Lightyear, the latest film by Pixar, is totally fine. It’s OK. Adequate. Mediocre. But for the studio as a whole, this might be the most damning response imaginable. We like to think of Pixar as innovators who changed the landscape of animation with 1995’s Toy Story, and continue to deliver beautiful, thought-provoking, mass-appeal original stories. With 11 Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature to its name, and $14bn in box office returns, Pixar is meant to be proof that success doesn’t always require selling out.
So why does Lightyear, a perfectly serviceable film, feel like such a disappointment? In short, because it’s exactly the kind of cynical, corporate-minded exercise that we always want – and expect – Pixar to rise above. Its premise sounds exactly like something an executive would scribble on a whiteboard and then aggressively circle in red pen. Lightyear is a spin-off of the Toy Story franchise that also isn’t a spin-off of the Toy Story franchise. As tweeted by actor Chris Evans – who voices Buzz – when the film was first announced: “this isn’t [about] Buzz Lightyear the toy. This is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on.” Got that?
