With the bulk of the company working on A Bug's Life, the film remained a small-scale side project for some time - until Disney's enthusiasm for early rushes in November 1997 led to it getting a theatrical release.
Toy Story 2 was originally conceived as a straight-to-video project. But as I stated in my review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the context under which a film was created cannot in and of itself determine whether the film is good or bad: "arguments and constant pressure can produce great creativity, while bonhomie and relaxation can lead to disaster." This is, admittedly, very difficult in the internet age, where the amount of information we have to process is inversely proportional to the time which we have to process it before forming opinions. I have continually stressed in my reviews the importance of not judging a film by its reputation - whether it comes to us with a bulging entourage of awards, or dragging behind it the stench of negative press. But here we are, with a sequel which both improves on and compliments the first film, and which is a masterpiece of animation in its own right. But when you take into account both the tortuous production saga before its release and the series' role as the jewel in PIXAR's crown, the idea of it being as good if not maybe better than Toy Story shifts from the impressive towards the inconceivable. This in itself makes it impressive that Toy Story 2 ever got made at all the original was such a high water mark in animation that it would not have been considered foolish if PIXAR had put up their hands and said "we can't top this". Any sequel worth its salt would have to do both. In making a sequel to Toy Story, John Lasseter and his PIXAR team could neither just reproduce the same graphical quality with a different story, nor retell the same story with better production values, a la Evil Dead 2.
It is even harder to do this when the film in question is not only groundbreaking as a children's film, but also a key pillar in the history of digital animation.
Creating a sequel to a successful and beloved film is hard enough at the best of times.
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