Toy Story 2 is undeniably one of the best animated movies ever made, and helped to cement Pixar as a powerhouse in the world of the best family movies. Now, though, Disney has said goodbye to one of the women who played a vital role in making the movie happen.
Disney cut 75 jobs this week, according to Reuters, with two high-profile executives among those saying goodbye to the company. Lightyear director Angus MacLane has been let go, along with the movie’s producer Galyn Susman.
Decades before Lightyear, Susman had a critical role in the history of Pixar. We only have Toy Story 2, one of the best movies of all time, because of her.
You see, computer backups weren’t quite such a routine job back in the late ’90s. In 1998, an animator managed to delete all of Toy Story 2 during the routine process of clearing out some files.
By the time the mistake was spotted, 90% of the work done on the movie was gone, and the existing backups hadn’t been in operation for around a month. Put simply, it was an utter disaster and could’ve resulted in one of the most important new movies in the Pixar catalog never seeing the light of day.
Fortunately for everyone, and us Toy Story fans, Susman – the movie’s supervising technical director – had been working remotely after the recent birth of her child. She had a backup on her own computer.
Someone had the presumably very stressful job of driving that computer to Pixar HQ under many, many blankets. Thankfully, the movie was saved – but for a few days of work – and Susman’s legendary role in the studio’s history was secured. We’re certainly sad to see her go.
Unfortunately, Lightyear didn’t do the business and became one of the most disappointing Pixar movies at the box office. Check out our Lightyear review to find out why we weren’t keen on the movie either.
Pixar’s latest animated movie, Elemental, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival 2023 and it’s one of the most exciting 2023 movies we can’t wait to see. Meanwhile, we’ve explained here why Elemental got too close to a scary Lord of the Rings character.