Two competing theories for Lightyear failed and both are about to be put to the test in just ten days…
It has been fun to watch the mainstream and access media all flutter into a unison of excuses for the failure of Lightyear. “People just aren’t going to watch animated kids movies in theaters anymore!” they exclaim. “Disney trained people to expect free Pixar fare,” they opine. Of course, none of that is true, and we’re just about to run into the hard stop for their narrative. The only problem: by that point they will move onto whatever new topic is out there, never to correct the record.
That’s why it is our job.
All the phony excuses in the world for Disney are about to come crashing down as Minions: The Rise of Gru is heading to theaters in just ten days. Like Paul Revere, I feel like riding my horse through the darkness of media confusion, calling out to all of them: “The minions are coming, the minions are coming!” Projected at $65-80 million for its opening weekend, if it lands anywhere in that range it is going to wallop Buzz Lightyear. But it won’t just be Buzz that gets thumped — so too will the excuses of the entertainment commentary class. That’s not to say that it will definitely hit its projections. Perhaps it won’t. The difference in this site and our writers versus much of the rest of the media is that we’ll just outright cover whatever happens honestly. I’m okay with being wrong so long as I figure out why / how it happened and adjust. I want to have the truth mapped out as best as I can!
If Minions: The Rise of Gru comes out and solidly beats Lightyear, however, it will be time to put to bed the excuses we’ve heard so far for Pixar, Disney and Lightyear. I do want to make a point, however, to correct some misconceptions I don’t think are accurate coming from the opposing view point. I don’t think that the issue of a lesbian kiss is what sunk Lightyear necessarily. It’s much broader than that. If a small kiss such as what we see in the movie were to be the only issue, I think the movie would have done quite well. What I think is really going on is that the kiss was a wedge device against the Florida legislation forbidding classroom instruction on gender theory to five-year-olds. That then made the kiss a political statement and it raised the public awareness about what Disney has been up to. The leaked Reimagine Tomorrow videos also seem to have truly created a Disney backlash effect. How else do you want me to explain a crash in Disney viewership on other properties? It’s not just Lightyear that failed to launch. The Chip and Dale movie on Disney+ came in second-place to a mediocre Netflix movie that was in its second week. It’s a fairly similar parallel to Lightyear. Furthermore, it’s not just the political maelstrom that Disney inserted itself into, it’s the issue that the movie went far beyond a kiss… many parents don’t want to have to explain to their small children how two mommies can be pregnant.
So the minions are coming and we’re all about to find out which reasons are real for the Lightyear debacle. I don’t expect the media to be any more honest than they are now, but it could be so obvious that they can no longer rationalize even to their own all-in audiences. And there’s hope. Despite Grace Randolph of Beyond the Trailer buying into the idea that Hollywood is inherently progressive by nature and all about pushing envelopes for awards shows (which, by the way, are dying)… she still seems to be understanding that what happened to Lightyear is unsustainable for studios. You have to give her credit there. She may be dead-wrong about a joke from Tim Allen, but there’s hope if people like her can be center-left rather than partisan left. By the way, I’d say the same thing about people on the political opposite, but I don’t see that as a major issue at this time. I’m just ready for people to put away partisan entertainment pushes and get back to making universally true and endearing stories. I’m not asking for studios to make conservative content — I’m hoping they’ll be making politically neutral movies so that all audiences will enjoy them.
If they do so, the market is likely to reward them. And that’s what we’re just about to find out with the little yellow blobs who speak in falsetto gibberish.
The minions are coming! The minions are coming!
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