Woke 'Lightyear' Tanks at US Box Office, But Media Covers for Disney by Obscuring True Reason Why

Woke 'Lightyear' Tanks at US Box Office, But Media Covers for Disney by Obscuring True Reason Why


The newest installment of Disney’s beloved “Toy Story” film franchise crashed and burned on opening weekend at the box office.

The tanking of the animated film comes amid a decision by Disney to add back a lesbian kissing scene after initially removing it amid an outcry from the public. In addition, critics point to other so-called ‘woke’ elements of the film which they claim only added to its paltry $51 to $55 million opening.

But you wouldn’t know that if all you relied on for your news was the ‘mainstream media.’

While earnings are likely to rise somewhat, “over at the far-left Deadline — along with all kinds of excuses that conspicuously avoid the woke propaganda in Lightyear — they are already calling it a disaster,” Breitbart News noted.

The entertainment outlet noted:

Well, this wasn’t suppose to happen. Disney’s Lightyear, despite an A- CinemaScore and 4 stars/85% positive on PostTrak, is coming in way under its $70M-$85M projection with a $51M-$55M 3-day weekend to Universal/Amblin’s second weekend of Jurassic World Dominion with $57.1M. Jurassic could even reach $66.3M through the four-day Juneteenth holiday.

What the hell happened here? Despite the lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating of the Toy Story franchise at 77% Certified Fresh, it’s clear no one in great quantity is going to see the origin story of Buzz Lightyear. Understand that a Pixar movie and a Jurassic movie have played in close proximity to each other on the calendar before, and they both walked away with an embarrassment of riches. While we’ve mentioned that spinoffs always open lower than the core franchise films (take your pick: Fantastic Beasts vs. Harry Potter, Hobbs & Shaw vs. Fast & Furious and Bumblebee vs. Transformers), this could be a case of going to the Toy Story well too soon, too fast, despite the fact that theater closures and a pandemic stood between now and the last Toy Story 4 three years ago.

John Nolte of Breitbart noted that Variety attempted to blame several factors including making a franchise too quickly and the current state of the economy, which he ridiculed.

Instead, he blamed the movie’s very woke overtones.

“Kids are not ready for this, their parents certainly aren’t, and the crashing and burning of this $200 million piece of propaganda should tell you most people agree,” he wrote.

As noted by The Western Journal, tone-deaf Disney made a big deal out of re-inserting the lesbian kiss scene as a way to ‘stick it’ to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s GOP-controlled legislature after the passage of a parental rights law that forbade exposing K-3 students to gay/lesbian/transgender materials because they are considered too young to process such complex sexual behaviors (like Nolte mentioned). Disney officials and other critics falsely labeled the legislation the “Don’t Say Gay” bill; the measure literally does not contain that phrase.

“Fourteen foreign markets had already banned the picture and it seems unlikely the largest foreign market for U.S. films, China, will allow it to be released there without edits,” the WJ noted.

But of course, Disney and others associated with the film think anyone who objects to the scene — in a kid’s film — is a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, and that includes actor Chris Evans, who replaced beloved comedian Tim Allen to voice ‘Lightyear’ (because Allen is a right-leaning individual and you know, ‘tolerant’ Disney can’t be associated with anyone like that).

Evans called parents who objected to having someone else’s sexual morality shoved into their child’s face “idiots” and “dinosaurs,” while producer Galyn Susman compared the scene to “showing failed relationships” on screen, which implies that parents who are upset over one and not the other are simply bigots.

But that wasn’t the reason why the movie tanked, according to the ‘media.’

“For starters, it may have been difficult for audiences to know what exactly the film was about. It’s not quite a ‘Toy Story’ movie since ‘Lightyear’ was marketed as a film about the man behind the toy rather than the toy itself. Ultimately, families might have been confused about the film and that could have steered them away,” CNN painstakingly explained.

The WJ adds:

A media analyst who did the heavy lifting for the analysis in CNBC’s coverage of the “Lightyear” flop shared similar concerns, plus the possibility that the movie theaters are just flooded with too much testosterone right now.

“‘Lightyear’ had a great deal of potential on paper, but a number of factors resulted in this very rare box office misfire for a Pixar release,” BoxOffice.com’s Shawn Robbins told CNBC’s Sarah Whitten.

“Did the film open in a market too crowded with male-driven films?” Robbins asked. “Was marketing ineffective at pitching the idea of this movie to both generations of Toy Story fans? Has Disney’s strategy of siphoning Pixar movies straight to streaming over the past two years backfired and hurt the brand’s value?”

The film may eventually make up ground. But the fact that it underwhelmed — and the media is making excuses for that — makes it glaringly obvious that Disney’s decision to offend two-thirds of the population was dumb from a business perspective.


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