Should We Be Worried About Pixar's Future?

I, like apparently many Americans, did not see Lightyear this past weekend.  This isn't out of protest, but simply because on a long weekend (I get Juneteenth off from work) I decided to go visit some family by heading up to Northern Minnesota (in a vain attempt to beat-the-heat).  I will catch Lightyear this coming week, though, as outside-of-the-pandemic I haven't missed a Pixar movie in theaters since Cars 3 and have seen every Pixar movie ever made.  Lightyear, though, wasn't on most people's radars.  While it had decent reviews and obviously comes as a component of Pixar's most popular franchise, the film appears to have been an enormous box office disappointment.

We are still waiting on final numbers as of this writing, but regardless, Lightyear has not come close to its potential.  Right now, it appears it will be lucky to crack $50 million, putting it in a tight race with Jurassic World: Dominion for the #1 box office slot in the domestic market.  This is a far cry from not only the film's two immediate predecessors (both Toy Story 3 and 4 opened north of $100 million), but also from movies like Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which opened at $72 million.  This is a huge problem for the once-storied Pixar, which has oftentimes made the bulk of its money not just with gargantuan opening weekends (Incredibles 2, for example, opened with a seismic $183 million, the high-water mark for Pixar box office weekends).  If the biggest franchise in their arsenal can't make serious bucks, what can?

In the coming weeks there will be a lot of handwringing about the film, and I think two things genuinely don't matter, specifically surrounding the film's politics.  The first, is the alleged (I haven't seen it) same-sex kiss in the film, and the second is the replacement of Tim Allen in the lead, which has gained some steam on Twitter that Allen was replaced because he's a Republican while current voice actor Chris Evans is a Democrat.  I doubt most of the mass audience wasn't even aware of either of these things, and it's genuinely doubtful that people actually cared enough to move the box office more than an inch or two.

No, I think it's two other things.  The first would be that this was too much of a stretch for audiences.  People at home loved the Toy Story movies in part because of obtuse spaceman Buzz Lightyear, sure, but exactly no one was clamoring for the backstory on a, to quote the movie "child's play thing."  The premise here seemed to imply a way to continue milking a franchise that had run out of juice, that had had not one but two emotional sendoffs (and at least one good, but superfluous sequel).  Pixar's recent run of sequels for the Cars, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, and Incredibles films had shown diminishing returns on the originals, proving the once flawless record of the studio was filled with junk.  Eventually audiences get wise to even the most rock solid of franchises, and in many ways this was the Solo of the Toy Story films-a movie that no one wanted, and were willing to decline.

The other is that I think Disney+ has largely ruined Pixar as a theatrical brand.  When the pandemic & quarantine behavior started to break out in the United States in 2020, Onward was in theaters and while it likely would've been a hit as it stretched out its legs, many audiences who surely would've seen it (myself included) were scared off while movie theaters closed around the country; this gave the studio its first true flop, albeit one outside its control.  Releasing Soul exclusively on streaming (while waiting on Raya and the Last Dragon) gave the impression that Pixar would be a subsidy for Disney+'s streaming content, which despite a big initial splash with shows like The Mandalorian and WandaVision, has mostly just been a stream of uninspired MCU and Star Wars materials in the years since those illustrious premieres.  The most recent MCU release, Ms. Marvel, has the lowest initial ratings of any MCU series to date.  Disney underlined that Pixar was streaming-only with the releases of Luca and Turning Red on the platform, and while they clearly thought that Toy Story box office was too much of a gold mine to risk putting on the platform for free, the damage appeared to be done-audiences don't expect to have to pay for Pixar films anymore, given that they can see them at home for free (...after paying their streaming service bill).  It's hard to see a great way out for Pixar here-if they can't make money with the Toy Story films, will Disney ever give a high-profile launch like this to a Pixar film again...or is Pixar destined to join Blue Sky, Disneytoon, & ImageMovers as an animated subsidiary of the Mouse House that was discarded once it stopped being useful?