Beyond Infinity

I haven't had a chance yet to make it to the movie theater for Pixar's newest film, Inside Out 2. But I'm actually one or two Pixar movies behind anyway... which I worked on recently when I caught up with Lightyear. This spin-off from Toy Story purports to be the movie that, in 1995, made a young Andy obsessed with the character of Buzz Lightyear. It's a science fiction action adventure featuring the title character, Star Command, Zurg, "to infinity... and beyond," and other elements we've heard snippets of in Toy Story films over the years.

It's also, I'm sorry to say, clearly "lesser" Pixar. There are worse movie out there, for sure -- especially animated films aimed mainly at a younger audience. But Pixar has famously set a high-enough bar that even "really good" can seem like a disappointment... and "kinda ok," like this, can seem almost disastrous.

I think the core issue here is that the movie makers didn't fully embrace their premise. As I said, this is a fiction within a fiction, as explained by the first words you see on screen: "In 1995, a boy named Andy got a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday. It was from his favorite movie. This is that movie." That's a conceit that could allow for a number of different ideas that the movie doesn't engage with.

They could have leaned into this being a retro movie, pretending it was actually more than 25 years old. I don't mean in terms of animation quality, but rather in applying all of Pixar's modern technological innovations to make a movie that looks like it was made on a 1990s budget, with 1990s dialogue, characters, and plot. This would have been a bit of a departure for Pixar, which generally makes "timeless" movies -- the quality of Pixar animation will key you into roughly when a given was made, but the story content usually tries to be as universal as possible. (There are a few exceptions like The Incredibles, which really reads as "1960s," but those movies seem rare for the studio.)

They could have leaned into this movie really being something a 10-year-old kid would love. I'm not saying that Pixar should have "sold out" and made something utterly commercial, nor that they should have abandoned their model of making movies both adults and kids can enjoy. But the premise here is really that this is young Andy's "Star Wars," a movie he watched over and over and had to have the toy for. Yet Lightyear is full of weird concepts that don't feel to me like they would capture a child's imagination like that -- time dilation, work-life imbalance, and more. And Buzz Lightyear himself is one of the least cool things about it; he should be something like a Han Solo in terms of cool, but I can't help but feel like the toy that child-me would have wanted from this movie is Sox the robot cat.

But if you accept that the movie isn't quite what it "says on the tin," it's alright. Pixar movies always feature a protagonist on a journey of self-discovery and improvement, and Buzz Lightyear fits that mold here. This is the story of him learning to trust in and care for others, and it's a nice character arc. There are some fun side characters too, particularly that robot cat I just mentioned. And the cast is pretty good, including Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, James Brolin, Uzo Aduba, and more.

I'd say Lightyear rates about a B-. Perhaps, if it were just "Pixar's space movie" and not actually saddled with its connection to Toy Story, I might have thought it a B? It's in a weird space where it's both "a good enough watch to be worth your time" and "probably shouldn't be on your list unless it helps you complete your Pixar collection."