Pixar exec Pete Docter says Lightyear “asked too much of the audience”
Pete Docter offers some patronizing words about Lightyear, Pixar's latest flop
Aux News Pete Docter
Pixar’s chief creative officer Pete Docter has taken some time to reflect on the dismal reception to the company’s most recent Toy Story-based production, Lightyear. After a bit of soul-searching, Docter has summed up the film’s problems as a matter of not playing into the feeble expectations of the audience.
“We’ve done a lot of soul-searching about that because we all love the movie. We love the characters and the premise,” Docter tells The Wrap. “I think probably what we’ve ended on in terms of what went wrong is that we asked too much of the audience. When they hear Buzz, they’re like, great, where’s Mr. Potato Head and Woody and Rex? And then we drop them into this science fiction film that they’re like, What? Even if they’ve read the material in press, it was just a little too distant, both in concept, and I think in the way that characters were drawn, that they were portrayed. It was much more of a science fiction.”
With some of the newer Pixar projects doing directly to streaming, it’s harder to simply equate success with box office numbers. Lightyear was the first Pixar film to hit theaters since 2020's Onward, which also tanked in comparison to previous outings. However, when looking at Toy Story 4, the discrepancy is clear, with Lightyear earning $226 million worldwide compared to Toy Story 4's whopping $1 billion. From a critical perspective, Lightyear hit lows not seen since 2017's Car 3, resting at a low-for-Pixar 74% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Realizing that banking on a beloved franchise does not always cash out is a hard lesson to learn (and one many more companies will likely learn soon, too). IP isn’t a guaranteed source of success, and when a premise is as convoluted as Lightyear’s, it’s hard to fault the audience for the failure. Yes, viewers may love Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear the action figure, but many could not muster up the same excitement for the man the toy was based on, voiced by Chris Evans.
As a result, Lightyear—despite its well-baked origins—paled in comparison to recent original stories like Luca, Turning Red (which currently is in the Oscars race for Best Animated Feature Film), Inside Out, and Coco. Contrary to Docter’s idea, Lightyear’s failure was not a matter of the audience not rising to the occasion, but more that the story was probably not one worth telling in the first place.
However, it seems as though Disney/Pixar is going back to the drawing board when it comes to storytelling within the Toy Story universe, with a fifth installment of the franchise in the works. Docter calls it “surprising,” fit with “some really cool stuff that you haven’t seen before.”
“The thing we’ve been really trying to do, and this has been the case for a while, is we’ve been looking at them a little bit like, okay, we’re not planning for the future. When we made the first Toy Story, we had no idea there would be a Toy Story 2,” Docter says. “We’re just trying to make this movie. But that in making the movie, it takes you places, unexpected places, which is what I love about the creative process. If I knew exactly what I was doing when I started making a movie, there’d kind of be no point in making it. I discover so much along the way.”
Hey, as long as there’s Woody and Rex and Mr. Potato Head, we’re all good.
187 Comments
“Pete Docter offers some patronizing words about Lightyear”
He was pretty open and took responsibility for it, admitting they were wrong in their approach, you unbelievable scum-sucking fucking asshole.
They should make a movie about the toy that Andy received as a Christmas present after watching the movie Lightyear and falling in love with the title character, Buzz Lightyear. A movie based on the toy based on the movie.
“When they hear Buzz, they’re like, great, where’s Mr. Potato Head and Woody and Rex?”I mean people are dumb but are they that dumb or is it that not as many people are interested in a solo Buzz Lightyear film as they would be a new Toy Story?
“Whenever Mr. Potato Head’s not on screen, Buzz should be asking, ‘Hey, where’s Mr. Potato Head?’”
“Mr. Potato Head. Mr. Potato Head! Backdoors are not secrets!”
Is that one of Willie Dixon’s lesser known songs?
Ha! Not sure to what level you’re joking around so I’ll just answer it straight. It’s a quote from Wargames. Tried to post a .gif or video but neither were cooperating so ended up just writing out the quote.
Oh, haven’t seen that one in a while, I’ll have to take your word for it.
Ironically in this film it would actually make a decent amount of sense if Mr. Potato Head died on the way to his home planet.
Mr. Potato Head died on the way back to his home planet.
I mean, did you see the uproar over the movie because two female characters briefly kissed on screen… people are that dumb.
Was it really an ‘uproar’ or was it a small number of people who were then given a larger platform because of the articles being written about their Tweets?
An uproar is someone loudly proclaiming their opinion. It’s not a group or anything.So yes. There was definitely an uproar.
I mean, did you see the uproar over the movie because two female characters briefly kissed on screen… people are that dumb.Was that interaction necessary to the movie? Did it advance the plot in any way? Did it help develop any relevant aspect of a significant character? Is the sexual orientation of any character vitally important to the story? Is going out of your way to include such a scene in a kid’s movie appropriate?If not, then its inclusion was unnecessary. If not, its inclusion is simply pandering to the over-sensitive sensibilities of, well, people like you. The studio going out of its way to include such a scene where it isn’t appropriate when they know that a major segment of their target audience aren’t exactly fans of having leftist political propaganda shoved down their throats is…the fault of the audience?Sorry, but audiences are not obligated to support your product. Audiences are not obligated to support your political messaging. Remember that whole “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences” mantra you guys are so fond of? Apply that to yourself.
Isn’t it supposed to be “gender-fluid potato person” now?
Fluid Potato is the name of my Master Shake/Frylock mashup cosplay.
I like.
Weren’t they always? I thought that was the whole “put all kinds of shit on a potato” premise.
I hear he really liked his tortilla body.
Would you put your brain in a new potato body?
No. There’s a “Potato Head” line of toys that include Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, but the creation of an umbrella brand was enough to fuel conservative media’s own “gotta be mad at sumptin” potato heads for weeks.
Isn’t it supposed to be “gender-fluid potato person” now? Or gender-mashed potato person?
“Oh look potatoes! This potato’s got big ears…little winged potatoes…oh, new potatoes!”
IT STINKS!
“His last words were ‘huzzah’!”
This has nothing to do with Toy Story. I simply can’t enjoy a science fiction adventure film unless there’s a horrifying man-sized potato creature who is the hero’s best friend.
It can be two things.
They’re not that dumb. This was an in-character adventure. Not hard to comprehend, and nothing about the trailer suggested Woody was going to show up at some point. It just wasn’t very good (apparently, didn’t see it.).
Exactly
It’s funny that you completely missed his point.He didn’t say people are dumb, he said that they want Buzz Lightyear in a specific context and removing him from that context causes problems.
Ie. for the slower among you, people want more Toy Story, they didn’t want a Buzz Lightyear sci-fi adventure movie that has nothing to do with Toy Story.
All I know is I took my kids to see it and I enjoyed it, they loved it and have watched it again at home since. That’s really all that matters to me. Sorry it didn’t make them a bazillion more dollars, though.
I probably would have loved it when I was a kid. I was that kid whose parents got them ‘A Brief History of Time’ when they were 10, so I would have loved the use of time dilation.
Lightyear was fine, but I find it hard to believe it was Andy’s favorite movie.
Huh, this is timely, considering I just watched it for the first time last weekend.Fundamentally, I think he’s right in that the biggest issue was a miscalibration between audience and film targeting, though I’d say that’s entirely on Pixar. The opening title cards (which feel slapped on, and might suggest someone in editing realized the conceit didn’t make sense) say that this is supposed to be the film that Andy watched in the 1990s that the Buzz Lightyear toy he got was based on. The problem is, that assertion doesn’t make sense.Lightyear doesn’t in any way feel like a 1990s sci-fi, let alone an animated film (I’m not entirely sure if the idea is that in-universe, this was a live-action film? Or traditionally animated? So that’s another weird issue with the conceit.) The feel isn’t there, the tropes are not contemporary, the visual design is massively different (Buzz loses his toylike costume almost immediately for a completely different look, and the thing is steeped in the greebled, grungy 70s/80s look), the guy doesn’t fly, and there’s not even any sense of the character traits that you could see getting flanderized into Tim Allen’s portrayal. The film’s choices made with Zurg feel like someone watched the end of the 1998 Lost in Space reboot film and somehow thought they were worth riffing on. (And again, introduce logic issues, since shouldn’t Buzz and Zurg know each other’s backstories, invalidating the interactions in Toy Story 2?)The film itself outside of those factors is just fine, but it doesn’t distinguish itself in any way that Pixar’s best films have. There’s basically no reason for it to be called Lightyear or related to Toy Story in any way; even from the trailers, it clearly wasn’t, and audiences clearly picked up on that. This was a failure of Pixar’s own making.
You’re right on every point. In a weird way, it felt like it hamstrung itself with that very strange opening title card, or even connecting it to Toy Story in the first place. I did like Sox though. (Mostly because the robo kitty seemed to be from a completely different version of Lightyear than the one that ended up on screen.)
The film feels more like a contemporary reboot of the film Andy watched in the 90s. Complete with unnecessarily convoluted revamp of the villain’s origins and way too serious treatment of a kid’s entertainment property. Your Lost In Space remake comparison is apt.
You guys are hurting Matt LeBlanc’s feelings.
It’s okay. He has all that money to dry his tears with.
Eh, he’s just a switch-flipping monkey anyway.
I was going to say “He and William Hurt can go cry about it together in a pile of money” but then I remembered William Hurt died. That’s sad.
Matt LeBlanc is evolved enough to have feelings?
Yeah, that’s probably the most succinct way of putting it. It’s doesn’t really feel like a kid’s movie (at least to the degree of something like Coco or Turning Red), which I think is another thing that probably put off audiences.
A contemporary reboot of a fictional film that inspired the meta-fictional backstory of character of a previous film of which this film is both a spin-off AND a canon in-universe artifact.This is like Pale Fire!
Well, that’s a better Nabokov novel to take inspiration from at any rate. Too many animated things (especially Japanese ones) seem to take their inspiration from Lolita and don’t seem to get that Humbert isn’t supposed to be a good guy.
The only thing that would have made it better was a post-credit stinger of Andy ranting about how this film murdered his childhood.
Yep. A lot of that Lost in Space movie seemed to end up in Lightyear.
Would it have been so hard to make a Space Ranger movie about actual Space Rangers doing Space Ranger stuff? You know… in space?
Instead the whole story was about Buzz being stuck on a planet, and we felt stuck on it with him. What was going on with the actual Space Ranger Corps? The one that sent him there in the first place? Was that supposed to still exist after all the tiresome timey wimey business?
And don’t even get me started on how time dilation seemed to be such a surprise to a Space Ranger who had just traveled to an alien planet.
The movie should have ended with a twenty-something Andy storming out of the theater and bitching about the remake online.
also that incredibly weird fucking sandwich scene with the meat on the outside. what the hell was that.
That thing KFC made a few years ago?
What a perfect response; you make excellent points. I actually thought the movie was gorgeous and had some cool moments. I hate to say it, but it might have been considered great if it was just “Pixar in Space” rather than the movie Andy saw in the theater, assuming the proper adjustments were made. Unfortunately, as a Pixar superfan, I walked away super angry and disappointed. What a shit and unbelievable tie-in to the Toy Story universe.
Yeah, you’re dead-on. I think the movie provides its own most devastating counter-argument. Everyone walked out going “gosh, I sure would love a toy of Sox.”Not Buzz Lightyear.
I think this would have been better if it had nothing to do with Toy Story. I purely original story would have landed better. Then let people connect the dots later that it could have been what Andy saw. Fans love making their own theories.
On the one hand you have a point, but on the other hand, so what? It was a good movie, why not just enjoy it? Who cares if it’s aesthetic matched 1990s sci fi?
I’ve never seen the movie and that is 100% the impression I got from the ads and PR. It makes absolutely no sense as the movie the goofy Buzz toy was “based on.”
Asking us to watch it was too much.
Welp, calling your audience too stupid to get the movie is an approach, I guess.
I use that excuse all the time for movies, shows, and restaurants. It even saved me during a performance review.
“Your honor, how can my client be ‘guilty’ of these so-called ‘incredibly violent murders’ when by his own admission he is too dumb to understand the lore behind Buzz Lightyear? The defense rests!”
Well, about 90% of the articles about Lightyear before its release were confused about its setting and backstory, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s my point—they made a film with a gordian knot of a twisted premise, now Docter seems to blame the audience for its failure, not themselves.
I remember when the trailers first hit there was *all sorts* of confusion ON THIS SITE about the premise. From site writers and commentariat both. So…
What’s funny is that he didn’t call anyone stupid, he pretty much owned up to the movie’s failures, but ironically you’re too fucking stupid to understand that.
What I would have done was have a scene at the beginning of the movie that shows Andy going to the movie theater to watch Lightyear that would have provided all the context people needed to know why it was so different. Also they probably should have had Tim Allen voice Buzz because that’s the voice we think of when we hear Buzz Lightyear.
What ruined the movie was the forced inclusion. Again.
Oh noz did they put a black person in it
And a gay! Gasp!
So if they had changed one of the relevant female characters to male, everything would’ve been hunky-dory?
No no don’t you understand. All the resources usually reserved for making a movie good gets used up making a character not a white straight guy. So you have to choose between good movie or fORcEd DIvERSIty.
Only if they changed one of the relevant female characters to David Bowie.
This is the last time I’m gonna do this (for now), but…You know what would have made this movie better?If they had let Freddie Prinze, Jr., do the voice of Buzz.
Agreed. It’s a better movie if they didn’t shoehorn in that Buzz fella
You know what you’re saying. We know what you’re saying. Are you just physically unable to speak in anything but dog-whistles?
How is it a dog whistle? It’s a straight-up airhorn.
Yes, like you, I was confused and enraged at the idea of two secondary characters briefly sharing a kiss in a children’s animated movie. I was so upset when I saw it in the theater that I immediately began pissing all over myself. Just non-stop piss. Gallons of the stuff. And then when the person next to me had the temerity to call me a “smelly little piss baby” I shouted “YOU DONT UNDERSTAND OUR FREEDOM IS DEAD BECAUSE OF THE WOKE THE WOKE KILLED OUR FREEDOM! DISNEY WOKE FREEDOM DEAD!” At that point the usher rushed in said “aw, does the big piss baby need a diapy? Diapy for piss baby? Come with me piss baby boy!” and I wanted to calmly inform him about the egregiously upsetting scene I was forced to endure, but I was just weeping and pissing so much that at that point I passed out from dehydration. I assume the same thing happened to you?
You’re really into pee, aren’t you?
Your comment is one of the funniest damn things I have read in weeks. No joke: it was so funny, I almost pissed myself. XD
Movies as a medium might be too challenging for you if you’re too fragile to handle anything but straight white guys. Same for games, music, TV, books, magazines, the outdoors, the indoors, pretty much anything. Might I suggest living in a deprivation tank?
Sounds like it’s unbelievably easy to “ruin” things for you if all it takes is a background kiss that lasts less than one second.Have fun inventing reasons to never enjoy anything.
Honestly, if there was a kiss, was it in service of the movie?
I laugh when I walk out the door about how I’m ruining society with the forced inclusion of myself as a bi woman. When I walk into a bank, I’m not happy unless people are asking, “Does she have to be bi? Why is this customer even a woman?”
It’s an animated movie from a Universe that includes sentient toys and aggressive plants. What inclusion could possibly be forced? ANYTHING is possible.
lmao youre a joke
It’s a kinda dull movie in which Buzz isn’t very likable, and takes place on a measly one dark, drab planet. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good, nor is it fun.
Oh yeah, it was like a Stan Brakhage film
Comparing a narrative film to the work of an experimental filmmaker is not the bon mot you seem to think it is.
Then again, that wasn’t quite the putdown you figured it was either. I guess we’re not at the Algonquin.
A Brakhage gag followed by an Algonquin gag. *Someone* is slapping with a crushed velvet glove, eh?
“Pixar’s chief creative officer”“…the COO…”Shouldn’t it be CCO? I’m Canadian so might be wrong cause I don’t know American executive titles.“Lightyear hit lows not seen since 2017’s Car 3“Car 3 should be Cars 3.
Car³
3FAST3CAR
You’re right, he’s Chief Creative Officer (as per the article), not Chief Operations Officer as I would have assumed reading the headline.
Chief (O)Creative Officer. The first O is silent like in that band Sunn O )))
COO-COO-ca-chew
Quit stealing my moves
Call me a curmudgeon, but I didn’t think Lightyear or Turning Red or Luca or Onward (or Soul, for that matter, though it wasn’t mentioned in that article) were any good in comparison to Pixar’s golden age.
I’d put Luca up there with the best. Turning Red is enjoyable, but definitely lower B-tier. Onward…is like a really good Dreamworks film. Haven’t even seen Soul.
Luca is really criminally underrated.
Soul….didnt play into the jazz/music element enough IMO. Onward…seems about right, lots of potential, but feel like that script needed more time in the over. Turning Red was top notch. Luca I havent gotten around to. Brother in law watched Lightyear with the nephews and thought it was great.
Amusingly, I’d flip that rating; I thought Luca was good, but not great—particularly regarding the ending, which felt extremely rushed—while Turning Red was tons of fun and Onward is on my list of favorite Pixar of all time. Of course, that may partly be because A) I’m a huge D&D nerd, so the D&D jokes landed for me the same way the comic book jokes in Incredibles did, and B) I’m a dad, and the scene with the dad returning in the end just hit me incredibly hard. It’s that final scene that makes me object to your Dreamworks comparison, by the way; no Dreamworks film, no matter how top-tier, could ever have pulled off (SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER)the incredibly downbeat element of the main character not getting the reunion which he’d wanted in the first place. Only Pixar would go there, and the movie gets two thumbs-up from me for that alone.
Luca was pretty good. They could have had the balls to admit the characters were gay, but I’m guessing they made a business decision.
I thought Turning Red was pretty top tier stuff but that could be because the Mom reminds me of my Mom
You’re a curmudgeon.
I’ll disagree on Luca (as have some others). Onward was good, but felt like it was, I don’t know coasting a little maybe? It just kind of pulled a lot of its punches where, say, Up just leaned into them.
Luca was super cute. Lightyear and Turning Red were just okay (though I do applaud what Turning Red was attempting to do). Didn’t see Onward or Soul.
Luca had its moments, but I think the problem that it and most of Pixar’s recent stuff has it that it’s trying too hard to recapture the magic of the studio’s early days, and consequently the movies end up feeling kind of samey.In my book best Pixar movie of the last 5 years or so is Turning Red because it went for a totally new style and tone instead of aping the studio’s glory days.
I really loved Onward, but Soul really fizzles out by the end.
I really wanted to like Soul, but the film just never gelled emotionally.
I liked Onward quite a bit.
Luca was fantastic. Turning Red, Onward, and Soul felt… generic.
I haven’t seen Luca yet but Turning Red was GREAT.
Luca was dumb and boring because it never gave me a reason to care about the characters. Soul was 1/2 of a great movie. Everything in the real world was hacky at best, but everything in the Beforelife/Afterlife world was amazing.Turning Red is a fantastic tale of change, sympathy and empathy. The best Pixar movie since Toy Story 3.Onward was a B grade. Decent intent and execution, a decent adventure/travel movie, but weak at execution of ‘heart’.Lightyear was a B+ for me. Good adventure, twist and well executed time travel/scifi stuff. Plus Sox is another addition to the culture’s great collection of kid’s movies sidekicks (like the Minions, etc.)
As the mother of a high-achieving daughter who suffers from anxiety AND the daughter of a scary-as-hell mother, Turning Red had me rocking back and forth sobbing with my face in my hands. I don’t know if that makes it a good movie, but I felt seen.
The only one of those I’ve seen is “Soul”…and I completely agree with you.
Hey Pete, I didn’t see your movie because I’m dumb; it was ‘cause I’m lazy. Don’t underestimate the lazy dummy demo.
you tell ‘em!
Isn’t the audience for these Toy Story movies like 6-year-olds?
If anything I’d say it expected too little of the audience. They expected us to buy that this movie existed because the story of the Buzz Lightyear toy’s original source media just HAD to be told (even though it was already told 23 years ago) when Lightyear obviously existed because someone at Disney decided they wanted to turn Pixar into Star Wars and start doing character-focused spinoffs left and right.I guarantee that if this thing had made money, a year or two from now we’d see a realistic Western starring Woody, and multiple sequels for both that and Lightyear down the line.This is why the backstory behind the movie became so important, and also why it felt so tacked-on; I don’t think Pixar anticipated that people’s reaction to Lightyear would be “why does this exist?” and so they scrambled to invent a satisfying answer that question.
Woody is from an in-universe TV show called “Woody’s Roundup” which I’m assuming is a take on Howdy Doody or Hee-Haw. Incidentally, that would be way more fun than this dour, overly-serious nonsense.Edit: Now that I’m looking into it more, Woody’s Roundup was specifically based on Howdy Doody, given that Woody was originally supposed to be a ventriloquist’s dummy.
The thing is, there /was/ a series back in 2000, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, that /did/ serve as the in-universe basis for the Buzz toy line in Andy’s world. Bizarrely, it’s not currently available on D+.
Doesn’t sound like the last woody roundup I attended.
The last woody round up I attended was a 7th grade sleepover. We were kids! Curious. Experimenting.
That’s true. However Buzz was originally also from an in-universe TV show, but Lightyear retcons that in order to justify its own existence.
No, that doesn’t make sense. Why wasn’t Buzz Lightyear on Tattooine communing with Boring Fett?
i can’t wait for the movie with mr.and mrs potato head as serial killers on the hunt for sexy body parts
“I guarantee that if this thing had made money, a year or two from now we’d see a realistic Western starring Woody, and multiple sequels for both that and Lightyear down the line.”
And maybe water would continue to make things wet?
I really don’t think “Why is Buzz not an action figure? I don’t understand why this movie isn’t a different movie,” was a serious issue in a world where we have, like, seven different Wolverine movies that are somehow in nine different continuities that all star the same guy.
The problem for me was that this adventure gave us a Buzz who never did any Space Rangering. He could have been anybody and the movie could have been titled INTERSTELLAR, BUT, Y’KNOW, FOR KIDS.
Buzz Lightyear was a coke dealer. He wasn’t a very good one. He got busted, and the judge said “Well son, Ah’ll give y’all a choice: yizz cin go tuh jayil, or yizz cin joyn the Space Force…Ah calls ever’one ‘son’ cuz it makes may sooperier to all y’allz.”
It’s become clearer to me in the past 20 years that there are a LOT of casual moviegoers who literally see a title, an actor, maybe a trailer or poster…and they watch the film with minimal expectation. And that people like me who thrive on What’s Coming Out Next Year level of cinema details are the minority. Chattier, but a minority.So I don’t think he’s slighting the people who watched LIGHTYEAR, he simply recognizes that not everyone realized this had *nothing* to do with toys.
Stupid premise. A different Buzz (not Tim Allen). “Woke” stuff.Choose any or all of the above as to why people didn’t see it. It’s been hashed and rehashed, but Disney still seems to be missing it.
If only it was a robot dog!
You shouldn’t think of gay people as “woke stuff”. You should think of gay people as people. I don’t go complaining about all the hetero-ass kissing I see when “the guy gets the girl” at the end. Go fuck yourself.
No, but you complain about a lot of other wacked-out shit.
With LOTS of comments.
Over & over.
Replying to yourself.
until we wonder who you’re even talking to.
I don’t go complaining about all the hetero-ass kissing I see when “the guy gets the girl” at the end.Then you, like Disney, miss the point.The lesbian kissing scene wasn’t the culmination of a romance plot/subplot involving the main character and his/her love interest. It was a completely unimportant aspect of a side character’s life. “Happy 40th Anniversary” parties don’t happen every day. So the interaction is forced, wildly improbably and completely unnecessary. It’s obvious propaganda. That’s why the inclusion of that scene, or more to the point that aspect of that scene, is “woke stuff”. It exists solely to pander to people like you so you – and Disney – can feel morally superior to everyone.
I just went with woke as the generic term for conservatives’ disagreements with progressive positions/politics. It’s the term they use regularly (“go woke, go broke”). To pretend that progressive positions in movies isn’t an issue for some moviegoers is to be willfully blind. Disney can choose to ignore them of course, but it doesn’t mean they’re not there.
Door for Nazis
<----- please exit promptly to hell
Are you interested in why some people didn’t see the movie, or are you interested in condemning the person that knows why?
People who think “Woke” is an insult must really like being asleep.
People who think “Woke” is an insult must really like being asleep.People who think “woke” is an insult understand the implications of wokeness…and want to part of it.
Study Finds People With Higher Cognitive Ability Care More About Free Speech Than Political Correctness – Summit News
Every time I’ve been with another woman, I’d giggle to myself about how I’m ruining someone’s day with all this “woke” stuff.
Well, you were certainly ruining her day.So…good job?
I mean, you’re clearly a ridiculous person, but you have a point. There are a lot of redneck snowflakes who refused to see it because there were a couple of Black characters and a kiss that took literally a second and their feeble little brains couldn’t handle that, so that was an actual thing. Probably though, it’s that the whole movie was just not that great, for reasons unrelated to the Black characters and the one-second kiss.
I highly doubt those people had any tangible effect on the movie’s ticket sales, though, considering the runaway success of so many other movies which have been branded “woke.”
The movie failed on its own merits.
I agree, hence the last sentence of my post, which said exactly what you just said.
…and their feeble little brains couldn’t handle that…No.They understood from the inclusion of that scene that this movie would be an unrelenting barrage of leftist political propaganda. And they wanted no part of it.Those “redneck snowflakes” are not obligated to support a movie. They can choose to support it. Or they can decline. They declined.And you are butthurt over that.So what kind of “snowflake” does that make you?
I don’t know why I’m a ridiculous person. Those are the reasons that I have seen come up over and over when this movie is discussed. And I listed three, btw. It doesn’t really matter if one agrees or disagrees. But as the guy running the show, it’s his responsibility to take an honest assessment of why people didn’t see the movie. Instead, he seems to have settled on basically saying the movie was too smart for the audience. That’s ridiculous.
Maybe I misunderstood. I thought you personally were saying that having Black and gay characters was “woke” stuff. Which is ridiculous. There’s nothing “woke” about the fact that Black and gay people exist, and only people who don’t know what “woke” means (which is why white America should stop appropriating Black slang) think there is.But I agree, his take that people are just too stupid for his movie is lame, but I guess it’s easier to say “You’re stupid” than it is to say “My movie wasn’t that good.”
Yeah, I gotcha. I replied to another poster saying that I chose that term because that’s the term that is often used by conservatives to speak against progressive positions/politics. I was trying to be succinct, but it seems my original comment was unclear to a number of folks.
You are not a ridiculous person, on further assessment.I mean I guess you might be, but not because of that. I, personally, am a ridiculous person for many reasons.
haha thank you. I’ll take ridiculous person over being called a Nazi any day.
please buy a goddamn thesaurus
Or.. maybe.. I’m just sayin’.. this could be the problem..
OK. That is very funny. I own a Sox toy, because Sox is indeed not just the best character in the movie, but a very good character indeed.Say what you will about Lightyear, but it is much better than Jurassic World Dominion. Now THAT is a truly godawful bad movie.
I just refuse to watch Pitch Meeting videos until they take those stupid googly-eyes out of the video thumbnail.
I mean, it also didn’t look or feel like a movie Andy would have seen in 1995.
And if it was, the must-have tie-in toy would have been the robot cat.
Does it piss all over the house?
Ah, yes, but if you remember Toy Story 2, Al’s Toy Barn was practically choking on leftover Buzz figures.So clearly Sox was the big toy and Buzz less so, hence the overstock.
I now have a Sox toy on my desk. I have never owned a Buzz toy.
Yeah, a 10-year-old boy would FOR SURE be more interested in a talking cat than a fucking astronaut.
Tell me again that you’ve never once interacted with a child.
I feel like the basic problem is “Why did a 7-year old boy think that this particular spaceman toy was cool?” is not actually a question that anybody really needs to see the answer to. Since that’s a gap anybody could fill in by themselves.
all they need to do is have the Chris Evans version of Buzz show up in the new Toy Story instead of Tim Allen, kids will realize it’s a connected universe, boom. Toys.
If it keeps a pay check away from Tim Allen then I’m game
“If there’s a steady paycheck in it for me, I’ll shove as many baggies of . . . ‘talcum powder’ up my bottom as you want!”-excerpt from Tim Allen’s interview for the Ghostbusters.
There used to be a Buzz Lightyear animated cartoon I watched when I was a kid, back in 2000-01. It was Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, and I never had any problems disassociating it with Toy Story.I was ten years old then, so I don’t think the audience is the problem.
The key to understanding this movie is that Andy never mentions it or shows any evidence of actually giving a shit about it because it was only his favourite movie during a brief window when he was a young, stupid child with the more limited children’s entertainment options of the early 90’s, and years later when he went to college, he chose Woody.
This guy needs to get a PhD.How he doesn’t have a PhD just for the introductions I have no idea.
Was our movie shit? No, it’s the audience that was wrong.
Mmmm… Duff Light Beer… *hungry drooling*
It’s not that it was a science fiction movie. Everyone knew it would be that. I think the time travel aspect was too complex for a children’s movie. You’re used to adults loving Toy Story so you were writing for adults, but these adults watched their first Toy Story almost 20 years ago when they were kids. Lightyear was supposed to be a kids’ movie with all this high level time warp stuff, so I think that was part of it.That said, my son liked it. He’s 4, so I doubt he understood the time warp aspect but he enjoyed all the pew pew pew.
When they hear Buzz, they’re like, great, where’s Mr. Potato Head and Woody and Rex? And then we drop them into this science fiction film that they’re like, What?Congrats on winning the award for the most out of touch, wrongheaded, and patronising comment of the year. Truly you are deserving of the position you’re in.
There’s a Principal Skinner quote that comes to mind…
I could see them getting that note a lot in focus group screenings, where people find out the title of the movie only a few minutes before they watch it and obviously don’t see any posters or previews.
Pete Docter offers some patronizing words about Lightyear, Pixar’s latest flopAfter a bit of soul-searching, Docter has summed up the film’s problems as a matter of not playing into the feeble expectations of the audience.
Snark all you want, but considering that I distinctly remember the dominant critical response of this movie being every critic (including a few around here) loudly shouting “BUT I DON’T GET IT” like this was Fermat’s Last Theorum or something, seems like he has a fair point.
Am I the only one who thought this was simply a delightful movie? I don’t know why it’s getting bludgeoned left and right..
It’s good to show contempt for your audience.
It was fundamentally a bad story. I want to leave a Pixar movie feeling like someone ripped my heart out but in a good way. I didn’t feel the usual emotional damage like an UP or a Toy Story 3 did to me.
Lightyear gave us Sox, and that is enough.
By any normal standard, Lightyear did not bomb at the box office. It made $226 million worldwide on a production budget of $200 million. Many, many people went to see Lightyear in the theatre, and many of them probably thought it was a perfectly fine way to spend their time. I saw it on a plane, and enjoyed it (mostly because of Sox, but still, it was a fine movie to watch on a plane and much better than some of the other movies I watched on the plane). It’s only a bad performance by comparison with other Pixar movies, and yes, it’s not as good as Pixar’s greats. Those are some very high standards. Also, there were a crap ton of very good-great animated movies released last year.