Toy Story 2
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Toy Story 2 is a CGI animation film and the sequel to Toy Story, and the third Disney/Pixar feature film, which featured the adventures of a group of toys that come to life when humans are not around to see them. Like the first film, Toy Story 2 was produced by Pixar Animation Studios, directed by John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, and Ash Brannon and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution in the United States on November 18 1999, and the United Kingdom on 11 February 2000.
The movie also keeps most of the original characters and voices from the first movie including the likes of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn and John Ratzenberger. They are joined by new members, voicing the new characters such as Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer and Estelle Harris.
Voice cast
| Character | Voice actor |
| Woody | Tom Hanks |
| Buzz Lightyear | Tim Allen |
| Jessie | Joan Cusack |
| Stinky Pete the Prospector | Kelsey Grammer |
| Mr. Potato Head | Don Rickles |
| Slinky Dog | Jim Varney |
| Rex | Wallace Shawn |
| Hamm | John Ratzenberger |
| Mrs. Potato Head | Estelle Harris |
| Al McWhiggin | Wayne Knight |
| Bo Peep | Annie Potts |
| Andy | John Morris |
| Wheezy | Joe Ranft (speaking) Robert Goulet (singing) |
| Barbie | Jodi Benson |
| Emperor Zurg | Andrew Stanton |
| Andy's Mom | Laurie Metcalf |
| Geri | Jonathan Harris |
| Little Green Men | Jeff Pidgeon |
Plot synopsis
Some time after the events of Toy Story, presumably the following summer, Andy rips his Woody doll while playing with him and Buzz. Woody is placed on the shelf, where he finds another broken toy, the penguin Wheezy, and begins to fear he'll soon be thrown away. When Wheezy is set out for a yard sale, Woody tries to rescue him, but ends up in the yard sale himself, where he is stolen by Al McWiggin, an obsessive toy collector and proprietor of "Al's Toy Barn". Buzz and several other toys set out to rescue Woody.
Woody is taken to Al's apartment, where he is greeted by a sister/partner-like cowgirl named Jessie, her trusty steed Bullseye, and the Prospector (an unsold toy still in its original box). They reveal to him that he is part of a set and the star of a forgotten children's TV show, Woody's Roundup. Now that Al has a Woody doll, he has a complete collection and intends to sell the toys to a museum in Japan. Woody initially insists that he has to get back to Andy, but Jessie reveals how she was forgotten and eventually abandoned by her owner as she grew up, and the prospector warns Woody that he faces the same fate as Andy ages. Woody agrees to go with the "Roundup Gang" to the museum.
Buzz and his friends search for Al at Al's Toy Barn, where Buzz gets into a scuffle with another Buzz Lightyear doll (who, like Buzz in the first movie, doesn't realize he's a toy), and the new Buzz sets off with the other toys for Al's apartment, believing it to be a genuine rescue mission from his arch-enemy, Emperor Zurg. The original Buzz frees himself and follows them to the apartment.
When they get there, Woody tells them he doesn't want to be rescued and intends to go with his new friends to Japan, since he's now a "collector's item". Buzz reminds him "you are a child's plaything... you are a toy!" (ironically, Woody says exactly the same thing to Buzz in the first film) Woody figuratively, and literally, turns his back on Buzz and Buzz's group leaves without him. But Woody then has a change of heart and invites the "Roundup Gang" to come home to Andy with him. Jessie and Bullseye agree, but the Prospector locks them in the room, saying that the museum trip is his first chance (since he was never sold) and won't have Woody messing it up for him.
Al takes the toys to the airport, where Buzz and his group manage to free Woody and Bullseye from the suitcase, and stick the Prospector in a little girl's backpack so he can "learn the true meaning of play-time". But Jessie finds herself in trouble and remains trapped in the suitcase. Woody and Buzz ride Bullseye in order to rescue her from being taken to the museum on her own.
Woody manages to find Jessie inside the plane but just when they're about to escape, the door closes and the plane heads for the runway. Woody finds another way out of the plane, through a small hatch which leads down to the landing gear wheel, and as they are doing so, he slips but Jessie catches him. When the plane is at the main runway, Woody knows that time is running out and in true Woody's Roundup style, using his pull string. Woody and Jessie swing down to safety on Bullseye's back just seconds before the plane takes off.
Shortly afterwards, Jessie dubs Woody as a hero by saying "That was definitely Woody's Finest Hour". Even Buzz offers his congratulations to Woody for his achievement. Their celebrations are cut short, however, as they are forced to take cover when a second plane comes out of nowhere and flies down over them. Mission accomplished, the toys can now make their way home.
At home, Jessie and Bullseye are adopted into Andy's toy family, a fixed Wheezy sings "You've Got A Friend In Me"" and Buzz asks Woody if he is still worried about Andy giving him up. Woody replies that he isn't worried anymore, and that when it is all over, he has Buzz to keep him company, for infinity and beyond.
The events of the airplane's cargo hold have a terrible (and hilarious) consequence for Al. After Hamm fails at the Buzz Lightyear video game, he flips through the channels and sees Al in an Al's Toy Barn commercial, crying since he lost his precious luggage.
Songs
Randy Newman wrote two new songs for Toy Story 2:- "When She Loved Me" - performed by Sarah McLachlan - used for the flashback montage in which Jessie experiences being loved, forgotten, and ultimately abandoned by her owner, Emily. This beautifully poignant song was nominated at the Oscars in 2000 for Best Song, though the award went to Phil Collins for "You'll Be In My Heart" from Disney's Tarzan.
- "Woody's Roundup" - performed by Riders in the Sky - theme song for the "Woody's Roundup" TV show. Also end-credit music.
Commentary and trivia
- Critical response to Toy Story 2 was overwhelmingly positive. The Rotten Tomatoes entry [link] lists 108 reviews for the film, all of them positive. Many even claim the film is superior to the original, a rare feat for a sequel.
- Hanks and Allen each earned a salary of $50,000 for their voicework in the original Toy Story . Their fee for Toy Story 2 was $5,000,000 each.
- When Hamm is flipping through the channels, all of the scenes visible are from Pixar's short films.
- There are A Bug's Life toys in Al's Toy Barn.
- Right before the road crossing scene, the "bug bar" from A Bug's Life is visible in the bushes.
- The elevator in Al's penthouse has the "elevator music" version of the Theme to A Bug's Life.
- Prior to the end credits, during the "Blooper Reel", Flick and Heimlich from A Bug's Life converse about the supposed sequel to their movie, although Heimlich informs Flick that it is not A Bug's Life 2. Before Flick's question as to what movie is being filmed can be answered, Buzz Lightyear's karate-chop-action hand snaps the twig. Incidentally, in the movie, if one looks close enough at that same location, a caterpillar looking suspiciously like Heimlich crawls by moments before Buzz breaks the branch.
- If you look closely at the wall in some of the scenes showing Andy's room, you can see a big watch on the wall with Mickey Mouse on it.
- Al makes a brief cameo in Megas XLR.
- The nightmare scene where Woody is thrown into the trashcan after Andy says he doesn't want to play with him any more was actually an idea for the first Toy Story, but was not used.
- In the nightmare, the cards that Woody falls into are all spades. In fortune telling, spades mean death.
- Before the toys are due to cross the road to Al's Toy Barn, Slinky Dog says "I may not be a smart dog, but I know what roadkill is". This may be a parody of a phrase in another Tom Hanks film, Forrest Gump, "I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is."
- At the end when Wheezy is singing, Andy's calendar has a picture of bugs on a blade of grass carrying food, which is a preproduction painting from A Bug's Life. Also, in the beginning, when Mrs. Potato Head lost her ear, she was reading the tykes "A Bug's Life".
- The Cleaner, the old man who restores Woody, also appears in the 1997 Pixar short film Geri's Game. Incidentally, when he opens the drawers of his box looking for his glasses, one of the drawers contains chess pieces.
- The truck that drives by just as the toys cross the road to Al's Toy Barn is the Eggman Movers truck from the original Toy Story.
- A Life magazine in Al's apartment features Woody riding Bullseye on its cover. It is dated January 12, 1957 (which is John Lasseter's birth date). Its price is 25 cents and the headlines on the cover read:
- *"Children television. Saturday's favorite cowboy 'Woody'"
- *"Sputnik - First photos revealed" (note that the surprise Sputnik 1 launch occurred on October 4, 1957)
- *"Doctors say 'Americans don't eat enough fat'"
- The dust in the scene where Woody meets Wheezy set a record for number of particles animated for a movie by computer.
- In Jessie's "When Somebody Loved Me" scene, the tree from Ant Island in A Bug's Life is seen.
- In the opening sequence, when Buzz is on an alien planet, and ultimately battles the evil Emperor Zurg, many of the sound effects are directly from the original Star Wars trilogy, including lightsaber sound effects, the torture droid's hum, and the scraping metal noise the AT-ATs make as they lumber across the plains of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
- The scene where Zurg identifies himself as Buzz's father is, of course, a reference to The Empire Strikes Back. John Ratzenberger, who plays Hamm, had a small part in The Empire Strikes Back, as Major Derlin.
- The floating platforms Buzz Lightyear hops on play Also sprach Zarathustra, the theme to the 1968 film .
- When Buzz says goodbye to the second Buzz he gives him the Vulcan salute, a Star Trek reference.
- While filming a documentary on the making of Toy Story 2, presenter Andi Peters was invited by John Lasseter to record a line for the film. However, since Peters did not own a US work permit, the cameo very nearly didn't happen. The dilemma was solved as Peters recorded his line in the UK supervised by Lasseter via satellite, and his line made it into the film (he's the Baggage Handler who shouts "Hold it! There's a couple more bags coming from the terminal!").
- Just before the scene where Buzz finds the Buzz Lightyear aisle Dim from A Bug's Life makes a cameo appearance, but it is difficult to see because the background is blurred.
- When Barbie is giving the tour around the toy store, she makes a reference to the shortages of the Buzz Lightyear toy after the original Toy Story film, by describing the shortages being caused by 'short sighted' retailers who did not order enough of the dolls to meet the eventual demand.
- Surprisingly, when the original Toy Story was being made, the producers had asked the Mattel company if they could show the Barbie doll in their movie, but the Mattel people rejected the idea. Then they were kicking themselves after seeing how sales for Playskool's Mr. Potato Head had skyrocketed after Toy Story premiered. When asked again during the making of Toy Story 2, the Mattel people jumped at the idea.
- During the scene in the toy store, there is a camera shot with Rex shown in the rear view mirror of the toy car, a reference to Jurassic Park. The sentence made famous by the Jurassic Park movie "Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear" is also visible on the side rear-view mirror of the toy car.
- The creators of Toy Story 2 decided to give the Little Green Men a bigger role in Toy Story 2 than originally planned, after realizing how popular they are in Asia during a trip there.
- During the beginning of the film, it is revealed that the Buzz Lightyear introduction is part of a video-game that Rex is playing. The controller Rex is playing the game with looks similar to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) controller. The colored buttons, however, denote it to be a European or Japanese model, and not the North American one. Minutes later, the console is revealed on the top of Andy's TV, which is almost unmistakable for an SNES, a console which is, of course, unable to generate the graphics of the quality shown in the film.
- In a reference to This Is Spinal Tap, Emperor Zurg's gun-arm dial goes to 11.
- In the original script, the plane rescue climax was meant to see Jessie slip and fall with Woody catching her and she would be dangling over the plane wheel, distressed and scared. However during production, the roles were switched round to ensure that Jessie does play an important part in the scene.
- The Pizza Planet delivery truck from the first movie was used by the toys to get to the airport to save Woody.
- When the pizza truck arrives at the airport the intercom states "the white zone is for immediate loading and unloading...", a reference to a joke in the movie Airplane!. There is also a courtesy phone call as the toys go through the automatic doors.
- Al ends his phone conversation with Mr. Konishi (assumedly the owner of the toy museum in Japan to which the toys are to be sold) by saying "Don't touch my moustache". This refers to a mnemonic commonly taught to English speakers learning Japanese to help students remember the phrase (dÅitashimashite, pronounced roughly; doy-tashi-mashtay), meaning "you're welcome".[link]
Box office and business issues
Toy Story 2 made over $245,000,000 in its initial US theatrical run, far surpassing the original, and in fact, every other animated movie to that date except for The Lion King, though both were later eclipsed by another Pixar movie, Finding Nemo.Toy Story 2 was not originally intended for release in theaters. Disney asked Pixar to make a direct-to-video sequel for the original Toy Story with a 60 minute running time. When Disney executives saw how impressive the in-work imagery for the sequel was, they decided to create a theatrical movie, and the plot was reworked to be much more epic and cinematic in scope and duration of the movie was extended to just over 90 minutes.
Pixar and Disney had a five-film co-production deal and Pixar felt that with its change in status, Toy Story 2 should count as one of the pictures in the deal. Disney, however, felt that since the production of Toy Story 2 was negotiated outside of the five-picture deal, it should not count. This issue became a particularly sore spot for Pixar, leading to a falling out between Pixar CEO Steve Jobs and Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, concluding in Pixar's 2004 announcement that it would not extend its deal with Disney and would instead seek other distribution partners. With Eisner's departure and Pixar's ultimate purchase by Disney, however, these problems have been overcome.
The movie was first broadcast on digital TV in the UK on The Disney Channel on December 8, 2001 but like Toy Story, the transition of the movie from digital TV to terrestrial TV was extremely slow and eventually first appeared on terrestrial TV on BBC ONE on December 25, 2005.
Attached short film
Main article: Luxo Jr.
Theatrical and video releases of this film include Luxo Jr, Pixar's first short film released in 1986, starring Pixar's mascot, Luxo.
See also
- Toy Story
- Toy Story 3
- A113
- Geri's Game - featuring Geri, the toy cleaner in Toy Story 2
External links
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