I wasn’t dying to see a Buzz Lightyear spin-off movie even though I do love the actual Buzz Lightyear character himself from the Toy Story franchise. From the moment this spin-off movie was announced, there was nothing but concerns about how I thought this movie would turn out. It felt more like a way to cash in on a popular Pixar character rather than telling a unique story with charming characters and inventive animation. On the other hand movies like Finding Dory and Toy Story 4 were Pixar movies I never would have thought to work but they turned out in my opinion to be solid follow-ups to their respective previous film’s. Thankfully this movie didn’t turn out as underwhelming as the trailers made it look, but what we are left with is a movie trying to be rellevent and interesting but instead feels hollow and somewhat soulless.
Taking place as a movie that Andy saw as a kid, Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) and his crew crash land on a strange planet that they can’t escape from as their spaceship is damaged and out of fuel. In order to get fuel, Buzz will need to travel in a small rocket to gather energy from space using portals in the sky. However, every time he does that he jumps forward four years in time and as he tries over and over again he loses the lives of some of his most trusted cadets to old age. Buzz then discovers a huge spaceship hovering over the planet and the robots that emerge from the ship are led by the evil emperor Zurg who orders his minions to attack the innocent bystanders. Buzz will need the help of some discovered inexperienced space rangers and his robot cat sidekick Sox (Peter Shon) to get onto Zurg's ship and find out what his evil plans are to end the rein of Buzz and his friends..
The story is not as creatively interesting as it honestly should be but it’s not in any way badly executed or relentlessly shameless. It’s just sort of a typical sci-fi adventure that you’d see in any other live-action film which is fine as is, but when thinking about Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story movies, I would expect to see interesting creatures colorful planets, and even cartoony silliness. I was thinking that a Buzz Lightyear spin off movie would be somewhat like a Star Wars meets Galaxy Quest in its tone and style. This movie for the most part tries to feel serious and sometimes gritty, but the charm of Pixar is that while they do take their movies seriously, there is also a level of funny humor and charming relatability from characters that are simple but dynamic at the same time. In fact, this movie feels less like a movie that could have been made in the 90s when Andy was still a kid and more like a boring remake movie that would be made now these days. Don’t get me wrong Pixar’s signature charm and humor is present during this movie, but because the movie is restricted into feeling “realistic”, it sort of restrains this movie from going all the way with its concept of making an interesting Buzz Lightyear movie that is unique from other Sci-Fi adventures.
The characters are a mixed bag but none of them were awful. Buzz himself is this time voiced by Chris Evans of MCU fame instead of Tim Allen from the original Toy Story films. I don’t mind the change in voice actors seeing as this is a different version of the beloved space ranger and Chris Evans is a talented actor, but admittedly even though he’s doing and saying the things Buzz Lightyear would normally do, the writing for his character feels a little underdeveloped and lacks the spunky charm that made the toy story character as memorable as he was in the toy story saga. The rest of the human characters can range from being okay to forgettable. Even now I can’t remember a single thing about any of the side characters that accompany Buzz on his mission. However one character seemed to shed some light and managed to make the adventure much more fun to partake in and that character would be Sox the robotic cat. Sox is voiced by Peter Sohn who voiced Emeil in Ratatouille and he is the only one that has a funny personality and actual interesting character traits compared to how the rest of the characters are drained of having anything unique to make them standouts.
The animation is always something to look forward to in every single Pixar Production and in this case the animation goes as far as it can to deliver a stunning piece of work even if there is more in the presentation that is to be desired. The human character designs while not bad do feel rather typical for Pixar-styled characters. They are pretty standard-looking Pixar humans and they lack that extra personal touch to make them instantly recognizable and relatable. The exception to this rule is sox the mechanical cat robot who is well designed and has a lot of personality just by looks alone. Even with taking the character designs out of the picture, the backgrounds while beautiful in some cases feel like something you’d see in any other Sci-fi movie whether it is live-action or not. This feels disappointing seeing that Pixar 14 years ago released Wall. E which while inspired by other Sci-Fi classics still felt like its own unique sci-fi experience thanks to its interesting locations and wonderful color palettes. In this movie, the color palettes do start to blend in after a while and the film only takes place in a few locations would be okay if they were designed to look unique and they really aren’t. This is not bad animation, but knowing this is coming from an animation studio that for the most part has visuals that inspire and reinvent the way computer animation can look, I would have thought that maybe the visuals could have been made way more interesting than this movie is giving itself credit for.
The music is scored by Michael Giacchino which should have resulted in a match made in heaven seeing as Giacchino is responsible for scoring the soundtracks for some of Pixar’s greatest movies. So it may come as saddening to say that this score for this movie while not bad is rather standard sci-fi movie scoring which comes at a shock seeing as his music scores are usually unique and memorable. I don’t blame Giacchino As he is doing his best, but I know that this composer can do better.
If this is the movie that encouraged Andy to buy the Buzz Lightyear action figure, I’d say that he must of had not that much of an interesting childhood. This is far from a bad movie and there were some good moments here and there, but Lightyear overall is a passable movie that sadly can’t be beside some of Pixar’s most impressive animated movies ever made. I mostly feel bad for director Angus Lee because he has directed good movies before but this is just a case where not even the creators at Pixar truly understand why Buzz lightyear was so beloved in the first place. I’m usually not this harsh on Pixar because I know that even when they are not at their best, there is still a feeling that you know they are trying to make a genuinely good movie that is better than most other CGI animation studios’ offerings. In this case, I’m glad I saw this movie, but this is sadly a movie I would put at the lower end of the Pixar movie spectrum.
(Final Grade: C+)