Hacker Cinema
Lightyear
2022 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Angus MacLane
AnimationScience FictionFamilyAdventure
Legendary Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear embarks on an intergalactic adventure alongside a group of ambitious recruits and his robot companion Sox.
1 positive18 negative5 mixed9 neutralfrom 33 commenters
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38 comments on Hacker News
Your own examples show the slippery slope this is. Walmart, Netflix, and Disney all DO carry content that some people want banned†. No matter what you're talking about, someone is going to take offense and want the content removed entirely.
Collective Shout, the group behind this latest censorship push, also wanted Detroit Become Human to be banned because the story depicted someone abusing a child. If we're banning that, why not ban memoirs of child abuse survivors or "James and the Giant Peach"?
You suggest it would be easy for Steam and Itch to run alternative storefronts. Given that they removed content that was offensive to their payment processors, they'd need to engage with high-risk payment processors to power these new store fronts. To say nothing of the technical work involved, those high-risk payment processors certainly charge more for their services. That'd raise the already high 30% that Valve takes on most transaction.
Additionally, if a games journalism website also has relationships with payment processors, are they allowed to review adult games even if those reviews don't include pictures? Or are they going to be equally punished for giving adult content a positive rating?
This all limits the options available of responsible adult consumers and costs creators of LEGAL content revenue.
===
†Here's a longer look at your examples:
Define adult toys. I assume you mean dildos. Walmart doesn't sell those in physical stores, but they do sell them online. Additionally they, like most other stores, do sell lube, condoms, and vibrating rings in their brick and mortar store. Every clothing store that sells underwear sells something many would describe as lingerie. Target has an entire lineup of "after dark" board games stocked right next to Candyland.
"After Netflix published a marketing poster showing the [11 year old girls] twerking in revealing cheerleading outfits without any context, an online petition calling for the cancellation of the US release received more than 140 thousand signatures."
'According to a source close to the production, Pixar’s next feature film, “Lightyear” does feature a significant female character, Hawthorne, who is in a meaningful relationship with another woman. While the fact of that relationship was never in question at the studio, a kiss between the characters had been cut from the film. Following the uproar surrounding the Pixar employees’ statement and Disney CEO Bob Chapek‘s handling of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, however, the kiss was reinstated into the movie last week.'
Just saying "Pixar movies" was probably not a great example. They can be deliberately location ambiguous (Monsters Inc., Toy Story - though it's clearly _somewhere_ in America, The Incredibles - a generic "metropolis"/50's futuristic city, lightyear, Elemental) or very specifically somewhere (cars - mashup of Route 66 towns, Finding Nemo - Sydney when on land, Ratatouille - Paris, etc...)
It makes sense to "translate" locale cultural indicators in say Wall·E which was very location agnostic but not so much for say Turning red which is very culturally specific.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Pixar does not have a monopoly on attention to detail. They're flush with cash and their leadership has decent taste.
There are so many creators putting in intense work, and doing it on low budgets. You can't claim these folks don't have attention to detail. Check out A24, low and mid and low budget films, or independent films and you'll see a wide assortment of highly meticulous storytellers.
Pixar, on the other hand, isn't low or mid budget:
Toy Story - $30 Million A Bug’s Life - $120 Million Toy Story 2 - $90 Million Monsters, Inc. - $115 Million Finding Nemo - $94 Million The Incredibles - $92 Million Cars - $120 Million Ratatouille - $150 Million WALL-E - $180 Million Up - $175 Million Toy Story 3 - $200 Million Cars 2 - $200 Million Brave - $185 Million Monsters University - $200 Million Inside Out - $175 Million The Good Dinosaur - $200 Million Finding Dory - $200 Million Cars 3 - $175 Million Coco - $175 Million Incredibles 2 - $200 Million Toy Story 4 - $200 Million Onward - $175 Million Soul - $150 Million Luca - Unknown but probably around $150 Million Turning Red - $175 Million Lightyear - $200 Million For that amount of money, they had better pay attention to detail.
Miyazaki is doing way more with much less.
Voices of a Distant Star was one person -- Shinkai. That's the kind of thing we'll see more and more of. Small creators reaching audiences and building studios. Gooseworx, psychicpebbles, Vivienne Medrano. That's the algorithm of tomorrow.
AI, as a tool, makes this more possible. One of the first people to do it successfully was Joel Haver, and he's just the first of many to come.
Oh, are you offended? Do you need a safe space? I thought you liked offensive comedy? Or is that just when it offends other people who aren’t you?
I never said I hated anyone. I just think these conservative talking points all rhyme with each other and when you trace them far enough they are all rooted in white supremacist ideas and misogyny.
Turning Red is only “woke” if you think people shouldn’t talk about going on your period because women are bad.
The Little Mermaid remake is only “woke” if you think Black people shouldn’t be the lead in movies.
Lightyear is only “woke” if you think people of the same gender shouldn’t kiss.
The list goes on and on. Literally none of these pro-offensive content people ever explain themselves in any way that makes sense beyond their hate for non-white people, women, and the LGBT community.
You literally criticized Disney for trying to please everyone. If they aren’t trying to please everyone, who are they supposed to sell tickets to, ghosts?
And this conservative cult gets in the way of understanding objective reality, like how you thought that Disney stock went down because of woke movies, when the financial reality of their stock decline had more to do with low Disney+ profitability and the Covid-19 collapse of theme park revenue.
> The last 5 Pixar films are all flops, and all signs point to leadership at Disney interfering with the creative process.
4 were flops in the sense that their theatrical releases did not cover their budgets, but only 1 of those (Lightyear) was because audiences didn't want to see it (and so could be blamed on the creative process).
The other 3 did not cover their budgets with their theatrical releases because they didn't have domestic theater releases (other than very short runs in a handful of theaters probably to preserve eligibility for awards) and their foreign releases were in a much smaller number of countries than other Pixar movies.
Domestically, and in countries that had Disney+, they went straight to streaming.
In reverse order:
• Elemental made nearly $500 million in its theatrical run. In no universe can that be considered to be a flop.
• Turning Red did not have a domestic theatrical release, and a fairly limited foreign release. It was only in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.
In those countries in which both Turning Red and Toy Story 4 (the last Pixar movie before COVID started tanking box office) Turning Red earned about half of what Toy Story 4 did.
If we assume that ratio would have been similar in the countries Toy Story 4 was in that did not get Turning Red (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela) we get that Turning Red should have made around $420 million.
It was the second most watched streaming film of 2022.
• Similar for Luca. It's theatrical release was Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Türkiye, Ukraine, and United Arab Emirates.
In those countries that had both Luca and Toy Story 4, Luca earned $39 million and Toy Story 4 earned $70 million. That extrapolates to a full theatrical release for Luca would have been around $560 million.
It was the most watched streaming film of 2021.
• Soul's theatrical release was Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia/CIS, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.
I don't have the Toy Story 4 comparison for that one, but its total foreign box office was about 2.4x that of Luca, suggesting that had it gotten a full theatrical release it would have have done quite a bit north of $600 million.
Soul's release timing made it so its peak streaming straddled the year boundary so it didn't get near top spots on yearly streaming lists but was on top of weekly or monthly lists at the end of 2020 and start of 2021.
Re: Lightyear, a $226.4M box office return on a $200M production budget isn't even close to being in profit, tiny or otherwise. For one thing, a film's marketing budget isn't included in the production budget figure and in this case was probably $100M+ itself. Secondly, Disney do not receive 100% of the box office take. After the distributor's cut, it's probably closer to 50%. Films of this type need to make maybe 3 times their budget at the box office to break even, making Lightyear a spectacular flop.
> Now it’s just more Disney nonsense, the soul has been lost.
Did you see any of them? Soul is probably their best movie; Luca and Turning Red were great. Onward was surprisingly good. Elemental was a new genre for them, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was still really good.
I didn’t see Lightyear, but this is also the Pixar that did Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur, so it’s not like every movie knocked it out of the park.
Have you forgotten COVID already?
When Onward was in theaters COVID had already massively tanked attendance.
Soul, Luca, and Turning Red only had box office releases in countries that did not have Disney+, except possibly for very limited US releases (e.g., Luca had a theatrical release for 1 week in a single US theater).
In the countries where they did get a normal theatrical release if you compare them with Earlier big Pixar hits, they performed comparably.
If any one of them had been a 2019 movie instead of a 20222-2022 movie it would have easily made at least twice its budget and probably more.
Lightyear is the only real flop on your list.
I mean, these numbers are almost dishonesty misleading when looking in a vacuum. Onward released March 6th 2020. It was receiving mid reviews but it was very much on par to st least break even if theatres stayed open for more than 2 weeks.And Soul IMO is one of Pixar's greats completely screwed by circumstance, released in June to Disney+. I'm surprised it even crossed 100m to be honest.
I'm not in charge of business, but the curve of box office seemed to rise back with the waning of the pandemic. Even for the critically panned Lightyear, so it's not like the better movies did better. It's no secret that streaming services make nowhere near the revenue of a theatrical release, but Disney aggressively shifted so it could get its handle in as 2nd in the streaming wars. I figure that unprofitable movies were a price to pay there.
If I understand what I read recently about movie budgets, for big films like these they need to make roughly double that headline budget to break even. The budget does not include distribution and marketing. So even Lightyear was actually a loss
edit: (and incidentally Lightyear is the only one of these I've seen. I've got 3 kids and we used to love Pixar films but these days.. meh. Even though we've since had the third so still should be the same demographic).
Profitability is the new target in 2024. Not losing so much money on useless underperforming movies. Let's go through the recent Pixar flops in the years before since 2020.
Onward (2020) - Budget: $200 million - Box Office: $142 million (Loss) Soul (2020) - Budget: $150 million - Box Office: $121 million (Loss) Luca (2021) - Budget: >$100+ million - Box Office: $49.8 million (Loss) Turning Red (2022) - Budget: $175 million - Box Office: $20.1 million (Loss) Lightyear (2022) - Budget: $200 million - Box Office: $226.4 million (Tiny profit) Apart from Elemental (2023) which was highly successful, there seems to be a string of more box office failures from Pixar recently and it being turned into a high cost factory. Disney saw the same and decided to let 20% from Pixar go.
At some point in the 2000s Pixar shifted from making movies for everyone to making movies for certain demographics, or people with certain issues in their life. Moving, strained relationship with parent, a purpose in life etc. Not every movie resonates with everyone, but almost every movie has its defenders. Maybe Brave doesn’t work for you if you and your mom don’t have trouble. Maybe Soul doesn’t work for you if aren’t a bit down.
They are also perfectly ok making simpler movies like Luca, that aren’t trying to be some sort of epic treaties.
What Freddie is getting wrong here is projecting his ranking onto everyone else, even when he is calling out the critics as being the wrong audience for the movies. A lot of the movies aren’t made for critics, but because the director or storyteller has something really personal to say to a subset of society.
Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur (which I’m not sure I’ve even ever finished) are their only real true misfires. A lot of their whelming movies (Onward, Lightyear) feel that way because they feel like a waste of premise and opportunity more than actually bringing bad.
As a stand alone movie, Lightyear fails to deliver an interesting and sound science fiction film for adults, or a competent action filled romp for kids. I could not tell you who it's supposed to be made for besides the producers.
Tbh I wouldn't even call Lightyear bad. It just dropped the marketing hard.
And ofc Pixar is held to a high standard. A "bad movie" for Pixar ia a "decent enough" level film if it was DreamWorks.
It used to be that Pixar films regularly got past $1B in revenue.
Most Pixar films don't actually get anywhere close to $1 billion; they tend to reach the $500-600m range worldwide. Only a handful of Pixar's films have breached the $1b threshold: Finding Dory, Toy Story 3 and 4, and Incredibles 2.
Turning Red earned $20m in countries like Poland, the UAE, and Vietnam...i.e., tiny markets, and only for 2 weeks, due to COVID. It was not released theatrically in major markets, but based on comparables to pre-COVID releases, if it had been released theatrically in major markets, it would be looking at over $600m in box office revenue, and online viewership numbers suggest it might have made close to a billion at the box office.
Soul, likewise, was primarily a Disney+ release (it wasn't released theatrically in the U.S.), and $120m in box office gross for a 2020 release is...amazing...considering that 99% of theaters were closed that year.
Onward was released right before the Spring 2022 COVID outbreak, and would have done much better if theaters hadn't closed 2 weeks after it released (though probably not much more than $4xx million worldwide based on tracking, so still underperforming but not a flop).
Lightyear was objectively bad. The story was too convoluted for children, too simplistic for adults, the characters were generic and forgettable, and nothing in the movie suggested it had anything to do with Buzz Lightyear as it was presented in Toy Story except for the name "Lightyear." Preview audiences were so confused about the movie's relationship to Toy Story that Disney had to add a blurb at the beginning claiming that this was Andy's favorite movie (but in the original Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear was an animated show with a movie, a la South Park, not a standalone movie). Lightyear should have been planned, produced, and released as a Disney+ film.
I was a huge fan of Pixar films, but honestly a lot of their films have just been really bad. I enjoyed Lightyear, Turning Red, etc. but they weren't nearly as good as their previous films. It's now put me off seeing most of what Pixar puts out, they all look like the same film.
On the other hand, other animation studios are putting out some really good films, the two animated Spier-Man films, the Puss in Boots sequel, etc.
Pixar needs to raise it's game and try telling more interesting stories.
I enjoyed Lightyear but it sounds like I am the exception. The plot was a little too complicated for a kid though and my kids don't ever want to rewatch it.
In contrast my kids loved the new Mario movie which I thought was not very good. However, we all liked the sonic movies so... <shrug>.
I'm not convinced you're putting the blame in the right place. Looking at the last decade or so, most of the original films — Inside Out, Coco, Luca, Turning Red, etc — have ranged from "great" to "incredible". It's the sequels and spinoffs like Cars 3, Toy Story 4 and Lightyear that have fallen flat. I don't know where in the Disney org chart people start worrying about revenue, but from where I sit Pixar still has plenty of spark.
Pixar is struggling. Unclear how much is related to Disney+ strategy (where they release via Disney+ rather than in theatres) and Covid restrictions, but its recent releases have struggled financially (numbers from Wikipedia):
* Onward - $140M
* Soul - $120M
* Luca - $50M
* Turning Red - $20M
* Lightyear - $226M
It used to be that Pixar films regularly got past $1B in revenue. This new reality where they gross very little is strange. And this new reality likely means that Pixar has to reduce costs.
Pixar movies used to have a very high standard for film critics. Rotten Tomatoes has Lightyear ranked as the 3rd worst Pixar movie behind Cars (https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-pixar-movies-ranked/)
including two of the executives behind “Lightyear”: director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman. MacLane had been at Pixar for more than two decades, serving as an animator on classics like “Toy Story 2,” “The Incredibles” and “Finding Nemo.” He co-directed the 2016 sequel “Finding Dory” before his first solo directorial feature film “Lightyear.” The spinoff of the “Toy Story” franchise, which featured Chris Evans as the voice of Buzz Lightyear, was a commercial dud; Deadline estimated the film lost the studio more than $100 million.
Susman, likewise, was a longtime Pixar employee. She is also the hero of one of the company’s most legendary stories. During the making of “Toy Story 2,” a Pixar employee accidentally wiped the servers of nearly the whole movie. Thankfully for the animators, Susman was working from home while taking care of her newborn child — her backup copy saved the film.
Having done great work in the past is not enough to incentivize others to keep you around.
> One thing I have noticed is some of the more recent Pixar movies don't feel like Pixar movies at all. They feel like Disney movies: Lot's of musical numbers, a lot more slap stick and silly, more cheap laughs
Which Pixar movies had lots of musical numbers? Of the ones I've seen (all but Lightyear) I only recall zero to three (depending on what counts as a musical number) that I'd count as having musical numbers. Have I forgotten some?
"Turning Red" had a some scenes where characters were singing, but they were singing for in-universe purposes. When I think of musicals what comes to mind is shows where the singing is not for an in-universe purpose.
Similar for "Soul" and "Coco". They had main characters that were struggling musicians and their music played a major part in their lives. All the music I recall in those was in that context (although it has been a long time since I've seen "Coco" so I could have forgotten music that was not in-universe.
I'm sure Disney was disappointed in Lightyear's performance given its marketing push and brand appeal, but I don't think you're listing the movies that are central to Disney's strategy anymore. Ever since COVID, Disney has pretty much banished Pixar to Disney+, not as "premium" releases that cost extra, but just included day one on the service. If they had theater runs, they were limited or international-only. That includes such films as Soul, Luca and Turning Red, whereas Encanto from their other animation company (Walt Disney Animation Studios) got a wide and successful theatrical run. Turning Red's box office returns are irrelevant because of this. However, due in part to people going back to theaters and (largely) to the film's brand recognition, Lightyear became the first Pixar film since 2019 to be given a real theatrical release. And the main reason it bombed was, I believe, because everyone and most importantly families had gotten used to being able to watch those movies on Disney+ for a lot cheaper. Even if that one waited two months to come to the service.
As for Strange World, it was widely observed that Disney didn't give it any marketing push and a majority of people weren't even aware of its existence. To me, the main reason is that Disney doesn't bother to hype up movies that they don't really believe in. Strange World was one such film, a WDAS movie that isn't a fairytale or a musical (and isn't safe from the kind of conservative hate campaigns that Disney tends to avoid). Disney has a long history of letting their studios make films outside of the cookie cutter but release them with little fanfare. They can now easily be written off as Disney+ fodder.
Disney absolutely still relies on their animation studios for blockbusters, but they've noticed which formula works best for each. Pixar is never as successful as when it does sequels. WDAS routinely hits the 1 billion mark when it makes new additions to their fairytale canon, or bombastic musicals (see Encanto's massive success). It's no surprise then that they're now pushing WDAS, a notoriously sequel-adverse studio, into making a third Frozen and a second Zootopia, and that a _fifth_ Toy Story is suddenly in the works at Pixar alongside... Inside Out 2. Any other project is bound to get buried in the release schedule or dumped on Disney+.
So what kind of movies are core to Disney's strategy? Star Wars is on a kind of hiatus and lives on Disney+. We have Marvel of course, which isn't in the healthiest state but still produces frequent hits. Avatar is now a big one. Any animated movie that fits their preferred formula. And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark, and I've no doubt that their lifeless Little Mermaid clone will do the same. I think Disney is now suffering from the same "we grew too big, too quick" realization as every other tech and entertainment giant, and they're definitely reeling from a few recent failures, but I wouldn't use Strange World or Turning Red as the poster children of their troubles; they never bet much on those anyway.
Unfortunately, when Disney makes the most bland and forgettable nostalgia bait, they still make the "movies people want to see".
> that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see
I can't completely discount what you're saying, since I have no interest in Lightyear (the toy from Toy Story, but it's not a toy? Why?) or Strange World (it looks fine, but their ads didn't make very clear anything about it).
But I will say that Turning Red was wonderful, and my family has happily watched that a number of times. Not surprised it flopped in the theater, though, given I didn't even know it was in the theaters. As far as I'm concerned it went straight to Disney+, like Pixar's previous 3 movies. It's been one of my favorite things about the service.
Turning Red and Lightyear are both Pixar movies
Turning Red was released on Disney+ instead of in theaters due to Omicron, so the fact that it still made $20m in theaters is actually quite an accomplishment. It apparently did quite well on Disney+; at the time of its release was the 2nd-most watched movie on [edit] streaming in general for 2022.
Disney didn't brag about the viewing numbers for either Strange World or Lightyear, so those films didn't appear to do well in theaters or streaming.
Yes, Turning Red's low revenue was primarily a cause of the film not being in theatres, rather than the quality of its story.
I personally liked the story of Turning Red very much (though I'm biased to like it because it's set in Toronto), but more objectively, the film is a step above Strange World and Lightyear in terms of ratings.
Turning Red's ratings: 95% on the Tomatometer of Rotten Tomatoes (RT), 7.0/10 on IMDb, and 3.7/5 on Letterboxd
Lightyear's ratings: 74% on RT, 6.1/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd
Strange World's ratings: 72% on RT, 5.6/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd
Their last few movies have been... well "abysmal" would make some abysses unhappy to be compared to the movie performance.
Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M.
It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.
Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget.
They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs.
You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)
That's a funny one cause Lightyear was a really good movie. In some ways it was a much more mature sci-fi story than most of the big "sci fi" movie franchises.
Disney has produced a bunch of duds this year, Avatar and a marvel movie or two were the only two shining stars in a otherwise drab sky. Lets look at Lightyear, a real bomb considering every other Toy Story movie has been a smashing success($220M made against a $200M budget). Or Strange World which did even worse($73M made against a $135-170M budget). Black Panther Wakanda looks like it had a good box office, but when compared against the first movie it did half the returns of its predecessor.
In the Pixar movie "Lightyear", at some point we see Buzz using an E6B calculator to quickly calculate a trajectory correction in space.
The E6B is some kind of nomogram/slide rule hybrid, still widely in use by pilots in flight training for dead reckoning.
Funny fact, the chart that Buzz uses in the film is used to calculate wind correction...in space. (Well he does get 'pushed' off course by the wind of an explosion).
I know this is subjective, but I'm not sure I agree. Some of the later Pixar films seem to have plenty of adult themes/moments to me. "Coco" (2017), "Soul" (2020) and "Luca" (2021) have things that strongly resonate with me as an adult, while obviously having appeal to kids. "Turning Red" in contrast feels pretty childish, but that's the exception. (Haven't watched Lightyear as the subject doesn't interest me).
Considering how good Toy Story 2 was, "sad" is an odd way of putting it, unless you're talking about the ensuing crunch.
There are a few more details about that side of the story elsewhere:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/lightyear-toy-story-2-deleted-b2017238.html
https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/toy-story-2-disasters-almost-killed-movie/
They didn't seem to delete user reviews for Lightyear made by all the bigots that were offended by having two women kissing in the movie so it seems that there's some preferential treatment for Amazon properties.
And deleting negative reviews by bigots at least would be more defensible than deleting negative reviews from fans of Tolkien who take issue with the treatment of the work they love.
EDIT: I still haven't seen the show yet and I originally thought the issue with review bombing was similar to people like me hating the show foundation on Apple TV... I see now that people claim that a lot of negative reviews were due to the race of characters and people claiming the "show is too woke". In that case, it's actually more of a similar situation to Lightyear. Still, it's very interesting to see the differing treatment of Lightyear, a pixar property compared to this, an Amazon show.
I'd argue the only real misses were the cash grab sequels (Cars 2, Cars 3, and I can only assume Lightyear is in that group but looking at RT it seems like both ratings are still "fresh"). The rest of the movies on the post-acquisition list were good, if not great. Critically, I think the worst one on the list is the Good Dinosaur and even that's still generally well liked.
Lightyear was a letdown. My kids enjoyed it but I thought it could have been much better. I expected to see Buzz as at this exciting space ranger, but that wasn't what the movie was about. If I was Andy from Toy Story there would be no way I wanted a Buzz toy after seeing that movie.
Inside out was good, but not great, IMO.
Counter-counterpoints:
Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Coco, Onward, Luca, Turning Red, Lightyear.
The (not very original) point is: You can no longer count on a Pixar movie being excellent.
A lot of creatives have a hard time understanding the product side of art. Games are far more products like movies than they are "art".
There have been a bunch of recent examples lately that showcases the minds of masses. Spiderman No Way Home did supremely well by giving the masses what they wanted, and not straying too far from the marvel formula.
Sonic the Hedgehog Movie had a awful original art direction. The fans complained and the director reversed course, and now its a beloved and highly rated movie.
Top Gun 2 is another great example. The tone, direction, spirit of the original movie is captured supremely well and is on track for a billion dollars.
Pixar's Lightyear is a disappointment at the box office. Honestly who wanted a "realistic" version of Buzz from Toy Story. The tone, spirit, and art direction are too different.
I think Ron made a horrible directorial mistake, and while he shouldn't be attacked for it. He does deserve criticism, and people should be allowed to voice their dislike for a product and its direction.
As people on other sites have mentioned, this whole project has the feeling of the George Lucas Star Wars Prequels. George Lucas needed some honest feedback, and collaboration with other people like Kasdan. Ron Gilbert should have gotten some opinions from the original Monkey Island artists/Lucas Arts Crew.