10 Reasons Why Lightyear Failed
2. The Underwhelming Critical Reception
Now, it would be silly to say that Lightyear was negatively received by critics, but its current Rotten Tomatoes score - 76% with a 6.8/10 average - does place it firmly on the lower end for Pixar.
Considering that the movie's aforementioned marketing woes left a lot of potential audience members on the fence, broadly positive reviews mostly in the three-star range didn't exactly persuade many that it was worth rushing to the cinema for.
Had Lightyear received rave reviews on par with, say, Top Gun: Maverick, it surely would've performed considerably better.
While the critically panned Jurassic World Dominion managed to stave off its poor reviews due to the inherent appeal of both dinosaurs and its legacy cast, Lightyear had neither luxury, and so the reviews did little to encourage anyone who was already ambivalent about it.