Top 10 Tom Hanks Movies to Watch Before Toy Story 5

Tom Hanks is back as Woody. After a seven-year hiatus that genuinely felt like goodbye — Toy Story 4 ended with Woody riding off into the unknown — Pixar is bringing him home for Toy Story 5, in theaters June 19, 2026. Early reviews are rapturous: a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and critics calling it "a charming, flawlessly animated sequel we didn't know we needed."

It's a good moment to ask a question film fans have been debating for 40 years: where does Woody rank in the Tom Hanks canon? And what are the movies that got him there?

Here are the 10 best Tom Hanks films of all time — ranked with an actual point of view, because a flat list is no fun — plus where Toy Story 5 fits the story.

10. What Made Tom Hanks a Star? Big (1988)

Before he was Forrest Gump or Woody or Captain Miller, Tom Hanks was Josh Baskin, a 12-year-old boy trapped in an adult body. Big is the film that turned a TV comedy actor into a genuine movie star, earning Hanks his first Academy Award nomination. What's remarkable rewatching it now is how grounded the performance is. The piano scene at FAO Schwarz is still delightful, but it's the quieter moments — Josh's homesickness, his dawning awareness that something is wrong — that explain why the Academy noticed.

9. Was A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Hanks at His Most Restrained? (2019)

Yes, and that's the point. Hanks plays Fred Rogers but resists the obvious move of doing an impression. Instead, he plays the essence of the man: unhurried, genuinely curious, comfortable with silence. The film is structured around an Esquire journalist interviewing Rogers, and Hanks is really a supporting player in his own movie. That choice works, and it takes confidence and generosity to let it work.

8. Can One Actor Carry an Entire Movie? Cast Away (2000)

For most of its runtime, Cast Away is the answer to that question. Hanks plays FedEx engineer Chuck Noland, who survives a plane crash and spends four years alone on a Pacific island. No co-stars. One volleyball with a handprint face. He earned the Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Oscar nomination. The film holds because the performance does: Chuck's silent adaptation to survival is as watchable as any dialogue-driven drama Hanks has made.

7. What's Tom Hanks' Most Underrated Performance? Captain Phillips (2013)

Hanks' work in Paul Greengrass's tense piracy thriller is arguably the most technically demanding thing he's ever done. He plays Richard Phillips, the captain of a cargo ship taken hostage by Somali pirates. The last five minutes — Phillips in a state of shock, being examined by a Navy medic — are entirely improvised. The medic was a real Navy nurse who hadn't been told Hanks would collapse in front of her. The result is acting so naturalistic it barely looks like acting.

6. Does Apollo 13 Hold Up? (1995)

Completely. Ron Howard's dramatization of NASA's 1970 near-disaster is Hanks in full movie-star mode — Commander Jim Lovell, calm and competent and carrying the weight of three lives. The film is a masterclass in building suspense from events the audience already knows the outcome of. Hanks anchors a deep ensemble without ever dominating it. "Houston, we have a problem" is one of the most quoted lines in film history. The movie around it earns it every time.

5. What Is Tom Hanks' Most Emotionally Devastating Film? The Green Mile (1999)

Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb, a death-row prison guard in 1935 Louisiana who develops a relationship with a gentle giant inmate with inexplicable healing powers. Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's novel runs over three hours, and every minute is earned. Hanks plays a fundamentally decent man slowly confronting a profound moral failure. The relationship between Edgecomb and John Coffey — played by Michael Clarke Duncan, who received an Oscar nomination — remains one of the great screen partnerships of the 1990s.

4. Which Tom Hanks Film Changed the Conversation? Philadelphia (1993)

Philadelphia was the first major Hollywood studio film to address AIDS and gay discrimination head-on, and it needed a star willing to take on a role the industry considered career poison in 1993. Hanks played Andrew Beckett, a gay lawyer fired after his firm discovers his diagnosis, who sues for wrongful termination. The performance won him his first Academy Award and turned Tom Hanks from a popular movie star into an actor people measured others against.

3. What Is Tom Hanks' Best War Film? Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The opening 27 minutes — the Omaha Beach landing, shot with handheld cameras and no musical score — remain the most viscerally terrifying depiction of combat in cinema history. Hanks plays Captain John Miller, leading a squad to find and return home a single paratrooper whose three brothers have all been killed. He was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Roberto Benigni. Most people who were in the room that night still think the Academy got it wrong.

2. Why Does Cast Away Almost Beat Out the Top Spot?

We ranked it eighth. The performance could have gone higher. But this entry is for the film that almost beat Forrest Gump in the ranking conversation — and the reason it doesn't win is that Cast Away is one man on an island. Which is incredible. And then there's a movie that is one man and an entire American century, and Tom Hanks plays it like he was born for exactly that.

1. What Is Tom Hanks' Greatest Film? Forrest Gump (1994)

Some rankings are genuinely close. This one isn't. Forrest Gump is the defining Tom Hanks performance, the one that crystallizes everything he does — warmth, simplicity, unexpected emotional weight, the uncanny ability to make you forget you're watching an actor — into a single unforgettable role. Hanks won his second consecutive Academy Award, becoming only the second actor in history to do so. The film earned $679 million worldwide. Thirty years later, it still plays. "Life is like a box of chocolates" is corny. Somehow it still lands, every single time.

Where Does Toy Story 5 Fit in the Tom Hanks Story?

Toy Story 5 is a different kind of Tom Hanks movie — he never appears on screen, only his voice does — but Woody has been one of the defining characters of his career since 1995. What makes his return interesting is what the film is asking of Woody: to confront obsolescence against Lilypad, a frog-shaped AI tablet that Pixar's marketing bluntly states is better at being a companion than any toy can be. Critics say it works. A 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and early reviews calling the film "irresistible."

How to Watch Toy Story 5 in Spanish at the Theater

If you'd rather experience Toy Story 5 in Spanish on the big screen, you can — through TheaterEars, the free app that streams synchronized Spanish audio straight to your phone during the movie. Download it before showtime, sync it to the film, and listen through your own earbuds. It works at participating theaters across North America.

Toy Story 5 opens nationwide June 19, 2026.