Why Toy Story 2 Is The Perfect Sequel
And possibly a perfect movie
Space. Stars. Explosive titles. A mysterious beam approaching from the far left of the screen. We zoom in and, SURPRISE! It’s Buzz Lightyear hurtling towards a strange planet.
He burns into the atmosphere, the musical score booming in our eardrums, and starts weaving in and out of a dangerous space canyon at warp speeds.
This is the first two minutes of Toy Story 2, the perfect sequel from a blooming studio who would go on to make some of the greatest animated movies in Hollywood history.
“I promise you, Toy Story 2 is even better than the first one.”
That’s what one critic said when Toy Story 2 came out all the way back in 1999. That’s right, it’s been 24 years since this masterpiece of a movie hit screens everywhere.
I watched Toy Story 2 recently after more than a decade of not seeing it, and I was shocked at how good it was.
It got me wondering whether this film is the perfect sequel.
Here’s what Rotten Tomatoes has to say about Toy Story 2:
“The rare sequel that arguably improves upon it’s predecessor, Toy Story 2 uses storytelling, gorgeous animation, and a talented cast to deliver another rich moviegoing experience for all ages.”
Toy Story 2’s critic score on Rotten Tomatoes is a perfect 100%.
So, do I think it’s the perfect sequel? Yes. 100 percent without question, and in this article I’ll detail why.
If you want to watch the video version of this article, you can watch it right here. :)
First, let’s ask THE question:
What Makes For A Perfect Sequel?
What makes for a perfect sequel?
For me, there’s two things a great sequel needs to do:
First, you need it to be similar to its predecessor. A Toy Story 2 without Woody or Buzz that decided to turn itself into a horror flick wouldn’t feel right, right?
You need it to have the same DNA.
John Lasseter, Toy Story 2’s director, said that his intention with the sequel was to respect the original Toy Story film and create that world again.
Second, you need it to improve upon what came before without going overboard. John Wick is a good example. The action in the John Wick films improve with every entry as they try to top what came before.
But they don’t go overboard.
Okay, maybe they do, but they’ve always gone overboard so it works for that franchise.
Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Carribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is a good example of going overboard. They took a great character, stripped him of all his interesting qualities, turned the volume up on the comedy, and it feels like he’s a caricature of what came before.
One last thing.
You shouldn’t retcon what came before. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a good example. Jedi Master Luke Skywalker attempting to murder one of his own students is a massive retcon to Luke’s character and doesn’t make any sense. A good sequel doesn’t tarnish what came before it. It builds upon it. Toy Story 2 has no problem here and therefore I won’t be discussing this in the coming minutes.
Let’s break down why Toy Story 2 does what all perfect sequels do.
1. Toy Story 2 Has The Same DNA As Toy Story
The first layer here is whether the sequel has the same “DNA” as the original.
What did Toy Story 1 do so well? If you could define what it was in a couple words, what would you say?
Funny
Heartfelt
Madly creative
Scary
I’ll break each of these down.
Toy Story was hilarious. I don’t need to prove that to you.
Toy Story was extremely heartfelt. It’s a film that, surprisingly, packs quite a large punch despite it being about a bunch of small toys. Ideas of jealousy, belonging, growing up, self-doubt, and feeling wanted are all over the first movie.
The story of the first movie originated from John Lasseter wondering about what a toy would find upsetting. How would they feel if they weren’t played with by a child or forgotten about?
Pixar humanizes things like toys, monsters, bugs, robots, rats, fish, and even superheroes. And they create a world that makes sense around characters who either don’t exist or are not self-aware.
Oh, we have a bunch of self-aware toys who can talk and move at their own free will?
What would they be afraid of? What would they do? What would they think about? Pixar always seems to answer these questions not just well, or good, or great, they answer them perfectly.
It makes sense that toys would be mortified at the idea of their owners buying new toys. It makes sense that they would have real problems with feeling wanted, knowing that they can be replaced in a heartbeat.
And that’s exactly what these doubts are. A heartbeat. They are the heartbeat of this Toy Story, and it’s a powerful one because all of us, no matter where we grew up or what’s happened to us, have felt unwanted at one point in our lives, and we can empathize with these characters on a profound level because of that.
Pixar, as we all know, is an exceptionally creative studio. In my opinion, back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s they were the most creative movie studio in the world.
Pixar does this masterful thing where they envision a ridiculous situation like a world where monsters actually come through children’s closet doors at night and design a perfect story around that.
The story seems to just flow naturally from the world they created.
The first Toy Story is also terrifying. Sid, Sid’s dog, Sid’s toys, and the thought of Buzz lightyear being blown to smithereens and dying are all terrifying elements of the story.
To me, Toy Story 2 has all of these elements in spades, and it actually improves upon them all. I’ll get to that now.
2. Toy Story 2 Improves Upon It’s Predecessor
For one, Toy Story 2 is funnier than the first movie. My favorite line of the movie is when new Buzz calls Hamm a “slotted pig.” In fact, the whole “new buzz” storyline is absolutely hilarious.
In the first movie Buzz Lightyear was an insufferable moron when he took himself too seriously. That worked well for us to empathize with Woody and later feel bad for Buzz when he realized it was a lie.
In this film it works for different reasons. It’s funny. It’s not just funny, new Buzz is a scene-stealer. Another hilarious part of the story is when Zurg escapes Al’s Toy Barn and confronts our heroes in the elevator shaft.
Watching Toy Story 2 remake Star Wars’ most famous scene wasn’t something I was expecting as a child.
Another wildly entertaining character was Al. You will never not know exactly what’s on his mind in this movie. It’s like he did a line of coke before delivering every single line. I used to hate him as a kid but watching him as an adult — I don’t know — he was way funnier than I remember.
Another funny thing Toy Story 2 does is put the characters in ridiculous situations. I’ll talk about that more in a few minutes.
Second, Toy Story 2 is more heartfelt than the original Toy Story, and that’s saying something.
I think all of us remember Jessie’s story told brilliantly through a montage. That one scene stands out to me more than any sad moment in the original Toy Story.
One thing we also need to understand is that, in a sequel, we have history with these characters. If you do things right, you get to build upon what came before. That’s why great TV shows are more emotionally fulfilling than any 2-hour movie could be. Because we’ve spent not just a few hours with these characters, but dozens.
Toy Story 2 builds upon Buzz and Woody’s relationship and takes these two individual characters to new places.
Buzz gets to see his older self represented by a new toy. He gets to see the aisle that’s nothing but Buzz Lightyear dolls and reflect on how important he is and how far he’s come. But he also gets to feel abandoned when new Buzz defeats him and acts as an imposter with Hamm, Slinky, and Rex.
That abandonment is the same feeling Woody has when he’s shelved, and the same feeling Jessie had when her owner abandoned her.
This movie hits harder than the first because the first Toy Story was mostly about the jealousy Woody had for Buzz. We never really felt like Woody was in danger of being abandoned. This movie steers directly into that pothole of emotion.
Woody gets ripped and shelved. He goes from most wanted toy to feeling least wanted in a single moment. Then he gets stolen by Al and realizes that he’s a collector’s item. He’s wanted again, but this time in a different way.
That emotional rollercoaster for Woody is powerful.
The film’s focus on abandonment, belonging, and feeling wanted are what sets it above the original Toy Story for me.
Let’s talk about the creativity here. Toy Story 2 took a lot of what I’d like to call creative risks. The original Toy Story felt a lot “safer” than this movie. That’s not to say it wasn’t ground-breaking or innovative. Let me give you an example.
The opening scene of Toy Story 2 shows Buzz Lightyear flying around the galaxy on a mission to get to something. First off, what the heck? I remember having my mind blown watching this as a boy.
Is it a dream sequence? Is it a television program? Is it Andy’s imagination? What is it?
We later find out it’s a video game, but look — they told a better story in the opening 3–4 minutes of Toy Story 2 than the entirety of Lightyear.
This is a good example of a creative risk. For the first time ever in this universe, the film’s creators took us out of the real world and placed us in one of fantasy, and they did it in the opening scene no less.
What a way to start your movie off with a bang, signal you’re not afraid to take risks, and deliver one of the greatest scenes in Pixar Animation history.
This scene was actually supposed to appear in the original Toy Story, but they scrapped the idea. More specifically it was supposed to be a television cartoon playing on TV and it was slotted to be the opening of the original Toy Story.
Later, after he rips his arm, Woody has a nightmare of Andy abandoning him. He gets dropped to the floor, cascades through a cavern of darkness, and lands in a garbage bin where the corpses of old forgotten toys reanimate and drag him into the abyss.
Umm excuse me this is a little kids movie can we please calm down?
The first Toy Story was scary, for sure, but there were no trippy scenes like that in the original.
Funny enough, this scene was also slotted to be in the original Toy Story, but they deleted it and repurposed it for Toy Story 2. Apparently they made it less intense.
Then we have the scene that nobody can seem to forget — the one where Woody gets cleaned by Grandpa Time. This sequence lasts about 2 minutes in total, but it forever left a stain on the hearts of children everywhere.
It practically started the satisfying video trend we see so much of today.
Toy Story 2 did that. Where in Toy Story 1 can we see a sequence like this? Nowhere.
Toy Story 2 also has bigger set pieces that lean into playing with the scale of these toys so well.
For instance the baggage transportation system at the airport. That one scene left such a profound impact on me as a kid that I still, to this day, try to see behind the plastic ribbons when my baggage disappears at the check-in counter.
Pixar used to be about fun. The East Australian Current from Finding Nemo is a good example. That reminded us of a roller coaster ride as kids. It was fun. In The Incredibles when we watched Dash run across a lake and best a full-grown man in combat, that was exhilarating. I simply do not see moments like these in modern Pixar movies today.
Fun moments you were never expecting but, looking back, feel like they were inevitable all along.
The baggage transportation system scene is one of these, too. Having an endless conveyer belt of bags as far as the eye can see is pure eye candy, and having toys run around in an environment like this is such fun.
In fact, the decision to have Hamm, Rex, Slink, and Buzz go out into the real world to save Woody was incredibly intelligent.
You get to have all these fun moments where you can play with scale, environments we’ll never be able to travel to, and danger we’ll never be able to relate to.
We can travel through an air duct with toys. We can have scenes on the inside of an elevator shaft. We can go behind the scenes at the airport. We can chase down an actual airplane on horseback.
Toy Story takes place, for the most part, in houses. That’s completely fine and a perfect decision to make, but to be a better sequel, you need to do something different.
Having the entire movie take place outside of Andy’s house was a massive risk. I mean, how can you seriously have a bunch of toys running around in real life without getting spotted?
The film decides to lean into the zanyness of that idea in a scene where Buzz and company need to cross a busy street. Disguised as traffic cones, they start crossing the street and end up, of course, causing a massive multi-car accident.
When I watched this scene again I was in tears. It was simply the most hilarious thing I’d seen in a while.
This film’s ability to NOT take itself seriously at all but also, at the same time, deliver a heartfelt story about a bunch of toys that makes tears come to your eyes is magical.
It’s masterful.
It’s an animation studio at the top of its game, and luckily for us, Pixar would remain at the top of its game for the next decade.
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