Darius Martin ’24
Website Editor
The new Disney Pixar Movie Lightyear is a story within the Toy Story franchise, viewed by a young Andy. The movie is about the events that influence him into buying a Buzz Lightyear figurine. This background information is more or less useless, and with the Toy Story franchise having a fifth installment in 2023, the movie feels unnecessary and it would have been better to slowly layout the backstory for Buzz within Toy Story 5.
The movie starts off introducing us to our main character Buzz and the organization he is with, the Space Rangers, building up to the main story. Buzz and the Space Rangers are marooned on a planet and are trying to return home. This build-up was done well, giving us an in-depth view of Buzz and his personality, as well as setting up two potential endings for the movie: Buzz needing to fight against either aliens or his past comrades to escape.
The main plot of the movie revolves around Buzz trying to rescue the colony. The principal cast consists of a rag-tag group of criminals, commanders, cats, and klutzes from the colony who work together to save their home. In many movies, groups are formed by seemingly random people, all with specific and useful skills, to accomplish an important task while adding comic relief through differing personalities. In Lightyear, we definitely have this. The skills and personalities provided by each member of the group are simple: a rough independent woman who knows about technology and weapons; an excited and confident young woman who is training to be a space ranger; a well-trained soldier who prefers to work alone or with experienced people; a robotic cat that can analyze people’s emotions and provides necessary help; a man who is clumsy and easily distracted; and the commander who does nothing but obstruct everybody and brag about his favourite writing utensil. This pen wielding man was obviously included to add comic relief, but the cat already fulfills that task.
The movie could have had a more satisfactory ending. Lightyear is imperfect and awfully simple in plot. The movie’s plot direction was predictable, and the ending could be figured out before the main plot began, leaving me disappointed and bored. There were far better ways to end this movie.
This movie had almost no character development. Buzz agrees to work with rookies, the commander agrees to leave the planet, and that is it. No bad guy becoming good, no major lesson, no overwhelming change of heart, and, although acceptable for a children’s film, it lacks originality and theme.
Lightyear is a movie that has useless characters, a replaceable plot, and no purpose for being created; a “meh” addition to the Pixar roster. 6/10
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