So this is the one that was worth coming back to theatres for? Pixar’s Lightyear is of course their first movie to release in cinemas in over two years, and it’s fairly likely the only reason for this is because of it’s tie-in with a known I.P. -Toy Story. Of course the nature of this tie-in has been convoluted and much made fun of -ever since Chris Evans’ bizarre tweet attempting to explain the nature of the title character. The movie does a better job: it’s opening text laying out clearly that this is apparently the in-universe movie that Andy loved so much as a kid that he got the action figure from it. But of course this itself is just the awkward excuse to justify what is essentially a reboot of this marketable character. Same for why Evans is voicing the part instead of Tim Allen -who hasn’t for a while been a bankable star (notice how even his role as co-lead of the Toy Story series was drastically reduced after the second movie), and given his outspoken right-wing political views, might be a liability for Disney’s P.R. during a time when they’re particularly concerned with appearing progressive.
Regardless, Lightyear is conceptually strange in the way it fits into the Pixar compendium, and as a movie itself seems to both want to lean in and divorce itself from its’ I.P. connection. The initial marketing sold it as a First Man-style Apollo movie, about astronauts readying to explore the cosmos. More recently it’s been perceived as something more in the vein of Pixar’s Interstellar, though far less ambitious: the story of a crew of astronauts shipwrecked on an alien planet, developing a community there for survival, and the repeated attempts of the man whose mistake landed them in this situation to get them home. So actually, it is really the Star Trek: Voyager of Pixar movies -which extends to both its’ appealing premise and its’ lack of a satisfying execution.
There is an aspect to the movie that does feel new and bold as it opens with an Alien homage on an empty spaceship waking its’ crew as it arrives on an extraterrestrial world. Buzz Lightyear goes out exploring it, and then in an attempt to escape in lieu of the discovery of hostile lifeforms, he accidentally critically damages the vessel, stranding its’ contingent on this planet for the foreseeable future. His subsequent attempts to break the hyperspace barrier, alone and desperately determined, consume his priorities as each failed shot comes with the effect of temporal dilation: four years pass for the burgeoning colony with each test of the hyperspace fuel. But it’s not enough to sway Buzz’s driving, obsessed ambition with righting his sin.
This is really compelling and unusually so for Pixar: the story of a prideful man’s quest to atone for his mistake on a scale that spans a lifetime for those closest to him -never much thinking about the lives they are building against a pursuit of what was lost. It feels like a continuation of that adult theming I discussed with Soul, a more mature edge that Pixar may be invested in exploring: the deeper consequences of guilt and learning to live with regret. But then, the end of the first act comes and the movie starts to shift its’ aims, resembling less any kind of deep sci-fi movie and more an episode of that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command cartoon -wherein Buzz is forced to throw his lot in with a gang of misfits as, several decades after that inciting incident, robots have come to suppress the the colony.
It’s here where things get much more typical and frankly much less interesting; Buzz’s guilt slides onto the back-burner in favour of a character arc more about teamwork and learning to accept the differences in his colleagues, unoriginal themes not conveyed with much spirit. The weight of his error is no longer emphasized, at least not consistently so, until a twist reveal that is conceptually very intriguing, but not suffused with enough meaning to hit as well as it should. Learning to forgive a mistake is part of the central thesis here, but it is awkwardly applied; and the gravity of the particular mistakes, again after that act one prologue, aren’t felt for as monumental as they are. Instead they are whittled down to the simple terms that can resonate with young audiences. Yet still there are the hints of something heavier, especially in Buzz’s confrontation with the villainous Zurg (who is there purely out of franchise obligation -even the movie doesn’t want to use him). However, each time one of these ideas or emotions or concepts is broached, the film backs away, as though it’s in a constant struggle between the great movie it aspires to be and the one that it is mandated to.
Amidst all this there is one serious thread that the movie handles pretty well and that is the pressure of generational legacy. Leading this band of ill-equipped Star Command cadets is Izzy, the granddaughter of Commander Hawthorne, Buzz’s close friend and apparently such a skilled and legendarily qualified astronaut that Izzy is perpetually in her shadow. She can never quite live up to her name, reinforced often by Buzz who expects way too much of her. It taps into the stress of legacy and family expectation in a relatively new way, and allows for Izzy to be one of the more engaging characters in an ensemble of mostly uninspiring comic types. Although I will say that Sox, a robotic cat companion of Buzz who acts as essentially the teddy bear from A.I., for all of his pandering cuteness and marketability, is quite fun as well.
Ironic that the toy character is the standout here. But Toy Story gets plenty of shout-outs anyway, mostly in the form of lines of dialogue that either mirror or directly quote Buzz in that first Toy Story movie. And these more than anything confirm how Evans doesn’t fit this part. He’s too sincere, too self-serious, too mechanical, so that the lines lack substance, whereas Tim Allen was always much more in touch with the cheesy bigness and ego of a character called ‘Buzz Lightyear’. The part doesn’t demand solemn Ryan Gosling, it demands hammy William Shatner. And that gets at the other issue with the whole enterprise. The Buzz Lightyear ephemera in those Toy Story movies is intentionally broad and over-the-top. It was designed as a mock-up of space-themed I.P., in everything from the goofy generic names like “Star Command”, to the overwrought grandiosity of Buzz’s built-in catchphrases like “to infinity and beyond”, Zurg’s Darth Vader-inspired design, and the extremely silly astronaut suit that Buzz wears, with its’ colourful buttons and dynamic features. Buzz Lightyear’s aesthetic is inherently “shallow toy for kids” -that is why it works, and despite the introductory conceit, I don’t believe for a second an eight year-old would be obsessed with THIS movie.
Once again, the much talked-up LGBTQ representation is laughably minuscule: a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kiss between an old lesbian couple. It soaked up conversation around Lightyear where there would have been little otherwise. I wouldn’t say the movie is awful necessarily, though it is perhaps the most underwhelming Pixar film since they stopped making Cars movies (it definitely feels like a product of the Lasseter era) -and it is a particular disappointment next to the real intrepid movies like Soul, Luca, and Turning Red that preceded it. Every so often its’ sparks of brilliance come to the surface, and the fact they are allowed to is encouraging. It’s also nicely animated, as is the norm for Pixar, and unexpectedly funny in places. Perhaps free of the Buzz Lightyear branding this could have been something. The ideas and the ambition is there. But what these give way to is an unremarkable and unmemorable product, invariably leaving only the commercial, branded ploy that Disney and Pixar would rather distract from.
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