It’s almost time for Pixar to release its newest movie, and this one’s a doozy: Lightyear is about the “real” person who inspired the action figure Buzz Lightyear. Apparently, he went on some “real”-life interplanetary adventures before getting immortalized in toy form. It’s a pretty meta story for Pixar, but the studio’s output is rarely anything but excellent, and this will probably follow suit.
But you won’t be able to see it in certain parts of the world, specifically in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Malaysia and Indonesia. Deadline reports that the movie has been put on ice in these countries, likely because it contains a same-sex kiss between the character of Hawthorne, voiced by Uzo Aduba, and another woman.
At one point in the editing process, this kiss was removed from the film, but it was reinstated following Disney’s lukewarm response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Pixar was highly critical of Disney’s initial refusal to take a stand on that bill, which bans mention of homosexuality in elementary school classrooms, the logic being, I guess, that mention of such a thing will corrupt children beyond saving…including gay kids, I suppose. And mention of heterosexuality is fine because…look, the point of the bill is performative hate, we shouldn’t expect it to be internally consistent.
Anyway, the kiss got put back into Lightyear and Disney did eventually condemn the Florida bill, which meant less hate from the left and more hate from the right. The banning of the movie in select countries is pretty predictable. Disney may not even have bothered to submit Lightyear to censors in Saudi Arabia given their reputation, but the movie was previously scheduled to come out in the UAE on June 16; cinemas there had even started advertising the film.
More Disney movies getting banned around the world lately
Disney has been more willing to go to bat recently for its content. Eternals, for example, also featured a gay relationship and was banned in many of the same countries.
Disney’s willingness to be ever-so-slightly more bold may have something to do with the fact that China basically hasn’t screened any Disney movie within its borders since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame; it’s unclear exactly why China has it out for Disney right now — it’s black-balled everything, both movies that allude glancingly to homosexuality and those that don’t — but the company is losing out on a lot of money given the size of the Chinese market. Perhaps Disney looks at that and says, ‘Eh, they’re not gonna release our movies no matter what we do; might as well make them how we want to make them.’
Lightyear also hasn’t been given a date for China. Elsewhere, the movie will be out on June 17.
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