On the surface, the idea behind this particular Pixar film makes a lot of sense. It’s an origin story for Buzz Lightyear, not the toy, but the film and TV character that the toy was based on in-universe. Toy Story 2 did the same thing with Woody and the Woody’s Roundup show, and Disney at large has been doing a lot of postmodern media exercises over the last several years; if nothing else, this should be more interesting than just the standard live-action remake. And yeah, it is interesting… but not in the way they intended.
The film opens with text on a black screen stating that, in 1995, this was Andy’s favourite movie. I’m a firm believer in the notion that, if something is brought up in a movie, something should be done with it. So hey, maybe they’ll take it in a quasi-period film direction, where it has the look and feel of a mid-90s sci-fi movie. Okay, maybe not the look, since I don’t exactly want this to feature the plastic-looking humans from the first Toy Story, but there’s plenty of details that could be added in.
Well, not really. This is extremely modern in terms of story and character development, with a space opera construction that is quite indicative of the post-Interstellar psychological take on the genre, and a character arc that is basically built on Buzz (Chris Evans) going through the feature-length equivalent of an AITA Reddit thread. The only real showings of period detail are all in the technology, and even then, it’s surprisingly superficial. Like how the IVAN AI modules for the spaceships look and operate like Nintendo cartridges, or using start-up sound effects from dial-up modems and Macintosh computers; stuff like that. It’s an odd amount of polish when the bulk of the film doesn’t really make the attempt, and Pixar totally could have made that attempt.
But okay, it’s a modern film with modern sensibilities that’s given a weirdly dodgy lead-up; not ideal but I can still work with it. So how is it as its own product? Well, honestly, it’s pretty mid throughout. The pacing of the story feels incidental in places, as if parts are being picked up and dropped whenever the filmmakers are done playing with them like Andy in TS2. The first act involves a lot of time dilation messing-around to do with hyperspace travel (again, a very trendy inclusion for a space opera in the wake of Interstellar), where Buzz ends up stranding his team on a deserted planet and continues to try (and fail) to find a way home for them. Then it gets into him being part of this rag-tag team of space cadets (both literal and figurative in some cases), discovering Zurg and his army of robots, and… yeah, it all feels like it’s meant to string together set pieces rather than tell a single coherent story.
The only thing really tying it all together is the character arc of Buzz himself, which is mainly about him accepting the mistakes he’s made in the past and learning to live in the now, with the people around him, rather than keep looking backwards and trying to rewrite those mistakes. Now, on its own, this is a perfectly fine message and I could even see myself getting into it as a kid, knowing my own habit of brooding over past mistakes.
But there’s still two major problems with how it’s handled, one in the film’s own universe and one outside of it. On the former point, it’s not delivered in the most sophisticated of ways, continually pounding that message into Buzz’s head over and over in the dialogue, which he only ends up getting when he reaches the finale which… okay, without spoiling it, I’ll just say that this takes the Star Wars “I am your father” spoofing between Buzz and Zurg from TS2, takes it even further, and then tries to play it seriously. It’s a weird fit.
Then there’s the bigger context for this kind of message, about accepting that your history isn’t full of perfect decisions, making peace with it, and striving forward to see what comes next. I find it particularly difficult to take this idea seriously coming from Disney/Pixar, considering Disney has been spending the last several years doing the exact opposite of this: Going back to their past productions, and trying to fix some central aspect of them (characters, framing, visual effects, music, etc.). It’s the same mentality that led to this film even existing at all, since it would’ve been more than fine for the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command animated series to serve as the in-universe source material for Buzz Lightyear the toy, as it has up to this point.
Even Pixar specifically have engaged in this practice, from Finding Dory suddenly growing a sensitivity about making jokes about mental disorders, to Cars 3 basically being a belated apology for how needless the other two films are. And just to be clear, I don’t inherently have an issue with any of this as part of those other films: I’ve said before that I like films that redeem bad aspects of other films or just bad films in generals, and some of the decisions made by Pixar and even a few from Disney proper have resulted in worthwhile material.
But then in comes this film, which already feels lacklustre because of the stakes it sets up for itself as explicitly being a film circa 1995 (I’m just saying, a sliding time scale like most animated franchises use would’ve made that much less of a distraction), and then compounds it with an unexpectedly bitter ‘do as I say, not as I do’ mentality. It takes what is a pretty solid message for kids, and even adults, and sours it by admitting that, if it actually followed through on that message, this film wouldn’t exist. The Toy Story franchise is built out of bizarre implications as it is, involving a lot of family-friendly body horror and existentialism, but this might be the strangest of the whole bunch by sheer accident.
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