Toy Story 2 (1999)
- To accurately portray their role in Toy Story 2, Tom Hanks spent weeks conducting hands-on research and rehearsing directly with director John Lasseter.
- Despite initial studio skepticism, Toy Story 2 went on to gross over $511,400,000 worldwide.
Toy Story 2 is a 1999 American animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, directed by John Lasseter, and widely regarded as one of the greatest animated sequels ever made. The film follows Woody after he is stolen by an obsessive toy collector named Al McWhiggin, who recognizes him as an extremely valuable vintage toy from a 1950s children's television show called Woody's Roundup. In Al's apartment, Woody meets his Roundup Gang โ Jessie the cowgirl, Bullseye the horse, and the Prospector โ and learns he is destined for a museum in Tokyo where he will be preserved forever but never played with again.
Buzz Lightyear leads a rescue mission across the city to bring Woody home, while Woody faces a genuine philosophical dilemma: the immortality of museum display versus the mortal joy of being loved by a child. Toy Story 2 was originally planned as a direct-to-video sequel, but early work proved so promising that Disney upgraded it to a theatrical release. The upgrade nearly became a disaster when nearly the entire film was accidentally deleted from Pixar's servers and the backup system failed โ the production was saved only because supervising technical director Galyn Susman had a copy on her home computer.
Joan Cusack's vocal performance as Jessie the cowgirl was the film's emotional revelation, particularly during the "When She Loved Me" sequence โ a wordless montage depicting Jessie being gradually forgotten by her owner as the girl grows up โ which reduced adult audiences to tears and is considered one of Pixar's most devastating sequences. Toy Story 2 earned $497 million worldwide and received universal critical acclaim.
