Hello, Spongey here.
Welcome back to Pixar-athon!
Sequels are hard to pull off.
It’s quite hard to tell another story when you already had a perfectly good one. Sequels are rarely good. We’ve looked at some decent sequels before. And we’ve seen some really bad ones.
Toy Story was a tough act to follow. But pixar did the impossible: Made a sequel just as great as the first.
This, is Toy Story 2
Woody is accidentally damaged during one of Andy's play times, which causes him no end of concern about becoming an unwanted "broken toy." Later, Woody gets stolen at a yard sale by greedy toy collector Al, so Buzz leads a group of Andy's toys to go rescue him. Meanwhile, Woody finds out he's a piece of merchandise from an old kids' show called Woody's Roundup after meeting three other tie-in dolls based on his sidekicks on the show. Woody discovers that they're all going to be sold to a toy museum in Japan, and he has to decide whether to go back to Andy — who will eventually outgrow him — or go to the museum and last forever, but never be loved.
And that’s just the basics!
While I don’t think it’s BETTER than the first one, it is just as amazing as it.
Again, I haven’t seen this pixar film that many times. I saw It on Disney channel once at a young age, but unlike ABL I remembered most of it, and quite liked it. Then I saw a few more times on youtube. Sadly it is one of two pixar films I do not own.
I like that the story has real depth. Besides the old kidnapping plot, we learn more about woody and really get to feel for him this time around. But we’ll get more into that later.
The characters are the same as before, so I won’t go into too much detail. But there’s some new characters this time.
First is Mrs. Potato Head. She isn’t in it that much, but she’s fairly funny when she is. Not much else to say.
There’s also Jessie, the other main character besides woody and buzz. We really get to know her through a backstory, which is told in song, and….it’s a Rugrats movie moment.
What is that, you may ask?
That’s a tear jerking moment in a film that’s otherwise not. Most pixar film’s have these, as we will explore later.
The moment in question for this is a song called “When she loved me”, where we find out Jessie had an owner much like andy. Only her owner grew up, and forgot about her. And you can predict how sad this is. Now you know why Jessie doesn’t like that woody wants to leave them for andy, as she thinks Andy will just dump them.
This leads to woody thinking hard about what he should do. Damn, this movie is pretty deep. This adds to woody’s character development, as I discussed.
By the way, you know those depressing Sarah McLachlan.ads with the dogs? She sang that song. She just thrives off the tears of men, doesn’t she?
This movie is filled with little moments that make me smile. For example, there’s a callback to the “YOU ARE A TOY!” line from the first movie.
Speaking of callback’s…
There’s a toy store called Al’s toy barn, which is central to the plot.
In the first movie, there’s a scene where buzz watches a commercial, and finds out he’s a toy. The ad mentions a store called Al’s toy barn, briefly.
Well played pixar, well played.
My fave scene? There’s a bit where the toys are crossing the road to get to al’s toy barn. And they cause a crap top on car wrecks, and overall destruction. It’s amazing,
Best line? The movie opens with an epic buzz lightyear space opening…which turns out to be a videogame rex sucks at. Later on, when they’re in al’s toy barn, rex finds a manual for the game.
REX: "You know, they make it so you can't defeat Zurg unless you buy this book! It's extortion, that's what it is!"
We’ve all encountered this, haven’t we?
This actually ends up being important to the plot as well. I won’t say how..
Now for the villains. First is Al. he’s just a guy who wants to sell the toys to a museum to make a bunch of money. He’s funny, but there’s not much to say,
The real villain is Stinky Pete, one of Woody’s roundup toys. For most of the movie, he seems nice, but near the end, it turns out he’s a bad guy,. He’s unhappy that kids started getting more interested in space toys. Which lead to the cancelation of woody’s roundup. He doesn’t want Woody to ditch them and mess up their plan. But he gets his great comeuppance. He’s an okay villain, and he’s fun.
I’m not saying as much this time, cuz this is a sequel, and I don’t have to introduce the characters and such.
Oh, a character from the pixar short “Gerri’s Game” makes a cameo as the guy who fixes woody! And when Hamm is surfing through channels, you see glimpses of previous pixar shorts.
Oh, and there’s another villain in the form of a Zurg toy (Buzz’s nemesis, voiced by pixar regular Andrew Stanton). But I won’t spoil the awesome-ness that happens with him.
A113 is the same place as the first movie. The pizza planet truck is used during a scene where the other toys try to get to the airport. And they run into more of those aliens from the 1st one, who Mr potato saves the lives of, and they decide to stick around with him.
But seriously, why are you sitting here reading about Toy Story 2 when you could be WATCHING it?! It’s really good, trust me!
…yea, I’ve run out of things to talk about. Uh…the animations really good, it improves on the first one.
Yup, I’m out.
So Toy Story 2 is a great sequel that is just as good as the original. Strong story, fully realized characters, and great animation. Toy Story 2 is just great.
This is Spongey saying, you already implied alien rape.
NEXT: Monsters Inc
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