‘Toy Story 2’ Was Nearly Lost Forever

The big picture

• Toy story
  revolutionized animated films with its mind-blowing computer animation and heartfelt story of friendship.
• The success of
  Toy story
  led to a decline in hand-drawn animation and the rise of computer-animated films.
• Toy Story 2
  was almost wiped from Pixar's servers, but a new mom working from home saved the film.

when Toy story was released in 1995, made movie history and forever changed how most animated films were made. In the early 1990s, animated films were as popular as ever, thanks to Disney blockbusters such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdini The Lion King. His hand-drawn animation style was a beauty to behold. Then came one a little-known company called Pixar and its fully computer-animated film about a child's toys that come to life when no one is looking.

Computer animation had been attempted before on a smaller scale, but it usually looked clunky and unrealistic. Toy story's animation was impressive as it made these toys look so real. To go along with it, the film also had a fun and emotional story about friendship, featuring the biggest names in Hollywood such as Tom Hanks i Tim Allen giving voice to the adventure. We might take the Toy Story franchise for granted, but really, we should be grateful to have it. At the end of 1998, a a freak bug nearly wiped out what would be Toy Story 2 from the Pixar servers.

Toy Story's computer animation changed the way movies were made

Toy story was a huge success, becoming the third biggest film of the year at the box office. After that, computer animation was all the rage, and unfortunately, hand-drawn animation quickly became a thing of the past. Four years later came a sequel, with Toy Story 2 being as good and successful as the first film. We would have to wait until 2010 Toy Story 3. It was the perfect end to a trilogy, with a final act both poignant and heartbreaking that brought grown-ups to tears in their theater seats. Woody and Buzz and Friends were so beloved that the film had the highest box office of any feature film released that year (not including Avatarwhich was released the previous December.

Many will agree that the franchise should have stopped there. There was no ending to the way the story had ended. Still, money talks, and in 2019, Toy Story 4 hits theaters It was another box office bonanza, and while fans attended and reviews were outstanding, it also felt unnecessary. There was no need to bring the gang back, but with Disney controlling Pixar, we've accepted that the sequels will keep coming. It was no surprise when Toy Story 5 it was announced The fifth film is sure to be another one that families will flock to see on the big screen, and given that the franchise means so much to millions, it's crazy to think it almost didn't exist.

'Toy Story 2' was almost deleted from their servers

According to Pixar co-founder SlashFilm, Ed Catmullhe wrote about what happened in his book Creativity, Inc. According to him, some poor, thankfully unnamed soul from Pixar was on the internal file servers doing a standard file cleanup, when you mistakenly enter a delete command in the root folder of the movie. All character models and assets started to clear.

Oren Jacobwho eventually became the technical director of Pixar, worked as an associate technical director of Toy Story 2. In 2012, he spoke to The Next Web about what happened.

“That's when we realized it for the first time, with Woody. [
Larry Cutler
] I was in this directory and was talking about installing a solution to Woody's or Woody's hat. He looked in the directory, and it had 40 files, and he looked again, and it had four files. Then we saw the streaks start to disappear as well and we were like, “Oh my god.” I picked up the phone… “unplug the machine”.

Jacob continued, “He had a bug, I forget exactly [one]. It was like “The directory is no longer valid”, because it's in a location that was just deleted. Then he thought of going up [a directory] and went back up, and then we saw Hamm, Potato Head, and Rex. Then we looked at it again and it was just Hamm and then nothing.” He continued: “
The master machine falls.
Some people are animating a socket and it can work for a minute or five minutes, but eventually you have to pull data from the master machine for one reason or another, and your machine freezes. Finally, every animator and, every TD, everyone who works on the show says, “Oh, all the machines down.” Let's have lunch. Ha, ha.'”

'Toy Story 2' was saved thanks to a woman who worked from home

The servers were abruptly shut down, but the damage was done. 90% of Toy Story 2 had disappeared There was a backup system, but to make matters worse, it hadn't been working properly for weeks. It seemed as if the film was gone, along with millions of dollars of work that had gone into it. However, after the worst luck imaginable, the crew followed up with the best of luck when Toy Story 2 he was, in a way, saved by a baby.

Galyn Susman she was the film's supervising technical director, but she didn't usually work in the office with everyone else. Half a year earlier she had given birth and was now working from home. He had developed a way to copy the database Toy Story 2 on your own computer. Together with Jacob, he rushed to his house, wrapped the computer in a blanket, as if it were a rare and fragile treasure (in fact it was), then returned it to the Pixar offices, where fortunately much of the film was recovered. “[Susman] and I got up and got out, went back to her Volvo, crossed the bridge, got the machine, got some blankets, hugged her with the seat belts, in the back seat,” Jacob said.

If it weren't for Susman having a son, which gave him reason to work from home, Toy Story 2 he would be gone, so maybe he should be thanking his grown son Toy Story 2the existence of obviously, Pixar would have started from scratch again, but it would have been a frustrating and painstaking task that would likely have delayed the film. for another year or two and altered the history of the franchise. Would the plot have been redone? How would this have changed the sequels that came after? Would the butterfly effect, which would have resulted in other Pixar films coming out at a different time, affect their performance or change how other now different films performed against them?

Today it's normal for many of us to work from home, but that wasn't the case in the 1990s. Here, that unusual practice happened to save an entire film. If ever a new mom needed to give her boss another reason why she should telecommute, then the story of Toy Story 2 It is certainly what needs to be said.