10 Reasons Why Lightyear Failed
7. The Dumb "Controversy"
When discussing Lightyear's audience response it's tragically impossible to ignore the online conservative backlash to the film's more progressive themes.
Prior to release, Disney confirmed that the film would feature a kiss between two women, which turned out to be Buzz's (Chris Evans) Space Ranger partner Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) and her wife.
It's an incredibly minor moment in the film, though a win for Pixar, as the company has reportedly had their attempts to feature LGBT characters and stories in the past censored by Disney executives. Yet beyond causing Lightyear to be banned in more than a dozen countries, the scene prompted the usual suspects to whine about Pixar injecting their "politics" into art aimed primarily at children, resulting in an influx of online media piling on the film before it had even dropped.
Homophobia has been not-so-subtly couched into much of the criticism levelled at Lightyear, with a lot being written online about it being a "woke" movie rather than, you know, a story that just so happens to fleetingly feature a gay couple.
All in all the fuss stirred up online about this tiny moment simply presented another obstacle that the film had to overcome with the masses, with this "controversy" dominating headlines.
It's a depressing result, though, given that it provides ammunition to many right-leaning bad actors to tout the inane "go woke, go broke" line once again.