Lightyear – the new Pixar movie with the most confusing backstory of all time – isn’t even out yet, but people are already wondering about its sequel potential. Pixar’s last few movies Soul, Luca, and Turning Red have all gone straight-to-streaming on Disney Plus with almost no theatrical release to speak of. It looks as though Lightyear will be getting a big theatrical push, however. And obviously if it does well financially, the chances of another one are pretty likely.
The cast and crew of Lightyear, including Chris Evans, have been keen to emphasise that in the new movie, Buzz is not a toy. He’s a human man. But a human man who only exists in a movie, which Andy will go on to watch and love and buy the tie-in toy from. Clear as mud.
This confusion is only going to get worse if they decide to continue Lightyear as its own franchise. What will be next, the origin story of the origin story? Fortunately, it sounds as though Lightyear’s director Angus MacLane agrees, saying it should be an “island of a narrative.”
Speaking to ScreenRant, he said; “To me, I look at it as what I liked about Star Wars is that it always allowed for the expansion of what the world could be. I think that that open endedness is often what’s most exciting, it’s when you start closing those doors and connecting those things that it becomes less compelling.” This could be a dig at the fact that Star Wars is insisting on filling more and more gaps by giving back stories to characters such as Boba Fett, something that no one is really clamouring for.
“So our focus right now is honestly finishing this movie, but it’s meant to be this like island of a narrative that is very much we don’t start when Buzz is born. It was very much this thing that you’d imagined stuff before and afterwards, I think connecting it is risky, but you know, who knows?”
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