Lightyear

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When I first saw that a special movie for 'Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear was on its way out, I couldn't help but feel curious as to what it would entail. I kind of figured that it might involve Buzz being separated from the rest of the gang and having to do his own crazy adventure to get home (as the general 'Toy Story' formula entails). Instead, Pixar decided to introduce us to the film that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy that Andy loves so much. It even says "this is that movie" right before everything starts.

We meet Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) of Star Command, along with his commanding officer, best friend, and a rather progressive character, Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba). In exploring the habitable planet of T'Kani Prime with their rookie recruit, Featheringhamstan (Bill Hader), they find hostile lifeforms. In an effort to escape, along with a crew for colonization, the ship ends up malfunctioning and crashing, marooning them. After a year of working together, a colony lives with the basics under a protective dome while Buzz volunteers to test hyperspace fuel - a key element in their escape from the planet.

Upon the first four-minute test of the hyperspace fuel, Buzz finds himself back on T'Kani Prime four years after his launch due to time dilation. Buzz, feeling ultimately responsible for their being there, tests the fuel again and again with the research help of his robotic cat, SOX (Peter Sohn). Eventually, the testing brings Buzz a whole 62 years into the future, and fuel testing is soon scrapped on the orders of Buzz's new commanding officer, Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). The catch - SOX only just perfected the fuel, so of course, Buzz sneaks away to actually succeed in the test and return a whole 22 years later.

I know it sounds a lot like I'm going through the whole movie, but that's really all just the setup. To be perfectly honest, I think I liked this first act the most. It's reminiscent of 'Interstellar' where the time dilation means missing so much, and it does manage to get a little emotional with it. It's almost like watching a kid-friendly episode of 'Black Mirror'. Anyway, once we get to this 22 years later deal, we find that the planet has been all but taken over by "Zyclops" (an army of robots who serve the evil Emperor Zurg). Thankfully the protective dome still holds, but it's up to Buzz to get them to stop attacking altogether.

With the help of a scrappy team of three colony defence soldiers; Izzy (Keke Palmer), Alisha's granddaughter; Darby Steel (Dale Soules), a recently paroled senior; and Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi), a naive, perpetual rookie, the team plans to pull a 'Star Wars' and attack Zurg's ship in order to make the Zyclops' malfunction so they can be taken out. That's about as far into spoiler territory as I'm willing to get, but the rest of the story has a decent surprise or two up its sleeve - only just decent though, not necessarily good or surprising. All in all, once Buzz comes back after the 22 years things do end up getting pretty simple, and it's just an average space adventure.

That being said, my only real criticisms lie in the basic plot points and Zurg seemingly having not much of a real motivation for what he's doing other than mining fuel. That brings me to my next criticism being that I can't totally buy that this is Andy's favourite movie. I'm not saying it can't be, but it does seem like a lot for a pre-adolescent kid to understand. However, having no kids of my own and only going by personal experience 30+ years ago, I admit that I could be way off here. I'd frankly be most curious to hear what kids have to say about this more than adults.

Personally speaking, I find it extremely middle-ground. It's much weaker than any of the actual 'Toy Story' movies, but I can say with confidence that there are worse Pixar titles out there. For me, this is on the level of something like 'Cars 3' - it's definitely a fun time, but I can see where people are coming from with their criticisms. Although I will say that Chris Evans doing the voice of Buzz doesn't exactly hurt my feelings like it is with so many. I see him as voicing the live-action actor within the 'Toy Story' universe who's portraying Buzz rather than Buzz, himself. But hey, purists are purists. Anyway, it's a good time, but only really necessary if you wanna see Buzz Lightyear's origin story.

3/5

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