Projects #036 - “And just to be clear, this isn’t Buzz Lightyear the toy. This is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on.”
The Pixar film that drove me completely insane!
The time has come - we must face one of the worst things to ever happen to me. Worse than Cars 2, as it was a direct attack on my very being. That’s right. It’s time for the origin story of Buzz Lightyear. No other project updates today - it’s just me and the space ranger. (And Mary Fran.)
Pixar Project #026 - LIGHTYEAR (2022) dir. Angus MacLane
In 1995, a boy named Andy got a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday. It was from his favorite movie. This is that movie.
That is the actual opening of Pixar’s Lightyear, a dour, pointless movie confused from conception. The fuck are they talking about? We are about to watch a movie that exists in the world of Toy Story? And this film came out in the year 1995? What was the critical response? Are we meant to experience this as if the special effects of the Toy Story world look this good? In 1995? Is this a live action film or a cartoon? Does Pixar exist within the world of Toy Story as the name appears in the opening titles? Too many questions emblematic of our current era of IP mining disasters.
But we need to back up. On December 10th, 2020, Disney needed to reassure the shareholders during the depth of covid, revealing their slate of movies and shows allegedly in development for the next couple years. Some of these things - like Turning Red and Encanto - hit their scheduled release dates with little incident, but series like Alien: Earth and Win or Lose1 didn’t manifest until this year. It was a bad move, setting up far too many bowling pins to knock down. There’s probably things announced that never happened that I’ve completely forgotten. They don’t matter. Smooshed in the middle of all these was the announcement of Lightyear, out of nowhere.
My initial reaction: what the fuck? Is he gonna be a real guy? Some guy who got kidnapped by aliens or something? Is he from the past? It’s a biopic? Isn’t Chris Evans taking a break from acting? What’s the plan? Thank god Chris Evans was ready to explain things.
Okay, got it. Thanks Chris.
Anyway, it eventually comes to light that this is a sci-fi movie starring a human Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans instead of Tim Allen. It seemed like Pixar wanted to get rid of Allen, who is a very annoying conservative snitch, but now he’s back for Toy Story 5, so what the fuck do I know. Lightyear is the culmination of everything that has been going wrong at Pixar. Sequel/spin-off no one asked for. Confused premise. Lackluster visuals. Lazy writing. Disregard for originality and creativity in general. Thank GOD no one saw this. I am the first person to ever watch this more than once.
And another point of confusion - there was a whole Buzz Lightyear cartoon after Toy Story 2! Buzz Lightyear of Star Command! He was friends with a girl? There was a robot? Not saying it was particularly memorable but it did exist! There are probably some sickos out there who love this more than anything and were devastated to learn that Lightyear was not following up on this series.
We’ll be here all day if I can’t get past the opening titles. Lightyear opens with Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans, just doing a Tim Allen impression) and his friend Alisha (Uzo Aduba) on their gigantic spaceship filled with hibernating Star Command scientists, researchers, and medical officers as they check out potential signs of life on a planet known as T’Kani Prime. When they touch down, they are immediately attacked by living plants and nasty creatures. While escaping, Buzz overestimates his piloting skills and crashes the ship, marooning everyone on this dusty planet. Cue title card.
Great start! If you couldn’t tell that the main lesson Buzz needs to learn is “trust your friends and work together”, they’ll beat you over the head with it every few minutes. To repent for his mistakes, Buzz volunteers to fly up into orbit and test their hyperspace crystal, hoping to lead everyone back to Star Command. We soon learn that Buzz experiences time dilation on these flights - a four minute trip is a year for everyone else. Though shocked, Buzz keeps trying, as everyone on the colony starts living new lives and building a community. Buzz stays the same age as Alisha gets older and older, starting a family and eventually dying. Buzz’s friends are all dead, and he couldn’t get them off this planet he stranded them on. What does he have to live for besides the mission, and a little robotic cat named Sox (Peter Sohn, a far better voice actor than director)?
We are meant to believe Andy, the child from Toy Story, loves this film. There is no way he even sat still for this bleak prologue. I try placing my eight year old self at this screening - my reaction would probably be “Where’s Woody” more than anything, but I can’t imagine I’m enjoying PG Interstellar with fewer jokes. One thing I will praise - I appreciate that the only Toy Story references are Buzz’s dialogue, even if it sounds crazy to hear his lines from the original film essentially devoid of context. Why does he say “you’re mocking me, aren’t you” in the exact same way? But at least the aliens don’t look like Bullseye or something.
Buzz is now at least 88 years in the future2, where an ominous gigantic spaceship hovers above the planet. He is saved by some ragamuffins wandering outside the colony forcefield, who tell him that giant robots led by someone called ‘Zurg’ have invaded. Are you ready for how this thing deals with Zurg? But first, Buzz learns that the leader of this small crew is Alisha’s granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer). With her are an old convict (Dale Soules) and an annoying flibbertigibbet (Taika Waititi). These are easily the worst supporting characters in Pixar history. They each have one joke (airhead, criminal, wimp), and they’re not funny. While the goofy circus bugs are charming in their obliviousness, Buzz is saddled with these fucking losers who make everything worse. Team full of Maters. And yet the film’s moral means that Buzz is going to have to work with these freaks. Awful.
A few unfunny and visually dull set pieces later, Buzz and co end up on Zurg’s mothership. What we wanted: a dynamic, full motion version of Buzz facing off against Zurg in the opening of Toy Story 2. What we got: something way weirder. When Zurg appears in all his metallic glory, he steps out of his big purple suit to reveal… he is AN OLD BUZZ FROM THE FUTURE! Now voiced by James Brolin, Old Buzz explains that the timeline actually split on Buzz’s final hyperspace trip. While our Buzz got back to the planet unharmed, Old Buzz went even further into the future, discovering this abandoned fleet of robots, the origin of which is never explained. Old Buzz starts calling himself ‘Zurg’ because the robots cannot pronounce ‘Buzz’. Great. With his new legion of robots, Old Buzz is determined to return to the past and prevent the Star Command ship from ever getting marooned in the first place. Buzz considers this momentarily, but realizes his awful new friends will probably be wiped from existence. This is presented as a bad thing. Buzz turns on Old Buzz, who climbs back into the Zurg suit to kill him.
There’s so much screaming, but eventually Buzz gets into a Star Command ship, granting him his iconic jetpack. That’s where this was all leading to. Buzz blows up Zurg3 and saves his friends, ready to face new space adventures together. That’s the origin of the real Buzz Lightyear! Good night!
But we’re not done here. Lightyear became a target of right-wing hatred, despite no one on the planet seeing the movie, due to its depiction of a lesbian relationship. Buzz’s friend Alisha falls in love with another woman while Buzz is in space, has a family with her, then dies. Buzz, woke king, knows his friend is a lesbian and has no objections. Naturally this portrayal of a black woman in love with an Asian woman was too much for most of humanity, leading to online screeds, boycotts, and outright bans of the film in awesome places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This likely led to the hetero structural changes seen in Elio, which we will discuss sometime next month.
More recently, Snoop got in hot water for confusingly saying he was ‘scared’ to see lesbians in Lightyear, which he apparently watched with his grandkids. He seemed to apologize, but then that remorse was revealed to be fake? But THEN he announced that his kids show will feature a pro-LGBTQ+ song? Always keeping us on our toes, that Snoop!
What is the legacy of Lightyear? It’s certainly not being reclaimed as a secret masterpiece. It was a gigantic box office bomb, mired in stupid lesbian controversy4 and lukewarm reviews. There’s nothing here but a stain on the ever-blackening report card that is Pixar’s output. Also director Angus MacLane was let go by Pixar during the layoffs last year. Sorry dude!
Lightyear: Point five (.5) out of five bouncing lamps.
From the archives
I have no photographic evidence but there were Lightyear toys at Target on the clearance shelf for months. Right alongside the toys for Wish…
Mary Fran Corner
This is so bad. I wish so badly it didn’t exist. Lightyear feels like a lazy money grab, like Pixar is trying to cash in on Buzz Lightyear’s popularity just because they can. I know I sound dramatic but this movie tarnishes what used to be one of the most reliable names in animation.
At least they knew better than to underdeliver on the animation on top of everything else. The lighting is Pixar-level mastery. Buzz’s reflection in his helmet as he surveys a new planet? Beautiful. Light streaming through the alien leaves? Gorgeous. It’s all absolutely wasted on this movie, but still, would’ve been even more angry if it was sloppy.
Then the dialogue starts... “You know how I feel about rookies.” “Look into the rookie’s eyes.” “This suit means something—it’s a promise to the universe!” Who talks like this? Was this written by AI? That is a genuine question.
The gist of the story is that Buzz accidentally loses a crystal fuel source while trying to escape danger, marooning his crew on a remote planet. Being stranded on an alien planet could make for an interesting story, but not for Pixar, and definitely NOT for a Buzz Lightyear movie. That’s just not their lane. In this universe, everyone’s oddly upbeat, happily building a colony while Buzz broods about his mistake.
When Buzz finally goes to test a new fuel crystal, the whole setup feels like he’s about to get on a ride at Disney World. “Ready to see the fuel?” “Here’s your checklist!” “Here’s what you’ll do next!” I half expected someone to check his seatbelt.
Buzz takes off, and something goes wrong. When he returns, only four minutes have passed for him, but four years for everyone else. So, we’re apparently doing Interstellar for kids, except without any of the emotional or scientific grounding that made that story work.
Buzz keeps trying new missions, missing decades of life, until his best friend grows old and dies while he’s gone. It’s a heavy concept (mortality, loss, regret) but so sloppily handled that it barely registers. I can’t imagine kids following this, or adults caring to. Buzz is given a robotic cat named Sox to cope, who’s supposed to be comic relief, but mostly just makes the whole thing feel even more off-tone.
The colony eventually decides to stay on the planet and “make do,” which is bizarrely underexplained. There’s talk of building a laser shield, but it’s not clear why or how any of it works. Then Sox solves the hyperspeed fuel problem, and next thing you know, Buzz has to escape from bureaucrats who want to confiscate the cat. These reasons are never made completely clear. So off Buzz goes again, racing through space at hyperspeed.
When he lands, decades have passed again, and now he’s working with a new generation of Space Rangers wannabes led by Izzy, the granddaughter of his old friend. Buzz, who famously doesn’t like rookies, has to team up with a group of pre-rookies to save the colony from a mysterious villain named Zurg. It all spirals into generic space-battle chaos, complete with an unnecessary time-travel twist that somehow manages to make even less sense than everything before it.
By the time the credits started rolling, I felt exhausted and uninspired. Lightyear could have been an interesting sci-fi film in some other context, but as a Pixar movie, it’s completely out of place. It’s overcomplicated, joyless, and weirdly self-serious.
Bottom line: Lightyear isn’t just a misfire. It’s Pixar’s worst film to date. And I feel confident in saying that.
Next week! Big project catch-up, Hawke talk, and everyone’s favorite rom-com: Elemental! See you then!
Which we’re covering soon!
Aw man is this a Back to the Future reference? Just realizing this now!
The post credits scene reveals that Zurg is alive, but there will never be a Lightyear 2 so we don’t need to worry about it. Could be kind of cool if Old Buzz is just dead and rotting inside there while the robot becomes autonomous, but I don’t write for Pixar so oh well.
The lesbians are not stupid, the controversy is!
also wait if this is based off the "real" human that buzz lightyear the toy is based on, does that mean the toy story world has this sort of advanced space travel in 1995? then why is everything else just typical 90s american suburbia??
Absolutely FASCINATED by the phonemic inventory that allows for "Zurg" but not "Buzz!" Also "This is just some guy?" made me laugh out loud while the other SLP is seeing a student across the room from me so oops