Rewritten for the Better: The History of Toy Story.

By: Josh Stephen.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The History and Production of Pixar Classics.

Today we're gonna talk about the film that started it all: Toy Story. 

Released in 1995, Toy Story is Pixar's very first full length animated film, and highly regarded as one of the best movies in their catalogue, but if it's original draft was released to the public instead of the one we got, animated movies as a medium may not be what they are today.

And like always, for those who may not have seen this movie, which I highly doubt is anyone at all at the time of writing, I'll give a brief recap of this movie for you before we dive into it's production history any further.

Toy Story is a movie about a cowboy doll named Woody who has been the leader of a group of toys who belong to a boy named Andy, due to being his favorite toy. One day, a new toy becomes Andy's favorite, Buzz Lightyear. An action figure with a crazy amount of features, from lasers, to wings, and even karate chop action. The movie deals with Woody and Buzz learning to get along in order to get back to Andy before he moves away, after getting lost at a gas station.

In early drafts of the script, Woody isn't as nice to the other toys as he is in the final product. He feels more like a dictator than a kind leader, which is what he ended up becoming, but in this Black Friday reel, you can see how different Woody is compared to what his character ended up becoming.

John Lasseter, the director for this film, showed this draft to Disney, and they were not happy with it, forcing Pixar to rewrite the script, and create the version of Toy Story we know and love today.

The character designs for Buzz and Woody were also very different from their final designs. Originally, Woody was meant to be a ventriloquist dummy, but then shifted over to being a cowboy doll shortly after it was decided that Buzz would be a spaceman toy. You can find some of these drafted designs on the official Pixar webpage for Toy Story.

Funnily enough, while researching the production history, I found that a lot of the artists working on this film liked designing the mutant toys present in Sid's room. Stating that they were also a lot like Sid as kids, and I find that a little funny considering Sid's purpose as an antagonist in the movie.

But, that's all for today. 

Next time, we'll be talking about arguably one of Pixar's worst movies: The Good Dinosaur.

Until next time, To Infinity, and Beyond!

Comments

  1. Timothy WhiteDecember 16, 2023 at 3:46 PM

    It's interesting to think what could have been if we got that version of Toy Story. Woody seems like much more of an antagonistic character than the likeable and loyal cowboy that we know him as today.

    Also yeah that is funny about the artists being like Sid as kids.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jillian DrummondDecember 19, 2023 at 4:42 PM

    Cool knowing they were going to make Woody a ventriloquist doll--- that could've opened up the door for a lot of funny jokes. Makes sense they made him a cowboy after Buzz was decided to be an astronaut though.

    ReplyDelete

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