“We’re being pursued by a… just a massive robot!”

The concept of Lightyear is one that is very interesting: the movie that Andy watched as a kid, which made him want a Buzz Lightyear toy. It’s actually quite surprising how long it took Pixar to capitalize on that idea, because it should have been both an easy home run story-wise and at the box office. There’s even a good bit of lore hinted at and presented in the Toy Story movies, particularly Toy Story 2, with the opening scene of that movie, as well as the villain, Zurg. For some reason, however, Pixar decided to make this movie not after Toy Story 3, but after Toy Story 4, and tell a story that has almost nothing to do with what people would have actually wanted to see.

The first mistake this movie makes is not having Tim Allen reprise his role as Buzz, which is weird because he is playing Buzz again in Toy Story 5, so clearly it wasn’t for political reasons (at least I’m assuming it wasn’t). To be honest, though, that actually doesn’t end up being a negative on the movie itself, because Chris Evans does an almost immaculate job at capturing Tim Allen’s voice. He also inherently sounds a lot like Allen anyway in real life, so that was a good casting choice.

And while Lightyear doesn’t do much to make itself stand out, it actually does do one thing, at least when you look at the rest of Pixar’s filmography. This is very much going for more of a visual and cinematic experience, which is pretty cool, honestly. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only Pixar movie that has heavily marketed itself as an IMAX experience, and it actually does execute being that type of experience quite well. Animation is always stellar from this studio, so there isn’t really anything to note about that, but the size and scale of the movie, along with the different space scenes, really do lend themselves to a bigger screen and superb audio.

Lightyear also wears its influences heavily on its sleeve, which is actually quite a good thing and not something that drags it down. The story’s premise very much borrows from Interstellar, and there are plenty of visual elements that clearly reference Star Wars, which Toy Story 2 in and of itself also references. While some might see them as cheap easter eggs, they actually fit really well into the science fiction type of movie that it should be.

But is Lightyear actually the science fiction movie that it should be? Not in the least bit. Instead of being the easy home run that it should have been, this movie decides to tell a story that both feels and has almost nothing to do with any of the even tiny bits of lore that we already knew. I sincerely ask what made Pixar look at the script for this and go, “Yep, that’s definitely a movie that a young boy would gravitate towards”? Seriously, this film is so bland and lifeless, lacking any excitement to the point where not only would it bore adults, but it would bore kids even more. It’s not even that it does anything remarkably bad; it’s just that it’s so generic that it actually does end up being bad. It’s just so disappointing because when you look at even just the opening scene of Toy Story 2, there is so much potential for an absolute blast of a movie, and Pixar decided, for whatever reason, to do something entirely different.

The first negative starts with Buzz himself. Despite how good a voice performance Chris Evans brings to the character, nothing can save him from being this emotionally drained and lifeless version of himself. I know the Buzz we all know and love is a toy and obviously not the actual character, but they could have at least given him some effort to make him a fun and enjoyable character. He’s simply just a sad man who is grieving to the point where he is no fun to be around as a main lead. There is definitely some depth attempted, but it comes off as a failure on that part, as the setup for him being the way he is is far too rushed.

He’s also surrounded by a bunch of uninteresting and uninspired characters. The main one is Izzy Hawthorne, the granddaughter of Buzz’s friend, Alisha Hawthorne, and her one identifiable trait is that she is trying to live up to her grandmother, but is scared of space. If you are scared of space, then why would you want to be a space ranger? Make that make sense, please. There is even a scene where Buzz Lightyear comes to the same conclusion, but instead of it being clever, it comes off as, well, lazy writing.

There are also three other characters, that being Buzz’s robotic cat companion named SOX, and the two other humans that are trying to become official space rangers, Mo (voiced by Taika Waititi, by the way) and Darby. SOX is the comedic relief character, and also very clearly the character marketed to be the potential selling point for kids, not only for the movie, but also for toys. He’s fun enough, but his purpose as a comedic relief doesn’t really deliver, as his funny bits only make the movie feel tonally inconsistent with itself. The other two characters are just plain annoying and quite simply just caricatures (again - lazy writing). Mo only serves to be the guy that always messes everything up by accident, and Darby is just an edgy old lady that screams, “Look at me, aren’t I crazy?”.

Zurg also had so much potential, but yet again, that potential was completely wasted. There isn’t really anything that stands out about him at first, but once we get to a certain revelation about him, not only does it not mesh up at all with what we knew about him before this movie, but it also completely derails any intrigue that was there about him beforehand. He’s very much a filler villain and doesn’t even feel like he belongs in the story, but instead was added after the main ideas of the story were completed.

So while I wouldn’t consider Lightyear to be Pixar’s worst movie, it pretty easily takes the cake for most boring, bland, generic, and creatively uninspired movie that the studio has ever made up to this point.