Toy Story has been one of the biggest hits among kids and adults ever since its first release, and its unique storyline very different from Disney’s classic old movies is one major reason behind its universal success. But besides that, if there is one person who inspired this change, it was none other than Tom Hanks.
As it turns out, the Forrest Gump star not only saved the $3.3 billion franchise but also influenced his Toy Story team so greatly that they rebelled against the usual Disney formula that might have cost them heavily.
How Tom Hanks Inspired His Toy Story Team To Rebel Against Typical Disney Formula
While films from the Toy Story franchise became one of the most famous and groundbreaking computer-animated movies from Disney Pixar, a massive hand behind its success was Tom Hanks’, who gave his voice to Woody. As revealed by Andrew Stanton, who wrote the masterpiece’s script, it was the Saving Private Ryan star who inspired the team to rebel against the typical Disney song-and-dance formula and its classic storyline of love stories.
“So when we pitched Toy Story to Tom Hanks for the first time, he walked in and he said, ‘You don’t want me to sing, do you?’ And I thought that optimized perfectly what everybody thought animation had to be at the time. But we really wanted to prove that you could tell stories completely different in animation. So, we didn’t have any influence then, so we had a little secret list of rules that we kept to ourselves.”
Since this entire theme was new and unique, the team received a lot of discouraging from others including a famous lyricist who was instead encouraging them to return to the ‘Disney model that worked’. But Hanks’ team was too rebellious to agree to how heavily their new plot could cost them.
“Thank goodness we were just too young, rebellious, and contrarian at the time,” He continued. “That just gave us more determination to prove that you could build a better story. And a year after that, we did conquer it.”
Nonetheless, their rebellion did end up helping them in tons, setting up a new blueprint for every Disney movie that came after, with the franchise now at a whopping net worth of $3.3 billion.
Lifesaver Tom Hanks Helped Save The Toy Story Franchise
Tom Hanks is a legendary personality, and it’s not just because he brought a completely new plot for the upcoming Disney movies after Toy Story. But besides that, he also helped save the movie series from becoming a straight-to-DVD film as well!
When he and the rest of the cast found out about this serious consideration going on for the then-upcoming sequel, he wasn’t one to sit back and let it happen. Instead, he and Tim Allen somehow managed to convince everyone and save the disaster from happening.
“Tim [Allen] and I and everybody else connected with it wanted to know why. We said it should be released as a film because it was magnificent and as good as the first one,” Tom Hanks said. “Usually sequels are pale imitations and are slapped on video but this was really great. Eventually they bowed to some brand of common sense so now we have a Toy Story 3 [and a Toy Story 4 as well, with Toy Story 5 reportedly in production]!”
Besides the animated movie spawning four sequels, Toy Story also received worldwide critical acclamation and is now rated with a tremendous 100% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Thank you, Tom Hanks, for saving such a masterpiece!
You can stream all Toy Story movies on Disney+.
Source: TED
