YMMV / Toy Story 4

• Accidental Aesop: Giving a cherished possession away to someone on the grounds that it's what big selfless grown ups do, or even that you think they'll love it the same way you do, is a nice gesture, but bear in mind that there's no guarantee they'll actually live up to your expectations.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was Gabby Gabby really a Tragic Villain who never got a chance to be loved? Or was she just a selfish, greedy little brat who felt entitled to get what she wants by all means necessary? Particularly with how she convinces Woody to give up his voicebox using what she learned about him from Forky; whether it qualifies as mutual understanding, emotional manipulation e.g. Social Engineering, or both varies from person to person. If anything, her portrayal as a "crime boss" of sorts in the comic where she is implied to run a protection racket granting passage to toys getting in her path seems to add credence to her (initially) bratty character.
  • Buzz's Taking A Level In Dumbass is theorized to be a result of brain damage from repeatedly being reset and having a TV fall on him in Toy Story 3.
• Angst? What Angst?: Andy's toys aren't really too worked up about Woody leaving them for good. Jessie and Buzz have emotional reactions, but the others rather quickly accept that their friend, leader, and protector for most of their lives for the last two decades is leaving them forever after they spent the last 24 hours worrying sick about him.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: Those who dislike the film almost always cite the ending as the reason why. The film ends with Woody choosing to become a lost toy like Bo Peep helping other toys find owners, leaving behind his Found Family in the process. Many people saw this ending as contradicting Woody's Character Development and the themes of in prior films about the importance of a toy always being there for its owner, only for Woody to leave the moment he's no longer the favorite toy in the household.
• Awesome Music: Randy Newman returns and he's still at the top of his game, writing two new original songs for the film:
  • "I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away" is a fun gospel-inspired song that plays during a montage of Woody trying to stop Forky from throwing himself in the garbage at every stop in Bonnie's RV trip.
  • "The Ballad of the Lonesome Cowboy" is the film's end credits song, with vocals by Chris Stapleton, that essentially serves as a theme for Woody and the emotional journey he's crossed throughout the series. Newman also sung a version of his own for the soundtrack.
• Badass Decay: In Toy Story 2 and 3, Buzz was shown to be a highly capable leader to the other toys, who could come up with plans on the fly and perform amazing acrobatic feats. In this movie, he's hapless to the point where he has to rely on his voice box to make decisions for him and only seems to get anything done through sheer dumb luck.
• Catharsis Factor: Remember the barracuda that killed Nemo's mom in Finding Nemo? Here, it's stuffed and mounted on the wall of the antique shop.
• Contested Sequel: The film was able to win over many, with plenty considering the film to be of comparable quality with the rest of the series. However, it has not been without its detractors that found it to be disappointing, especially with how its overall message seems to clash with the other films. Much of the debate of its quality comes down to its hotly contested ending. Some find Woody leaving Bonnie and his friends behind to start a new life with Bo to be a fitting send-off to his character, but others feel the message of toys' independence contradicts the ending of 3 too much.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Ducky and Bunny’s plans all involve haunting and attacking the old lady and it’s just so freakin hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: All the new toys introduced in this film are well-received by fans, but it’s Bunny, Ducky, and Duke Caboom that are the most popular. It helps that their voice actors put a lot of charm into their characters.
• Fan Nickname: One fanmade title that is commonly preferred over Toy Story 4 is simply Woody, a Protagonist Title done in the vein of movies in long-running franchises like Logan for X-Men, due to the focus on Woody superseding the rest of the regular cast.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Apparently sticking a face on anything and signing it can bring it to life. The possibilities for arts and crafts-loving kids are mind-boggling.
  • Bo Peep's adventures during the seven-year Time Skip between the night when she was donated and meeting up with Woody again is also the source of many potential interesting storylines, considering that she basically went through pretty much the same thing Woody and his gang did offscreen and even ends up leading her own band of toys as well. This includes both her arms and her staff being broken, not necessarily all at the same time, and having to tape them back together. Some of these questions would be answered in the Lamp Life short.
  • What kind of adventures do Woody, Bo and the rest of the lost toys get into after the ending of 4?
  • How will Bonnie react once she realizes Woody is missing?
• Fanon Discontinuity: There are several fans who pretend that this movie is not canon and that the third film was the actual Grand Finale of the franchise, especially with regards to the controversial ending.
• Genius Bonus: One of the background cars has a licence plate that reads "RMRF97". "rm -rf" is a Unix command that deletes all files in a given directory without confirmation, with the "97" part being a reference to an infamous incident during the development of Toy Story 2 where an accident led to deleting all of the project files and would've forced a complete restart of production if it wasn't then discovered an employee took some backup copies to work on at home.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After all the stuff about Forky needing to be saved from the trash, a plush toy of him was recalled as a choking hazard. One hopes all the parents who already bought one don't feel too awkward explaining why it has to go away. At least Forky may feel vindicated though.
  • In the film's climax where Gabby Gabby joins Woody and the crew, Benson is left behind, seemingly disregarded by his (former) employer and confidante. Cue a few months later and Christina Hendricks (who voices Gabby) parted ways with her ex-husband, also to the surprise of many.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Nearly a month after the premiere, the Comic-Con announcement of Thor: Love and Thunder confirmed that another Disney-owned franchise would present a movie in which a Love Interest absent from the third installment Took a Level in Badass and reappears in the fourth.
• Ho Yay:
  • The last scene in the official trailer has Forky clamoring onto Woody, stroking his cheek and whispering into his ear, "Everything will be okay." Which is actually a line spoken out of context in the movie proper. In reality, Forky is telling Woody that being in a trash can is, among other things, like having a voice tell you that "everything will be okay".
  • Bunny and Ducky are sewn together in such a way that they're essentially constantly holding hands. Their bickering also occasionally falls into old married couple territory, like when Ducky chides Bunny for his listening skills. The way they gush about finding a child also sounds much like a gay couple planning to adopt a child.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Some people have criticized the film for rehashing the plots of the previous films like Woody getting lost in a creepy place with a new toy surrounded by creepy-looking toys, he's trailed by a villain that wants to use him for her own self-serving goals, and the other toys make an attempt to rescue Woody before it's too late.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Some were interested because of the presence of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. And of course, the internet's favorite actor Keanu Reeves.
• Magnificent Bastard: Gabby Gabby is a 50s-era doll who has languished on the shelves of Second Chance Antiques for years waiting for a child's love. When Gabby Gabby meets Woody and learns he has a functioning voicebox, Gabby Gabby covets it for herself and quickly realizes the folly in attempting to brute-force it out of him. Two thirds of the way into the film, Gabby Gabby uses the knowledge she's gained by befriending her "captive," Forky, and subjects Woody to a brutal but heart-wrenchingly sincere speech that convinces Woody to stop opposing her and give up his own voicebox so Gabby Gabby can have a chance at happiness. Unlike Stinky Pete and Lotso, Gabby Gabby always remains calm and grateful toward the heroes—even offering Woody his voicebox back when her initial chance at happiness earns her rejection—while remaining the one antagonist in the series to have effectively hit Woody at his core.
• Misblamed: Similar to Cars 2, many tend to blame Disney for greenlighting the sequel against Pixar's wishes. However, according to interviews, Pixar had been planning and discussing a fourth film since Toy Story 3 was completed in 2010, with the preproduction phase beginning a year later. It is frequently forgotten and/or ignored that Pixar only greenlights sequels because they want to make them, not because Disney forces them to.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Misaimed Fandom: Many people treat the end of the movie as a case of Friend Versus Lover, where Woody ends up choosing his girlfriend over his friends, this ignores that Buzz himself is the one who convinces him to stay with Bo Peep, and the rest ends respecting and supporting this decision. That doesn't stop the fandom from considering Woody a bad friend, and a traitor.
• Moe:
  • Bonnie still qualifies for being a cute, innocent Shrinking Violet.
  • The lost little girl who was crying before adopting Gabby is endearing as well.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The neglected toys in Bonnie's closet only appear for the one scene where Woody is left inside it, but they get in a bunch of funny jabs at Woody while they're around. It helps that they're all voiced by veteran figures in comedy.
  • The Combat Carl Jr.s that Woody meets at the playground, especially the one who can never get the high-five he wants until the Logo Joke at the very end of the film.
  • The many, many toys seen partying in the antique store's pinball machine, one of them being Tinny.
• Reviews Are the Gospel: When the film was released in 2019, while it was still considered an Contested Sequel it was still fairly well liked and successful at the box office. However, in the years since it came out, particularly in the new 20’s several YouTube critics, GamingMagic13 being the most prominent example with his “How Toy Story 4 Destroyed Everything” series, have come out and made their case for it being a bad film. While the movie never gained a large hatedom it has received more vocal criticism (justified or not) in comparison to 2019.
• Tainted by the Preview: Since the release of the first official trailer, numerous people have noticed that what the trailers have shown of the plot appears to be a retread of Toy Story 2, with Woody separated from the gang only to encounter a prominent female character from his past and undergo an internal struggle regarding whether or not to stay. The movie puts some twists on the formula, but some still feel that it is a little too similar to the second film in the end.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Outside of Woody, Buzz and Bo Peep, the original cast get very little screen time. This is especially egregious considering this is stated to be the last installment of the franchise. Their spending most of the movie literally in the back seat is a quite apt visual metaphor. The same goes for Bonnie's original toys, as most of them have bit parts near the beginning and end of the film and not much else.
  • A special case with Mr. Potato Head. While Don Rickles' passing of kidney failure in April 2017 limited any role he could've had to old recordings and outtakes from the previous films, the fact only two or three barely audible lines were used in the film can still feel disappointing. This is especially noticeable when compared to the time put in for Paul Newman to posthumously reprise his role as Doc Hudson for Cars 3.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Buzz and Jessie's romance gets zero acknowledgement here after being subtly built up in the previous two movies.
  • Bo Peep's arm breaking off, and her other signs of wear-and-tear, serves as a reminder that she's not really a toy so much as a porcelain lamp decoration, and is fairly vulnerable to being broken as a result. The ramifications of this are never brought up after this, as she brushes the injury off very quickly and this doesn't get brought up anywhere else.
  • The whole concept of Forky is pretty interesting: a bunch of trash put together by Bonnie to make a toy who then becomes sentient and is terrified to learn what he is and that Woody has to show him the ropes. It's all resolved by the end of the first act. It simply takes a long conversation between Woody and Forky for Forky to be convinced that being a toy isn't all that bad, and that plot is dropped in favor of Woody and Bo's reunion, with Forky being relegated to a plot device simply to help in Gabby's character development. The plot only gets revisited in the credits scene where Jessie reveals that Bonnie made a female Forky, who almost immediately asks "how am I alive?". However, the viewer only gets to hear Forky's answer: "I don't know."
  • Ducky and Bunny's quest toward finding a kid seems to taper off quite a bit as the movie goes on. As such, they mostly serve to provide bits and pieces of comedic moments rather than gain any actual development.
• Tough Act to Follow: Long before the film was released, many fans felt Toy Story 3 was a perfect end to the franchise and a direct sequel was redundant, if not completely unnecessary. This set the film to have high expectations such that, though it was agreed it might result in a quality film on its own merits, it would be impossible to make a finale that would satiate many fans' criticism with the concept.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Watch clips from this movie back to back with the first one and be amazed at how far CGI has come since the first full CGI movie. In particular, the opening scene in a thunderstorm, the photorealistic antique shop and the incredibly realistic cat feel like pure showing off by the animators. Also of note were the material shaders used which is in stark contrast to the more simplistic ones in the first two movies, not to mention the improvements made with human characters, which while still stylised to fit with the artistic direction, is light-years ahead (pun not intended) of the Unintentional Uncanny Valley humans in the first film (and by extension the baby in Tin Toy).
• Vocal Minority: The amount of people who criticize this movie online are vocal, but rather small. Many fans, general audiences, and critics alike consider this sequel to be just as good as the previous three movies.
• The Woobie:
  • Gabby Gabby. Compared to other villains in the franchise, she's a forlorn toy who was never played with due to her broken voice box. Hell, you could almost say that she's simply a protagonist. When rejected by Harmony, she comes dangerously close to losing all hope, though she does eventually get an owner.
  • Duke Caboom qualifies too, due to his backstory. He was abandoned on the day his owner got him as he wasn't able to replicate the stunts that were shown in the commercial. He has a hard time bringing this up, and when he does, he breaks down in tears.
  • Bonnie. She's clearly distraught about having to go to kindergarten for the first time due to her shyness. Also, no other kid sits with her or even says hi. However, she does manage to make it through her first day due to her making Forky.
  • To a lesser extent, Woody in the beginning of the movie due to him being forgotten by Bonnie.

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