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This cracking origin story for Toy Story’s spaceman hero is fun and clever and reminds us why we loved Pixar in the first place
To infinity – and even further back! Lightyear is a treat: a time-travelling, space-ranging, animated adventure in the spirit of classic sci-fi. It is a prequel origin-myth for the Buzz Lightyear spaceman figure from the Toy Story movies, that lantern-jawed and gung-ho astronaut sonorously voiced in the original by Tim Allen and now by Chris Evans. Lightyear might not precisely be up there with the very creamiest of the Pixar crop but it reminds you why we loved Pixar in the first place: wit, fun, storytelling and heart. It does, however, leave untouched the crucial question of whether “Buzz” is his given name or his nickname. I naturally spent this film waiting for someone to call him Edwin Eugene Lightyear Jr. But no.
In the original films, Sheriff Woody was the cowboy toy taken from a hokey TV show called Woody’s Roundup. Now it transpires that Buzz Lightyear – who once threatened Woody for dominance in the toy collection of a kid called Andy, just as sci-fi superseded the western in Hollywood myth-making – was taken from a sleek and exciting movie called Lightyear. And the opening titles explain that this is that very movie, the film that generated the merch of which Buzz was a part. It was therefore supposedly made in the early 90s, the era of the first Toy Story set in 1995. Young Andy must have had his mind blown at this film’s digital effects and perhaps also by its admirably forward-thinking attitudes on LGBTQ+ representation. It also has a very startling twist. What a strain it must have been for Buzz, Woody and everyone else never to have mentioned that.
