Pixar Pint #26: Lightyear
A movie that should go to infinity and beyond is instead largely stuck on one boring planet.
Welcome back to Pixar Pints, our two-summer-long journey through all 27 Pixar films in release order.
Y’know, I actually grew up watching Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins (2000) on VHS. I have generally fond memories of it. I still remember the alien character designs, the voice acting, and several lines of dialogue despite not having seen it in probably two decades. That might be because I was a kid when I watched it, and kids eat more stuff up and form core memories more easily, but hey: it stuck with me.
Probably the best thing working in favor of that movie (and the ensuing series) was that they got Tim Allen to voice Buzz, even though this version of Buzz was a real human space ranger and not a toy. It added to the realism of it all; the toy was a true-to-life depiction of the actual Buzz. That was really cool to kindergarten Eli!
It’s also why it was really weird to hear Chris Evans voice Buzz in Lightyear and even weirder to hear Tim Allen’s reasoning for why it wasn’t him. In an interview with Extra, he said:
“The short answer is I’ve stayed out of this cuz it has nothing to do [with Toy Story Buzz]. … [Lightyear] is a wonderful story; it just doesn’t seem to have any connection to the toy, and…I wish there was a better connection. … It’s [Tom] Hanks and I. There’s really no Toy Story’s Buzz without Woody.”
Woody does not appear in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins.1
Let’s get into it.
Lightyear quick facts
Release date: June 17, 2022 | Director: Angus MacLane | Music: Michael Giacchino
Starring: Chris Evans (Buzz), Keke Palmer (Izzy), Peter Sohn (Sox), Taika Waititi (Mo), Dale Soules (Darby), James Brolin (Zurg)
John Ratzenberger as: He just said he was going out for some milk. I’m sure he’ll be back any day now.
Budget: $200 million | Box office: $226.4 million
Academy Awards: None. The only accolade of any kind this movie won was an NAACP Image Award for Keke Palmer: Outstanding Character Voice Performance in a Motion Picture.
Eli
This is the first time I’d seen this movie.
Aesthetic: 4/10 | The entire movie is spent either on a barren planet or in space, which is basically what they did in WALL-E, but it makes a lot less sense here. This is supposed to be a sci-fi action flick for kids, a six-year-old Andy’s favorite movie. They should have made it more cartoony. It needed to pop more.
Animation: 7/10 | I hesitate to give them more than an average grade here because they didn’t even really attempt to do anything experimental. It’s a movie where the heroes face monsters from another planet and space robots from an evil emperor. Feels like they could have hammed it up some more beyond adding the federally mandated gratuitous Pixar explosions.
Story: 2/10 | This story suffers from one major problem: there are no stakes. Buzz’s entire mission is to escape the barren planet and go “home”, but we never see what “home” is, so I’m never under any impression the movie will return there. The movie simultaneously has too much exposition and not enough. The first act is Buzz monotonously failing the same mission over and over again while his friends’ lives zip past him, but the movie doesn’t make me care about those lives. We don’t get to see what Buzz and Hawthorne’s lives are like before they get stuck because the film begins with the conflict, so we as viewers don’t even know what we’re rooting for. The movie gets a couple points for a few touching moments, most notably in Izzy’s arc. But all of these problems plus some unintuitive time loop shenanigans made this one a chore to finish.
Characters: 7/10 | Well almost everyone in the first act has passed away by the second, so we have to get introduced to two different sets of characters, which is a slog. Aside from that, I thought the characters in this movie were mostly good. Buzz acts like a hotshot space ranger; cool. Izzy is the legacy recruit who wants to live up to her family name; great. The other two recruits whose names I forgot before I wrote the Quick Facts, at least they’re funny sometimes. But the star of the whole show—the character whose merch would have been the real hot seller if this movie was actually released in 1995—was Sox. Perfect character; no notes.
Acting: 7/10 | The first Pixar movie in a long time in which I could notice slips in the acting. I know why they didn’t retain Tim Allen as Buzz, but when the first thing I notice about your movie is “wow, that’s obviously not Buzz’s normal voice”, you’re not off to a great start. Keke Palmer’s Izzy is also a little flat.
Music: 4/10 | There are a few ways in which Lightyear is the Cars 2 of the Toy Story franchise and this is one of them. Precisely as with Cars 2, this franchise should be scored by Randy Newman, not Michael Giacchino. I wish Buzz’s musical motifs reminded me of his cues in the Toy Story movies even a little.
Final score: 5/10 | This movie is pretty drowsy, which—again—is surprising and disappointing given the premise.
Leah
Aesthetic: 7/10 | I liked the inspiration they took from old sci-fi movies. It was fun seeing Pixar’s take on it. Overall, the setting was a bit drab; I suppose that’s what you’d expect from an inhospitable planet, but it still wasn’t interesting to look at.
Animation: 8/10 | Pixar put their talent to good use, though I agree with Eli that it didn’t do much to break new ground. Still an impressive product, but nothing that stuck out to me compared to the 25 movies prior.
Story: 4/10 | I might be about 20 years too old for this movie. The message was good—accepting mistakes and not trying to do everything alone—but it was presented in a way that was too obvious, even for me: a person who tends to like the obvious in art. Buzz’s determination to complete the mission at the beginning of the movie just seemed absurd. Surely he’d want to stop and think for a day about blowing through time like that? Alisha isn’t more upset about her best friend ditching her for most of her life? Also, Sox was able to solve the energy problem in 60-ish years?!? They didn’t have a more advanced AI than a therapy cat that could work on it? I think worst of all, I just couldn’t get very invested in this movie’s narrative. It was just too boring.
Characters: 7/10 | Sox was the best character in this movie, a 10/10 in an otherwise 6/10 world. A robot cat that’s super smart, full of silly surprises, and adorable to boot? They should’ve made a movie about him instead. The other characters were okay, but I didn’t really connect with them in any meaningful way.
Acting: 8/10 | I thought the actors did a fine job, though they were held back by the script they had to work with.
Music: 6/10 | Nothing really stuck out to me. It did the job of backing the movie, but I can’t say much more than that.
Final score: 6/10 | The narrative really holds this movie back. The old sci-fi setting is fun, and Pixar clearly put their skill to work here, but there just isn’t a lot to care about when it comes to the story or characters.
Maddy
Aesthetic: 9/10 | Animation: 7/10 | Story: 5/10 | Characters: 6/10 | Acting: 7/10 | Music: 7/10
As a premise, this movie sounded interesting: a Pixar film taking inspiration from sci-fi films of the ‘70s and ‘80s and throwing Buzz Lightyear into it for kicks and giggles. And early trailers looked promising! And yet…
What we got was a largely forgettable, confusing, and fine film that didn’t really justify being tied to the Toy Story franchise outside of a need to put butts in seats.
It’s a 6/10 based on looks alone. I really do appreciate what they tried to do with the aesthetic and the aforementioned homages to the look of old sci-fi films. But in a time when overly realistic animation is becoming old news, this feels boring and flat, just like its story. It tries to do something unique, but doesn’t hit the right notes in my mind like Pixar used to.
I’m not saying Pixar is losing its way—far from it, considering how highly I’d rated the last three films. It just feels a need to use intellectual properties for money to the detriment of the films’ actual quality.
Lightyear will slowly settle into the category of forgotten animated films, which is rare for Pixar, mind you. It’ll only be brought up in “hey, remember when they made a Buzz Lightyear movie?” posts on social media. It exists, and our world ate it up and took it in without feeling much about it.
I still have faith in this studio, but this is another moment in recent memory when I’ve questioned what strings Disney is pulling behind the scenes.
Final score: 41/60 or 6/10
David
Aesthetic: This is kind of a miss, I think. Everything just feels a little too flat, and not even in a way that feels real. It reminds me of WALL-E, but bad.
Animation: They’re good at animation, but this isn’t exactly outstanding in any regard.
Story: At no point is there anything that truly feels like it’s going to make or break things for the crew. At no point does it feel like this is anything but a vehicle by which to sell merchandise, which, given this is a cash-grab spinoff of a series that has also overstayed its welcome, is probably not wrong, but I didn’t think that it would come off so blatantly. So much of the movie feels like it’s stagnant or like it’s missing cornerstone pieces—by not giving us glimpses into what these characters are actually fighting for, everything remains a nebulous concept with no real gravity to it.
Characters: Sox is better than I expected. Having to acquaint myself with two sets of (on the whole) forgettable characters—not great. Buzz is Buzz. At least they didn’t fuck that up too badly.
Acting: This is not great. Evans is a mediocre Buzz and Palmer’s Izzy is eh.
Music: Giacchino is so good, but this is one of his worst. Keep continuity between series—let Newman handle this. He knows what he’s doing.
Final score: 2/10 | This suuuuuuuucks. If I were a toddler, maybe I’d like it. Unfortunately, I am 26.
Final notes
I guess it’s worth noting that this movie was the first Pixar project since Toy Story 4 to get a full theatrical run in North America, not that anyone actually went to see it in theatres.
Next up: Elemental
Okay, this is technically untrue. There’s a 90-second 3D-animated scene at the very beginning in which all of the toys in Andy’s room gather around a TV to watch the movie after receiving a VHS in the mail. But Woody isn’t in the 2D-animated movie itself, and even in the intro, Pixar didn’t get Tom Hanks to voice Woody; they got his younger brother Jim.