Disney & Pixar present- "LIGHTYEAR!"

Exatron

Kaiser Dragon
Citizen
Show? This is a theatrical feature film.
"Show" doesn't refer exclusively to TV shows. Personally, I use show all the time for pretty much anything on the TV screen, other than video games. Actually, even then in the context of a group watching someone playing a game.

6a: a theatrical presentation
b: a regularly distributed program (as on radio, television, or the Internet)
 

The Predaking

Administrator
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
"Show" doesn't refer exclusively to TV shows. Personally, I use show all the time for pretty much anything on the TV screen, other than video games. Actually, even then in the context of a group watching someone playing a game.

In all honesty, I thought that this was a Disney+ series until I saw the latest trailer. I am sure that I will enjoy watching this when it hits Disney+ but nothing I plan on running out to see in theaters.
 

ZakuConvoy

Well-known member
Citizen
I can't help but notice in that trailer not a single shot of the 00's cartoon. I assume they at least allow a shot of it in a montage in the full documentary, unless they really hate that show that much. I know people have said before that the original Toy Story creators didn't really like the cartoon, but to not even mention it in a documentary about the history of Buzz is going a little far, right?

Mind, I don't know how much of this is a "history of Buzz" and how much is a "making of the new movie". 50/50? 70/30?
 

Axaday

Well-known member
Citizen
I had detected that the trailer had some scenes clipped out of context, but not the extent of it. There is some light misdirection in the trailer to no discernible purpose.

I'll stay away from spoilers, I promise, but the first moment of the movie explains what it is how the marketing things should have from the start. So if you have been as confused as me, it is pretty simple. This is not the story of the real man that inspired the toy. This is the movie that Andy saw a little before Toy Story. Andy's Buzz is from the toyline for this movie.

Edit - canonically, Lightyear is now the first Pixar movie!
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Watched it.

What the hex was that?!

Also, three bonus scenes at the end?!

I didn't see the trailer but I know there's a cat and there's a time skip involved and Zurg. But I don't know about the crew and the plot.

It started hard sci-fi, which I liked. Then turned into a typical goofball ensemble (I seriously wanted to throttle Mo for being a bonehead).

Some things don't pan out for me. The moral quandary... bothers me.

I want to talk to someone about it. Cuz I would probably lean towards the other way. Maybe?

Also, dumb generic ending scene.

Oh, I know Sox is made to be adored so I was steeling myself against his charms. But he got me anyway. He second deserved a chance.

Good Dinosaur is still the worst Pixar film for me. Lightyear was just waaaay out there.
 

Axaday

Well-known member
Citizen
The Good Dinosaur is really good!!!

If Zurg had caught Buzz earlier, Buzz would've done what you think you might have done. But he had a breakaway where he learned an important lesson that kept him from making that choice.

The end scene was pretty dumb generic though.
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Good Dinosaur looked amazing but the story was weak compared to other Pixar.

Good point. But, hmm, he already knew how it was to have a friend (since he was best friends with the aging lady) so what he was suppose to learn was how to accept rookies or how to forgive and accept that people make mistakes (like the granddaughter, that bonehead Mo and, most importantly, himself).

Does that connect with the switch he had to make? It would be kind of wild if the granddaughter was considered a mistake, like an accidental birth, and he had a choice to 'correct' that mistake.
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
So, I missed out on getting to see this in theaters and simply decided to wait for its Disney+ release. Then life and other priorities got in the way.

As of now, I finally got the time to sit down and watch this movie on Disney+ and, I gotta admit... I did not like this one.

Like, not at all.

I laughed at a few parts, but only a few.

Sox was the only character I cared for. The rest, not so much.

This is honestly the first Pixar movie I've ever seen that actually made me angry. I got the polar opposite of the kinds of emotions I usually get from Pixar movies. This movie broke that trend so hard that it actually ticked me off something fierce.

I think the first part of the movie that really irked me was that montage of Buzz going up in his hyperspeed missions again and again only to keep failing each time. What bothered me about it was the presentation. It's shown to us in such a way that makes it look like Buzz just keeps trying the exact same thing over and over again and hoping for different results each time, with no insight to any improvements being made to the Crystallic Fusion formula until after the montage is over. All they had to do was include some scenes of Buzz checking on some formula updates between each flight, so as to make it clear that some actual work on that was being done outside of Sox's 62-year calculations.

And all the while, the whole montage made Buzz look like he didn't care at all about the preciousness of the time he had with his friends. When he gets back after his first flight and first discovers the time dilation, he wants to try again to fix things. That's fine. But after the next failure or two, seeing his friends get some much older, he doesn't even think to slow down and realize that he's missing out on so much of his friends' lives. And yes, I get that that's the whole point of the message. That he's so obsessed with completing the mission that he fails to realize how much he's missed out on. But that makes it look like he's never had any kind of real attachment to those around him, as if he never had a life to live with his friends and colleagues before the events of this movie.

That kind of single-mindedness may work for a toy that's only just come online for the first time upon being released from his packaging, and who doesn't yet realize that he is a toy, but this Buzz is a human who had a life and friends before he and his crewmates were stranded on that planet. Otherwise, why would he be trying so hard to get himself and his crew back home to Earth? So they can get back to the lives they were living there in the first place. He obviously did have connections and other personal ties back on Earth, fueling his zealousness to get back there. But with how personally detached from the lives of the people he is desperately trying to save in this movie, it creates a sense of disjointedness in his depiction. And no one even calls Buzz out on this, not even his supposed best friend. She just keeps letting him do all these test fights that keep sending him farther into the future like it's no big deal that her best friend keeps disappearing for years on end missing out on several important parts of her life.

And the bad ideas, clumsiness, and mistakes just keep piling on and on as the movie goes on. It's like its whole plot is completely dependent on the characters making things worse and worse for themselves, with bad decision after bad decision or foul up after foul up. It's really frustrating when actually rooting for the characters to score a win and wanting to see what might happen if they succeed runs completely counterintuitive to the plot, especially when so many of the screw ups are not played for comedy.

And don't even get me started on what the movie did to "Zurg".

Or all the shameless homages and references to the much better Toy Story movies (e.g. - Buzz quoting MANY of his toy counterpart's lines, certain shots in this movie being shot-for-shot recreations of shots from the Toy Story movies, etc.). Those just felt like the Toy Story equivalent of modern Transformers media overquoting Transformers: The Movie (1986).
 
Last edited:

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Yeah, I was hugely disappointed in it too. More so cuz I watched it in theaters cuz I was very excited for it (only to be let down).

You didn't even get to your thoughts on the new teammates part, hehe.

Btw, what happened with John Ratzenberger and Pixar? He's not in the new Pixar's but he appeared in that Luck movie by John Lassiter. Has there been a falling out? (Also I want to talk about Luck).
 

Dvandom

Well-known member
Citizen
On a more nitpicky level, it bugged me that they tried to use "real" science for the time skips, and got it wrong. They should've just said the time skips were due to the effects of the unstable formulas.

Why? Because even at light speed (which he never reached on the test runs), he'd only have lost a few minutes each time. And since he was shown capping at around 0.8c, his personal clock would only have been about half as fast as the planetary one. So, figure the sun is about 10 light-minutes away from the planet, 20 minute round trip for light itself, he'd fall no more than 20 minutes behind. (Gunbuster did this slightly better, but still exaggerated the effect.)

Aside from that nitpick, it was very very dark. Like, society slid into fascism while Buzz was away...or maybe it had always been that way but we didn't really get to see enough of it until they needed to provide a reason for Buzz to steal the ship. (And if the program had been cancelled, why did they wait until the day Buzz returned to decommission the cat? If they could wait for his return, they could have waited for him to adjust to the changes, instead of being so arbitrarily cruel.)

LOADS of "spirit of the staircase" problems here. It's mostly paced quickly enough to keep the viewer from thinking about it at the time, but after?

(I'm also annoyed that the toyline so thoroughly ignores the supporting cast. All Buzz, a couple of Zurg and bot figures, one Hawthorne as part of a two-pack with Buzz. The only way to get any other protagonists is in Imaginext form.)

---Dave
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
You didn't even get to your thoughts on the new teammates part, hehe.
Like I said before, Sox was the only character I cared about in the whole movie. He was the only one I wanted to see make it out okay in the end.

I didn't feel anything for the rookies, and Buzz choosing them over the ZAP troops at the end was the obvious and predictable decision that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command did way better in its "The Adventure Begins" pilot movie.
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Sox was the best character. I was super annoyed the other version got killed. It would have been awesome to have had a pair of Sox...

(Seriously though, it would have been great if they interacted and future Sox shared info with our Sox. Such a shame.)

(Side thing but "Spirit of the Staircase"!!! Gosh dang, I hadn't read that term in a long time. That was from the first issue of the Death miniseries High Cost of Living. Title of the first issue and what the guy Sexton was explaining as he walked down the stairs, thinking of all the things you could have said but didn't get to or thought too late. Like... 'you, my dear, are a few nuts short of a fruitcake'... I think that's what he thought of Didi. Le Espirit Le escalier or something. So cool to see it used :) )
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
The trailers made the movie look so much more interesting and fun than it actually was. The impression and expectation for the movie that I got from the trailers was that it would play out something like this:

In the future, Star Command is launching a new deep-space program with renowned Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear piloting the new Crystallic Fusion test flight. He takes off and, believing the test fight a success, he returns to find that the place he just launched from a short time ago is drastically different. The environment is wilder, there are ruins everywhere, and dangerous robots patrol around. He tries to contact Star Command and ponders "Why don't they answer?", leading him to believe that he was somehow thrown off course of his flight path and instead landed on a far distant, hostile alien planet.

As he tries to get the lay of the land, he is attacked by some of the robot patrols. He does his best to defend himself until he is helped by a mysterious fighter who fends off the machines and saves his life. Removing their helmet, Buzz initially mistakes his rescuer for one of his friends from Star Command, whom he had just saw right before his test flight. But the rescuer explains that she is actually the granddaughter of Buzz's friend, who wasn't yet born when Buzz last saw her grandmother. Buzz then realizes that he somehow ended up traveling several years (decades, even) into the future.

Realizing that everyone and everything he knew and inadvertently left behind are now gone, he is at a loss for what to do and believes he's failed everyone. But when he learns more about the grave situation the granddaughter and her fellow rebels are in with the invasion of Emperor Zurg, who had attacked Star Command in the years that Buzz was gone, Buzz sees a chance to redeem himself and sets out to help the rebels take down Zurg once and for all. And, along the way, maybe find out what went wrong with the test flight, and either find a new place and purpose for himself in this new time period or even see if there is a chance for him to make it back home to his own time and stop Zurg's invasion in the past.

THAT's the kind of movie I was wanting to see going into this! One test flight, one mistake to fix. That's all that was needed. Not a series of mistakes constantly made over and over again.
 
Last edited:


Top Bottom