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So much for a big liftoff. After pulling some of the worst reviews and early fan reactions ever for a Pixar project, Lightyear proved to be a box office disappointment in its opening weekend. Not only did the Toy Story spin-off post a tepid (by Pixar standards) $51 million during its launch weekend, but it couldn’t even get past Jurassic World: Dominion, which retained the top spot at the box office during its second week of release. So why exactly is everyone going all Zurg on Lightyear? Here’s a closer look at the reasons—some obvious, others more existential—Lightyear didn’t send audiences to infinity and beyond.
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1. Even Andy is tired of his toys
Too much of a good thing can be, well, too much. The Toy Story franchise kicked off in 1995 with the original story about a boy and his toys—toys that spring to life when their owner sleeps. The film radiated charm, generated laughs, and elicited a wistful tear or two. The performances by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as Woody and Buzz, respectively, anchored the project, which also enlisted a strong supporting cast. The animation was not just gorgeous, but groundbreaking; Toy Story holds the distinction of being the first fully CGI animated feature. Disney/Pixar wisely spaced out the subsequent tales, debuting 2 in 1999, 3 in 2010, and 4 in 2019.
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But, beyond the features, Toy Story aficionados will also remember Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command: The Adventure Begins, a direct-to-video title released in 2000, as well as the television shows Toy Story Treats (1996), Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (2000-2001), Toy Story Toons (2011-2012), plus the specials Toy Story Of Terror (2013) and Toy Story That Time Forgot (2014). That’s a whole lot of Buzz Lightyear, and that doesn’t include toys, books, stuffed animals, video games, and all the accompanying merchandise. It’s conceivable that longtime fans have simply grown up and moved on and/or gotten tougher to please.
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2. Pixar cut too many slices from its IP pie
Thanks to franchises like Star Wars that continue going back to the same well—and the growing abundance of “legacyquels”—studios have learned that exploring a familiar story from a (seemingly) new perspective can generate a critical or box office win (or both). And audiences are usually thrilled to see beloved characters back on screen. But while those same audiences may not be as eager to watch original ideas as those wrapped in the warm blanket of nostalgia, at some point they start to realize that they’re getting something reheated, rehashed, or just plain repetitive. So this is a “live action” movie from within the Toy Story world that inspired Andy’s love for Buzz? What does this tell us about the films we’ve already watched, except that Pixar has more confidence in its established franchise than trying to launch a new one?
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3. Back in theaters, but not back on track
Speaking of leaning into the familiar, Lightyear is the first Pixar feature to be released theatrically since Onward, which opened on March 6, 2020, just as the pandemic swept across the world and turned theaters into ghost towns. Disney pivoted quickly, making Onward available as a premium VOD title by the end of that same month, then adding it to the Disney+ queue. In the meantime, Soul, Luca, and Turning Red all bypassed theaters, going direct to Disney+. Obviously, many of these moves were driven by the pandemic—and one imagines the studio’s peerless market research shows that family audiences will watch these films no matter where they are shown, especially when they’re on a platform that’s comparatively convenient and cheap. But some moviegoers are disappointed that their overdue chance to see a new Pixar film is happening with an idea that doesn’t feel especially new, especially given those other films’ focus on original stories. Moreover, even with those larger logistical challenges to consider, it doesn’t seem to put the studio’s money where its mouth is in terms of supporting diverse and original stories equally with its more established fare.
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4. Meta isn’t always better
Broadly speaking, we’re fans of Lightyear’s basic premise, that it’s the movie that inspired Andy to buy his Buzz toy. But the execution leaves moviegoers’ heads spinning. And the title card that opens (and explains) the film doesn’t do much to help. Is Lightyear a movie within a movie? A fictional movie within Andy’s world? Is the fake movie a Pixar animated movie? Why does Buzz not look anything like the “humans” in Toy Story? Is Buzz … Buzz Aldrin? How come Chris Evans is voicing Buzz? What happened to Tim Allen? Well, we think the answers are yes; yes; we have no idea; we have no idea; Evans is voicing the character, Buzz, while Allen voiced the toy iteration of Buzz. And there’s a spoiler we won’t share that complicates things even more. The fact that so many adults are mystified is hugely problematic, and we can only imagine the confusion kids must feel. It’s possible Pixar was too smart for their own—or the film’s—good.
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5. A kiss that won’t be seen ’round the world
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have banned Lightyear over a same-sex kiss between Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) and another female character, her onscreen partner. Inclusion of the scene has instigated a collective anger at the film, albeit for a variety of different reasons: according to UAE’s Media Regulatory Office, Lightyear was in “violation of the country’s media content standards.” Conservatives, meanwhile, seem to be fearful that they and their children are becoming “indoctrinated” to view LGBTQ+ characters (much less real people) with compassion and humanity and view the scene as Pixar’s capitulation to leftist Hollywood propaganda. In more progressive circles, the kiss doesn’t go far enough; it’s seen as a pandering, token gesture that fails to lend substance or real dimensionality to the studio’s first same-sex relationship. Notwithstanding the complexities of a gesture that would hardly be remarked upon if it were cisgender (can you even remember the last time there was another kiss in a Pixar movie?), the studio landed itself in hot water by simultaneously doing too much, and not enough.
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6. Maybe the reviews are right, or wrong—or both
Moviegoers will ultimately decide Lightyear’s fate, but critics have been wildly polarized by the movie. Jake Wilson of The Age in Australia, writes, “A typical product of the Disney-Pixar-Marvel-Star Wars complex, and far from the worst of its kind. But there’s no question its makers are more concerned with spinning their wheels than with taking a leap into the void.” Matthew Monagle of the Austin Chronicle argues, “Lightyear is a unique miss in Pixar’s catalog, a film that neither commits to its sci-fi imagination nor tries to find authentic moments for kids.” Stephanie Zacharek at Time Magazine slams Lightyear by stating that “Its plot is so hopelessly, desperately Christopher Nolan–style meta, that it caves in on itself.”
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On the other end of the spectrum, Barry Hertz at the Globe and Mail praises the film as follows: “If you can divorce Lightyear’s shareholder-appeasing origins from its actual cinematic accomplishments, then we’re left with a rather beautiful, often thrilling, sometimes devastating adventure.” Patrick Gomez of Entertainment Weekly observes that “Kids will love Lightyear. Adults will enjoy it. The only reason it falls short of what we’ve come to expect from Pixar is that they’ve set their own bar so damn high.”
The A.V. Club’s Tomris Laffly, meanwhile, came down somewhere in the middle, saying “Lightyear both struggles to justify the proposition it suggests in its opening and feels like an irrelevant oddity within the beloved Pixar series it claims to expand upon.”
When the consensus is that there’s no consensus, that can be a great opportunity for moviegoers to discover for themselves why it does or doesn’t work. But it also speaks to what may ultimately be the movie’s biggest flaw: When you set out to please the most people possible, you run the risk of pleasing no one. Few have called Lightyear an outright disaster, but for a movie built around the idea of inspiring a little boy’s love, it seems to lack a few of the qualities needed to truly move audiences.
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