'Lightyear' Coming Summer 2022

[TwilightZone]

the twist

Reading reviews all over the internet this twist was an issue for a lot of people.

Spoiler: Lightyear spoilers ahoy!

Disney and pixar really need to stop with B.S. twist villains because the twist in this movie, featuring a time traveling Buzz, was just awful.

 

[Willmark]

I’m beginning to think Pixar’s time has past, but honestly not because they have done anything egregiously wrong. Their offerings have become erratic and of less dependable quality, but society also has changed.

Early Pixar was something of a magic trick (the latest CG) but put to use to tell rock solid stories. Remember when Pixar was known for simply crafting the best STORIES? Now it’s easy to point to the cash grab sequels, but early Pixar still made high quality art while grabbing the cash.

But their stories don’t seem inspired anymore. Even Soul could have used some more revisions. Now their CG is great, but nothing special. Gone are the days when the only other act in town was Dreamworks. Now all the streaming studios seem to release an animated movie once a month. Their visual quality might not be as great as Pixar, but they’re good enough to fill the niche.

It’s the 1950’s again, and Disney is trying to tell audiences that are enjoying TV cartoons to come watch Sleeping Beauty!

Agreed. Early Pixar up till about Toy Story 3. Inside out was good but everything after uneven to me (out of the ones I’ve seen).

WALL-E and Up were likely their peak achievements. Hard to top either of those in terms of story IMO.

 

[MisterPenguin]

The relationship of Buzz with Zurg doesn't have to be the same for "the original movie," or "the toy," or the "cartoon series," or even "the theme park universe."

We've already seen that with Marvel, there is the comic book canon (which gets updated and changed about every five years), the MCU canon, and the Marvel Theme Park Universe. Who's alive or dead or related to whomever is different in each universe. In the MCU, the Collector is a third-party acquaintance of the Guardians. In the Theme Park Universe, he's an enemy.

 

[MisterPenguin]

thoughts on strange world? I saw the trailer during lightyear (not sure everyone got that one), and I really have no interest in it.. at this point. I just dont get what the story is or who the characters are.

If the story and setting were familiar, it wouldn't be "strange"!

 

[Kirby86]

I do think as Disney fans we should support them as much as we can. To me, that means going to as many movies as I can, which interest me. Which is most of their animated stuff. Live action is hit or miss.

I just think it is odd to use Opening Weekend to determine if a movie is good or not, when you didn't go to see it. That makes you (not you @Sir_Cliff) part of the problem as to why it did so poorly. You knew about the movie, and still chose not to go. It's not like they did a bad job advertising it to you.

We as fans don't owe Disney our support. It's a buisness, if Disney dosen't sell their movie well to the audience this is the result, a movie that underperformed. This is not the first movie this has happened to and it won't be the last. My "support" begins and ends when I buy a ticket to a movie that intrest me. If the marketing doesn't get me interested in the movie thats on them I won't give them my money. (This is coming from someone who saw the movie)

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Agreed. Early Pixar up till about Toy Story 3. Inside out was good but everything after uneven to me (out of the ones I’ve seen).

WALL-E and Up were likely their peak achievements. Hard to top either of those in terms of story IMO.

Wall-e is the masterpiece for me but I’ve seen every Pixar movie so far except for Turning Red and Lightyear. My least favorites are probably Brave and Monsters University. Yes I liked Cars 2 better than Monsters U. Brave was fine but it felt like a Disney Princess movie and should have been one. It wasn’t a Pixar movie to me. So I judge it weirdly I guess.

 

[DCLcruiser]

thoughts on strange world? I saw the trailer during lightyear (not sure everyone got that one), and I really have no interest in it.. at this point. I just dont get what the story is or who the characters are.

No real interest. Honestly, it looks like some CGI designer's doodles. Maybe a college project on reinterpreting Dr. Seuss?

Then again, I wasn't sure how Inside-Out or Soul would turn out, and they were very good.

We as fans don't owe Disney our support. It's a buisness, if Disney dosen't sell their movie well to the audience this is the result, a movie that underperformed. This is not the first movie this has happened to and it won't be the last. My "support" begins and ends when I buy a ticket to a movie that intrest me. If the marketing doesn't get me interested in the movie thats on them I won't give them my money. (This is coming from someone who saw the movie)

Not sure how anyone who likes Toy Story wasn't immediately interested in Lightyear. The idea of a backstory on Buzz, but with humans, got me interested at the first mention of it. I like Sci-Fi, I like Toy Story and I also wanted to see how they could add it to either BLRS or SM. Disney did enough marketing (for me).

John Carter, without derailing this too much, was a good movie, and could have been a new space Indiana Jones type of series. It was ruined by a lack of marketing, a bad title and an unknown cast. Such a shame.

 

[ppete1975]

Wall-e is the masterpiece for me but I’ve seen every Pixar movie so far except for Turning Red and Lightyear. My least favorites are probably Brave and Monsters University. Yes I liked Cars 2 better than Monsters U. Brave was fine but it felt like a Disney Princess movie and should have been one. It wasn’t a Pixar movie to me. So I judge it weirdly I guess.

you do not want to see my wall-e obsession.......

 

[DCLcruiser]

Wall-e is the masterpiece for me but I’ve seen every Pixar movie so far except for Turning Red and Lightyear. My least favorites are probably Brave and Monsters University. Yes I liked Cars 2 better than Monsters U. Brave was fine but it felt like a Disney Princess movie and should have been one. It wasn’t a Pixar movie to me. So I judge it weirdly I guess.

Wall-E gets me every time. Great movie.

 

[Willmark]

Wall-e is the masterpiece for me but I’ve seen every Pixar movie so far except for Turning Red and Lightyear. My least favorites are probably Brave and Monsters University. Yes I liked Cars 2 better than Monsters U. Brave was fine but it felt like a Disney Princess movie and should have been one. It wasn’t a Pixar movie to me. So I judge it weirdly I guess.

Brave, Monsters U is where we started noticing the difference.

Brave felt so forced in a lot of ways. It’s hard to put my finger on it. At the time my wife and daughter liked it but less so now.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

We as fans don't owe Disney our support. It's a buisness, if Disney dosen't sell their movie well to the audience this is the result, a movie that underperformed. This is not the first movie this has happened to and it won't be the last. My "support" begins and ends when I buy a ticket to a movie that intrest me. If the marketing doesn't get me interested in the movie thats on them I won't give them my money. (This is coming from someone who saw the movie)

Disney has received a small fortune from us over the last decade, with so many amazing ways to give them our money there’s no need to support them for the things that don’t peak our interest.

The thousands the parks stand to lose from us annually as a result of reservations/AP changes should be a much bigger concern to them than the few hundred they’ll lose by us waiting to watch movies on Disney+.

Fortunately for them they’ll still get most of the “lost” park money via Disney cruises and Aulani.

 

[Sir_Cliff]

Agreed. Early Pixar up till about Toy Story 3. Inside out was good but everything after uneven to me (out of the ones I’ve seen).

WALL-E and Up were likely their peak achievements. Hard to top either of those in terms of story IMO.

I suspect there will be a generational split in terms of when people think Pixar was good, as there is with a lot of things. The films are still getting good reviews and it seems like they're finding an audience (on topic for this discussion is that Luca was the most-streamed movie of 2021, which is no mean feat).

Personally, I lost interest when they started doing so many sequels but have recently re-engaged as they have eased off the sequels in favour of original films. If you were to ask me what are my favourites right now, I'd probably say Ratatouille, Coco, and Luca. That comes more from enjoyment and feeling a connection with the films than anything else.

I will sheepishly admit that I have always found Wall-E the most overrated Pixar film...

Not sure how anyone who likes Toy Story wasn't immediately interested in Lightyear. The idea of a backstory on Buzz, but with humans, got me interested at the first mention of it. I like Sci-Fi, I like Toy Story and I also wanted to see how they could add it to either BLRS or SM. Disney did enough marketing (for me).

This may be just me, but I am a bit Toy Storyed out at this point. I felt like I almost went to the 4th one out of a sense of obligation, even if I enjoyed it well enough. As a parks fan in particular, I feel a little hit over the head with this franchise.

 

[Willmark]

I will sheepishly admit that I have always found Wall-E the most overrated Pixar film...

 

[TP2000]

Uhhhh, Turning Red happens to be 94% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

That's great. So why didn't they release it in theaters in March, 2022? Spring, 2022 was just a few months after the blockbuster Christmas season when Spiderman packed theaters across the country and did a Billion dollars in sales.

Again, we aren't discussing artistic or creative merits of films. We are discussing their financial success or failure.

Perhaps they wanted to juice Disney+ subscriptions with Turning Red? But you can't spend $200 Million on a film like Turning Red and then try and earn that all back plus profit on eight dollar per household streaming subscriptions instead of fifteen dollar per seat theater tickets.

 

[TP2000]

What are you talking about? Turning Red was critically acclaimed and a lot of people love it. It's hardly a "dud of a movie."

It's a dud of a movie financially for the company.

I will keep repeating this over and over if I have to, but we are discussing financial success backed by hard facts and data, not artistic merits backed by personal feelings and individual opinions.

You can't tell me the sales pitch to the Burbank financial guys on Turning Red in 2018 was "We'll spend two hundred million dollars producing this film, then release it only via a streaming service that only charges 8 bucks for the entire family to watch it as many times as they want!"

Turning Red lost at least a few hundred million dollars for Disney. That's not a business model and distribution setup that is financially sustainable.

 

[TP2000]

We're not exactly talking voting here! We don't owe it to Disney to financially support all the endeavours.

Thank you for getting it!

I just think it is odd to use Opening Weekend to determine if a movie is good or not, when you didn't go to see it.

Opening weekend is the well known barometer of a movie's box office success. It's also the weekend where studios earn the most from ticket sales, before they start having to share more profits with theaters in the second through eighth weeks of a release.

When a movie bombs at the box office on opening weekend, as Lightyear just did, things don't get better for the studio in the following weeks. In fact, things get much worse financially.

As a reminder, we are discussing the financial success of Lightyear backed by hard data, not the artistic merits of Lightyear that are entirely subjective and personal.

That makes you (not you @Sir_Cliff) part of the problem as to why it did so poorly. You knew about the movie, and still chose not to go. It's not like they did a bad job advertising it to you.

Consumers in the free marketplace do not owe it to any studio to attend their movie. If you feel you personally owe something to Disney for making Lightyear, you should just buy a few extra tickets online at your local theater. You don't even have to go sit in the seat, just buy the tickets online and give Disney some of your money as thanks for making Lightyear. Problem solved!

 

[MisterPenguin]

It's a dud of a movie financially for the company.

I will keep repeating this over and over if I have to,

You don't have to, but you will. It's your M.O.

 

[Disney Irish]

That's great. So why didn't they release it in theaters in March, 2022? Spring, 2022 was just a few months after the blockbuster Christmas season when Spiderman packed theaters across the country and did a Billion dollars in sales.

Because no animated movie so far has made money at the US box office post-2020. So Disney decided to send it (just like they did previously) to D+. Honestly I probably would have sent Lightyear to D+ too, but that is just my opinion.

And Turning Red did have a small international release and made $11M.

Now on your points about streaming and a studio can't make a profit off of streaming subscriptions, why can't they? I brought this point up briefly before but I'm going to expand upon it now. The music industry claimed the same thing in the early 00s about music sharing services, that it'll be the death of the music industry. But here we are almost 20 years later and the music industry is thriving on streaming services like Spotify, a service where you pay a monthly subscription and get all the music for free included with that subscription, hmm sound familiar.....

Hollywood will find a way to make money hand over fist with streaming, just like they've always done. Just because it doesn't work out in your mind, well as you said earlier in this thread you're not a Studio executive.

 

[MisterPenguin]

You can't tell me the sales pitch to the Burbank financial guys on Turning Red in 2018 was "We'll spend two hundred million dollars producing this film, then release it only via a streaming service that only charges 8 bucks for the entire family to watch it as many times as they want!"

Turning Red lost at least a few hundred million dollars for Disney. That's not a business model and distribution setup that is financially sustainable.

And as often as you throw around the 8 bucks canard, I'll remind you and everyone that you're ignoring the over 100 million subscribers who pay that 8 bucks every month.

Between March 20 and May 29 there have been 7.6 Billion minutes of Turning Red watched on Disney+.

One of its songs charted on the Billboard 100.

It didn't lose money for Disney.

So, yeah, I *can* tell you that since I have facts on my side and you have wild assumptions based on purposely skewed information.

 

[TP2000]

You don't have to, but you will. It's your M.O.

I finally got the beach house all set up for summer fun now, so I've got plenty of time!

Here's the latest from Variety today, which rolls out a few odd excuses why Lightyear bombed at the box office. Interestingly, Variety completely avoids Lightyear's controversy surrounding the Lesbian kissing and why that might have kept some parents away from that side of the multiplex this past weekend, while the Top Gun and Jurrasic Park side of the multiplex did gangbusters business again.

What Stopped Pixar’s ‘Lightyear’ From Going to Infinity and Beyond at the Box Office?

It's hard to escape the deflating sense that Disney's "Lightyear" has remained stubbornly Earth-bound in its box office debut.

variety.com