Lightyear

[Darin Steffl]

I haven't seen it yet but our attendance has been horrible. 14 people Friday and only 13 people today for 2 showtimes. I was planning for 100+ Friday and at least 50-80 per show today.

Anyone else seeing low attendance for this one? Kids movies always do good for us but this has been a horrible start.

[Jon Dent]

Yep. It's at roughly the same level (and sometimes lower) than Jurassic World Dominion which is going into it's second week. I'm a bit puzzled too. My boys both loved it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Watched it yesterday with just 3 people in the room...

I think it was an OK movie, but apparently, on IMDB, about 43% of people right now are giving it an 1 out of 10... Not sure what happened there, but I guess Disney must have stepped on someone's toes...

[Darin Steffl]

Far right nuts are mad that there's an LGBT kiss between two women. Not a problem for me but the negative reviews are likely related to that.

I haven't seen the movie yet but it still did bad at every show all weekend. This will be a long 3 weeks.

[Lyle Romer]

Far right nuts are mad that there's an LGBT kiss between two women. Not a problem for me but the negative reviews are likely related to that.

I haven't seen the movie yet but it still did bad at every show all weekend. This will be a long 3 weeks.

If Disney/Pixar didn't think there would be a financial consequence to including this then they were delusional.

Politics aren't allowed on the board but it is more than just "far right nuts" who object to this being included in an animated film with a target audience of young children. The number of "far right nuts" in the USA isn't high enough to materially effect the box office gross. Extreme right wingers would likely keep their kids away from pretty much all movies so it wouldn't just be this one.

[Darin Steffl]

LOVE isn't about politics. Representing minority races, sexualities, and genders in films is not political. It's about representation and no one should have a problem with seeing a lesbian kiss in Lightyear. There are kids with two moms or two dads and to see this represented in a movie they watch makes them feel included, understood, loved. LGBT people don't have a problem seeing straight people kiss. Love who you love and stop judging people.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yeah, maybe it's the anti-LBQWERTY++ brigrade that have organized a click-a-thon on IMDB, on RT, the user-score still is 86%...

The only thing I thought myself, when that scene hit the screen: Well, this movie tries to be pretty "progressive" for a movie that pretends to be released back in 1995...

I've read some reviews and many people just qualify it as "boring", which I can agree with, to some extend. But another reason this movie isn't pulling in crowds may be simply the lack of awareness and advertising.

[Jon Dent]

Far right nuts are mad that there's an LGBT kiss between two women.

That is an element, but Disney's marketing has also been pretty bad. Based on the trailers I had no interest in seeing Lightyear as I had no idea what it was about and it looked boring. My sons are major Lightyear fanbois though, so I went with them. The movie was entertaining enough once it got going, but at the end it was all a big 'meh'.

So you take a movie with a muddy premise that looks like a cash grab and toss in a highly controversial culture issue (that had absolutely no bearing on the story), and you end up with a lot of people just avoiding it.

I feel really bad for Pixar. It feels more and more like they've lost a core part of what made them special. "Soul" was decent but the last truly exceptional movie from them was "Inside Out".

[Lyle Romer]

LOVE isn't about politics. Representing minority races, sexualities, and genders in films is not political. It's about representation and no one should have a problem with seeing a lesbian kiss in Lightyear. There are kids with two moms or two dads and to see this represented in a movie they watch makes them feel included, understood, loved. LGBT people don't have a problem seeing straight people kiss. Love who you love and stop judging people.

You brought politics into the thread by talking about "right wing nuts" being mad about it. If you don't think this kiss was included by Disney specifically to make a political statement and not to make kids of gay parents feel included then you've been living on another planet. I'm not going to go any further in the discussion as we're already off topic and coming to the edge of violating forum rules.

[Leo Enticknap]

IMHO, a combination of the belief that the scene was politically motivated in the first place, and most parents not wanting their children in the target age group of this movie to be subjected either to explicit displays of sexuality (of any orientation), or overt political propaganda (right or left), is likely behind the poor box office showing. The film has received a lot of coverage in both the mainstream and conservative news media, focusing on that particular scene, and so anyone contemplating taking their kids to see it will likely know what to expect. The moral of the story: keep sex and politics out of kiddie pics.

Relating to Jon's point about Disney's marketing, my six-year old has been bugging me relentlessly to take him to the Minions movie when it's released, but hasn't mentioned this one at all. His knowledge of movies is derived mainly from the ads that play before cartoon videos he likes to see on YouTube, so it would appear that Disney aren't marketing it that way.

[Geoff Jones]

a highly controversial culture issue

subjected...to explicit displays of sexuality (of any orientation)

Here are some explicit displays of sexuality other Disney films have subjected us to...

[Carsten Kurz]

Don't know if that's true, but I read that Disney (obviously) wanted to censor that scene, but staff protested against that move. Wether it's likely that employees overturned management, I don't know. There are strange things happening between Disney and the Florida government currently as well.
What the heck, small girls are kissing each other frequently, why should they give it up when they get older...

[Darin Steffl]

Thanks Geoff for the clear picture of all the other Disney movies with "straight" kissing scenes. The hypocrites will speak and say keep sexuality out of movies but they're not out boycotting every other kids movie with straight kiss scenes, just LGBT ones. So if they have a problem with it, just come right out and say they're homophobes. Representing a quickly growing segment of our population is not political just as representing straight people isn't either. The only people making it political are homophobes.

20.8% of Gen Z (born 1997-2003) Americans identify as LGBT in a 2022 Gallup poll. Statistically, if this figure is accurate, nearly that many people are also LGBT in all age groups but the older someone is, the less likely they are to identify as LGBT. The polling shows the older someone is, the percentage drops but this is likely because those who are LGBT don't identify as such due to it being harder to do until fairly recently. They could already be married and just suppress their sexuality because of their family, friends, etc.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx

In relation to Lightyear, I think it's significant that they included a very short kiss scene between two women showing love is possible between same gender people. If 20.8% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBT, imagine if that figure rises as people even younger reach adulthood. If 1 in 5 Americans are LGBT, I think every movie should feature some (10-20%) LGBT characters to at least provide a somewhat accurate representation of our country. This should never be about politics. It should be about representation.

[James Wyrembelski]

It's definitely a combination of all factors listed above. But I think it's mostly poor marketing and a cash grab no one asked for. All I'm hearing is a big fat MEH from the reviews.

I avoided it because as a member of this acronym "community" myself I avoid anything that uses me as a political football whether that was the intent or not. It always eventually becomes one. It's gotten old. Another factor to consider.

[Lyle Romer]

Thanks Geoff for the clear picture of all the other Disney movies with "straight" kissing scenes. The hypocrites will speak and say keep sexuality out of movies but they're not out boycotting every other kids movie with straight kiss scenes, just LGBT ones. So if they have a problem with it, just come right out and say they're homophobes. Representing a quickly growing segment of our population is not political just as representing straight people isn't either. The only people making it political are homophobes.

20.8% of Gen Z (born 1997-2003) Americans identify as LGBT in a 2022 Gallup poll. Statistically, if this figure is accurate, nearly that many people are also LGBT in all age groups but the older someone is, the less likely they are to identify as LGBT. The polling shows the older someone is, the percentage drops but this is likely because those who are LGBT don't identify as such due to it being harder to do until fairly recently. They could already be married and just suppress their sexuality because of their family, friends, etc.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/...-ticks-up.aspx

In relation to Lightyear, I think it's significant that they included a very short kiss scene between two women showing love is possible between same gender people. If 20.8% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBT, imagine if that figure rises as people even younger reach adulthood. If 1 in 5 Americans are LGBT, I think every movie should feature some (10-20%) LGBT characters to at least provide a somewhat accurate representation of our country. This should never be about politics. It should be about representation.

YOU are the one who brought politics into this review thread by talking about "right wing nuts" being mad. This post further crosses the line of violating forum rules. A movie review thread is not the place to be discussing these issues.

The scene is in there to make a political statement and not to advance the story and to appease the LGB employees that didn't think the CEO properly responded to Florida's law. Using your percentage argument, the lead characters in 10-20% of all movies from all studios should be gay. Hollywood would never do that because there'd be all kinds of international markets where the titles would be outright banned and domestically it would hurt the gross.