I Have Unresolved Feelings about Lightyear…

I would call myself a casual Toy Story fan. Those movies weren’t my childhood. Little baby me was far too into animals for sentient toys to interest me much. In fact, I didn’t remember much about them at all until a few years ago when I rewatched them as an adult.

However, the original trilogy is undoubtedly a creative masterpiece about growing up, letting go of childhood things, love and family and change. We won’t mention what the fourth one does to the original message, because the point is I can certainly see the appeal of Toy Story, even as someone who preferred movies like Balto, The Land Before Time, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Brother Bear, and Ice Age.

But Lightyear is another breed altogether. When I say this movie broke me, I mean that I watched it almost a year ago and it still haunts me to this day.

At a glance, the moral seems clear, but it’s buried under layers and layers of trash, and by the time you reach it, there are so many contradicting points and plotlines that fall short that you’re left wondering what the hell you just watched.

I’ve watched this film twice and I still can’t tell you exactly what happened, what I’m meant to get from this, and why this of all movies was supposed to make a young boy purchase an action figure of this dude. I spend this entire film nearly reaching enlightenment and understanding of it, just to have it leave me with blue balls over and over again. And I left the movie feeling… Empty. Depressed. Lost.

And so we’re going to dissect this particular beast, and try to figure out what exactly is going on here, why this movie exists, and what we’re meant to glean from it as a standalone film.

SPOILER WARNING

We are going all in on this film. If you don’t want spoilers, you’ll want to skip this post for now. Go watch the movie and come back. I’ll be here for you! If you don’t care, then please continue!

Let’s open with a little disclaimer, shall we?

A lot of the general criticism for this movie has been drowned out by the collective screeching of both sides of a social and political war over a scene SO BRIEF it is quite literally a “blink and you miss it” moment within a minutes long montage of an almost 2 hour movie.

The discourse over this particular scene is ridiculous in my mind, as you’re likely to see a more inappropriate same sex (or any sex for that matter) interaction at your local superstore than you are in this movie.

What I find more interesting is the continued pattern Disney has shown for introducing diverse characters only to kill those characters off in the first 15 minutes of their films.

However, that moment meant a lot for some people, and I refuse to invalidate those feelings and opinions. So we won’t be lingering on those patterns for too long.

Just know that my general disgust for this movie has nothing to do with a same sex kiss, and everything to do with the poor writing, failure to make me connect with the characters, ridiculous contrived plot points, laughable character motivations, insertion of terrible jokes at the most inappropriate moments, and the use of an adorable fuzzy little plot device that manipulates the audience into not exposing him for what he really is.

The movie opens on a black screen with text that reads

“In 1995, a boy named Andy got a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday. It was from his favorite movie. This is that movie.”

Does anyone else feel like this would have been the perfect opportunity for Disney and Pixar to team up and make a campy, fun, 90s 2d movie in the same vein as Luca? Instead we got a film that shows the true graphical capabilities of the studios, and while impressive, one of two things is happening.

Either we’re meant to suspend our disbelief and accept that this genuinely graphically stunning animated movie took place in the 90s (x to doubt) or, as I’ve seen floating around the Internet, this was meant to be live action in the 90s (lol).

If the latter were true, you would think that, you know, Disney would have just… made it live action. You know, kinda like what they have been doing with any animated classic that smells even vaguely of money? A simple fix for this would be for them to just say this is a reboot of that classic film. But I digress.

In my opinion, after the opening text, the movie has a strong start.

It’s kind of funny, but in that campy way you’d expect for a movie that’s meant to take place in the 90s, so outside of the animation it works. We get a short scene as Buzz and his friend Alisha explore a strange planet. They are attacked by a weird combination of huge carnivorous bugs and plant life, and Buzz fails to get them off the planet by wrecking their spaceship.

I love media where the hero fails to achieve their goal. Making a character fail makes them more relatable and makes us sympathize with them right off the bat. I genuinely expected a good movie at this point. Maybe not the sort of thematic masterpiece Toy Story was, but I at least expected a fun story about a beloved character.

Oh how I was wrong.

Buzz becomes one of those annoying ass characters that blames themselves for everything. Was it technically his fault that they didn’t escape the planet? I suppose, considering he was the one driving. But the giant carnivorous plants and bugs certainly didn’t help, and I’m of the mind that his guilty conscience becomes moot because I feel like whoever was driving would have crashed the spaceship. It’s not as if they disobeyed orders, ran off onto the planet and caused this catastrophe through their irresponsibility. This would have happened regardless. But I digress.

Alisha tells Buzz to “finish the mission” to make him feel better about himself because he tries to turn himself in and be stripped of his status as a space ranger.

What she didn’t know is that she set him on a path of failure, self loathing, self destruction, and a ridiculous fixation on that singular thing that would nearly lead to everyone’s demise, and DID lead to everyone Buzz knows dying.

Yay.

So it has been a year, and the people trapped on this strange planet have set up a relatively stable home there. Fences are enough to keep plants that travel underground at bay, and apparently the bugs can’t fly over said fences. Sometimes people are picked off but it is played off for laughs and depending on who it is, the inhabitants may or may not save them.

Buzz engages in his first hyperspeed test flight, which he needs to reach in order to get everyone back home (remember this for later).

Meant to be gone 4 minutes, he returns in 4 YEARS. Buzz ages minutes, while the other people age those 4 years. Alisha welcomes him back and recommends he stop the test flights, but of course he doesn’t listen. He’s much more sad about failing on his arbitrary mission than he is that four years passed in mere moments.

This is where this movie becomes a horror to me. 4 YEARS gone in moments. And Buzz doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t care. He must complete the mission.

He returns to his room to find a robo therapy cat named Sox, which was given to him to “ease his emotional transition.”

This is hilarious because Buzz spends this ENTIRE movie not giving a shit about anything emotionally.

If I had more faith in Disney as a whole I would think this movie is some deep existential exploration on the masculinity of men and the unfair expectations placed on them from boyhood by society. But since we do absolutely nothing to explore that particular theme apart from Buzz being an emotionally stunted manchild and realizing it was okay for his FRIENDS to have feelings almost 2 hours later and in a single one sentence line, I’m pressing x to doubt on that one as well.

And here we get the infamous montage.

We see Buzz continuing to fail on his missions, his friend Alisha falling in love, getting married, having kids, and those kids going to college.

Buzz finally comes back to find Alisha dead. This makes Buzz surprised for… reasons? I really feel like this particular scene would have worked so much better if the full 60 something years had passed during the first test. Because then you could feel the full impact of it, rather than it feeling like something Buzz intentionally chose to continue doing over and over again while seeing his friend aging at an accelerated rate every time he came back.

But then we wouldn’t have gotten a montage that a lot of people have compared to Up.

I am open to everyone having opinions, but I consider it open treason to compare this manchild choosing to board a spaceship 15 different times and knowing his friend is literally living her life and aging exponentially before him to the beloved scenes of Ellie and Carl’s bittersweet, beautiful life together.

Call me a cynical bitch but I just couldn’t bring myself to feel bad for Buzz here. We get a heartfelt last message to him from Alisha that amounts to just about nothing, she talks about their friendship and it comes across that she’s proud of him? Which makes no sense because at this point they would have grown apart, barely knowing each other. Buzz would, at best, be her estranged friend who spends his time roaming space and can’t be assed to come share his life with her or start his own.

Surely Buzz saw this coming? But it comes across that he didn’t. It’s like he didn’t realize that coming back and seeing Alisha covered in wrinkles when mere hours ago she was a fresh faced young woman would result in her dying someday.

This entire thing is stupid.

And then, to top off the stupid, we need a joke, because God forbid things get too heavy or emotional. A man comes into the room and jokes about how his dead friend’s office belongs to him now and he was just moving his stuff in.

He breaks it to Buzz that they’ve decided to stay on the planet. Considering they have the technology to make it where two women can become pregnant and have children, and everyone can live freely and happily there, that doesn’t surprise me.

Over 60 years have passed. It is highly unlikely anybody these people know is left on earth, or wherever these people were meant to live before. At best they could return and meet their great great great grandchildren after making the return trip to their home planet.

This “mission” is entirely useless now. What reasoning would these people have to return “home”?

But this revelation causes Buzz to do another shocked face at the fact that all of these people have families and love and happiness on this planet, and there are adults who were born here who don’t even remember earth/the home planet. Buzz has nothing but his mission.

This doesn’t make Buzz sad, if anything he feels like even more of a failure. These people are happy and fulfilled. How could he allow this to happen?

Do you see a problem yet?

Buzz is absolutely infuriating and we aren’t even halfway through this movie yet.

Buzz returns to his room, and discovers that Sox has figured out the highly scientific formula for the specialized fuel he needs to get to hyperspeed. He gave this task to Sox back before the montage and forgot, but Buzz doesn’t realize that Sox is a highly scientific super plot device capable of anything.

A couple of people show up to take Sox away from Buzz for absolutely no reason aside from furthering the plot. I literally can’t think of a single reason why they would want to take him away. Buzz hasn’t been home for longer than overnight for 60+ years and everybody he knows is dead. He should be more emotionally traumatized than ever before and should need Sox. But this is only the second instance of Sox being openly and unabashedly used as a plot device, so let me just shut up.

Sox literally shoots a blow dart at the guard and Buzz escapes with him in a stolen ship. They have the correct fuel mixture but the formula is destroyed, and they blast off to finish the mission. Buzz no longer has permission to finish said mission, and none of the people on the planet want him to finish the mission or will come with him, and Buzz has no reason to want to return to his home planet alone aside from an arbitrary fixation on said mission, but WHO CARES, WE’RE FINISHING THE MISSION.

Sox is truly adorable and he provides all of the non-cringeworthy jokes in this movie. However, he is 100% a plot device. He has, in no less than 6 or 7 situations, whatever the plot needs to move forward. Screwdriver, override system, blow dart, Chapstick, gasoline, a scientific formula for fuel, a lozenge… Whatever you need, Sox has it covered. It becomes increasingly frustrating the more you see of the movie, and it’s like nails on a chalkboard the second time around.

It also makes no sense that toys of Sox would be seemingly lost to time and space, and that Andy wouldn’t want a toy of Sox specifically because of his cuteness. But I digress.

Buzz manages to reach hyperspeed and I can’t imagine a scenario where anyone would give a shit. I watched this film at home in the comfort of my pajamas where I could look gobsmacked in peace, but I really don’t see anyone at the theater applauding when this happened, considering we’ve just been blindsided with the knowledge that everyone this guy knows is dead because of choices he actively made.

They crash, and Buzz attempts to call command, and is shocked that they don’t answer, which is funny considering he is now an outlaw and if anyone cared to reply, it would probably just be to track him down and arrest him for stealing a space ship and assaulting multiple guards.

He finds that evil robots have invaded the planet. Why? Who knows.

He happens to run into the granddaughter of his old friend Alisha, who mere moments ago was little more than a toddler in the video she recorded to be her parting message to him. What a coincidence!

I cannot stress enough how distressing this enormous passage of time should be to Buzz. It would be jarring at best, and invoke an emotional breakdown at worst.

The alien robots are attacking the main base the people have built. Buzz blames himself of course, which at this point is just annoying. To me, there comes a point where blaming yourself for things completely unrelated to you in any way comes across as rather selfish. How up your own ass do you have to be to assume evil alien robots invading a planet is your fault?

This is doubly hilarious in hindsight because the invading robots do turn out to be a separate timeline version of Buzz’ fault. Rewatching this movie it seems incredibly on the nose and absolutely ridiculous for him to feel guilty for this. Whether they meant to do this as some bizarre cross-timeline unconscious realization that it was secretly his fault, or just because Buzz’ only real character trait is to assume everything is his fault, I hate it.

Alisha’s granddaughter Izzy tells Buzz she has a plan to take on the robots and a team to do it with, so Buzz goes with her. This team consists of a random guy from New Zealand named Mo (I literally had to look up his name) and an old lady felon named Darby (again, I had to look up her name).

Buzz and the team are out to “finish the mission.”

What. Bloody. Mission?!

The mission to get 4 random people back to a home planet that is devoid of anyone or anything they know? Darby MIGHT remember the home planet. Mo was definitely born on this current planet, and so was Izzy. Buzz is the only one who definitely remembers it but the same problem arises as last time he blathered on about the mission. Everybody they know on earth and likely everything they know about earth would be dead.

I know almost nothing about space and time, and I hate this movie for having me do research on it, but this is what I found on time dilation on planetary-science.org. And the quote…

“For example, one year of interstellar travel might correspond to ten years back on Earth. Therefore, constant acceleration at one G would theoretically allow a human crew to travel through the entire known universe in one lifetime. Unfortunately, the crew could return to Earth billions of years in the future. Interstellar travel at high speeds thus would have huge implications from both an anthropological and sociological perspective. The crew volunteering for a mission of this magnitude and speed would have to accept the fact that their loved ones, and perhaps even their home planet or star system, would have died long ago.^[iii] Because of this effect, humans might wish to travel to nearby stars without spending their entire lives aboard an interstellar spacecraft.”

So I ask again.

WHAT MISSION?!

Even if you tell me Buzz was trained to accept the fact that his friends and family would be dead and his home planet would be gone, he would have to also accept that there is absolutely no reason to “complete this mission” outside of furthering the plot of this movie. Let us continue.

Buzz learns that this motley crew of randos Izzy brought him back to aren’t even rookies.

Buzz decides to leave the randos, and go blow up the alien ship, but not before they all get famous Buzz Lightyear suits. Buzz tells them to engage “stealth mode” to sneak past bug monsters, which was never a thing on the Buzz Lightyear toy and also stinks of plot contrivance.

The non-rookies don’t know it has a timer, however, and they awaken the bug monsters and end up boarding a ship with Buzz.

We find out that Izzy is terrified of space, which could be compelling and make her character rather interesting as she grapples with that. The problem is she wants to be a space ranger. As someone who is afraid of space. Which is the equivalent of someone who is terrified of heights wanting to work as a repairman on the SkyBridge.

They crash land, and Buzz feels sad. Not because all of his friends are dead, but just because he keeps screwing up.

The group decides to go to a mining facility to get something they need to fix their crashed ship.

They get the coil they need and eat sandwiches, which have become a piece of bread between two slimy, slidey, wet pieces of meat. Buzz is treated like a dumbass for thinking this is silly, which he is, but not for thinking that sandwiches are backwards to how they should be in this bizarre world.

Mo accidentally knocks Sox off of a table and assumes he’s dead, and in this random contrived moment, Buzz tells Mo about his own failures to comfort him.

Buzz tells the non-rookies,

“She [Alisha] believed in me and it cost her everything.”

Izzy tells him it didn’t cost her everything, and Buzz seriously implies that Alisha wasn’t shit and didn’t matter because she wasn’t a space ranger anymore.

Izzy responds with

“Believe me, she mattered.”

And at this point, I want the space robots to win.

Buzz literally doesn’t ponder this, or consider it, or take a moment to realize that he’s being a piece of crap here.

The team attempts to get back to the ship, and are attacked, and while they attempt to escape and Sox prepares the ship for hyperspeed, Izzy launches too early and stops them from getting away. Their fuel is stolen, and we’re at our low point.

Everyone in this movie is allowed to make mistakes except for Buzz. And while that’s a real trait that can absolutely manifest in people, Buzz doesn’t learn from that outside of a random epiphany he pulls out of his ass at the last minute. The first Toy Story depicted a slow, methodical character exploration and Buzz coming to realize who and what he is and what that means for him. He has high and low moments. He ponders what has happened to him and links things together slowly. How does a toy have more emotional depth than the real guy?!

Buzz is captured by Zurg, and the big reveal happens… who is Zurg you ask?

Zurg is Buzz.

I’m not a sci-fi nerd. I don’t understand time travel, or space, or timelines, or anything to do with any of that. But something tells me a timeline split like this where Buzz captures Buzz and Buzz fights Buzz isn’t a thing.

Villain Buzz brushes all of this off by saying none of the details matter.

Quite.

We find out villain Buzz returned to command and wasn’t hailed a hero, which is a huge surprise because why wouldn’t stealing a ship and assaulting guards and disobeying your command result in praise?

So he escaped and traveled many centuries into the future, found a way to get a time machine, traveled back in time, and found a way to make it where they never crash landed onto the planet.

In this moment, Buzz finally realizes that if he helped villain Buzz do this, Izzy wouldn’t exist because Alisha never would have lived her happy life. It is a split second epiphany decision that has no emotional weight and the audience is given no real clue that Buzz is starting to realize Alisha was actually happy and fulfilled.

Buzz admits he needs help, his friends board the ship to do so, Izzy walks across space to reach Buzz, and Sox literally throws up a torch to burn open a doorway to get to him.

Buzz fights Buzz, programs the ship to self destruct, and the friends all escape.

They get rescued, Buzz decides suddenly that he’s fine with not finishing the mission and just living on the crash landed planet, and command decides to let slide everything Buzz did because he didn’t get anyone else killed. They make him a space ranger and task him with defending space. And the movie ends…

This movie exhausts me. The endless plot contrivance, stupidity of Buzz, themes that faceplant, it’s all too much to handle. This movie is visually stunning, and could have been something great. But the side characters are ignored or killed off, the main character is insufferable, the furry friend is a literal plot device and an excuse to sell plushies, and the great visuals are little consolation for the lists of issues. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of these characters. They weren’t given enough time, or care, or personality outside of bland tropes to become something beloved. This was just another example of an old and dear IP being strung up and paraded through town to make a few bucks.

And ironically, toy Buzz was more human than human Buzz could ever hope to be…