Lightyear is surprisingly one of Pixar’s best modern stories. Its unexpectedly mature emotionality, unafraid to let the melancholic in, significantly strengthens its ability to tell the ‘true’ story of Buzz Lightyear. Lightyear lands in cinemas nationwide on June 17th.
Technically, Lightyear is not the first Buzz Lightyear feature film – that title goes to Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins. Surprisingly similar to Lightyear, it’s similarly framed as the ‘real’ story of the figurine, reintroducing us to the now-classic emblems of Zurg and the Little Green Men from Toy Story 2. It’s by no means a perfect film. Still, it has a certain aura of nostalgia around it – Lightyear undoubtedly threatened that nostalgia, largely due to the replacement of Tim Allen with Chris Evans. It is somewhat rare for Pixar to even travel down the spin-off route, with the former Lightyear adventure and 2013’s Planes as two of the few examples. So what does Lightyear offer that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command can’t?
Surprisingly, Lightyear is reminiscent of several famous sci-fi flicks – but certainly nothing in the last 30 years. Given the film’s 1995 release, it appears that director Angus MacLane has drawn inspiration instead from the classic space adventures Lost in Space and Forbidden Planet. The world of Lightyear feels thematically and aesthetically like a throwback to 1950s and 1960s sci-fi – big, chunky spacesuits, oh-so-serious mission monologuing à la William Shatner; oddly, by going back in time, Lightyear makes itself feel fresh amid the somewhat uniform aesthetic of modern science fiction.
It’s a fish-out-of-water twist that also means that, in a way, Chris Evans was the perfect pick to don the Lightyear suit – the first act of Lightyear is, in a way, Captain America in Space. Credit to Evans, he can portray Buzz in a laudably similar sense to Allen’s own Lightyear, whilst also finding a unique edge. Due to the film’s metatextual inspiration for the toy line, there’s a tricky entanglement between copying and creating anew with Lightyear. This layered meta-ness does serve a slight removal as Buzz fires off his best-known quips from the Toy Story franchise – but given that this film is the inspiration for the toy line, who do the lines really belong to: Evans or Allen?
Thankfully, Lightyear avoids the pitfalls of many a spin-off – this is no Solo; there’s no over-explanation of every single thing we’ve come to understand Buzz to have. There are intriguing retellings of certain characters’ backstories and relationships with the space ranger, alongside the beautifully bleak bond between Lightyear and Uzo Aduba’s Hawthorne, a standout connection in the entire film.
Like many Pixar films, the rocket fuel of emotion is crucial to Lightyear’s journey, but its surprising, melancholic touches give it greater maturity than one might expect. Buzz’s self-imposed time-travelling imprisonment, forced to witness everyone he knows and loves age and gradually disappear into the ether, is an unexpectedly heavy weight carried throughout. While it doesn’t delve deeper into the natural psychological distress and the mental burden this endeavour would take on someone, it’s nonetheless something that took me quite by surprise.
While there’s not much to say about Pixar’s animation efforts that hasn’t already been said – it looks spectacularly cinematic, as it always does – this foray into the cosmic is undoubtedly something I’d love to see more of from the studio. The barren wastelands of the planets, the inky nothingness of space, and the crystallised magnificence of hyper-space (no doubt a 2001 reference is in there) are divine to watch animated upon the screen. Surprisingly, this is only Pixar’s second venture into space after WALL-E, when it’s clear they have a strong vision for the creative visualisation of what space could be like out there, amongst the stars. Hopefully, Angus MacLane can push them further. What could a Pixar film set around the Space Race be like? Now that I’d love to see.
Lightyear is surprisingly one of Pixar’s best modern stories. Its unexpectedly mature emotionality, unafraid to let the melancholic in, significantly strengthens its ability to tell the ‘true’ story of Buzz Lightyear. It’s a throwback to classic science fiction that breathes new life into the genre, and its temporal fish-out-of-water twist, alongside perfect Chris Evans casting, gives Lightyear a real cosmic buzz.
Follow Us