Toy Story 2 is wildly considered to be one of the greatest sequels ever made and for good reason! It takes everything people loved about the first movie and expands upon them in every way. With even more memorable characters, stellar animation, hard hitting emotion, and timely themes anyone at any age can relate to, Toy Story 2 is one of the sequels that somehow manages to be as good if not better than the original. Heck, there’s plenty of folks that would argue that Toy Story 2 is the best Toy Story movie out of the four that we have and even the best Pixar movie ever made. With a movie as well-made and loved by so many people, you would assume this would have had the most smoothest, least stressful film production imaginable. You would be wrong! As a matter of fact, you would be seriously dead wrong! If films were judge solely on what kind of production it had, then Toy Story 2 would be on par with flicks such as Food Fight or The Emoji Movie.
Toy Story 2 has to have one of the worst and most stressful productions for a big movie that I’ve ever heard of. From confrontation from Disney on whether or not it should released in theaters to nearly all of the files getting deleted to having to rework the plot over the course of one weekend to finish a near two and a half year long development cycle in the span of just nine months, it is about as stressful and pressure filled as a production of a movie can get.
To coumarate the film’s 23rd anniversary, let’s take a look back as to all the problems that Pixar have to face during the production, all of the obstacles everyone involved had to overcome, and despite having everything going against them, they still managed to deliver an amazing film in the end. This is the story of the production of Toy Story 2!
Direct-To-Video or Theaters?
The first conflict of the movie was whether or not Toy Story 2 could be released in theaters. Back in the 1990s, Disney didn’t view sequels as a high priority or movies that had to be seen in cinema. With the commercial success they’ve gained with their sequels that were straight to VHS and DVDs, they usually didn’t put as much focus on the sequels as they do their original films. Whenever they did sequels directly for VHS and DVD, the majority of those would be made by a studio of their own called Disneytoon Studios. Disneytoon Studios are the ones that Disney depends on to deliver these direct-to-video sequels with a cheaper budget, shorter development time, lower resolution, and mostly something they can carve out in a hurry for a quick buck without much concern over the movie’s overall quality. All of those reasons and more is why when a sequel to Toy Story was greenlighted, not only did Disney plan on making it go direct-to-video, but they were considering letting Disneytoon Studios take care of it instead of Pixar. Since they technically own the rights to Toy Story and they still hadn’t acquired Pixar yet, Disney had all the power in the whole to make this happen.
As much blasphemy as that sounds to chose Disneytoon over Pixar, it should be notified that this was back when Pixar was still no where near as known in the later 1990s as they are now. With A Bug’s Life still in the works and all of the other future hits from the company that still had yet to be actual hits, they were still only known as the studio behind the original Toy Story and a couple of short films and nothing more. However, Pixar was a company that took great value in the quality of their work and never wanted to accepted mediocrity. The folks there had to know that if they would going to become anywhere near as big as they would later on, then they would have to always work their butts off to create the best possible feature films they can make.
Eventually, after Toy Story 2 was confirmed, Pixar met with Disney to convinced them that not only they were right for the jobs to helm it but that it should be released in theaters. After looking at some early story reels for the movie, the higher ups at Disney were impressed and agreed to release it in theaters. Despite certain complications with Disney to have the movie come out on the big screen, that turned out to be the least challenging part of production.
Team A and Team B
Once Pixar was hired by Disney to helm Toy Story 2, there was some conflicts surrounding which members of the Pixar team that was actually going to be working on it. The production originally began in a building separated from Pixar as most of the crew behind the original went off to work on A Bug’s Life. In this case, think of John Lasseter (a name which everyone would want to forget nearly two decades later) and the original crew from the first movie as Team A and the team that was originally assigned Toy Story 2 as Team B. Despite having all the intention and confidence in the world to make Toy Story 2 the best sequel possible, Team B just could not get the job done on their own.
Team B would have to go to Lasseter for help numerous of times during the production and the team itself just were never were able to come together as a cohesive whole despite all their best intentions. Shortly after Team A was finished with A Bug’s Life, they came to check in on Team B with the production of the movie….and it was quite a mess. Lasseter and company felt that movie was just flat and was no where near as emotionally affected or engaging as it could be. As I’ve stated before in this piece, Pixar had committed to a very strict policy for themselves to deliver the best movie in terms of quality imaginable. Having a sequel to Toy Story being mediocre or even just “okay” was no where near good enough for them.
With the deadline of the movie approaching (along with other personal matters that we will be discussing), Lasseter and most of the team from the first movie (Again, Team A!) decided to step in to work on Toy Story 2 in the hopes of delivering something better than it’s original state.
So far, the production has been quite shaky but it doesn’t seem THAT much to handle, right? Well, now let’s get into the REAL meat of this catastrophic development! The parts of production that nearly broke Pixar and made Toy Story 2 almost non-existent!
The Computer Accident
This is the part of the story that I believe most people know about when it comes to the behind the scenes of Toy Story 2, the computer files being accidentally deleted. Right before Team A step in to rework the story from Team B, they nearly lost all of the files they had saved for the movie. A member of the Pixar team named, Oren Jacob, who was the assistant technical director, initially attended to delete some files to create more space and make room for the ones they needed for the movie. But in doing so, he began to deleted files from the actual movie itself such as character models, story reels, storyboards, etc. and didn’t take notice of that until it was too late. Despite file servers eventually being shut down while that was happening, over 90% of the files, that took at least two years to make, were deleted and all gone! They did have backup files of their own at Pixar but unfortunately, those also decided to stop working at the worst possible time and they had nothing left! It was all over!
With two years of development flushed down the drain and less than a year until the intended deadline, everything seemed doomed for failure for both Toy Story 2 and Pixar themselves. If Pixar couldn’t get the movie done in some form of quality before their deadline, then why in the world would Disney want to work with them again? This was their one chance to recapture lightning in an bottle and put themselves fresh on the map for everyone to witness their glorious achievements and they blew it! Or at least it seemed like it?!
Galyn Susman, the savior of Toy Story 2 at your service!
If there is at least one person that should stand out as the hero (or heroine) of the production of Toy Story 2, that would be Galyn Susman. Susman, who was the technical director of the film who had been working at home after having her own child, confirmed to have existing backup files of her own in her own home computer. By some miracle saving grace, the Pixar team were able to recover the majority of the files they had lost, save for the work for the last couple of days, and the production was allow to proceed. Even then, it had been revealed that the files they couldn’t save didn’t turn out to be as important as originally intended.
Okay, that was certainly a heart raiser and something NO ONE ever wants to go through but at least it can’t get worse than that, right?! Right?!
Unsatisfying Results
Even with the production still staying afloat thanks to Galyn Susman having backup files of her own that the team could use, Pixar still wasn’t happy with the quality of Toy Story 2 thus far. Team B of Pixar clearly wasn’t working well on their own and was basically helpless without Team A around. With as strict as Pixar is to delivering top quality films, releasing Toy Story 2 in the current state that it was in was simply not an option.
With around nine months left to go, Pixar met with Disney, hoping they would let them delay the picture in hopes of being given more time to redo the film. Disney however refused. They felt the quality of the movie was fine the way it was and that it didn’t need to be redone. As a result, no extension was given to them. Pixar had no choice but to get the movie done on time for it’s November 1999 release date.
Despite having the files to complete the movie in it’s current form before the holidays rolled around, Pixar believed that wasn’t good enough and didn’t want to release the picture in it’s existent state. Despite not having much time left, Pixar decided to start the process over again in the hopes of delivering a more quality project than it was in it’s original form. It was this stage of production that the making of Toy Story 2 turned into a race against time.
Maximum Overworking Overload
With Lasseter and Team A fully on board, the production of Toy Story 2 started the process of being reworked. In order to meet Disney’s deadline, Pixar now have to make an initial development cycle of over two and a half years into just nine months. The first film’s creative team had to redevelop the entire story of Toy Story 2 in the pan of just one weekend. It was then that the animation team behind Pixar were in for what was most likely the most difficult time of their entire careers with the company.
While longer hours and more work days were nothing out of the ordinary for the team at Pixar, especially for Lasseter himself, the immense heavy workload eventually got to many people behind the hard working crew. The team worked shifts that went beyond 10 hours a day and 6 days a week. About a third of the group suffered from repetitive stress injuries and a syndrome known as carpal tunnel. There was even an instance where an animator forgot to drop their kid off at a daycare and left them in the back of the seat of their car by accident. While the child themselves turned out to be just fine, these were just minor details of how much of a massive working overload the process of making Toy Story 2 was and how it was affecting the work-life styles from the folks at Pixar.
The team had to push themselves beyond their limits to make the best sequel they could possibly make to what was already a majorly groundbreaking film for animation in the original Toy Story. The most amazing thing about all of this is how it all worked out in the end. Despite having every reason in the world to fail, Toy Story 2 managed to be one of the greatest sequels not only in animation history but possibly even film history as well! It made it all worth it by the end!
It All Worked Out
I don’t think most people realize to this day what an absolute impact that the success of Toy Story 2 had on Disney and Pixar! It was able to convince Disney that sequels are majorly important movies that deserve to be seen on the big screen and it helped put Pixar on the map as easily one of the best animation studios out there. If this movie was a failure, there’s a big chance we would be seeing a different version of both Disney and Pixar than we are seeing right now or at least we have seen since 1999.
This whole ordeal also help greatly characterized Pixar as a top-tier film company. They didn’t have to go through all of this. They could have just took Disney’s word for it and deliver the same movie that was in the original subpar state that had been already approved by their higher ups and called it a day. But, they had higher expectations for themselves! They wanted to make something truly meaningful and worthwhile to the rest of the world, even if they had to go through hell and back to make it happen.
Although every single creative person from Pixar must have been exhausted to death after all that extra hard work they put in to make Toy Story 2 as good as it was, they certainly have a film to be proud of themselves for. Being able to deliver the movie in some sort of finished form is already a miracle in of itself but having it be one of the best Parts 2 films of all time is surely a sign that anything is possible. That just because a film has a bad and troubled production does not mean it will turn out to be a bad film itself. Anything in filmmaking or even life can be overcome if you have the right team of people to make it all a possibility.
Toy Story 2 could have killed Pixar but in the end, it only made them stronger!
Thanks everyone for reading and I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving weekend!
Here’s some other links about the production hell of Toy Story 2:
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