Soy Frankelda and Toy Story 5 (2026): Animation’s Fight Against AI

At first glance, Mexico’s first stop-motion feature and the fifth installment of Pixar’s biggest franchise have little in common—but both films arrive at a moment when it seems like every day a new celebrity gives a sponsored statement about the so-called inevitability of AI. In an era of monetized defeatism and corporate slop, there has been an active effort to celebrate human artists. While cinema in all its forms is an art (for some more than others…), the handmade nature of animation has always given it a specifically warm quality. Soy Frankelda follows a woman aspiring to write horror novels in 1860s Mexico who must save the worlds of reality and imagination after her monsters come to life. It’s a story about the human act of creation and the way art helps us process the world around us. In a way, it finds itself in conversation with Toy Story 5, which approaches many of these same questions not from production, but consumption. The newest addition in one of history’s biggest animated franchises follows the toys trying to save their human, Bonnie, from her new toy: a nefarious tablet. Unlike Soy Frankelda, it’s not about the artist creating worlds, but about a child trying to grow into her authentic self in an age of digital artificiality. Together, these movies don’t say that technology is bad, but that it can never replace the human relationships and labor that give meaning to identity, creation, and existence. 

         While both films carry the artisanal signature of human labor in each frame, there’s an almost rough-hewn quality to some of the puppets and movements in Soy Frankelda that I found to be extremely charming. The bold and striking use of color feels so alive and doesn’t just increase viewers’ sense of wonder as she travels between worlds, but helps us navigate the changing emotions throughout the film as the palette switches from vibrant wildflowers to drab greys and browns. In some moments, the film uses real world footage, papier mache, puppets and at one point (when it appeared to run out of funding) marbles. Though successful in varying degrees, I found it to be consistent with the overall maximalist approach taken here. The fantastic imagery, even in its real-world setting, differs a lot from the naturalism in Toy Story 5, but that realism has a purpose. It makes the toy’s vitality that much more surreal, as if it’s something that could actually be happening, which is what every kid dreams of. There’s a technical precision needed for this style that the team seems to have mastered; at some points I wondered if it was using real world footage like Frankelda. It also switches to an almost watercolor look for sections based in Bonnie's imagination, which I found to be both visually beautiful and also a great way of helping ground viewers. This is to say that I don’t think either style is more valid than the other, but that what makes each work in its own context is the sense of artistic intent behind every choice. The great visuals of each film are purposefully employed to explore a growing anxiety that emerges when human imagination, labor and connection are treated as things that can be replaced.

         Both stories articulate a need to re-center humanity. As a woman writer in 1860s Mexico, Frankelda’s only readers are her close friends. Publishers won’t even read her submissions—so when the prince of an imaginary realm recruits her, she couldn’t be more thrilled, until she learns her stories will be rewritten by a power-hungry spider. This fear of being silenced and overwritten, of not being in control of your own narrative, is something that speaks to an era where many people feel increasingly displaced within society and, in an act of rebellion, are taking to local protests and making their voices heard. Despite its sometimes-luxurious pacing and jarring aesthetic choices, Frankelda’s arduous journey doesn’t just show that creativity and the labor it entails is inherent for the living, but actively celebrates how it can never be replaced.

         Toy Story 5 looks at what happens when things like inventiveness and community are treated as something to be digitized. We see the heartbreaking consequences when Bonnie’s new Lily Pad toy treats friendship like something to be gamified online instead of experienced in-person. The shallow, backstabbing friends who bully Bonnie in a group chat contrast strongly with the one she connects with through play and imagination; but I appreciate how this film handles that topic with nuance. Technology is how Bonnie ends up finding her true friend, even if that connection only develops once they’re in the same room. It’s one thing for technology to mediate friendship; it’s another for it to replace embodied connection. The pacing of this script is pretty tight, even if some of the story beats are familiar. This isn’t a film interested in taking its characters in new directions as much as deepening our understanding of their current selves. It’s an effective, albeit safe, approach, but you can’t have expected them to swing for the fences with a franchise this popular.

         Cinema, especially animated cinema, has undergone several technological revolutions: from hand-drawn to CGI, physical media to streaming. I chose to combine my review for these films because they each arrive at a time when many industry-insiders insist that AI-generated media is the next stage. In such a milieu, these movies dare to ask how we maintain a hold on our humanity. Soy Frankelda is now on Netflix, and Toy Story 5 is now in theaters, and both are worth seeing. One film emerges from the shadows of folklore and indie authorship, the other from the brightest digital franchise in animation history. Yet both arrive at the same conclusion: in an age obsessed with frictionless content, the stories that endure aren’t the ones generated fastest, but the ones that preserve a trace of the people who made them and the people who share them.