Lightyear Review: A fun scifi romp from Pixar

The first 20-30 minutes of Lightyear are fantastic and full of emotional touchstones as well as gorgeous animation. Unfortunately, Lightyear loses steam as it goes along with a lesson that basically devolves into simply trusting others and in yourself type of story.

Lightyear‘s animation is top-notch Pixar and probably the most consistently gratifying aspect of the film. Full of gorgeous color, creative planets and a purrfect robot cat.

Chris Evans is the perfect casting choice for Buzz. Similar to Steve Rogers, Buzz is a character from a different time. He’s determined to fix his mistake which marooned his crew to a planet. The only person Buzz trusts is Alisha Hawthorne. She agrees to let Buzz continue pushing to infinity and beyond. With each lightspeed jump, the people around Buzz age, he doesn’t. The relationship between Alisha and Buzz is the heart of the film. Unfortunately, the story takes a major shift and can’t match the emotions of that story.

The best character is Sox. A robot with feline features. The robot serves as Buzz’s companion and the film would have been better served to focus on their dynamic rather than placing a crew around Buzz. Izzy Hawthorne is Alisha’s granddaughter and fares the best out of the crew. She’s determined to live up to her grandmother’s legacy but lacks the skills. Mo Morrison played by Taika Waititi is the team clown, think Korg from Thor: Ragnarok, but dumber and Darby Steel as an explosive expert. Morrison and Steel are unnecessary characters.

Lightyear is occasionally great, but simply can’t maintain the momentum from an excellent beginning. As a Pixar film, Lightyear simply falls short of Turning Red, which brought creativity, emotion and humor that Lightyear simply doesn’t have enough of.

With the overview out of the way, let’s dive deeper into the elements that stood out in Lightyear. There may be some minor spoilers.

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Fighting Time and Space in Lightyear

Buzz spends the bulk of his life trying to atone for a mistake. When Buzz, Alisha and a rookie land on a planet, disaster strikes. Buzz tries to leave the planet in the hurry, but can’t clear a cliff. He crashes into it and destroys the hyperdrive. Leaving the planet is impossible without a hyperdrive crystal. The stranded crew is forced to build a community.

Buzz and Alisha work together to try to solve the fuel problem. Feeling guilty for his mistake, Buzz is determined to make the mission a success. Unfortunately, every time he attempts to jump people around him age, while only a small amount of time, minutes at most, has passed for Buzz He does this over and over.

The relationship between Buzz and Alisha is full of Pixar-quality depth you’d expect. She doesn’t blame Buzz for his mistake and does caution him to stop at one point. Alisha also does everything she can to help Buzz succeed. While she gets to live a full life, Buzz spends his life constantly taking off missing the most important aspects of life.

A Legacy

Buzz and Alisha’s granddaughter, Izzy both try to live up to Alisha’s legacy. Izzy is terrified of space and lacks any relative experience. Yet she’s determined to work with Buzz to much of his chagrin.

After some time, Alisha is no longer in charge. Commander Burnside is now in charge. He grounds Buzz. Determined to succeed, Buzz decides to steal the ship. When he returns, the base is under siege by robot aliens.

He’s forced to work with Izzy, Mo, Darby and Sox to defeat Zorg. Izzy, Mo and Darby are incompetent for this mission.

Once Zorg shows up, Lightyear loses a lot of its heart. The dynamic between Izzy and Buzz is pretty strong but gets drowned out by the background noise from Mo and Darby.

The Fantastic Mr. Sox

Sox is one of the most endearing characters created by Pixar in ages. The cat-like robot is designed to support Buzz at every turn. Buzz, at first, isn’t interested in the robot’s help. His first command is for the robot to project white noise to help him sleep.

Buzz begins to trust Sox more throughout the film. Once Sox figures out the formula, Sox becomes Buzz’s trusted companion. After Buzz is ground, an order is given to have Sox decommissioned. Buzz disobeys that order and takes off with Sox to help save everyone.

Sox has the best comedic one-liners, he serves as Buzz’s conscience and is easily the best aspect of the film. If this film had just been a trio of Buzz, Izzy and Sox, then Lightyear could of stuck the landing. The only point of Mo and Darby is to show incompetence. Izzy already fulfills that role, but she has the motivation to improve. Lightyear never really develops Mo and Darby’s interest in being cadets. They’re on Izzy’s team, because she convinced them to be, not of their own initiative.

Lightyear Final Thoughts

For a spinoff Toy Story film, Lightyear is a relatively fun sci-fi romp for Pixar. The film is a great way to introduce science fiction stories to kids. From that standpoint, Lightyear is a success.

Unfortunately, like a Pixar film, Lightyear starts strong but falters in the 2nd and 3rd acts. The animation is fantastic as is Michael Giacchino‘s score. Outside of Sox, Lightyear simply doesn’t pack enough heart or humor to make it stand out in Pixar’s catalog.