Pixar’s New ‘Try Not to Cry’ Compilation Invites a Grown-Up Rewatch
Pixar’s new video revisits childhood favorites. Reflections from Lee Unkrich and Tom Hanks offer a way to think about what changes when we return to familiar films.
The short answer: Pixar’s new video revisits childhood favorites. Reflections from Lee Unkrich and Tom Hanks offer a way to think about what changes when we return to familiar films.
The scene may be familiar; the person watching it has changed. Pixar’s new YouTube compilation, “Try Not to Cry | Impossible Level,” invites viewers to revisit childhood favorites as adults—a reason to press play that goes beyond remembering what happens next.
Published October 26, 2026, the video builds its playful challenge around that shift in perspective. Away from the compilation, Pixar filmmakers and performers have offered some revealing examples of how age and personal experience can change the way a film lands.
The same film, different eyes
In a January 2018 interview with The Independent, Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich reflected on concerns that the film was too intense for children. He suggested that parents might be responding partly to their own wish to protect children from strong feelings.
The whole notion of kids watching the film versus adults is interesting. Lee Unkrich, speaking to The Independent in January 2018
Unkrich argued that children and adults could see the film’s ending differently because most children do not yet have the same awareness of their own mortality. His point was not that the scene lacked emotional weight for younger viewers, but that parents brought a different understanding to it.
Tom Hanks offered a more personal example in a June 2026 Guardian interview about Toy Story 5. The voice of Woody recalled a quiet moment in Toy Story 3: Andy is leaving for college, and his mother stands in his empty room. For Hanks, the scene connected with something happening in his own family.
It’s a silent beat. When I saw it in a normal cinema it rang so perfectly because one of my kids was going off to college. Tom Hanks, speaking to The Guardian in June 2026
Those responses also have a filmmaking side. In the 2018 interview, Unkrich recalled that pairing music with the moment Andy gives his toys to Bonnie in Toy Story 3 brought tears to his eyes. With Coco, he felt the emotion of the ending while assembling it in storyboard form, before the final actors’ performances. His recollections offer another focus for a rewatch: the music and storytelling choices that help a familiar moment carry its weight.