Toy Story 5 brings something new to the Pixar animated movie franchise, but it is still a familiar story for fans of the series. The first Toy Story movie has Andy’s toys see a threat in a new electronic toy, Buzz Lightyear, who can speak and, annoyingly, believes he is a real Space Ranger. However, the toys soon realize he is one of them, and they work together to help give Andy a childhood that all kids deserve.
However, the villain in Toy Story 5 doesn’t look like it will be one that will fit in well with the other toys for one big reason. The antagonistic force here is the tablet and how screen time is taking away from kids’ playtime. Instead of sitting on the floor and playing with toys, disappearing into their imagination, the kids with the tablets just stare at the screen, and either watch videos or play games developed for tablets.
This is the entire fear involved with tech anxiety and how the cold glow of a screen threatens the joy of toys. This isn’t the first movie that has shown how technology is a threat and a source of anxiety, from AI uprisings and corporate control to the threat of killer robots and internet chaos. These animated movies reveal the genuine fear of tech anxiety.
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9 (2009)
Released in 2009, the animated movie 9 is a sci-fi film directed by Shane Acker, based on his 2005 short film of the same name. Tim Burton serves as the executive producer of 9, which is set in an alternate, war-torn 1940s. The film depicts a post-apocalyptic world where machines have annihilated humanity, leaving only small stitchpunk dolls to survive against roaming war machines.
This creates a real tech anxiety storyline as a scientist builds a soulless intelligent machine, the B.R.A.I.N., which a dictator weaponizes into the Fabrication Machine. This soulless machine turns on its creators and decides to exterminate humanity, wiping out all life with toxic gas and chemical weapons. Each of the stitchpunk dolls has a part of their creator in them, and they are all that is left to save the planet from the machine.
9
Robots (2005)
Robots is a 2005 animated adventure comedy from 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios, directed by Chris Wedge (Ice Age). The film imagines an entirely robotic society where the corporate villain Phineas T. Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) halts production of spare parts, forcing older robots to either buy expensive upgrades or be melted down as scrap.
This takes the robots and machines and puts them in a world that is similar to the real world, but with robots forced to pay for upgrades or be deemed irrelevant. However, it also has a strong message when Bigweld, Rodney’s idol, represents the philosophy that any robot can shine regardless of build, opposing planned obsolescence and a throwaway consumer culture.
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Astro Boy (2009)
Astro Boy is a 2009 animated superhero movie that is loosely based on Osamu Tezuka’s manga. The series has a deep theme, as a grieving scientist named Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) builds the robot boy named Astro, implanted with the memories of his dead son, raising questions about replacing humans with machines.
However, the real tech anxiety is more than just a grieving father who replaces his son with a robot. It is also about how evil corporations try to use that technology to attack society. The Peacekeeper is a militarized robot powered by a destructive red core built to wage war, embodying fears of weaponized AI. If anything, it shows that technology is only as dangerous and moral as the humans who use it.
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The Animatrix (2003)
The Matrix is one of the best movies of all time when it comes to tech anxiety, as it shows a world where the machines have already conquered humanity and enslaved them in a virtual world. While the three original movies are all extremely popular to this day, there was also a lesser-known anime that plays out as an anthology film that expands on the world of the Wachowskis trilogy.
There were nine animated short films by different directors in different styles, and “The Second Renaissance” is the one that really delivers this message, as it chronicles humanity creating sentient servant robots, then violently suppressing them, sparking a catastrophic war between humans and machines. The shorts show how human cruelty and greed are what led to their downfall more than the machines.
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Ron’s Gone Wrong (2021)
Released in 2021, Ron’s Gone Wrong is a movie set in a world where a tech giant called Bubble markets B-Bots, which are walking, digitally connected robot companions sold as a best friend out of the box. The entire idea here is satirizing smartphones and social media. The entire idea of tech anxiety is that the machines are always listening to you.
The film has a defective B-Bot that a young boy named Barney gets, and it lacks the algorithmic programming that makes the other Bots data-harvesting, behavior-shaping devices, framing standard perfect tech as the real problem. The entire critique of the film takes on surveillance capitalism and social media validation, and how these devices also take away what makes people human.
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Ralph Breaks The Internet (2018)
The first Wreck-It Ralph movie looks at a video game villain and shows how he is actually a good guy pigeonholed into his role. However, the sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, takes that idea and sends it into the world of the internet, where the greatest tech anxiety resides. Ralph and Vanellope head into a Wi-Fi router to find a replacement part for the broken Sugar Rush game.
The dangers of the internet are what is on display, with Ralph buying a computer virus named Arthur and ending up replicating his insecurities at losing his only friend and unleashing thousands of Ralph clones across the internet. This causes an immense global internet attack from the dark web, and it showcases the online toxicity and anger that have ruined social media and online interactions.
4
The Iron Giant (1999)
The Iron Giant is one of the most beloved cult animated movies, released in 1999 and directed by future Pixar director Brad Bird (The Incredibles). In this, Bird’s debut movie, Vin Diesel voices the Iron Giant, a large robot who has a dangerous secret. The tech anxiety here is that a robot, even one that people love and admire, could turn on society and become the deadliest device in the world.
The Giant is revealed to be an extraterrestrial weapon who must fight against his own destructive programming, choosing peace over violence. However, the tech anxiety here is one where the United States military and a paranoid government agent attempt to hunt down and weaponize the Giant, despite its desire to be a hero, which it ends up being in the end.
3
The Wild Robot (2024)
In 2024, DreamWorks Animation released the sci-fi movie The Wild Robot. Directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), this movie takes the fear of tech anxiety and throws it into a very different environment when it mixes tech with nature. The story follows a service robot shipwrecked on an island who ends up becoming the adoptive mother of an orphaned goose.
The entire theme here is that tech made to help can do exactly that once it is free of corporate oversight. However, the tech anxiety here is real because the corporation that created the robot wants it back to ensure it follows their orders, which is meant to make them money more than to help others. Seeing the local wildlife help change this tech for the better creates a heartwarming story.
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The Mitchells Vs. the Machines (2021)
The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a Netflix animated movie that tackles tech anxiety directly. This movie starts off by showing the disconnect between a father and his daughter, as she has become ready to leave home, and doesn’t find the same things exciting as her dad anymore. While he is still interested in family trips and bonding time, she is more concerned with making videos as she wants to be a filmmaker, something he doesn’t understand.
That technological generational gap between parents and kids causes tech anxiety for the older generation, but the movie takes it one step further when an AI takes over and attempts a hostile world takeover by enslaving humanity. It is almost like The Matrix in animated movie form, but as a family movie, it is up to the Mitchells to put their tech anxiety behind them and save the world. The Mitchells vs. the Machines is still Netflix’s greatest original animated movie.
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WALL-E (2008)
WALL-E is not only one of the best animated movies ever made about tech anxiety, but it is one of the best Pixar movies of all time. This unique film plays as an almost silent film for the majority of its running time, with WALL-E as a solitary robot cleaning up Earth after humanity abandons it when corporate greed helps turn it into a wasteland. The majority of the movie has no dialogue and only robot pantomime.
The true tech anxiety here is about how humans allowed corporate greed and tech to overrun the Earth until it was destroyed. The survivors now live on a spaceship orbiting Earth, with everyone attached to tech, almost losing the ability to freely move around on their own. When the ship’s AI attempts to run a directive to never return to Earth, it shows that once humans have destroyed the world, they lose all their powers.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
