Toy Story 5 Has the Worst Reviews of the Franchise. It Also Just Had the Biggest Opening of 2026.

Toy Story 5 opened last weekend to $9.81 million at the Australian box office, making it the biggest local opening of the year. Globally, the film pulled in USD $312 million across its debut weekend, the second-best opening in Pixar history and the biggest of 2026 so far.

The critics, though? Not quite as enthusiastic.

The film currently sits at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, which sounds impressive until you stack it against the rest of the series. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 both hold a perfect 100%. Toy Story 3 sits at 98%. Even Toy Story 4, which divided fans when it came out, landed at 97%. By Pixar standards, 93% is the franchise low.

Critics have called the film "irresistible" and "fun" while quietly noting it feels a bit scattershot in the first half and struggles to say anything particularly new. The word "repetitive" comes up a lot. For a franchise built on making adults cry in a cinema full of children, "fun but a bit vague" is a lukewarm endorsement.

Audiences, however, could not care less. The film earned an A CinemaScore and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. People showed up, people loved it, people presumably cried. Which raises a genuinely interesting question: at what point does critical consensus stop mattering for a franchise this embedded in popular culture?

Toy Story is not a film series anymore, it is a cultural institution. Woody and Buzz are up there with Mickey Mouse in terms of emotional real estate. You are not going to convince a parent of a five year old to skip it because a film critic found the second act a bit muddled.

There is also something worth noting about what "worst in the franchise" actually means here. A 93% critical score is still exceptional by almost any measure. The fact that it reads as a disappointment says more about how high Pixar has set the bar than it does about the film itself.

Box office success and critical acclaim have always had a complicated relationship, but the Toy Story 5 situation is a good reminder that for certain films, the audience has already made up their mind before a single review drops. The nostalgia machine is operating at full capacity and no amount of mixed notices is going to slow it down.