I write this blog with deep and sincere apology to @MamasGeeky on twitter. My reaction to there tweet was knee-jerk and in the wrong, and no amount of justification will excuse my words. I will not bring up their tweet after this, in an effort to keep this in good taste.
So, Lightyear. Beyond the aforementioned incident, I'm coming into this blog with some baggage. This is the first Pixar animated movie to hit theatres since Onward, and between then and now there was Luca, Soul and Turning Red, all of which went straight to Disney+. Now, this led me to question whether or not Pixar was being treated fairly by Disney, and to be fair, maybe that was all just me worrying about nothing, I am a human, I am able to worry over nothing. That being said, the news of Lightyear hitting theatres did little to ease my suspicions. I mean, if we want to be truthful, this is just a Toy Story spin-off, putting it in the Toy Story franchise. Of course Disney would put this movie in theatres, it seems like a guaranteed box office success, unlike a movie like say... Turning Red which is based on no established franchise, is a completely new I.P. and did not have any established characters to market. Of course Lightyear is the movie that marks Pixar's return to the big screen.
But none of that means that the movie didn't have me interested. I try to avoid trailers as much as I can, but hearing David Bowie is almost always gonna hook me in like the worlds glammiest fish. So, after giving my money to Disney, again, what do I think of Lightyear? Well, yeah, it's pretty great.
First of all, it was thrilling. The test flights at the start of the movie were genuinely exciting, I was just holding on, waiting until Buzz succeeded his mission. The rest of the action is not as exciting, you kind of know what kind of action scene they are doing, but they are done well. On top of that, the lighting really works. I've seen a lot of movies where the visually dark scenes are just too dark, but here, almost everything has a nice blue tint to it, and when something is in silhouette it can look really cool. I do wish some shots lingered for a bit, but over all I don't have any complaints visually. Honestly, I think my only complaint is that they didn't get Tim Allen to cameo in the movie. I don't want to spoil anything but, well you'll get why once you see it. Even then, I can appreciate the voice cast as they all did a fantastic job.
That being said, there is one thing people might get upset about. There is no way I'm getting out of not bringing this up because it's a big part of the news surrounding this movie, but there is a same sex relationship at the beginning of the movie, and Pixar apparently did not want to cut it. Now, on the one hand, and I really should stress this first, I support this. I think it was done very well, Buzz just casually asked "Who is she" when he noticed his friend was engaged, it's very small and almost unnoticeable, so that was pretty cool. On the other hand, this is pretty coincidentally timed, eh? After it has been revealed that Disney funded the censorship bill that is Florida's "Don't Say Gay" garbage, we get news that Lightyear's same sex relationship won't be removed for international releases. I'm glad they didn't, but I just think that maybe they wouldn't have made that decision if that little nugget of information wasn't given to us.
Honestly, it was just nice to see Pixar back on the big screen. Would it have been nice to see the other films on the big screen? Yes, but maybe we can get them rereleased, it's sad movies don't get rereleases anymore. If this is Pixar coming back to the theatres, I think they did pretty well, and if this was just a test to see if Pixar movies are still lucrative, hopefully it works. Lightyear is an exciting and visually pleasing movie that I think plenty of people will enjoy. Solid recommendation.
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