Pixar Playlist #3 - Toy Story 2

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist

Well, it didn’t take long to get to the first sequel but here we are with Toy Story 2. The success of Toy Story really sparked something, and because it’s Disney and around this point in their history, if a movie made any money, it got a direct-to-DVD sequel.

The deal with Disney was at this point revised to 5 movies in 5 original franchises, so Toy Story 2 wouldn’t count towards it. Production for this film was not easy, with tight deadlines and a sudden rush for it to be theatre quality as it was changed to get a theatrical release, not to mention them nearly deleting 90% of their assets and staff members working to the point of actually getting wrist problems did put a dampener of things.

Released in 1999, the film made a respectable $497m on it’s $90m budget and is one of those rare films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so is it worth all that praise?

Well, yes and no, but I’ll get to that.

Pixar Playlist #1 - Toy Story

Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not: The Pixar Playlist

Whatever happens behind the scenes (and for the purposes of this review series, I’m going to ignore that) there’s one thing you can’t deny. Pixar have become pioneers in the animation industry. The dream of having computer generated animated pictures seemed a long way away back when the foundation of Pixar was being built, but today CG animation is everywhere, using computers to animate is practically the norm and hand drawn is saved for only the rarest of Japanese anime and some bits in Mary Poppins Returns.

Pixar’s first film is Toy Story, released in 1995, this film was made with a relatively small $30m budget. Disney handled marketing and distribution in return for profits and design rights. And boy was that a lucrative deal for Disney as Toy Story is an international phenomenon, making over 10 times its budget at the box office spilling into billions of dollars of merchandise, theme park attractions and sequels.

It’s well acclaimed, with a rare 100% Rotten Tomatoes Rating, so what do I think?