Lightyear: Toy Story Spinoff Further Proof of the Genius of Pixar, and Delightful to Boot

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B+

Spinoffs of beloved franchises are always risky, even for the storytelling masters at Pixar. Lightyear is a spinoff of the hugely popular Toy Story series of films which, in the risk-benefit scenario, is no small thing.

Released in 1995, Toy Story launched the Pixar feature film studio, and created a new standard for animated movies in Hollywood: movies that were simultaneously grounded and whimsical, that had intelligence, charm and wit with rock-solid storytelling.

These were movies that were cleverly constructed so that they were appealing for kids but had another level that made them work for adults, too. Pixar’s stories had an almost magical ability to rekindle the joys of childhood innocence, but also the grief of recognizing the point where childhood ends. All of this delivered with much goodhearted sweetness.

I know more than one stoic who emerged from Toy Story having shed a few tears, and with a softer heart. Which brings us back to just how risky it is to reopen the toy box.

The good news is that both my inner eight-year-old and my adult self loved both Lightyear and its clever premise.

Lightyear is, in movie franchise speak, the origin story for the character Buzz Lightyear. In the Toy Story series, he’s an action figure, one of the favourite toys of little Andy, who fell in love with the character when he saw him in a space movie. And the conceit is that Lightyear is that very movie.

Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, is one of more than a thousand crew members, scientists, and technicians in hypersleep on a ship on its way back to Earth after a mission.

The ship’s autopilot wakes Lightyear up when it encounters a planet that might be of interest. He decides to set the ship down and take a quick look. Along with him are the Commander Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) and a hapless intern Featheringhamstan (Bill Hader).

The planet doesn’t seem hospitable, so it’s back to the ship for a fast getaway. But they never get off the planet. Lightyear, who takes his space ranger job seriously and has best intentions, is also impulsive and driven by ego. He makes a big mistake and ends up damaging the hypercrystal, the ship’s power source, beyond repair, stranding them on the planet.

He is crushed at his mistake and swears he will not give up until the crystal — or whatever replacement they can come up with using the resources of the planet — until he can get everyone back to Earth, and finish the mission. This becomes his mantra.

The scientists and technicians get to work and in about a year, they have the prototype to be tested. They load it into a test rocket ship, and Lightyear takes it for a nail-biting, four-minute test ride into space and back. When he lands, he’s shocked to find that what was four minutes for him (and us) on the planet has been four years.

It’s a lot to process, but Lightyear won’t be soothed or deterred from solving the problem. And so, as each newer prototype is ready, he takes it into space, losing four years each time, while the people around him age, and get on with their lives. Commander Hawthorne, for instance, gets engaged, married, then has a child and grandchild.

Things move fast with new characters, and new problems. After setting up the premise, the movie never settles down. Just when it seems that Lightyear has made a breakthrough, the film throws up another twist and more characters to challenge him in new ways.

Quite wonderfully, the characters are not only diverse in terms of representation and background but they’re all also developed beautifully. These include Alisha’s teen granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer), the clumsy under-confident Maurice “Mo” Morrision (Take Waititi), Darby Steele (Dale Soules), an ex-con with a variety of hidden skills, a robot/therapy cat named Sox (Peter Sohn), and the robot army and their leader Zurg (James Brolin).

Director Angus MacLane and his story team Matthew Aldrich and Jason Hadley pack a lot into the film’s one hour and forty-minute running time. That includes the themes that work on several levels at the same time. Lightyear is fun and comedic for kids, and the theme of what does it mean to make a big mistake is handled well.

True to Pixar’s magic storytelling, Lightyear offers a much deeper and more complex set of ideas for adult viewers on that very theme, without being heavy or depressing. There is much sweetness here. Circling back to Toy Story after seeing Lightyear, it’s easy to see why Andy would fall in love with Buzz.

Lightyear. Directed by Angus MacLane. Starring Chris Evans, Uzo Aduba, Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, Dale Souls, Peter Sohn, and James Brolin. In theatres, June 17.