Pixar’s latest project, Lightyear, comes from the world of Toy Story, and the early reactions to it show exactly why Pixar will never let the Toy Story franchise die. Pixar continues to be a powerhouse in the world of animation, and it keeps treating its audience to at least one movie per year. 2022 saw the release of Turning Red and is now preparing for Lightyear, the first Pixar movie to be released in theaters since Onward.
Directed by Angus MacLane (Finding Dory), Lightyear tells the origin story of Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans), the hero that inspired the famous toy introduced in Toy Story. Lightyear follows the legendary Space Ranger on a mission that leaves him stranded on a hostile planet, millions of light-years from Earth. Buzz must find a way to get back home through space and time, and for that, he will be joined by a group of ambitious recruits and a robot companion cat, Sox (Peter Sohn). However, Buzz’s plans will get more complicated when the arrival of the infamous Emperor Zurg (James Brolin) threatens the mission.
Since Lightyear was announced in 2020, there have been a lot of questions around its connections to Toy Story and the Buzz Lightyear toy the audience has come to know and love, as well as why Pixar chose Lightyear over Toy Stoy 5 and why the studio refuses to let the Toy Story franchise die. As mentioned above, Lightyear is the first Pixar movie to be released in theaters again since Onward, as all movies that came after it were sent to Disney+, and it’s set for a June 17 release, but the first reactions to it have already arrived, with a lot of praise from critics that ultimately shows that Toy Story is still Pixar’s most profitable franchise, thus why it won’t let it die.
Toy Story was not only Pixar’s first movie but also the first entirely computer-animated feature film, earning a place in film history. Toy Story went on to become a franchise with four movies, four TV series, a short film, and a direct-to-video TV movie centered on Buzz Lightyear. Surely, not all the expanded content from the Toy Story franchise has been as successful as the movies, but the positive reception of Lightyear proves that the Toy Story universe can continue living through movies, and with Lightyear’s box office projections being high, it's likely the box office will further prove this point, showing that there’s still a wide audience for Toy Story content. Lightyear’s early success is a good sign for Pixar, which will most likely continue mining Toy Story for more, whether with the highly-rumored Toy Story 5 or even a Woody origin movie now that Buzz got his.
Although at the time of writing there are no plans for more Toy Story spinoff movies and a fifth movie isn’t official, if Lightyear does prove to be a big box office success, it won’t be surprising if Pixar decides to move forward with even more content from the Toy Story universe. Surely, Toy Story 4 gave the movie series a satisfying conclusion, but there are many spinoffs that could be made out of the saga.