Rent Lightyear on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Angus MacLane & Matthew Aldrich & Jason Headley (story by), Jason Headley & Angus MacLane (screenplay by), Rebecca Banks (story coordiantor), Matthew Aldrich & Andrew Stanton & Lauren Gunderson (additional screenplay material by)
Directed by: Angus MacLane
Starring: Chris Evans (voice), Keke Palmer (voice), Peter Sohn (voice), Taika Waititi (voice), James Brolin (voice), Uzo Aduba (voice), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (voice)
Rated: PG
Watch the trailer
Plot
While spending years attempting to return home, marooned Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear encounters an army of ruthless robots commanded by Zurg who are attempting to steal his fuel source.
Verdict
It doesn't have the heart and emotional impact of most Pixar movies. This is based on the cute and fun Toy Story franchise, creating a world that is more realistic and action based. It feels like a movie that's trying to be Pixar. A big part of their movies is the world building, and this does very little of that. This utilizes all of the typical stranded astronaut tropes, adding very little insight that has become a hallmark of Pixar. The story beats are something I've seen a few times before.
Skip it.
Review
This is the movie that inspired the toy in the original Toy Story movie. That's also the reason producers claim Tim Allen doesn't voice this character. Tim Allen voiced the toy, this movie depicts the movie character.
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| Chris Evans voices Buzz Lightyear |
Buzz Lightyear inadvertently crashes his ship on a planet, stranding his crew. He vows to reinvent light speed travel in order to leave as the rest of the crew create a colony to perform the long term repairs. Due to Buzz's space travel tests, he experiences time dilation where four minutes pass for him but four years pass on the planet. It's a neat concept that could make for a good story. It could have.
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| Darby Steel, Buzz Lightyear, Mo Morrison, Izzy Hawthorne |
Buzz continues to test space flight until decades have passed. This ties Buzz to the colony through one friend, but it could have done more with the entire crew as Buzz would have known all of them. Buzz manages to achieve light speed, but he returns to an unrecognizable planet that's being invaded.
You can see the Pixar formula, the plot hinging on Buzz's shortcomings. part of Pixar's magic is creating these really neat worlds, and that's not developed here. We don't see much of the world, and what we do see isn't that interesting. We get a typical story turn where Buzz works towards this one goal the entire movie, abandoning everything else to do what he thinks is right. In the end he realizes he was wrong and his goals change completely. Buzz embraces the ragtag group of soldiers that helped him and this planet on which he's stranded. He realizes the crew made it home, something he failed to notice.
There's a bit of a twist as far as the invading robots go, but that felt forced. I didn't have high expectations for this movie and it panned out mostly as I expected. It's an unnecessary spin-off to a great series.
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