You know the square jaw, the steady gaze, the proud bearing. He stands alone, confident that he’s the best of the best, ready to do the job singlehanded because anyone else would slow him down. He’s a hero; heroes never quit, never fail, and never need a hand.

Tom Cruise’s Maverick and Disney’s Buzz Lightyear are cut from the same cloth, but the fictional fabric that makes up their movies is as different as night and day.

Buzz Lightyear opened to lackluster numbers, with Top Gun Maverick beating it easily despite having already been in theaters for several weeks. But the movies weren’t aimed at the same audience.  Maverick is targeted at an audience that had seen it in the mid-80s, and were already adults then, while Buzz is focused on a much younger demographic: viewers who were kids in the mid-90s when Andy got a new toy from his favorite movie. Different audiences, but the characters had much in common then, though the message was as different then as now.

For Maverick, it’s about how being the best means never having to say you’re sorry. For Buzz, it’s about how being the best is a fantasy that you grow out of: real strength comes from accepting your weaknesses and forging friendships to bolster them.

It’s the classic Hollywood/Disney dichotomy, and the new movies tell the same story over again. The only problem is that when Toy Story came out in 1995, parents wanted their children to buy into the idea of cooperation, but today is a much more fractured time.  There’s no common good that we can agree on, no shared goal we can cooperate to achieve. Tom Cruise’s Maverick has been marginalized by the organization, but he still stands tall, while Buzz’s redemption only comes after accepting his failure (spoiler alert, his friends are stranded on a planet because he crashed the ship).

There’s no question that Buzz’s journey of reconciliation and self-acceptance leads him to a happier place than Mav’s, but for viewers that feel disenfranchised by forces beyond their control, Maverick is just not resonant.

Nor, of course, is the message at the beginning of the movie that promises you Andy’s favorite movie. When Buzz shows up in Toy Story, he’s clearly stepped out of a heroic tale where fast blasters and a hero’s swagger are the answer to everything. In Buzz Lightyear we see just the opposite, that the hero is a danger to others, not their savior.

The dour message is no doubt full of vitamins and good for you…but those aren’t the pills we’re looking for.  And it’s not what we’re wired for.