Reviews

There were three things that drove me to distraction during the first thirty minutes of the movie, all of them about the utterly baffling decisions Pixar made: (1) Why on Earth did they make Buzz so unlikable? (2) Why wouldn't Tim Allen be the voice of Buzz? And (3) How is it possible that Pixar didn't apply the lessons they learned from films like Finding Nemo (which, in my opinion, is their single greatest storytelling triumph?) More on 3 is below.

That the second question was rattling around in my head really took me by surprise. I thought, and hoped, the lack of Tim Allen wouldn't be distracting, but it really bothered me. Even in a world where Buzz Lightyear is played by an action movie star, you'd still get Buzz's voice in any officially licensed merch, which the toy Buzz Lightyear certainly is. Toy Story Buzz is sold in a version of Toys R Us in Andy's world (R. I. P. Toys R Us), there are advertisements for him on TV in Andy's world, and there are even official video games. You don't get a random voice for Darth Vader in Star Wars toys, advertisements, and games. You get James Earl Jones, unless it's a knock off or it's a really far flung spin-off. The decision not to cast Tim Allen as the voice is really confounding, bizarre, and just utterly wrong.

But that's relatively minor. The biggest problem is that Buzz Lightyear the action hero and "star" of this movie, is *highly* unlikable. I can't imagine any child in any multiverse watching this and coming away wanting to be Buzz Lightyear, or even wanting to own a Buzz Lightyear toy. He's not a lovable rogue, he's not charismatic, he's not super smart, not super funny, not witty, etc. He's not really good at anything other than flying experimental spacecraft. Shockingly, you could make a persuasive argument that he's not even good at that, based on him stranding a generational colony on a hostile planet because he made a series of mistakes and refuses help at every turn.

That's the real problem with his personality: Buzz is selfish to a fault, and for almost no reason. He's the only one who cares about the mission after the first try, which takes roughly 4 years off of everyone else's life. An entire society of people revolve around this attempt and eagerly await his return. When he fails he's totally game to try again because he's not the one waiting around 4 years for him.

The worst, most baffling thing, though-The most baffling thing in Pixar's entire history as a movie studio-is that when you get to the twist, you learn, astonishingly, that Pixar also sees just how deeply unlikable Buzz Lightyear is because-and I cannot believe I'm typing this-Buzz Lightyear is also the villain of the movie! That's who Zurg is. The sworn enemy of the Galactic Alliance and the archenemy of Buzz Lightyear is Buzz Lightyear.

Through some deeply disappointing and convoluted time travel explanation that, again, I cannot believe, is dismissed away by Zurg/Evil Buzz as something he, Evil Buzz, doesn't fully understand. Even though, according to the story, Zurg/Evil Buzz has spent literal decades attempting to reach this moment. It was such nonsense that the film doesn't even bother to address the why question even superficially. It just presents Zurg is Buzz as a fact and then moves on to how our film's hero, 'Not yet evil, but definitely showing enough unlikable characteristics that it makes sense-Buzz' will defeat the Zurg/Evil Buzz.

Which brings me to my third point about Pixar in general. There is a phenomenal feature I remember in the Finding Nemo extras that describes a significant and frankly ingenious change they made to Nemo. The scene at the beginning (when all of Marlin's eggs are killed except for Nemo), that scene was originally a late third act reveal in the first cuts of the film. The problem was that test audiences who saw that version reported overwhelmingly how much they hated Marlin. They found him overbearing, overprotective, weird, and not relatable, even after learning his motivations in the latter part of the movie.

Pixar's simple, and brilliant solution was to move that devastating part of the story from the final thirty minutes to the first five. Perception of Marlin completely changed. By moving that section to the beginning, audiences go from seeing Marlin as deeply unlikable, emotional mess, to a single dad doing whatever he can to keep his last remaining child alive at whatever the cost. Nothing about the story changed other than when the audience learns about his past.

In Finding Nemo, Pixar had an unlikable character and they made a simple adjustment that changed the movie and made it into one of Pixar's very best films. In Lightyear, Pixar had an unlikable character and they decided to lean into it hard, making him the villain of the story as he saves himself from himself (It's not nearly as deep as it might sound-Buzz is unlikable well before we learn he is also Zurg).

By the end of the movie, I was honestly happy that they didn't use Tim Allen. We can all just move on and pretend that Lightyear is an inexplicably terrible movie in Andy's universe. Or maybe in Andy's universe all movies are terrible? In any event, Andy's mom thought Andy enjoyed it enough to buy him a toy and then the real quality story-telling begins.

Despite everything I said, I would actually recommend this movie for people curious about what Pixar's worst film is like. If a non-Pixar studio made this, I'd probably have watched it once and never thought about it again. I probably wouldn't have walked out, I probably wouldn't hate it. I'd probably feel like it was extremely, extremely mediocre and I *definitely* wouldn't have tapped this review out after I got home.

Odds and Ends: I give the animation 10 stars, but no one would expect anything else. I am also a cat guy, so I appreciate the fact that a cat gets a friendly/lovable sidekick arch in a Pixar movie. If this movie does one thing right (aside from the animation), hopefully it helps people love cats a little bit more.

Wanted to end on a pawsitive note (har har)

I want to like this show so, so, so badly. Everyone has a problem with the way a piece of space trash rocks a space hotel, and yet no one has a problem with the fact that Ed Baldwin would be roughly 66 years old when the mission to Mars begins and would take at least 3 years to get there and back, meaning Ed Baldwin returns in his 70s. Neither NASA nor the viewer seems to care about this, for some reason.

Let's talk about Ed, actually. This is the same Ed Baldwin that has had numerous, numerous failings. Like how after he learned his son died in an accident, went completely offline for several days in Jamestown while an emergency situation unfolded, and Mission Control had to cook up a solution to flash lights in Morse code just to get his attention so he responds to them. Great leadership!! All while this was happening, Ed Baldwin had taken a Russian cosmonaut hostage, risking nuclear war between USA and Russia for a personal vendetta, and intended to torture information out of the cosmonaut. It is by complete dumb luck that he gets out of this situation.

Nothing happened to him though, of course, and not only that, he is rewarded somehow in Season 2 with a prestigious position where he alone has authority over the program to find people suitable to be future astronauts (lol) That is until he gave himself the opportunity to fly the first Pathfinder mission. Must be nice. So, what happened then? Oh ya, he escalated tensions with the USSR blockade of the moon and fired nuclear warheads at his own ship. He detonated nuclear bombs in space on the dark side of the moon, as Russia was getting ready to do the same. What if Russia, seeing warheads coming their way fires back? "Who cares!" says Ed Baldwin to his crew while one of them holds a literal gun to his head because she thinks he is unhinged. We actually know he's unhinged because his feelings are hurt about his wife cheating on him. And we also know, like everyone else in NASA, that in season 1, Ed's feelings were hurt by the death of his son, so he took a cosmonaut hostage and cut communication off with the Earth for multiple days.

That's the 70 year old Ed Baldwin that Molly, another individual that has demonstrated a series of catastrophically terrible judgement, wants to lead a mission to Mars, and all anyone here wants to talk about is the way theoretical space trash might damage a theoretical space hotel.

I had hoped so, so, so badly that this season Ed Baldwin, Molly, and all the others with catastrophically terrible judgement would finally at least enjoy background story arcs, while we get some new blood and better characters that you can actually root for. I cannot believe we're in for another season of watching Ed Baldwin make the same childish, reckless decisions that he's only ever been rewarded for.