Lightyear (Disney/Pixar, PG)
There’s a unique place in the hearts of a lot of people my age for Toy Story and the franchise’s long standing characters. For people around the age of thirty, Andy kind of aged with us. I will always remember going to see Toy Story 3 the summer before I went off to college, my mom an emotional wreck, and watching a movie about Andy going off to college and finding a home for his toys. It was like Pixar had chosen to imitate my life, and here I was in a theater with my mom sucking back snot and tears. It was great. Truly. When Lightyear was announced I distinctly remember thinking it was a bit weird, but in our world of ever expanding franchises, it wasn’t entirely out of pocket. The question remained though: What could Lightyear be about? The initial thought was that it was a movie based in the Toy Story universe. But that doesn’t make a ton of sense. Right? If Andy lived in a world with faster-than-light travel, why in the world hadn’t we seen it? That’s a pretty big omission. Well, the answer to where Lightyear fits is actually a lot more simple than that, and its genuinely cool. The movie opens on a black screen. Text fades in: In 1995 Andy’s mom bought him a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday. The toy was based on his favorite movie. This is that movie. I don’t know about you, but I was instantly locked in.
Lightyear follows the crew of a colony ship as they search for a new planet to call home. In the first moments we see them land on a planet and send out a squad of Rangers to scout the planet’s viability. Quickly things go awry as living vegetation and a population of aggressive bugs make their presence known. In their retreat, Buzz makes a poor judgment call and they end up marooned. When watching the original Toy Story movies there is the suggestion that Buzz is a bit of a try-hard. He’s an overconfident Boy Scout, always assuming he has the best solution for any problem. In Lightyear we see where that comes from, and the remainder of the film is equal parts a movie about Buzz learning to trust those closest to him and Buzz coming to grips with the consequences of his own actions. It’s a bold movie, honestly. Because nothing about a movie focused on Buzz Lightyear gave me the impression that they would have deep and thoughtful questions about sacrifice and duty and family, but here we are.
After the crash of their colony ship permanently damaged their hyper-space drive, Buzz is tasked with testing new formulas for the crystal in successive launches of a sporty ship. The task is simple, launch from the base built around the wreckage of their old ship in the following year, slingshot around the sun, and reach hyper speed. The colony’s ability to find a more hospitable home depends on it. What the scientists, and Buzz, don’t account for is the theory of relativity, specifically the concept of time dilation in Einstein work focused on special relativity. Yes. I said the theory of relativity. See, for those who aren’t familiar, Einstein theorized that objects in motion experience a sort of time dilation. Meaning, in understandable terms, when an object travels at very high speeds, that object will experience time more slowly than when it is at rest. So each time Buzz goes up in his ship to test the newly formulated crystal, what is supposed to take a mere four minutes in fact takes a little more than four years. What is a short trip for Buzz suddenly becomes a very long trip for everyone else planetside.
As a huge sci-fi nerd, I couldn’t have been more happy when the theory of time dilation in regards to faster-than-light travel was presented as a central conflict. It’s just delicious sci-fi problem solving and Lightyear treats us to a little feast of conceptual science. The film that follows this realization is a genuinely touching and complex story about what home is, what it means to live a life, and the importance of family - found or born. Adding to the mental spectacle is the continuation of Pixar’s nearly inhuman ability to render highly convincing and startlingly beautiful environments. Lightyear is downright gorgeous. Many times pausing to capture well composed shots and allowing their prowess at constructing life-like textures and architecture to flourish. They maintain their choice to keep human characters looking cartoony, a choice they say stems from a desire to avoid the uncanny valley, the concept that making digital humans too lifelike can cause an instinctual fight or flight response from viewers. So Buzz has his cartoonishly large jaw, but his suit, the flora and fauna, the space flight, the ship design, all of the rest of this movie is absolute visual candy floss. It positively melts in your mouth.
In terms of the audio landscape, Lightyear also thrives. Though I will say, as a huge “spaceship and the sounds they make” brand of nerd, they spend a little less time focusing on those sounds than I would like. There is a beautiful and sharp whine each time Buzz’s ship’s engines power on (and that phenomenal ringed ion glow of high atmosphere SCRAMjets) but I wanted just ever so slightly more. Having seen Top Gun: Maverick recently, my brain is constantly hungry for good flight sounds. Lightyear could have had more, but the absences of my deeply specific longing doesn’t make this a worse movie. The soundtrack is composed by Michael Giacchino, who might be the most active composer in the business right now. Read this log line real quick and allow your jaw to drop as low as mine did. In the last three years alone he has composed: Spider-Man: Far From Home, Jojo Rabbit, An American Pickle, Let Him Go, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Batman, Jurassic World: Dominion, and Lightyear. Without the ability to speak to him personally I will, instead, in this review plead that he politely, chill the hell out and save some work for the rest of us. Good lord has he been busy. And to add to the “far beyond my actual sphere of influence” insult, his scores are consistently stellar. Lightyear is no exception, with rising queues that instill that heightened fanfare of 70s monoliths like Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and intriguing and rambling lows that feel drafted to the likeness of Vangelis or Hans Zimmer, replete with booming choir accompaniment and sharp staccato strings.
For a movie that ostensibly didn’t need to exist, Lightyear does a tremendous job campaigning for that existence, thrilling viewers with a space spectacle that feels right at home in its universe, and furthermore, lives up brilliantly to its initial pitch. If I had seen this as a five year old, I would have absolutely begged my mom for a Buzz toy. After this movie who wouldn’t? I would absolutely watch a sequel. Stick around after the credits. They certainly make the case for one. Take your kids to this movie, they will love it, and so will you. To infinity…and beyond.
~Caleb