Lightyear

In the year 2000, a straight to VHS spin-off movie based on the popular Toy Story character, Buzz Lightyear, was released called Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins and gave the public an insight into what the life of the space ranger would have looked like to any kid interested in buying a toy themselves. Though never releasing on the big screen, the movie offered a fun time with good characters, animation, and writing, and garnered enough success to earn itself a tv show that spanned a single year run from the year 2000 to 2001. Both these projects made people want to see more of Buzz in his home territory and actually made the idea of another Buzz Lightyear Star Command property sound pretty inviting. However, when it was announced that Buzz would get his own film away from the Toy Story universe, the trailer made it clear it wasn’t going down the old Star Command format, but rather something tragically different. Travelling through space with a whole civilization of people, space ranger Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) is faced with the guilt of inadvertently stranding his crew and people on a habitable but desolate planet, with the only way off coming in the form of hyper speed fuel that needs testing before usage. Buzz volunteers to partake in the mission, but discovers that with every trip, he travels forward in time, and with each consecutive trip, those he worked with grow old and pass away, including his commanding officer and best friend, Alisha Hawthorne (voiced by Uzo Aduba). After perfecting the hyper speed fuel with the help of his robotic feline companion named Sox (voiced by Peter Sohn), Buzz’s next trip into hyper-speed launches him further into the future, where the planet is now overrun by killer robots led by Zurg (voiced by James Brolin). Buzz discovers the colony’s defense force which consists of Mo (voiced by Taika Waititi), Darby (voiced by Dale Soules) and Alisha’s granddaughter, Izzy (voiced by Keke Palmer) whose inexperience in the field clashes with Buzz’s need for perfection in his teammates. However, with Zurg’s robots closing in, they will all have to learn to cope with the situation and save their home. Released in 2022, Lightyear is stated by the creators as the movie that inspired Andy to get his own Buzz Lightyear toy in Toy Story, but with what this movie has to offer, its hard to see why anyone would want him at all.

The idea of a movie based around Buzz Lightyear has strong potential and with how the series and animated film established the tone, atmosphere, and environment for the space ranger as well as a cute and even clever premise surrounding the purpose of the movie (being Andy’s inspiration) its setting this movie up to be like a sci-fi film stripped right out of the 90s with the cheesy tone, colorful characters, and insane action sequences. This movie isn’t even trying to be that tone of film in the slightest, if anything it’s the most 2022 animated movie that you could expect, with a serious grounded tone, emotional and troubled characters and little to no action whatsoever. This more serious approach, while ill-fitting and not what people would anticipate from a Buzz Lightyear project, is capable of succeeding with the right handling, but the film must have forgotten that because this movie struggles heavily with being incredibly boring and generic. The narrative has more ties to an Interstellar-type film than something out of Pixar’s library, and while Pixar’s line-up can be extremely adult-oriented, it still carries elements that make them perfect for kid’s film, whereas this film seems like it appeals to neither. The younger audience will be turned off by the drab tone, mostly serious and introspective narrative and photo-realistic imagery, and adults will tire from the bland recycled plot, weak/annoying characters, and lack of entertaining material. It’s a movie that tries desperately to cater to fans of the Toy Story world (it’s one of those dumb movies that quotes familiar lines to an annoyingly specific degree), but this movie offers the exact opposite of what fans of that franchise would want out of a Buzz Lightyear property. It lacks that fun factor that should easily come from a goofy product that is in itself a spoof on those over-the-top sci-fi stories. The director of this film is Angus MacLane, a regular within Pixar, one who had his directorial debut in this film and someone who has had an attachment to Buzz, being responsible for helping to animate him and acting as a consultant for the character in later projects with him in it. Despite this, it feels like the ambition to take this story to new places was too far in the wrong direction, starting him off on a bad spot that leaves little intrigue to improve upon in later projects, and making the movie feel more like an original project that was attempted to be made more interesting by inserting a popular icon into it.

What’s funny about having the man responsible for forming Buzz at the helm of the film is that the character of Buzz Lightyear is one that does strangely get weaker with each consecutive movie. As each Toy Story film progressed, he devolved into one-off jokes as opposed to being a fleshed-out character (made painfully obvious in the fourth film), and it causes an odd conundrum where the man who helped create Buzz may have also helped destroy him. But that version at least had a sense of  charm and likeable energy that made him a memorable character and one that was worthy of being one of Pixar’s most recognizable names. If all they had to go off was this version, there’s no chance he would have lasted. All the characters in this movie are very poorly realized and are either very under-written and pretending to be more complex than they actually are, or are just annoying comic relief who feel like the lowest level roles you could get from a film of this genre. On a voice acting level, you can tell everybody is doing their best and thankfully most of the performances come out strong. Even though it is bizarre that Tim Allen wasn’t voicing a version of his iconic character, it doesn’t feel too distracting as Chris Evans does a surprisingly spot-on impression. The character lacks personality, interest and is mostly just a wet blanket for a majority of the movie, but Evans really does capture the mannerisms and inflection of the character very effectively. Roles like Alisha and Izzy could have been stronger if they were given better writing and story, but what they are left with is nothing special and very forgettable. What little crumbs of charm these two had are very absent from the other crew members, who are very annoying, unlikeable, and given some of the most boring comedic writing seen in one of these films for a while (the guy’s running joke is that he has a pen in his space suit, that’s it). Zurg is another completely wasted character and one that is horribly executed with a confusing backstory, motivation that could be interesting if given better writing, and has zero intrigue or personality to make him stand out, ironically making the overly diabolic cartoon version much more fun and interesting to watch. Easily the best character in this film is Sox the cat voiced by Peter Sohn,  being the only character to provide memorable lines and funny moments, meaning what looked like the worst part of the movie (at least from the trailers) was actually the best part of it.

The movie wastes a lot of its technology and visuals by staying in a dull, colorless environment that doesn’t showcase any of the otherwise great looking visuals, but the clashing of tones really makes things worse. Pixar movies always look good now, so there needs to be a specific element that makes it stand out, and sci-fi can offer plenty of creative ideas and imagery that could be fantastic for animation. But for a character whose tagline is ‘’To Infinity and Beyond’’, the film is stuck on this singular planet for the whole movie and even that isn’t an interesting looking planet; it gets boring to be around, it looks like any other sci-fi planet from any other movie, and even when the movie has moments that showcase some of the visuals like during the hyper speed sequences or some of the character designs, it doesn’t excuse the otherwise awful look the film has when it comes to its location. Its trying to be realistic, but when realism equals blandness, its not worth the trade that comes with creativity, and there’s nothing new or creative about these environments, these creature and robot designs and even to some extent the character designs. This is also the first animated movie to feature technology that allows the aspect ratio of the film to shift in certain sections, which does provide for some cool moments when they are in space, as those sequences do look stronger on a widescreen, and it showcases the (for lack of a better word) space very effectively, especially during a pretty cool sequence when a character whose afraid of space has to jump from one location to the other over open space without a guide or attachment.

If someone were to ask out of these two options which one they believed Andy from Toy Story saw that would inspire him to buy a Buzz Lightyear toy (this movie or the Buzz Lightyear: Star Command film), they are obviously going to say the latter as it showcases everything a kid from that era would want to see from a character like Buzz. While not a great movie by any means, Its still action-packed, comedic, visually interesting, has creative action sequences, and is self-aware enough to not be serious and to have fun in its goofiness. That is the quintessential Buzz Lightyear film that showcases the character, whereas this is a gritty re-imagining that certain studios think fans want to see when in actuality, it brings no-one pleasure. Lightyear isn’t a very strong movie and considering this was the first Pixar film to be released in theatres since the pandemic hit (with Luca and Turning Red going straight to Disney+), it doesn’t warrant the cinematic treatment and doesn’t even hold a candle to those other films. Its not an unwatchable movie, its not even one of the worse Pixar films, but for something attached to one of their biggest film franchises, it’s definitely going to leave your memory the second you are done with it and it is a pretty sad spin-off that is easily out shined by another that was released twenty years prior. Going nowhere near infinity and beyond, Lightyear is a movie where a robotic cat outshines everything else and is the only one deserving of massive toy exposure.