be on Instagram exactly.
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  Speaker 2: And the thing is we've willingly accepted this. This is
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: the way you have to live I mean, you only
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: have to go in down to Woollies and how many
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: people are lined up to go through the self serve
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: checkout at peak hour? Then you look up and you
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: see the poor I was going to say check out chick,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: but I don't think we're allowed to say that now.
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  Speaker 4: But customer service executive, customer service executive behind the counter,
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  Speaker 4: you know, looking terribly lonesome, and I think, why don't
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: we want.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: To engage face to face with the person behind the
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  Speaker 2: counter now, We'd rather engage with a machine in the
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  Speaker 2: self service checkout and the admin. All these tasks have
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: been outsourced to us. But hasn't made life easier? Has
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: it aid at the cost of living? Has it made
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: us more productive? I don't think so.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Well, it's great to chat to you, Jared, and I
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: look forward to you next review of some infuriating device.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, no worries clue.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Jared Lynch is The Australian's Technology editor. You can read
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: all his work, including the robot vacuum reviews, anytime at
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au