The movies in the "Toy Story" franchise may be kids' movies, but they still come with villains and bad guys. The latest installment in the franchise "Toy Story 5" has a villain in Lilypad, who also represents a battle of screen time for kids versus time with toys. This creates a full circle moment for two worlds, both shaped by the legendary Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs the Master of Pixar
Best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Jobs also bankrolled and led Pixar, the studio behind the Toy Story franchise.
Jobs paid $5 million to acquire the computer graphics division from Lucasfilm, the movie studio owned by George Lucas. Jobs also invested future millions into the money-losing venture to keep things going until The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) signed a distribution deal for "Toy Story," the hit 1995 film.
The purchase from Jobs came after he had recently exited Apple and was looking for opportunities, which led to the acquisition, and he wanted to create digital animation, as reported by Startupbell.
Called Pixar, the new company worked to change computer graphics technology into something that had never been done in animated movies before.
"And so our vision was to make the world's first animated feature film that was completely computer synthetic. Sets, characters, everything," Jobs previously said.
The work led to the successful creation of "Toy Story," which was released in theaters through a partnership with Disney in 1995. The film grossed $191.8 million domestically and was the third-highest-grossing film domestically of the year.
The success of Toy Story helped launch other Pixar titles. The company went public one week after the film's release, helping to provide a boost in demand. Jobs became a billionaire from his Pixar stake, famously hitting the milestone not from Apple but from his work with the movie company.
Disney paid $7.4 billion to acquire Pixar outright in 2006. That deal led to Jobs becoming the top Disney shareholder.
Disney Takes Things Full Circle
The Toy Story franchise saw three more films launched, including "Toy Story 3" in 2010 and "Toy Story 4" in 2019, which came after Disney acquired Pixar.
The four films have grossed over $1.3 billion domestically and have become worldwide hits. The last two films each grossed $1.07 billion worldwide during their theatrical releases.
A fifth movie in the franchise hits theaters June 19, and Disney is hoping that fans of the franchise are ready for a new storyline involving some of the same beloved characters from past films.
The full-circle moment for Jobs comes at this point. Jobs helped create Pixar and Toy Story and now sees the characters of "Toy Story 5" fighting against a learning tablet and technology like screens, making screen addiction more the bad guy than the Lilypad character herself.
While at Apple, Jobs was part of the team behind devices like the iPod, iPhone and iPad, all screened devices for adults and kids that take attention away from physical toys.
Jobs is no longer alive, so we won't know what he thinks of the film franchise he helped create, making technology that he had a hand in launching the bad guy.
Image via Kemarrravv13/ Shutterstock
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