If you asked a movie critic — Pitching legacy sequels, ‘Lightyear’ box office, more

You didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you anyway.

The late, great film critic Roger Ebert once ran a regular column titled, “Movie Answer Man,” where he answered random questions from readers about movies and industry trends. Predictably, I don’t receive as much mail as he did, so I’m left to make up my own queries.

These aren’t real people, and yet, the questions seem so hostile.

Legacy sequels like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World: Dominion” dominate the box office. Name a legacy sequel you’d like to see, and try to explain how you wouldn’t screw it up. You’d still screw it up, in my opinion. — Pete Mitchell, Fairchild.

I agree with you, Pete! I’m not a screenwriter or director, so Hollywood shouldn’t let me near any of their valuable properties.

Legacy sequels can be a tricky endeavor, and most attempts either fail to offer anything fresh or lean too hard into nostalgia for the previous film (“Top Gun,” by the way, is one of those rare, sweet-spot success stories).

Since almost all the viable blockbusters of the 80s and 90s have already been rebooted, I’d go with something off-kilter and unexpected. Consider this: A legacy sequel to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” set years later and told from the perspective of Kate Winslet’s character instead of Jim Carrey. Carrey’s character has died, and new technology exists for loved ones to extract memories (a seed of this can be seen in this year’s superlative sci-fi drama, “After Yang”). Winslet then goes on a journey through another person’s mind wherein her memories of their relationship (their second one, if you remember how the original ends) battles his memories for supremacy.

Of course, you don’t do this sequel without the principal actors or director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman. If any one of them bails, I’m shutting the project down.

Pixar’s “Lightyear” stumbled at the box office, and my grandpa said it’s because “Disney went woke, they then got broke.” As a weird adult Pixar fan, what’s your take on the film’s disappointing financial performance? — Sid Phillips, Rathdrum.

Plenty of adults like Pixar, Sid. Don’t be so hateful (and play nice with your toys!). Politics poison almost everything in our country these days, so I’m sure a few people chose to skip “Lightyear” because they heard it contained a brief same-sex kiss and that Chris Evans voices Buzz Lightyear in the movie instead of noted conservative, Tim Allen.

Here’s the thing though — the vast majority of the potential audience for “Lightyear” isn’t scrolling Tweets from Republican politicians to tell them what to see and not see. Instead, “Lightyear” likely disappointed because of several other factors:

• Genuine confusion over how it relates to the “Toy Story” franchise (“Lightyear” is the movie that the character of Andy from “Toy Story” saw that inspired him to want the toy).

• A lingering reluctance for some families to take their kids back to the theater.

• Heavy competition from other nostalgia-bait titles like “Jurassic World: Dominion” (kids like dinosaurs too) and “Top Gun: Maverick.”

• The last three Pixar movies came out on Disney Plus instead of theaters. You’ve essentially trained your target audience to find their content there.

• Good-but-not-great reviews, coupled with the naturally diminishing returns of a vague spin-off. It’s not a “Toy Story” movie, and people know it.

I’ll say this: I’m one of the biggest (weird, adult) Pixar fans around, and yet I haven’t had a pressing urge to see it yet. It just doesn’t look like a “must-see” big screen adventure, does it?

Bottom line: Take out the kiss and put Tim Allen back in, and I doubt the box office results change all that much. I’m sure Disney will be happy to use it as content fodder for Disney+ subscribers in a few short weeks anyway.

Hey, movie nerd. I just finished watching the “Obi-wan Kenobi” series on Disney Plus. Now that we’ve had several of these “Star Wars” and Marvel limited series, what do you think about all this “blockbuster” content available at home? — Beru Lars, Hayden.

Funny how you describe these Disney Plus shows as “blockbuster content,” because after watching all of them, I feel that most of them tend to be somewhat overstuffed and would be better as more condensed, two-and-a-half-hour movies rather than 4-5 hours of television.

The best of these programs, in my opinion, are Marvel’s “WandaVision” and “The Mandalorian” in the “Star Wars” universe because both actually seem to be properly structured as television episodes. I’ve enjoyed the other Marvel shows, though I feel all of them were at least 1-2 episodes worth of content too long. “Loki” came the closest in establishing a sustainable structure, and “Moon Knight” with Oscar Isaac meandered around what would have been a killer story told across a two-hour movie.

The worst of the bunch, “The Book of Boba Fett,” only worked when Grogu appeared to tee up the next season of “The Mandalorian.” As for “Obi-wan Kenobi,” I liked about 75 percent of the story despite some lazy plotting and prequel-level contrivances, and the last episode showdown worked so well I nearly forgot I wanted to shave a good hour in total out of the previous five installments.

Overall, I’m happy to have such “big” stories at my fingertips, but I will say that the constant churn of new Marvel content makes me feel OK with waiting for movies like “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” to be available on streaming. And look! It’s already there.

• • •

Tyler Wilson is a member of the International Press Academy and has been writing about movies and pop culture for Inland Northwest publications since 2000, including a regular column in The Press since 2006. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.