Lightyear

On Decem­ber 11 2020 when Hol­ly­wood heart­throb and ex-Cap­tain Amer­i­ca Chris Evans announced that he would be voic­ing Buzz Lightyear in a Toy Sto­ry spin-off film, he tweet­ed an amus­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion about his role: ​“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”. Nat­u­ral­ly the inter­net was quick to seize upon the vague­ly ridicu­lous state­ment, which only fuelled long-held sus­pi­cions that Dis­ney would rather mine the low­est depths of their IP behe­moth than come up with some­thing new.

A text card at the begin­ning of Lightyear explains that Toy Story’s human lead, Andy, was giv­en a Buzz Lightyear toy from his favourite film in 1995. ​“This is that film” we’re told. Accord­ing to Pixar, Lightyear is a fic­tion­al car­toon spin-off from a fic­tion­al pop­u­lar sci-fi fran­chise (akin to Star Wars) that Toy Story’s Andy saw as a child. Buzz Lightyear – the ani­mat­ed spin-off char­ac­ter – then became a mer­chan­dise mon­eyspin­ner (akin to Star Wars) and it’s one of those action fig­ures that became the co-lead in the Toy Sto­ry films. It’s not entire­ly clear why Pixar felt the need to make Lightyear’s ori­gins so con­vo­lut­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly since they have no bear­ing on the plot of this film itself.

Instead, Lightyear is a stand­alone space opera about a man out of space and time, whose stub­born­ness crash lands him and his space ranger crew (includ­ing co-pilot Alisha Hawthorne, voiced by Uzo Adu­ba) on a hos­tile plan­et. Lightyear imme­di­ate­ly sets about try­ing to find a way to cre­ate the ener­gy source they need to return home, but every solo flight attempt sees Buzz miss four years of life back on base.

In a mon­tage rem­i­nis­cent of the Up ​‘Mar­ried Life’ scene (though lack­ing the same emo­tion­al impact) we watch as the new base on the plan­et grad­u­al­ly grows. Hawthorne meets her girl­friend and rais­es a fam­i­ly, lives a full life and grows old. Buzz returns to find that her grand­daugh­ter Izzy (Keke Palmer) has fol­lowed in Alisha’s foot­steps, also becom­ing a space ranger, but their makeshift home is now threat­ened by evil robots they refer to as ​‘Zurg’ as that appears to be all they can say. Buzz, now more deter­mined than ever to get every­one home, teams up with Izzy and a mot­ley crew of mis­fits (a crotch­ety geri­atric ex-con­vict, a clum­sy rook­ie, and a robot cat) to try and get to the bot­tom of what’s going on.

The thrust of the film is that Buzz has missed out on life due to his sin­gle-mind­ed focus on com­plet­ing his mis­sion. While his best friend found love and made a full life for her­self on their unin­tend­ed new home plan­et, Lightyear missed out, not only on hav­ing his own expe­ri­ences, but shar­ing in Alicia’s and being part of her fam­i­ly. This melan­choly sen­ti­ment is actu­al­ly quite per­ti­nent, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our post-Pan­dem­ic world when so many peo­ple feel robbed of time with loved ones, and it feels like some­thing Pixar might have – at one point – been keen to explore.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Lightyear is more focused on its action sequences and its baf­fling vil­lain twist which seems to under­mine the entire plot of Toy Sto­ry 2. The char­ac­ters here are reduced to thin sketch­es and tropes (the con­vict seek­ing redemp­tion, the bum­bling fool look­ing to get things right for once, the irri­tat­ing­ly chip­per robot assis­tant) and even Lightyear has less per­son­al­i­ty than his action fig­ure coun­ter­part in the orig­i­nal Toy Sto­ry movie. Per­haps younger view­ers will be enter­tained by the cute robo-cat and the sil­li­er parts of the bat­tle sequences, but Lightyear is real­ly lack­ing in the heart and soul that made Pixar films so dis­tinc­tive in the first place.

Much has been made of the same-sex kiss between Hawthorne and her wife, that has seen Lightyear banned in mul­ti­ple coun­tries where homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is ille­gal or frowned upon. Some have argued that the moment is actu­al­ly a major plot point, which feels like a bit of a stretch. Instead Hawthorne’s sex­u­al­i­ty and the fact she has a wife are treat­ed with respect and as just a part of life – which makes sense, giv­en that sci-fi has always been a genre where it makes no sense to impose the bina­ry think­ing of human soci­ety. It is also refresh­ing to see a nor­malised queer cou­ple in a kid’s film in an age of hol­low rep­re­sen­ta­tion from major stu­dios (includ­ing Dis­ney). Of course this scene was ini­tial­ly cut, and then only restored after an inter­nal back­lash at Dis­ney, so it’s dif­fi­cult to say how much they actu­al­ly cares about human rights over mar­ket shares. Prob­a­bly not very much.

After the heart­felt com­ing-of-age com­e­dy that was Turn­ing Red, it’s frus­trat­ing to see Pixar cre­ate a film that feels so devoid of per­son­al­i­ty. Lightyear pur­ports to be a film about liv­ing in the moment and work­ing as part of a team, but the char­ac­ters are so thin­ly-realised a con­nec­tion to their group dynam­ic nev­er forms and there’s pre­cious lit­tle sense of per­il as prob­lems are resolved moments after they arise. Even the film’s vil­lain is remark­ably under­whelm­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing he’s sup­posed to be the Toy Sto­ry franchise’s Darth Vader.

Despite some pret­ty inter­galac­tic vis­tas, this is a flat Pixar sto­ry which fails push the bound­aries of either ani­ma­tion or the sci-fi genre — famous­ly elas­tic and expan­sive forms which have allowed for some awe-inspir­ing sto­ry­telling, even in recent years. Per­haps the prob­lem lies with Pixar hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly made mould-break­ing films in Toy Sto­ry and lat­er Wall‑E, which far sur­pass Lightyear while work­ing in sim­i­lar themes of found fam­i­lies, human tenac­i­ty and the search for life beyond our own plan­et. Either way, Lightyear is an under­whelm­ing effort for Pixar, and the darn robot cat up there with C3PO in the Tedious Robot Side­kick ranking.