Lightyear is the latest example of a studio milking a past glory, and maybe film fans are growing tired of it
The trailer for Pixar’s upcoming film Lightyear debuted last week, and met an unexpectedly muted response from film fans. It promises to be a fun, child-friendly animated space adventure with Chris Evans leading the voice cast, which should have delighted the faithful. But it centres on a character called Buzz Lightyear, derived from its Toy Story series, and appears to be yet another case of a film studio giving an unnecessary backstory to a character who arrived onscreen fully formed.
For decades, fans and critics complained about Hollywood’s endless sequels, which eventually run out of steam by either ratcheting up the action to ludicrous heights or losing sight of what made their heroes interesting in the first place. Instead, to keep those same franchises alive, studios responded by pivoting to reboots, prequels and origin stories. These initially seemed more fruitful – a fun flashback origin opens Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with River Phoenix’s young Indy gaining all his character tics in a single eventful afternoon – but now we have an endless parade of such flashbacks masquerading as standalone films.
Helen O’Hara is a film journalist, broadcaster and author of Women Vs Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film
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