LIGHTYEAR. Starring (by voice): Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Uzo Aduba and Taika Waititi. Also James Brolin. Directed by Angus MacLane. Rated PG (Mild science fiction themes and animated violence). 105 min.
This film, like other Buzz Lightyear movies before it, is produced by Pixar Animation Studios and extends in a very unusual way the Toy Story franchise, that commenced in 1995. Buzz (voiced by Evans – a new voice for Buzz) is a young astronaut who travels to outer space, only to find himself marooned on a hostile planet which threatens the safety of himself and his crew.
Buzz has been the action figure in all previous Toy Story films. In this film, he takes a test flight on Star Command, which ends up projecting him 62 years into the future. The flight leaves him marooned on an unfriendly planet.
The film is the fifth movie featuring Buzz, and depicts the origin of his character. This is really a movie within the universe that spawned the toy, and the film tells the origin story of Pixar’s most famous character. This Buzz Lightyear is a space ranger that inspired the good-hearted cowboy toy bought by young Andy, as his plaything back in 1995. In this film, Buzz is a space hero with a future to sell. It is a story of the person behind the toy that has become famous. Pixar has created a movie about a toy within a story that inspired its most famous fantasy character.
Pixar has a terrific reputation for richly imaginative cinema. Its attention to detail is exceptional, right down to the threatening look of the movie’s evil characters. New friendly characters are introduced, including Alisha Hawthorne (voiced by Aduba), who is Buzz’s best friend and commander of the mission. As expected, Pixar, pays detailed attention to aerospace design.
Buzz is desperate to find his way back home, and he is joined in his intergalactic adventure by a motley array of ambitious recruits – voiced, for example, by Palmer and Waititi; and a new robot companion (cat), called Sox (Sohn), who provides a richly comic character who is obviously going to feature in future Buzz Lightyear movies. On the way home from outer space, Buzz has to cope with sinister characters, who threaten the future of the universe. Buzz finds himself surrounded by marauding aliens, some of them winged, and by an army of robots. Action adventure imaginatively fills the screen throughout his trip back home.
The problem with this film is that Pixar has made a calculated, directional shift away from what made Buzz Lightyear so enjoyable a character in the past. In 1995, as well as in the movies that followed, Buzz was firmly entrenched as Buck Rogers: a character who was immensely likeable, old-fashioned, a little clumsy, and a cowboy through and through. This movie has changed Buzz Lightyear into someone, or something, that was not envisaged at the start of the Toy Story franchise. That is a risk. This movie turns Buzz into a different character.
Moving such a risk aside, Pixar is reliably inventive, highly imaginative, and plays with a Buzz who never was. New fans will come on board, but some of the old fans may go. New fans may need to be technologically savvy to keep up with the plot’s sophisticated technology demands.
This film is different to the Toy Stories movies viewers might have seen before, but the magic of Pixar animation continues. As a Pixar movie, it is still family-friendly, plot sophisticated, and thoroughly action-oriented. Buzz was given a chance to change the past. He refused, and at the moment seems happy to continue as a Space Ranger with special command responsibilities.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Released 16 June 2022