Lightyear’s a stiff-as-plastic deconstruction of heroic space dramas

Pixar and Disney made Lightyear out to be a new version of Toy Story's canon that revealed new information about Andy Davis' favorite space explorer. The story of how reaching for the stars can lead to people losing hold of the important things in front of them is more about unpacking why we tend to frame people like him as heroes.

The story of Buzz, one of the headstrong Galactic Rangers of Star Command, is told in Lightyear. After years of working closely only with his commanding officer, Lightyear left convinced that it simply isn't safe for him to partner up with rookies, an assumption that ends up spelling disaster for them all. When Buzz decides that he doesn't need help during a routine mission, an accident leaves him and many other people stranded on a strange planet, and everyone knows who is to blame.

Image: Pixar / Disney

Lightyear opens and zooms in on the space hero as he searches for a way to put right everything that's gone wrong, but instead of tiny green aliens who think with a hive mind and worship a claw in the sky, Buzz's guilt is what scares him as he looks Buzz doesn't have to feel guilty about being marooned because everyone on the strange planet wants to leave. It isn't long before they build a colony because they're all highly trained survivalists. Buzz, a lantern-jawed boy scout with a penchant for dramatically narrating his mission logs, would refuse to move on with his life if he were to admit that he failed.

Buzz believes that if he keeps trying on his own to solve a problem involving unstable fuel sources, he alone can save himself and his fellow Rangers from having to tough it out on a planet full of murder. Buzz believes that if he keeps trying on his own to solve a problem involving unstable fuel sources, he alone can save himself and his fellow Rangers from having to tough it out on a planet full of murder.

The way Pixar renders Lightyear's lush and vibrant alien world at first makes it seem like the movie will focus on Buzz and Alisha dealing with strange creatures they don't know how to deal with. Lightyear has an action sequence that spotlights some of that. It is much more interested in Buzz's quest to prove himself than it is in films like Interstellar and The Martian.

Pixar

Lightyear follows Buzz as he rockets off into space hoping to use a nearby sun's pull to slingshot himself back to the Star Command base in hopes of finding a way back to their home planet. Lightyear is more about Lightyear than anything else, and before you can get to know Buzz and Alisha, you have to see it. Buzz has lost a number of years due to the way time dilates for those moving at high speeds, and every return to Star Command is a reminder that his life is passing him by.

Lightyear makes it clear to the audience that Buzz can't really see the truth until he comes face to face with a Star Command issued robotic cat. For all the charm that Evans and Palmer bring to their performances, they never quite manage to make Buzz or Izzy feel like people who would enjoy spending time together, even though their burgeoning friendship is supposed to be the emotional center of the movie.

Buzz saw the passage of time and decided not to carve out a new life for himself with his friends. Lightyear puts Buzz and Izzy in situations meant to push them to realize how working together is both beneficial to them as individuals and in line with Star Command's idea of what makes for good explorers. Even though the movie is trying to show how Buzz takes matters into his own hands, it can still hit many of the same beats as the movies it is trying to comment on.

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The movie is a visual triumph for Pixar and Disney, who have managed to translate the entire design vocabulary surrounding Toy Story's original Buzz into an aesthetic language that reads as lived-in.

By the time Lightyear gets around to introducing its true villain and their dastardly plan that underscores many of the movie's larger ideas, you can see why Disney decided to run with the "what if Buzz Lightyear was a real guy" conceit. It is difficult to tell if Lightyear will sell people on the idea of sitting down for a big, flashy, but formulaic spin-off about a guy who is learning to get out of his own way.

Lightyear features Taika Waititi, James Brolin, Dale Soule, Mary McDonald-Lewis, and IsiahWhitlock Jr.