Review: Lightyear is Fun Despite Its Problems

Pixar’s Lightyear has finally come to Disney+. It’s a film that’s been on my radar for some time. I’m a fan of the Toy Story franchise and I thought the trailers looked great. But I started hearing mixed reactions. Friends of mine really like the film while animation critics I follow and usually agree with their opinions didn’t think too highly of the movie. The general consensus was the movie was fine. Not bad. Not great. The only “bad” take I heard were from pearl-clutchers who were angry because there was some queer content in the movie (it’s not even that much). Now that the film is out on streaming, I decided to see what I thought of it.

And I thought Lightyear was pretty good!

Lightyear is very much a sci-fi adventure for the family. It makes callbacks to the original Toy Story franchise, showing where all of Buzz’s catchphrases came from. I was expecting the movie to play with more comedy like the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command television series. What I found was a slower drama that really focuses on Buzz as a character.

Buzz is someone plagued by a mistake he made and his drive is to finish his original mission. After ignoring help from his fellow space rangers, one being a rookie who Buzz has a dislike for working with, Buzz crash lands an exploration shuttle full of people and strands them there. Their hyperspace crystal is damaged. Buzz sets out to right his mistake by testing new hyperspace crystals. The issue is every time he tests it, only four minutes pass for him while everyone else experiences four years of time. During his last mission, his best friend Alisha, who has been aging, passes away without him there. Buzz takes matters into his own hands and achieves hyperspace, but jumps ahead 22 years. When he returns, the planet is invaded by a robot leader named Zurg. Buzz is forced to team up with Alisha’s granddaughter, Izzy, and her team who are all rookies.

I really enjoyed Buzz’s story in the movie. He’s so focused on fixing his mistake that it has devastating consequences. He completely misses the life of his best friend because of his drive for atonement. The tragedy of it all is the atonement is something that he puts on himself. No one else really pushes him for it. It’s Buzz holding himself accountable. Finishing the mission is important to Alisha, but her time on the planet teaches her there is more than just missions, a lesson that Buzz must learn for himself.

The only big disconnect I felt between Lightyear and the Toy Story franchise is the Buzz in Lightyear does feel like a very different character from Toy Story. In the original movies, Buzz can be boastful and full of pride. He’s a bit of a dork, especially as he develops feelings for Jesse. Buzz is also corny and hams up a lot of his larger-than-life dialogue. Buzz in Lightyear only really felt like that in the opening minutes when it’s clear he’s very proud to be a space ranger. His relationship with Alisha is great and one of the best parts of Act I. But after Alisha passes away, there is a major change in Buzz’s character. It’s understandable that he’s mourning his friend which pushes his drive to finish their mission even more. But in Acts II and III, he’s nothing like his Toy Story counterpart. I find it hard to believe that this is the movie that inspired Andy to get a Buzz Lightyear toy. While I’ve seen very little of the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command series, what I have seen is far more believable as inspiration for the toy than the Lightyear film.

One of the biggest gripes I heard from critics was the side characters. But honestly, I had no problem with them. I found Mo and Darby charming and endearing. They were effective for the time they were given. Each had a pivotal role to play at vital moments in the movie. There’s a scene surrounding sandwiches that focuses on how much Buzz missed out on the planet while he was away. The simplicity of Izzy, Mo, and Darby bonding with Buzz and helping him cope was simple but effective for his character arc.

The only thing is I wish they used Mo and Darby a bit more to showcase life in the colony. All the work with Izzy is fantastic with wanting to be like her grandmother being a driving force for her arc. She’s the one who really convinces Buzz there is more to save on the planet than just completing his mission. I would have liked to know more about Mo and Darby’s lives on the colony though to help sell the world to both Buzz and the viewer. If there are sequels, I hope we get more focus on them.

Sox was the surprise of the movie. I thought for sure he would be the annoying mascot character only made to sell toys. I mean, let’s be real here. There are already a ton of Sox toys and shirts on the market. But when it comes to Sox’s character, he’s truly the MVP of Lightyear. Also, I’m always a sucker for cats. Give me all of the robot cats!

Sox has the best one-liners of the film and got the biggest laughs out of me. You never knew what he would do next making him quite the surprise factor of the film. I also liked how Sox functions. As a robot, they really pushed the limits of what he could do. He would go from purring at belly rubs to hacking up a flame torch to cut open a door. I loved the little details like when he was charging, his ears would glow like a phone. He was the needed levity in the more serious tone of the film.

To get into my biggest criticism of the movie, visually it’s very boring. This is supposed to be a movie about space rangers! When I think of that term, I think of battles, planet-hopping adventures, and the animators really showcasing interesting alien designs and planets! Lightyear really doesn’t have much of that. While I don’t think being stuck on one planet is necessarily a bad choice, I think they could use it much more effectively.

The biggest “alien” threats are bugs and vine monsters, which are fine but they don’t really do anything. If Izzy and her team had learned to co-exist with the vines to help fight the robots, that would have been a much stronger choice. Also, it’s an alien planet! Instead of making it look like Earth, the setting could have been visually stunning. Trees don’t have to be brown and green in space! They could have made the forest any other color! Let the trees be purple with big orange leaves! Even the bugs are dark red and brown. They could have had cool patterns and designs on their shells to make them really stand out, but the animators chose a very muted palette for the entire film.

And the Zurg robots have no point other than being there to do Zurg’s dirty work. There is no explanation of where they came from, why they’re there, or what they were doing when they were discovered. They’re pretty standard robots. There’s this running gag of one robot in particular that’s following our heroes and trying to find them that leads to nothing. It feels like something was cut out of the script with that character. Maybe I was expecting it to be more like Frobo in Amphibia. Frobo is a character that followed the heroes and was made by the bad guys. But his programming is simple so the heroes adopt Frobo and he becomes part of the team. I was expecting something more with the robots to happen.

The surprise twist villain is going to be divisive, to say the least. I’m mixed about what I feel about him. On one hand, it does fit into Buzz’s character arc. But on the other, it goes directly against the already established Toy Story canon which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t get why Pixar has a need to have a twist villain in its movies. What made Encanto and Turning Red so good is there really wasn’t a villain. They were family dramas that drove the story. Who Zurg really is felt like a huge backslide for the company and left the third act very underwhelming. Heck, I would take Alisha from a different timeline as the surprise villain over what we got. That would at least have huge emotional implications not only for Buzz but Izzy as well.

If I could change anything, I would have liked to see the robots incorporated better into the story. Maybe if they were the original settlers on the planet, then the conflict could be rising tensions as humans are colonizing this place. It would fit Buzz’s drive to find a way to get back into space to avoid conflict. By the time he gets into Izzy’s timeline, the humans and robots are on the brink of war. Zurg could have been the leader ruling the planet at the time. That’s just one of the many possible ways Lightyear could have handled the villains. What we got was very lackluster.

Overall though, I did enjoy Lightyear. It’s nowhere near a perfect movie. It sure does have a lot of problems with the story. Still, it’s a fun sci-fi flick that I think kids and adults alike will get something out of. I’d be interested to see where a sequel would go.

Lightyear is now available on Disney+