Movie Thoughts: Lightyear (2022)

• Released: June 17th, 2022
  
• Directed by: Angus MacLane
  
• Running time: 1 h 40 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

After making a horrible mistake that affects many, Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear tries for many, many years to fix it. But eventually he must face a major choice: is it really worth to undo a mistake that also led to good things? And should he even still blame himself after all these years?

My Thoughts

 Per usual, this Movie Thoughts contains spoilers

Alright is how I'd describe this movie. It's pretty straightforward. Just a movie in the Toy Story universe surrounding the character and lore of Buzz Lightyear. It somehow also glosses over the fact that an entire other movie (albeit 2D animated) and TV-series have been made about the exact same character using the exact same concept (an origin story for Buzz). Ah well. It completely ignores those, so let's see it as a separate thing.

The movie is pretty solid. It looks fantastic, as is to be expected with Pixar. I also like the futuristic technology having a slightly dated feel to them, like this was a movie that was made in the 90s. The movie uses this and just runs with it. I also like how Sox the robot cat for the most part really moves like an actual robot and doesn't do very un-robot-y things like overly emote or move smoothly.

But other than it looking good there's not too much credit I can give the film. It's fine, don't get me wrong, but it's also pretty forgettable. The characters are kind of basic and outside of Buzz, Alisha and Izzy none of them really feel all that important. There is some neat interactions between these three, and I like their relationships, but they were also really predictable. I knew from the moment Izzy was introduced as a minor kid character that showed up in one scene at the beginning that she was gonna be a major player in the story. I knew exactly how her arc was going to go and how her bond with Buzz was going to evolve. Honestly, I felt much more emotional at the bond between Buzz and Alisha than Buzz and Izzy. And Alisha dies in the first fifteen or so minutes, and most things after that just feel predictable.

Regarding the twist with Zurg being an alternate future version of Buzz: neat twist, I guess? But he's so boring as a villain. Yet another unneeded twist villain, he only really becomes a major threat during a small part of the movie and he's just pretty underwhelming. Honestly I think I'd have preferred it if they had played it straight and Zurg was actually just a Darth Vader ripoff, maybe even including the whole "he is Buzz's father" bit. Or they invented something new that actually worked in the context of the movie and was engaging. Future Buzz didn't work for me personally.

Another thing with this movie is that I think it takes itself a bit too seriously. Especially if you consider what Buzz was in the original Toy Story franchise: pretty much a parody of certain archetypes in science fiction movies that were popular at the time. A lot of jokes in those Pixar films revolved around Buzz taking himself too seriously as a Space Ranger while he was (obviously) a toy. 

Here, the movie does play it straight. And I don't really vibe with it. There's some jokes and moments of levity, but unlike other Pixar movies I really didn't find many in this movie funny. There's one or two funny moments regarding the cat, but not much more. I'd have preferred it if this movie had a neat balance between being serious and having some actually funny moments. They do make certain jokes from time to time, but they're not very funny overall. It needed more of a balance, because it was clearly taking itself too seriously.

Overall this is a decent movie and I'm happy I saw it, but I don't think I'll see it again anytime soon. It's okay, but just too average in quality (aside from the visuals) to really stand out.