‘That’s not the reason the movie failed’: Pixar employees hit back against ‘Lightyear’s same-sex kiss controversy

Did you see Lightyear? Me neither. And that’s kind of the point—the film performed so poorly in theaters, Disney lost $100 million on the film. Unfortunately, we now know they’ve taken the absolutely wrong lesson as to why the film failed.

According to Alex Stedman’s bombshell new report at IGN, “multiple sources” from inside Pixar say that Disney leadership pinned Lightyear‘s failure solely on the film’s same-sex kiss. “It is, as far as I know, still a thing, where leadership, they’ll bring up Lightyear specifically and say, ‘Oh, Lightyear was a financial failure because it had a queer kiss in it,’” said one source, who spoke to IGN on condition on anonymity. “That’s not the reason the movie failed,” they add.

Lightyear did, indeed, have a same-sex kiss, which caused the film to be review-bombed. But the source is absolutely right: The film has numerous issues that can help to explain the public’s utter lack of interest way more than a same-sex kiss. And yet, Disney seems fixated on it. They even removed it from the film, but reinstated it after an internal staff uproar following the company’s initial lack of response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Anecdotal case in point: I had no idea there even was a same-sex kiss in Lightyear. That at least makes it seem like the movie did something interesting. But it’s still not enough to make me watch it unless I’m bored on a flight in the future.

Lightyear‘s actual failures

According to the IGN report, after Lightyear‘s failure, “Pixar lost the desire to take risks.” But this completely misses the point as well. The reason I, personally, have no desire to watch Lightyear is because it feels contrived and generic as all hell. From the outside, it felt like a cynical cash grab from a studio who could surely come up with more interesting, original ideas—and consumers are smarter than companies like Disney give us credit for.

You’re telling me to go see the animated version of the generic would-be live-action sci fi flick that was made in-world to promote Buzz Lightyear? Especially when the beloved weekend morning cartoon Buzz Lightyear of Star Command already exists and feels like a much more compelling connection to the franchise? That’s not “risk,” that’s just a convoluted and bad idea which, as Disney found out the hard way, is incredibly hard to advertise.

That’s all before discussing the swap out of Tim Allen for Chris Evans as Buzz—which wasn’t a bad call, but added to the confused sense of “what the hell is this?” for most potential viewers—plus people’s hesitancy to go back to theaters after the pandemic when they could just wait and watch films on Disney+.

So no, Lightyear didn’t fail because of the same-sex kiss. It failed because it was a weird, convoluted premise which simultaneously felt cynically generic. Taking out same-sex relationships and avoiding risk-taking are literally the opposite lessons Disney should’ve taken.