Random Movie Review - Lightyear

Pixar did it again. Gave us a film that no one wanted (as far as I know), but we get it anyway. I say this in the nicest way because we have already had a cartoon series about everyone's favourite Space Ranger, so a film just kinda doesn't make sense. Especially with some continuity issues surrounding the toy counterparts of a couple of these characters and that we are trying to envision this as a film that Andy saw in 1995 that made him want the action figure of the main character. I'm struggling more with the envisioning part because of the film's inclusion of an LGBTQ+ character, which in 1995 would be a very rare occurrence in films. But kudos to Disney and Pixar for not having a care in the world for what certain organizations and governments would say about that because we all need to accept the world we live in now because being different is not as scary as it's often made out to be. What is scary is people thinking it's OK to declare war over petty things, think terrorism is fine and not take vaccines for very serious illnesses and diseases. Covid is real, and I should know because I isolated recently. Anyway, enough ranting, let's see if this film takes us to infinity and beyond (as cheesy as that line is these days):

The film begins by telling us that this is the film Andy saw in 1995 whether we want to believe that or not. Buzz Lightyear (voiced this time by Chris Evans), travels to and explores the habitable planet, T'Kani Prime. But he and his team are forced to retreat back to the ship when hostile lifeforms reveal themselves. The vessel gets damaged, which forces the crew to evacuate and make repairs to continue their journey. One year goes by, and the repair site has become a colony for humans. Buzz volunteers to test hyperspace fuel, a key component of the repairs, which leads to a series of events that have him travel quite a few years into the future as he tests it. Buzz eventually gets introduced to a cat robot companion called Sox (voiced by Peter Sohn) who calculates how to properly travel to light speed, which leads to Buzz wanting to do it one last time despite the colony no longer interested in returning home. Leading to events in the future where either the colony will continue to thrive or die at the hands of a familiar nemesis.

Without giving too much away, there is, as I said, some continuity errors with Buzz and the main villain in terms of how they know each other when compared to their toy counterparts. Plus also the LGBTQ+ thing which, while very welcome in this film (and as I said, should not be feared by anyone), is hard to imagine seeing if this was a film released in 1995 when it wasn't as accepted as it is now in many countries and cultures. Despite this, this film is pretty good and reminds me a lot of video game cutscenes and a few sci-fi films that I love dearly. Plus, I really like the callbacks to the many famous lines, such as Buzz's mission logs and just generally what his toy counterpart says in the Toy Story films. You get what you are expecting to see in this film, but it probably won't take you to infinity and beyond I'm afraid. 7/10