19 movies we’re definitely looking forward to in 2019

17. Toy Story 4

As far as trilogies go, the Toy Story films are pretty much as perfect as it gets. Toy Story was an instant classic; Toy Story 2 was a more than worthy follow up; and of course, Toy Story 3 had most of us bawling in our seats, especially if you grew up with the previous two movies. Now, after what felt like a fairly perfect ending to the series, Disney-Pixar is going back for fourths.

It’s hard to imagine what might happen next in the Toy Storyline—and even harder to picture how it will ever live up to the sense of completion that Toy Story 3 gave us. And for that matter, the first teaser trailer was not exactly jaw-dropping; pretty much all it accomplished was getting all the old favorite characters back on screen, in a kind of “hey, remember these guys?” kind of way, with the audio editing of all the toys’ catchphrases at the end coming off as almost clumsy. How can they be screaming in slow-mo but also tossing out a sound byte in regular time? Do the toys have two mouths? Are their voices psychically projected? So many questions.

But. All those things to be said against it, there’s still no good reason why the franchise can’t pull another good one out of the bag. And even if Toy Story 4 ends up falling short of its predecessors, it’s hard to imagine not looking to its June 14 release date with anticipation, either positive or negative.

Tim Allen, the voice of Buzz Lightyear, did hint that Toy Story 4 will somehow be even sadder than Toy Story 3. We are now taking bets on which of the toys they kill off. Can a toy die? If so, that’s an even more troubling implication about the nature of the Toy Story Universe.