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“Lightyear” is not the origin story of the Buzz Lightyear toy from Pixar’s “ Toy Story ” series. It’s the origin story of the reason the Buzz Lightyear toy wound up in Andy’s bedroom. You see, Andy’s Mom bought a Buzz Lightyear toy back in 1995 because he was the main character in Andy’s favorite film. “This is that film,” a title card tells us before plunging us into an animated space opera starring Chris Evans as Buzz. Along the way, we’ll meet the Evil Emperor Zurg and learn where all those catchphrases folks have been saying for the past 27 years originated.

I won’t fault suspicious viewers who think this sounds like a bunch of cash-grabbing malarkey, but I should point out that this retrofitting is not without Pixar precedent. If you recall, “ Toy Story 2 ” revealed that the Woody toy was originally a tie-in to a television show from the 1950s. Which begged the question as to why the Hell a millennial like Andy would want him. At least this time, the toy came from a contemporary reference for the kid. After seeing “Lightyear,” I was full of even more questions, such as, “Would Andy’s Mom have allowed a toy version of Buzz’s partner in her house?” And, “Come on, Andy! Why didn’t you ask your Mom for a toy version of Buzz’s cat?!”

More on the kitty cat later. “Lightyear” begins with a special mission for space rangers. Buzz is partnered with Alisha Hawthorne ( Uzo Aduba ), his best friend. They share in-jokes and memories of missions past. Hawthorne is a Black woman, something you don’t often see in space movies despite all that work they did for NASA in “ Hidden Figures .” She constantly mocks Buzz’s penchant for “monologuing,” that is, recording the Shatner-like captain’s log into that device on his arm. Before each adventure, the duo touch fingers and yell “To infinity and beyond!” which I assume would have been the tagline for this film when Andy saw it. By that rationale, the makers of “Lightyear” can sue the makers of “Toy Story” for stealing it.

But I digress. Buzz Lightyear, the movie character, has the same penchant for being stubborn and following his own path that his toy did. This gets him in a heap of trouble when he disregards the advice of both his team and his ship’s autopilot navigator I.V.A.N. ( Mary McDonald-Lewis ). The turnip-shaped ship he’s flying crashes, marooning everyone on a hostile planet filled with killer vines and bugs. Guilt-ridden, Buzz makes it his mission to discover an energy source that will help them achieve hyperspace and get off the planet.

Or something like that. The most important thing to know is that every failed attempt to reach his goal results in Buzz missing four years of life back home. Everyone gets older while he stays the same age. “Lightyear” represents much of this repeated passage of time in a montage scored by Michael Giacchino ; it’s reminiscent of the opening scene in “ Up .” Buzz’s unwillingness to accept failure keeps him from celebrating the marriage of Hawthorne and her girlfriend, the birth of their daughter, and far too many in-jokes and experiences for him to count. When he finally achieves hyperspace, it costs him 22 more years. By this time, Hawthorne has passed on, leaving him a recorded message that Aduba delivers with such bittersweet beauty that there were audible sniffles at my screening. You’ll hear them at yours, too.

Hawthorne’s message is delivered to Buzz by her daughter, Izzy ( Keke Palmer ). She’s inhabiting the latest iteration of their home planet, one that’s full of hostile robots who are under the control of the suspicious “Zurg” space ship. Buzz sees a new shot at getting everyone off the planet. Unfortunately, he’s on the outs with Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) the military man who used to run things, and must retrieve the turnip ship without any skilled help. Izzy offers to assist and volunteers her team of amateurs, ex-con/bomb expert Darby Steel ( Dale Soules ) and Mo Morrison ( Taika Waititi ). Their space ranger abilities are best described by Whitlock’s profane catchphrase on “The Wire.” Morrison is so bad, and causes so much trouble, that he manages to make the pig-headed Buzz look reasonable.

Director Angus MacLane and his co-writer, Jason Headley do a very good job gently mocking the type of space movie that would have existed in the 1990s. They fill “Lightyear” with details that are sure to inspire arguments on Twitter from the “Toy Story” faithful. The film’s visuals gleefully rob from other movies. I saw “ Return of the Jedi ,” “ Avatar ,” “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” and even “ The Last Starfighter ” amongst the inspirations. I.V.A.N. looks like something Nintendo would have created. Each character fits neatly into the familiar roles the genre specifies: Flawed heroes seeking redemption, rookies hoping to prove themselves, villains with secrets, and so on. The score by Michael Giacchino is one of his best, a delectable spoof of bombastic space movie music that elevates every scene it plays under.

Of course, every great hero needs a great sidekick. “Lightyear” gives us Sox ( Peter Sohn ), an adorable cat whose job is to offer emotional support to Buzz. Sox speaks in soothing tones, sort of a cross between “ Big Hero 6 ”’s Baymax and HAL, and will purr if you scratch his stomach. He is exceptionally good at calculations and occasionally makes a noise that sounds like “Be-boop, be-boop, be-boop!” Like any cat, Sox is full of surprises both hilarious and ominous. If Pixar’s plan was to create a character whose toy would fly off the shelves, they were successful. He has one scene in the movie—you’ll know it when you see it—that elicited audible gasps of panic in the theater. I’m not a cat person, but I was stanning so hard for Sox that I wanted to—you’re mocking me, aren’t you?

No matter. As far as spin-offs go, “Lightyear” is a lot of fun. The voice talent is topnotch, especially Palmer and Evans. They have big shoes to fill; Palmer has to build on the emotional bond Aduba created, and Evans has to give us a Buzz Lightyear that’s close enough to Tim Allen ’s characterization to make us believe the film’s toy tie-in. Sohn is perfectly feline and Bill Hader has a good time with his small role as a rookie with a difficult to pronounce last name. When Zurg finally appears, he’s voiced with a deranged glee by Mr. Barbara Streisand himself, James Brolin . Hell, if his kid can play Thanos, I guess he can play Zurg.

After the lackluster “ Toy Story 4 ,” I’d had enough of this series, so much so that I expected to file a negative review. In the immortal words of Buzz Lightyear, “Not today!”

"Lightyear" will be available only in theaters on June 17.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Lightyear (2022)

Rated PG for action/peril.

107 minutes

Chris Evans as Buzz Lightyear (voice)

Keke Palmer as Izzy Hawthorne (voice)

Dale Soules as Darby Steel (voice)

Taika Waititi as Mo Morrison (voice)

Peter Sohn as Sox (voice)

Uzo Aduba as Alisha Hawthorne (voice)

James Brolin as Emperor Zurg (voice)

Mary McDonald-Lewis as I.V.A.N. (voice)

Efren Ramirez as Airman Diaz (voice)

Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Commander Burnside (voice)

Keira Hairston as Young Izzy (voice)

Angus MacLane

Writer (based on characters created by)

John Lasseter
Pete Docter
Andrew Stanton
Jason Headley

Cinematographer

Jeremy Lasky
Ian Megibben
Anthony Greenberg
Michael Giacchino

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‘Lightyear’ Review: Infinite Buzz

The new Pixar movie recounts the adventures of Star Command’s most famous Space Ranger before he was a toy.

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By A.O. Scott

The simple, charming premise of “Lightyear” is explained in an onscreen text. “In 1995, a boy named Andy got a toy from his favorite movie. This is that movie.” In other words, it’s the origin story not of a hero but of a piece of merchandise, one that started out fictional but long ago crossed the boundary into real life. More than one hard plastic Buzz Lightyear lived in my house for a long time, just like in Andy’s. To be part of the “Toy Story” universe is to be intimately acquainted with the metaphysics of the commodity form.

This Buzz is a little different, though. He isn’t a toy, and he doesn’t sound like Tim Allen, who did the voice work in the four chapters of Pixar’s “Toy Story” cycle. He’s a real live animated make-believe Space Ranger, and he speaks in the manly baritone of Chris Evans, who played Captain America over in the Marvel Universe zone of the Disney empire.

Like Cap, Buzz is square-jawed, stoic and shadowed by a hint of melancholy — a soulful soldier in an endless corporate campaign. If “Lightyear” lacks both the sublimity and the giddy inventiveness of the best “Toy Story” movies, that may be by design. This isn’t supposed to be a 21st-century masterpiece, but a kid-friendly, merch-spawning movie from 1995. (That was a pretty good year for commercial cinema , by the way.) The Buzz Lightyear toy was meant to stick around after the movie had been forgotten, and to populate a richer, more varied imaginative landscape.

“Lightyear,” directed by Angus MacLane from a script by Jason Headley, aims to please by pandering, to be good-enough entertainment. As such, it succeeds in a manner more in line with second-tier Disney animation than with top-shelf Pixar. The hero, fighting off an invasion force of alien robots, falls in with a motley group of misfits, in whom he must instill the competence and confidence necessary for the task. The action is wrapped in lessons, delivered in a manner that isn’t too preachy, about how it’s OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. And there is a scene-stealing animal sidekick, in this case a robot cat named SOX, voiced in perfect feline-A.I. deadpan by Peter Sohn.

A few soft-boiled Easter eggs pop up to connect “Lightyear” with various “Toy Story” episodes. Remember Zurg? He’s back, with James Brolin’s growl and a secret I won’t spoil. An early section — a kind of extended prologue to the main action — recalls the celebrated montage in “Up” that compresses a long marriage into a few short minutes. This time, the focus is on the friendship between Buzz and his closest colleague, Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), who crash-land a crowded space vessel on a distant planet.

Buzz doggedly tries to plan an escape, which means embarking on a series of test flights intended to reach hyperspeed. Each journey lasts a few minutes, which equals four years on the planet’s surface. Buzz stays the same age as Alisha marries, has a son and then a granddaughter, grows old gracefully and is gone.

Her life amounts to a sweet sidebar, a touching miniature movie-within-the-movie. But it also might make you wonder what it would look like if the story were told the other way around, with Alisha at the center. The person she marries is a woman, and a brief display of affection between them has already led some countries to ban “Lightyear,” which deals with the characters’ sexuality in a commendably matter-of-fact manner. At the same time, their marginality to the main plot makes it feel as if the filmmakers were content to check a diversity box, pat themselves on the back and move on.

What they move on to is an energetic, somewhat familiar adventure, with a few moments of lovely deep-space animation. Buzz teams up with Alisha’s now grown granddaughter, Izzy (Keke Palmer), and two other Star Command trainees: Darby (Dale Soules), a salty ex-convict, and Mo (Taika Waititi), an all-purpose goofball. And, of course, the robot cat.

It’s possible that, in 1995, “Lightyear” could have been an 8-year-old boy’s favorite movie, but that’s not really the point. Its purpose is to extend brand awareness, and to close a loop between the stuff we see and the stuff we buy.

Usually the movie comes first, but not always, as the “Transformers” franchise demonstrated. Greta Gerwig is making a Barbie movie. And within the “Toy Story” cosmos, the possibilities are endless. How about a Forky docuseries? Or “Shepherdess,” a folk-horror retelling of the Bo Peep story? Personally, I’d be most excited about “La Testa di Patata,” an uninhibited Italian romantic comedy about the courtship of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

Lightyear Rated PG. Robot danger. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Lightyear First Reviews: An Exhilarating, Visually Spectacular Sci-Fi Adventure for Fans who Grew Up with Toy Story

Critics say pixar's toy story -adjacent space romp is gorgeous and fun, even if it doesn't reach the studio's greatest heights, and a scene-stealing sox the cat will be everyone's new favorite sidekick..

TAGGED AS: animated , Animation , Film , films , movie , movies , Pixar , toy story

Pixar returns to theaters with Lightyear , a sort of spin-off of their Toy Story franchise featuring the in-universe inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear toy (voiced here by Chris Evans ). The first reviews of the movie celebrate its animated sci-fi action and adventure story and visuals, as well as its scene-stealing robot cat for comic relief, but it’s not necessarily the studio’s greatest release.

Here’s what critics are saying about Lightyear :

Does it live up to peak Pixar?

Lightyear is the best movie of the year so far, and the best Pixar movie in quite some time. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Lightyear emerges as a disappointing runner-up, capturing but a fraction of the comedy, thrills, and poignancy of its predecessors. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

Sadly it never reaches the emotional highs that Pixar was known for. – John Nguyen, Nerd Reactor

It lacks the emotional weight and meaning Pixar moviegoers expect. – Jeff Nelson, Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Not every Pixar production needs to be a new modern classic, but… Lightyear is not exactly going to occupy too much space in my mind in the weeks to come. – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

(Photo by ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Will Toy Story fans love it?

The film captures the magic of what made the Toy Story franchise while confidently opening the door for new fans to the franchise. – David Gonzalez, Reel Talk Inc.

For old and new Toy Story and family adventure fans alike, this is worthwhile dream fulfillment and highly exciting entertainment. – Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson

Angus MacLane’s animated space adventure is an absolute winner with thematic and emotional resonance, just like the Toy Story films before it. – Ryan McQuade, Awards Watch

This is a movie for Toy Story adults — the people who grew up on the movies and now hold jobs and mortgages — not Toy Story children. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm

It won’t engage the heart or the head in the way that Toy Story films have led viewers to expect over the last quarter-century-plus. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

What ultimately waters down Lightyear … is an absence of the excitement and disciplined storytelling spirit that made Toy Story such a pioneering hit. – Tomris Laffly, AV Club

How is the writing?

Angus MacLane and his co-writer Jason Headley craft a transportive and imaginative screenplay… The most impressive thing about the duo’s screenplay is added layers of freshness to an already beloved character. – David Gonzalez, Reel Talk Inc.

The script… tosses off a few gently mind-bending twists, but otherwise rests comfortably within an accessible, highly allusive branch of family-friendly science fiction. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

The movie feels a little episodic… like a kid recapping the plot of a movie, saying, “This happened and then this happened and then this happened.” – Fred Topel, United Press International

This feels like a story designed off a checklist rather than one told from the heart because it needs to be told. – Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

What about a strong message for the kids?

Lightyear will show you why Andy was enamored with his movie of choice and make you remember which one did that to you too back when you were a kid. – Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson

Lightyear is a moving movie to see in our modern, cynical times when we can see people grow beyond what they are into the people we need them to be. – Ryan McQuade, Awards Watch

There is a lesbian kiss in Lightyear … This is a great way to have LGBTQ+ representation and inclusion on the screen, and should be applauded. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

A tired message better taught in Monsters University : never underestimate the hard work, determination, and loyalty of your allies. – Tomris Laffly, AV Club

Does it play well as a sci-fi action movie?

Lightyear is still an extremely fun action sci-fi film that is better than most animated films released in a given year. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

The space action is genuinely thrilling with stakes as high as Gravity . – Fred Topel, United Press International

Pixar has dabbled in the action genre with The Incredibles and doubles down here with visually impressive, grin-inducing shootouts and fights. – Jonathan Sim, ComingSoon.net

It works out well enough to be entertaining overall for people who enjoy animated films that take place in outer space. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Offers exhilarating action sequences, involving racing rockets, robot armies, and a truly breathtaking space walk. – Kristy Puchko, Mashable

The outer-space visuals and action-packed fight sequences are undoubtedly riveting. – Mike Massie, Gone With the Twins

Chris Evans as Buzz Lightyear in Lightyear (2022)

How are the visuals?

If it needs to be said, the film is a visual triumph, with stunningly photo-real images and richly detailed deep-space locations. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Lightyear is easily Pixar’s best-looking movie yet. It isn’t even a question. – Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

One of the most aesthetically appealing features Pixar has done. The environments’ scale and scope are dazzling. Many gorgeous frames are pure art. – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

With stunning space sequences, Lightyear adds to a genre rich in space beauty with one of the best-looking films of the year. – David Gonzalez, Reel Talk Inc.

Lightyear has visual pizzazz, from the hyperspace sequences to the heretofore hidden surprises that emerge from those colorful buttons and dials on the Space Ranger uniforms. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

The visuals are definitely up to Pixar standards, but the visual effects in Lightyear are not really game-changing or extraordinary. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

How is Chris Evans as the new voice of Buzz?

While Evans’s version of Buzz is akin to Tim Allen’s interpretation, this version is given the space to mold something fresh. – Ryan McQuade, Awards Watch

Evans puts his stamp on the character and makes it relatively easy to forget about the re-voice casting and fall back into the world of Buzz. – David Gonzalez, Reel Talk Inc.

Evans also does a commendable job of taking on the iconic role of Buzz Lightyear, giving the character just the right amount of gravitas and heroism that he needs, but mixed with just a dash of ignorance and naivety. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

He’s intentionally impersonating George Clooney for the entire movie; that’s how it sounds, anyway. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

[He] does a creditable job… though a bit of that Allen snap gets lost. The character seems less funny, a notch more ordinary. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Peter Sohn as the voice of Sox the cat in Lightyear (2022)

Will fans love the new characters too?

One of the movie’s greatest strengths is that it introduces characters with memorable personalities and quirks, with Sox being the one that viewers might be talking about the most. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Sox immediately belongs in the pantheon of great Pixar secondary characters, alongside Edna Mode, Dug, and Bing Bong. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

One of the best character debuts in any Pixar film. – David Gonzalez, Reel Talk Inc.

[Sox the cat is] one of the best new characters in recent Pixar memory. – Ryan McQuade, Awards Watch

Despite feeling a bit derivative of Baymax in Big Hero 6 , [Sox] the cat brings much-needed charm, heart and smile with his cute behavior, funny situations, and loyalty as a companion. – John Nguyen, Nerd Reactor

Izzy is an instant fan fav. She has the charm, the comedy, determination, overall countenance, natural hair, and all, of a character people can relate to. – Catalina Combs, Black Girl Nerds

This [movie] is packed to the gills with vibrant characters and creepy villains, most of which are sadly more interesting than Buzz himself. – Tomris Laffly, AV Club

Should they have just titled the movie “ Sox the Cat “?

His presence alone makes this movie worth the price of admission. – Jeff Nelson, Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Suffice it to say, Sox would be the toy every kid would have wanted after this film, not a Buzz Lightyear. – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

Hey, if Disney wants to make a Sox streaming show or spin-off movie, I’ll happily watch that. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Is it a good sign for the future of Pixar?

If Luca , Turning Red , and Lightyear is the vision of Pixar going forward… then we are looking at a whole new renaissance by this prestigious animated institution. – Ryan McQuade, Awards Watch

If this is what Pixar can accomplish without really stretching its creative or emotional talents, just imagine what they could do if they gave it their all. – Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

Lightyear opens in theaters on June 17, 2022.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Buzz origin story is exceptionally animated and inclusive.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Teaches viewers about the power of teamwork and ap

Promotes teamwork, family, empathy, perseverance,

Buzz is brave, thorough, determined, and loyal. He

Commander Alisha Hawthorne is Black and a lesbian;

The space rangers are attacked by sentient vines o

A character announces her engagement and is later

"Shoot," as well as mild bathroom humor when frien

Nothing on camera, but Disney-Pixar movies have to

Educational Value

Teaches viewers about the power of teamwork and appreciating that even "rookies" can make important contributions.

Positive Messages

Promotes teamwork, family, empathy, perseverance, and human connection. Also encourages people to ask for help and value others' talents, even those of someone still new to a job or a mission.

Positive Role Models

Buzz is brave, thorough, determined, and loyal. He's committed to finishing his mission. Alisha is a courageous, caring, and encouraging commanding officer and friend. Izzy is eager to help and overcomes various obstacles to make a difference. Mo and Darby summon their courage and use their know-how to be part of Buzz's team.

Diverse Representations

Commander Alisha Hawthorne is Black and a lesbian; she's eventually shown with her Asian wife and their multicultural family. This is a milestone for Disney-Pixar, which has previously only hinted at this type of organic representation. Buzz's crew of helpers includes an older White woman, a culturally ambiguous man of color (voiced by Taika Waititi), and a young Black woman. Also body-type diversity.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

The space rangers are attacked by sentient vines on an alien planet. The vines seem to swallow them. People build shields and use other tools/means to combat the hostile being on the planet. Zurg chases after Buzz and sends armed robots to capture him. Zurg personally wants to destroy Buzz. People fight robots with weapons, breaking the robots into pieces. Buzz fights with and outruns commanding officers who want to ground his mission.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A character announces her engagement and is later seen holding hands and kissing her wife at an anniversary celebration.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Shoot," as well as mild bathroom humor when friends misinterpret Buzz sticking his finger out to say "To infinity and beyond" as a "pull my finger" joke.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Nothing on camera, but Disney-Pixar movies have tons of merchandise tie-ins including games, toys, apparel, and more.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Lightyear is a Pixar-animated origin film for the character who inspired the Buzz Lightyear action figure from Toy Story . In the movie, space ranger Buzz (voiced by Chris Evans ), his crew, and an entire spacecraft filled with people is marooned on an alien planet. Buzz's attempts to get everyone home end up transporting him far into the future, where evil robots controlled by Emperor Zurg ( James Brolin ) have taken over the planet. Sci-fi/action violence includes chases and weapons-based fights with robots, Zurg, and the planet's pesky vines. Positive diverse representation includes a Black lesbian supporting character who discusses her partner (and later wife) in a way that makes it clear that everyone supports her identity and relationship. This is a milestone for Disney-Pixar, which has only hinted at this type of representation in previous films like Finding Dory and Beauty and the Beast . Teamwork, perseverance, empathy, and courage are prominent themes, and the film encourages people to ask for help and value the talents that others bring to the table. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (42)
Kids say (41)

Based on 42 parent reviews

Not worth the time or money

What's the story.

LIGHTYEAR begins with a reminder that, in 1995, a boy named Andy was given a Buzz Lightyear action figure from his favorite movie -- and this is that movie. (In other words, this movie is not the origin story of Andy's beloved toy and Woody's best friend: This movie is positioned as the reason the toy existed in the first place.) The Buzz in this movie (voiced by Chris Evans ) is indeed a Space Ranger who takes his missions very seriously. While he's investigating an alien planet with his commanding officer/best friend, Commander Alisha Hawthorne ( Uzo Aduba ), and a rookie who has a lot to learn about being a space ranger, sentient vines start entangling them and their spacecraft, and all 1,200 passengers end up marooned there. Trying to fix the spacecraft, Buzz volunteers to undergo a series of test flights (with help from a brilliant therapy cat robot named Sox) to see whether they're capable of achieving hyperspace and getting off the planet. But Buzz discovers that each flight costs him time -- four years or more. In between test flights, he reconnects with Alisha and her growing family (wife, son, and eventually granddaughter). But once the lonely and singularly focused Buzz finally breaks the hyperspace code, he finds that an army of killer robots and their leader, Emperor Zurg ( James Brolin ), are terrorizing the planet. Buzz must work with a misfit group of three inexperienced space ranger cadets -- eager young Izzy ( Keke Palmer ), kind Mo ( Taika Waititi ), and jaded explosives specialist Darby Steel (Dale Soules) -- to help defeat Zurg.

Is It Any Good?

With its fabulous animation, honorable hero, and lovable sidekicks, this tribute to a host of space adventures is a story of perseverance, teamwork, and friendship. This version of Buzz Lightyear is ideally voiced by Evans, who already has that perfect Captain America halo of courage, loyalty, and hard work. For him, finishing a mission is paramount -- even above his own comfort or sense of belonging. His relationship with Alisha/Commander Hawthorne is a highlight, because they have complementary strengths and trust and respect each other. Aduba does a lovely job of expressing the commander's concern, love, and humor for her space ranger partner/bestie. Similarly, Palmer, Soules, and Waititi are hilarious as the ragtag trio who test Buzz's ability to rely on others, ask for help, and act as a patient and encouraging team leader. And Peter Sohn 's scene-stealing portrayal of Sox the brilliant and candid robo cat is sure to delight viewers of all ages.

Director Angus MacLane impresses with the technical excellence of the movie's animation: Textured hair, Sox's fur, and the aggressive vines are as amazingly detailed as the epic landscapes of space and the planet on which all the action takes place. Composer Michael Giacchino's score is spot-on for '90s blockbusters, and the script tips its hat to nearly all of the big space-based films, from 2001 to Star Wars and back again. And Disney takes a big step forward (for them) on the representation and inclusion front by featuring a Black lesbian character. There's no coming out necessary for Commander Hawthorne; Buzz knows that his best friend's partner would be a "her," just as she knew he would need Sox because he'd end up lonely after all the time jumps. Animated movies need more organic inclusion, and Lightyear handles it in a natural way. Ultimately, although Lightyear isn't at the top of Pixar's "heartwarming" (and heartrending) scale, it's far more than the cash cow some viewers expected.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about whether Lightyear brings the Toy Story franchise to a satisfying conclusion. Do you think the movies feel complete, or would you want more Lightyear sequels?

What positive diverse representation did you notice in the movie? Why are representation and inclusion important?

What did you think about the violence and peril in the movie? Is it age-appropriate? Why, or why not? How much and what kinds of violence are OK for younger audiences?

Movie Details

In theaters : June 17, 2022
On DVD or streaming : September 13, 2022
Cast : Chris Evans , Keke Palmer , Taika Waititi
Director : Angus MacLane
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Indigenous actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors
Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Genre : Family and Kids
Topics : Adventures , Friendship , Robots , Space and Aliens
Character Strengths : Courage , Empathy , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 100 minutes
MPAA rating : PG
MPAA explanation : action/peril
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : January 31, 2024

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Lightyear Reviews

Despite some small throwbacks to “Toy Story,” Angus McLane’s film is a darn good time that can stand on its own two feet...

Full Review | Feb 3, 2024

The film offers a good balance between emotion and comedy, although at times the development of the action is hindered by the constant difficulties on Buzz. Despite this, Lightyear is a very entertaining proposal for both adults and children.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 28, 2023

Lightyear exceeds all expectations for me & truly goes to infinity & Beyond… an emotional thrilling space Epic that is a true marvel to see in IMAX. This is an incredible experience that I cannot wait to see again! One of Pixar’s Best.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

In nearly all ways, Lightyear is underwhelming. It’s shocking that this film was Pixar’s return to theatres after the pandemic. Soul, Luca, and Turning Red all would have made better theatrical releases than Lightyear.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

An adventure filled with tons of entertainment, inspiring messages, and breathtaking animation.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 23, 2023

"Lightyear" is frantic and colorful and the one hour and 40 minute runtime zips by, but it's confounding who exactly the movie is intended for.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2023

LIGHTYEAR is an approximation of what an energetic kid in the mid-90s would have glommed onto. It's a nostalgia bomb [of STAR WARS meets STAR TREK pastiche] and it works.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 6, 2023

Lightyear is an action-packed and visually stunning experience that puts less of a premium on Pixar’s legendary heartfelt comedy. Still, this is a future franchise that’s light-years in the making.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 2, 2023

It may not be Pixar's best movie, but it's definitely not their worst; it's the kind of vastly entertaining, emotional, heartfelt and humorous Pixar adventure we all expect from this iconic animation studio.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Dec 30, 2022

As Lightyear stumbles to make a compelling story on its own, it’s difficult to not get caught up in the incongruities.

Full Review | Dec 16, 2022

Lightyear is fun, summer popcorn fare. However it is unlikely to make the same cultural impact as it did in the Toy Story universe. If it makes enough money to inspire a sequel, Buzz’s legacy may continue to Infinity… but not beyond.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 13, 2022

Anything interesting about the character has been stripped from him, and what is left is a by-the-numbers science fiction film with a plot already mined out by generations of earlier movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 2, 2022

It's not a bad movie - reminiscent of 50s sci-fi where space exploration is at the heart of it all - but smacks of a genericness that lacks that particular passionately careful storytelling that Pixar is famous for.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 1, 2022

Lightyear was exciting, suspenseful, funny and heartfelt, and animated action film is a category I didn’t realize I was missing out on.

Full Review | Sep 28, 2022

A dubious feat of reverse engineering an IP into a commercial for itself, geared to administer doses of nostalgia to the Toy Story faithful and expand the lore of a character into a potential saga of his own.

Full Review | Aug 29, 2022

“Lightyear” offers plenty of pretty things to look at and one funny/adorable robot kitty. But it hardly reaches to infinity, and it certainly doesn’t go beyond.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 25, 2022

in relation to the Toy Story series, it lacks the heart-tugging depth that made those movies so memorable. Taken on its own, Lightyear is entertaining, suspenseful (but not too scary), full of action and fun – just right for a summer movie.

Full Review | Aug 23, 2022

To get the most fun you can from Lightyear, only one requirement needs to be met: don’t expect anything extending the Toy Story universe.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 12, 2022

Lightyear is fine, just fine. It inspires no greater superlatives.

Full Review | Aug 4, 2022

The film isn’t about the beloved toy Buzz Lightyear, but rather the “real-life” human who inspired him. Second, the hero is not voiced by Tim Allen, like doing a Woody origin story without Tom Hanks. If you can get past that, “Lightyear” isn’t a bad ride.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 3, 2022

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Pixar’s ‘lightyear’: film review.

Chris Evans voices the big-screen Space Ranger who became a 'Toy Story' action figure in the sci-fi adventure spinoff, also featuring Uzo Aduba, Keke Palmer and Taika Waititi.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans) and EVIL EMPEROR in LIGHTYEAR.

The conflict in Pixar ’s ageless 1995 breakthrough feature, Toy Story , hinged on the displacement anxiety of old-fashioned pull-string cowboy doll Woody when his young owner Andy acquired a popular new action figure called Buzz Lightyear . The movie named for that Space Ranger, Lightyear , extends the Toy Story franchise by showing us the sci-fi adventure that hooked Andy on the character and inspired the merch. This is a funny spinoff with suspense and heart, a captivatingly spirited toon take on splashy live-action retro popcorn entertainment. The title character is given splendid voice by Chris Evans , balancing heroism and human fallibility with infectious warmth.

Full credits

Production company: Pixar Animation Studios Distribution: Disney Cast: Chris Evans, Uzo Aduba, Peter Sohn, Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, James Brolin, Mary McDonald-Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Efren Ramirez, Keira Hairston, Bill Hader Director: Angus MacLane Screenwriters: Jason Headley, Angus MacLane Story: Angus MacLane, Matthew Aldrich, Jason Headley Producer: Galyn Susman Executive producers: Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter Directors of photography: Jeremy Lasky, Ian Megibben Production designer: Tim Evatt Music: Michael Giacchino Editor: Anthony J. Greenberg Sound designer: Ren Klyce Animation supervisor: David DeVan Character supervisor: Mark Piretti Effects supervisor: Bill Watral Visual effects supervisor: Jane Yen Casting: Kevin Reher, Natalie Lyon

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: pixar's 'lightyear'.

Bob Mondello

Buzz Lightyear flies to infinity and beyond in Lightyear , the fifth film in Pixar's Toy Story saga.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Buzz Lightyear and his robot cat Sox stand in the cockpit of an X-wing-like ship in Lightyear

Filed under:

Lightyear follows a familiar Pixar theme — and that’s its biggest problem

By echoing so many past Pixar messages, the Toy Story tie-in opens itself up to comparisons and comes out behind

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For the last seven years, one of the most popular critical analyses of Pixar Animation Studios movies has come from a Tumblr meme. Granted, it’s an insightful meme. The idea that Pixar movies all boil down to “ What if [random object] had feelings? ” does hold water, and given how much the studio built its name on the idea of evoking profound, powerful adult emotions in animated movies, it’s an understandable lens for viewing Pixar work.

But the studio’s new science fiction movie Lightyear suggests another way of looking at Pixar that’s a little less simple, but just as relevant. Arguably, Pixar’s strongest movies are about people (or toys, rats, robots, anthropomorphized emotions, etc.) figuring out how to accept who they are and how to live with each other. Lightyear forges new ground for Pixar with an ambitious story built around a new alien world and a new human society, focusing on how one man deals with his own shortcomings and losses over the course of more than half a century of lost time. But at heart, it links back to that core Pixar concept about opening up to other people as a first step toward finding a comfortable place in the world. That should be a resonant theme — certainly past Pixar movies, from Inside Out to Up to Coco to the original Toy Story , have drawn powerful narratives from the same message. But Lightyear takes such a disjointed, surface-level approach to the idea that it doesn’t land as powerfully as it should.

Lightyear has a slightly complicated place in Pixar’s franchise thinking. It’s meant to be a fictional artifact from the Toy Story world: the favorite sci-fi movie of Toy Story ’s central human character, Andy. Toy Story ’s toy version of Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) is a piece of merch from the Lightyear movie, where Buzz is a human astronaut (voiced by the MCU’s Captain America, Chris Evans), part of an elite team of Space Rangers. The bits and pieces of Lightyear ’s arc implied throughout the Toy Story movies — like Buzz’s various pull-string catchphrases and the existence of his big purple robot enemy Zurg — were all elements Finding Dory co-director Angus MacLane and his co-writer Jason Headley ( Onward ) had to deal with in plotting Lightyear . (MacLane told Polygon in an interview that they ignored the previous Toy Story animated spinoff, 2000’s film and TV series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command .)

A grubby Buzz Lightyear, Izzy, and robot cat Sox stand together in Lightyear

But those connections aside, Lightyear is meant to stand entirely on its own as an adult science fiction story rather than a movie primarily aimed at 6-year-olds like Andy. Which certainly explains some of its bigger ideas. As the film opens, Buzz is part of a human mission into deep space, aboard a bulbous, turnip-shaped ship full of cryogenically frozen explorers. When the ship is diverted to explore life signs on a planet en route to their final destination, Buzz and his commanding officer Alisha (Uzo Aduba) are thawed out to investigate. The planet proves dangerous, and Buzz tries to pilot the ship to safety, but he miscalculates, damaging the fuel crystal that lets the ship enter hyperspace and leaving it stranded in hostile territory.

Obsessed with fixing his error, Buzz takes on a series of experimental missions to space to test new fuel crystals. But because he approaches the speed of light in those missions, time passes more slowly for him than for the colonists he left behind. After every mission, most of which blur by in a quick montage, he returns to find Alisha older — first married to a woman she met while he was gone, then with young children, then adult children, and so forth. The colonists move on as well, settling in on their new planet and adapting to it, until they finally decide there’s no point in devoting resources to Buzz’s ongoing mission.

That’s a lot to take in as just the scene-setting for the actual action of the film. Too much of it whips by as if there are no questions to be asked and nothing worth mentioning about the ship’s original mission or the society it came from, the time that passes between Buzz’s missions, or whether anyone starts questioning their worth before the hammer finally drops on them. There’s nothing in that setup about how Buzz lives from one day to the next when he’s on the planet, or whether Alisha ever tries to talk him out of his obsessive space jaunts. It’s all presented as the basic buy-in for the rest of the movie, which deals with Buzz’s refusal to accept the future he’s suddenly found himself in, and his struggle to let go of the past.

As a Flash Gordon-style space adventure packed with fast-moving alien creepy-crawlies, snappy banter, and big explosive action, Lightyear is perfectly enjoyable. There’s a lot of funny business about Buzz narrating his actions as if he’s the hero in a space serial, and a strange, silly scene about the sandwiches of the future. It’s no wonder all this would appeal to Andy and his generation, who likely see it much like 6-year-olds in our world might: as an exciting rush through a world packed with killer robots, icky monster-bugs, and cool laser swords.

But Lightyear is so clearly calibrated to be something more: a thoughtful meditation on the passage of time. Its biggest ideas all point to the need to connect with people and live in the present rather than the past. It’s a warning about all the things we might miss if we fixate on past mistakes instead of letting them go. And on that level, the film never hits as hard as it’s meant to.

Izzy, Mo, Darby, Buzz Lightyear, and Sox the robot cat ride together in a vehicle as Buzz narrates his actions into his wrist communicator in Lightyear

In part, that’s because the script spends too much time explaining those themes. In part, it’s because there’s so much other business getting in the way. A robot cat named Sox, given to Buzz as a therapeutic tool to help him adapt to his time skips (and voiced by The Good Dinosaur director Peter Sohn), serves up plenty of gleeful visual and verbal jokes, but never serves his primary purpose. Buzz’s new allies Izzy (Keke Palmer), Mo (Taika Waititi), and Darby (Dale Soules) each get micro-arcs of their own, but they’re largely underdeveloped characters who mostly exist to remind Buzz that he needs to learn the value of teamwork — a moral lesson that crops up so often in kids’ movies that it’s hard to see it as an adult value here.

The way that arc plays out is particularly familiar. In the setup sequence, Buzz repeatedly refuses to accept a rookie on his mission with Alisha. He insists that he works alone and doesn’t need help or input from others. He’s echoing another big-chinned hero who has to learn the value of teamwork: Mr. Incredible, whose similar rejection of a rookie sidekick in the opening sequence of Pixar’s The Incredibles drives the entire plot of that movie.

But Lightyear doesn’t have the same narrative neatness or force. Buzz continues to echo his “I’ve got this, I don’t need help” line as he’s making his big mistake, but there’s no real evidence that teamwork could have solved the problem, or that the rookie he’s shoving aside had anything to offer. His error stems more from overconfidence in his own abilities, and not listening to the ship’s computerized autopilot. There’s only a slight disjunction between “accept other people’s help” and “listen to a robot’s calculations,” but it’s still a fairly serious one that highlights the little ways Lightyear doesn’t entirely connect its emotional dots. When Zurg finally emerges — and unlike so many recent Pixar movies, Lightyear is absolutely a story with an actual old-school villain — there’s a thematic connection to the film’s morals there as well, but one that doesn’t fully make sense within the world MacLane and Headley have laid out.

None of this keeps Lightyear from being a satisfying experience in any given scene, as Buzz and his various teammates outfight aliens and out-think robots, all on the road to the inevitable moment where Buzz finds a way to accept his life and what he’s made of it. The problem is in the ways the pieces all add up into something that never digs as deeply into these characters as it needs to. The Pixar craft is on full display, as MacLane and his team fill the screen with a polished, immersive world full of emotive, likable characters. (Notably, many of them are people of color in roles that don’t revolve around their racial heritage — a welcome reflection of Pixar’s ongoing steps forward in on-screen representation.)

But they’re up against so many past Pixar successes that mine similar emotions and ideas. They all have different constructions, but most of them have more power, in part because they bring more passion to bear. So many of the best Pixar movies are about characters struggling to fulfill one dream or another, but Lightyear makes it clear early on that its hero’s dream is unworthy and misguided, making it harder for viewers to fully engage with his battle to make it happen. (Headley’s Onward takes a similar tack in its climax, but at least lets the audience root for the heroes throughout the rest of the story.)

And that dream might have stronger roots if Lightyear spent a little more time on establishing about who Buzz was in the world he wants to get back to. It’s clear what he’s lost, but not what he values: It’s clear who he is, but not who he wants to be. Certainly viewers will fill in those blanks themselves based on what they value, but that rush to put all the narrative pieces in place leaves too many of the details in viewers’ hands. Seen through that enduring Tumblr lens, Lightyear could be summed up as: “What if people wracked with guilt and regret had feelings?” But seen as another Pixar film about acceptance and connection, it feels like a less heartfelt, more calculated echo of some of the studio’s more personal projects. It’s a familiar message, in a pleasantly shiny but visibly flawed new shell.

Lightyear debuts in theaters on June 17.

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Filed under:

Lightyear is a good movie — and an even better IP grab

Lightyear will makes lots of money, and sell even more toys.

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The running joke about Disney-Pixar movies is how well they imbue feelings into objects and lifeforms that don’t often clearly display them. Finding Nemo is about how fish have feelings. Ratatouille is about how rats have feelings. Cars is about how automobiles have feelings. Even Pixar’s logo, a little anthropomorphized lamp, seems to have feelings.

Similarly then, Lightyear is about how white men have feelings.

Lightyear centers on Buzz Lightyear. You likely know Buzz as a starring character in the vaunted, 27-year-old Toy Story franchise about a boy named Andy and his secretly sentient batch of action figures, dolls, and playthings. However, Lightyear is not a continuing solo adventure of that tiny plastic hero (who was voiced by Tim Allen). According to Disney and Pixar lore, Lightyear (2022) is the actual 1995 sci-fi flick that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toys in Andy’s universe. Andy saw Lightyear and wanted the action figure, which his mother purchased for him in the original Toy Story.

Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story movies is simply a toy representation of this original, fictional Buzz Lightyear (who is voiced by Chris Evans). Despite their differences, a shared idea of both Buzzes Lightyear — daring, stubborn, strong — is understood by Andy and by us. It’s a pretty high concept for a children’s movie.

Lightyear itself is a sweet musing on the value of friendship, an origin story that gives the titular character a sense of purpose, and a zippy ride through an often-gorgeous cosmic world. There’s also a hilarious robot cat named Sox; I am frightened by my own affection toward Sox. All in all, Lightyear is easily in the top half of Disney and Pixar’s filmography. It’s a charming and, at times, acutely funny space adventure.

Yet, there’s something beneath the surface that compromises Disney and Pixar’s proficient storytelling. It’s the idea that Lightyear exists not to just give us a free-standing movie about this space ranger’s feelings, but rather to take advantage of Disney’s very lucrative intellectual property. For a character whose famous words are “to infinity and beyond,” Lightyear feels predictable, content to play within Disney’s plum boundaries rather than push Disney and Pixar into a thrilling future.

If you think about Lightyear ’s existence too much, your brain may start to itch with questions.

Lightyear is animated the way Andy from Toy Story is animated, so does Andy perceive Lightyear as an animated movie, or is it live-action? Can Andy, who is 6 years old at the start of the first Toy Story , even understand what the movie is about? And how does Lightyear even exist in our own universe, 27 years after its debut? How did it get here? And why is it here?

Like a faceless god, the movie does not give any concrete answers to those queries. Instead, it gives us a story about failure (kind of) and friendship.

This Buzz Lightyear, along with his bestie, space ranger Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), is part of a crew responsible for exploring an unexplored planet. They quickly discover this uncharted world is a hostile one, full of giant bugs and strangling vines, which is made even more complicated when some decisive action from Buzz leaves the entire crew of their turnip-shaped spacecraft stranded there indefinitely.

Buzz is intent on righting his wrong, trying again and again to travel back home by hyperspeed — the velocity needed to get the entire crew to jump through space. He gets closer with every attempt, but still faces the nagging problem of the unbreakable relationship between time and space. Each of Buzz’s trips are just minutes for him, but they’re four years for his marooned friends, all of whom are aging normally. Buzz doesn’t see a problem with this because he sees sacrifice as virtuous (it’s one of the qualities that makes him similar to Chris Evans’s other major Disney character, Captain America). This is, in fact, the Buzz Lightyear we know and love — one who is brave and loyal, and doesn’t always have the best ideas.

There’s a question implicit in the higher-budget, better-cast, more winking IP adaptations. You can feel it in The Lego Movie , in many of Disney+’s TV series, in the stills for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie film. Sure, it seems to say, this is a project based on a familiar intellectual property, made to almost-surgically extract dollars from the wallets of longtime fans … but can’t it still be creative? Isn’t it still fun?

Lightyear ratchets that up yet another notch. The whole premise of Lightyear is that the Buzz Lightyear action figures in Toy Story were actually just promotions for this movie; that this film is not just the IP we know and love but something more authentic. Lightyear is, according to Disney-Pixar’s retrofitted storyline, the actual real-deal story. And in a creative landscape devoted to ransacking the past, isn’t this a pretty clever idea?

This is slightly complicated by a sensibility in Lightyear that, as an audience, we’re smart enough to understand the way money-grabs work. It’s hard to take Disney’s smirking critique about consumerism too seriously because Disney is the force that it pretends to laugh at.

The very many movies in the Toy Story franchise are about how these cookie-cutter toys actually are individuals with human feelings that aren’t disposable. This nifty caveat allows for new Lightyear merchandise and Toy Story toys, plushies, tents, and costumes to exist side by side in Disney’s stores .

Lightyear is very much mining existing nostalgia and brand name to pad its box office haul. Depending on its financial success, there may be several more Lightyear movies in the future. The ability to keep churning out Buzz Lightyear content is especially convenient for Disney since 2019’s Toy Story 4 was supposed to be the end of the Toy Story movies.

But the funny thing is: There’s plenty in Lightyear that’s good enough to stand on its own. It didn’t need to be about Buzz Lightyear. “Brave and loyal without the best ideas” could apply to lots of characters. It’s Buzz’s friendships that make this movie.

First, with Alisha. While Buzz reacts to tragedy by trying to force correction, Alisha adapts. She leads the rest of the crew in creating a home for themselves on this new planet: constructing buildings and living spaces, building labs to cultivate resources and sustenance, and learning to defend against the planet’s very large bugs. Scientists and architects and engineers thrive.

Alisha also starts her own life.

She begins to date a fellow crew member, which blooms into romance. As the years tick by, Alisha and her partner have kids and their kids have kids. Buzz, who returns as often as a leap year, misses out on so much of her life.

Alisha doesn’t resent him. She knows her best friend needs to try to save his crew — even if they might not need saving, given how well they’ve adapted. She understands that Buzz will keep charging into space four years at a time, so she gives him a robot cat named Sox (Peter Sohn) to keep him company.

Eventually, Buzz’s final space run is successful and he has the solution to get everyone home! But unfortunately Buzz returns 22 years into the future, and his adopted planet is now under siege from a robot threat. Buzz and Sox are the colony’s best hope, but also find themselves responsible for Alisha’s sunny, but extremely green granddaughter, Izzy (Keke Palmer), and her companions, the cowardly Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi) and octogenarian ex-con Darby Steel (Dale Soules). It’s time for the lessons of friendship, round two.

Izzy, her ragtag crew, and Buzz inevitably teach each other about heroism and life — the kind of lessons that Pixar is so adept at telling. These emotional beats are hit so precisely, Pixar should think about charging its competitors for the clinic. Buzz will grow a heart. Izzy will learn more about her grandmother. Sox will learn to love despite his android circuitry.

Lightyear ’s conclusion telegraphs another movie: Buzz, Izzy, Sox, and all the friends they made are strapped in and prepared to fly into hyperspeed. And while I’m sure it’ll be a great time, I’m just a little more hesitant about joining along.

The appeal of Buzz Lightyear — the toy and now the astronaut — has been that the character dares to dream despite an entire world telling him it isn’t practical. His existence is supposed to be a testament to endless possibility, and his adherence to it is so stubborn that it borders on frustrating. Lightyear gives us a fleeting glimpse into that, but this good-enough movie isn’t the slightest bit concerned with the unknown. There’s no thought to mapping out a future for the character that feels the slightest bit surprising or inventive, especially compared to the places that the original Toy Story took him.

The box office might go to infinity, but we’ll never get anything beyond the limits of intellectual property.

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‘Lightyear’ Review: Buzz Lightyear Gets His Own Adventure. It’s Diverting Enough, But Doesn’t Give You a Buzz

Making Buzz a real Space Ranger means he's no longer...a toy. That enlarges and diminishes him.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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'Lightyear' Review: Diverting Enough, But Doesn't Give You a Buzz

“ Lightyear ,” the 26th Pixar film, has a premise that’s explained by the film’s opening title. It seems that in 1995, Andy, the young hero of “ Toy Story ,” was given a Buzz Lightyear action figure as a present. That was because he’d seen a Buzz Lightyear movie and loved it. “Lightyear” is that movie.

There are plenty of ways the Pixar wizards could have spun that premise. One imagines a Buzz Lightyear origin story in which he’s a brash young upstart going through flight training. And since Buzz, in his curvy plastic spacesuit with the chartreuse trim and the bubble helmet, is the most futuristic of all the “Toy Story” playthings, one could envision that film unfolding within the most deliriously Pixarian of sci-fi kiddie landscapes.

But “Lightyear,” in its eminently conventional and likable way, is a far less audacious movie than that. As it opens, Buzz is already more or less the Buzz Lightyear we know — an absurdly overconfident test pilot who’s a gifted flier but also a delectable egomaniac, too cocksure for his own good, given to stunts he thinks he can pull off just because…he’s Buzz. He and his crew, who are bopping around the galaxy exploring new worlds in the mode of the “Star Trek” team, have landed on a planet populated by thickly aggressive vines and the occasional rust-spotted robot. When they’re forced to make a quick getaway, piloting the spaceship (which Buzz calls “the turnip,” since it’s shaped like one) out of a steep valley, Buzz miscalculates, damaging the ship by scraping it against a rock face and stranding them all on the barren planet.

For what is surely not the first time, Buzz’s I-can-do-anything myopic bravado has failed. He thought what was happening was all about him. “Lightyear” will be the movie in which he learns to think and care about others, but even so, it plays less like an origin story than like the middle episode of an ongoing Buzz Lightyear adventure franchise.

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The entire movie is about how Buzz, coming together with a trusty team of fellow space explorers, fights to get off that planet. First he tries to pilot his own rocket ship to hyper-speed — and as he keeps trying, and failing, to accomplish that, he returns from each experimental mission just a few minutes older, but several years have passed on the planet. This means that we watch the developing life of his friend and colleague, Capt. Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), as she gets married (to a woman, which the film admirably makes no big deal about), has a child, and finally passes on. Her grandchild, Izzy ( Keke Palmer ), who’s her spitting image, joins Buzz’s crew, along with Sox (voiced by Peter Sohn), a hilariously matter-of-fact robot feline who looks like he was bought at a souvenir shop, plus Darby Steel (Dale Soules), a crusty felon, and Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi), a walking nerve case.

Can they destroy the massive robot alien spaceship that’s hovering in the sky — a mysterious craft presided over by a horned megabot, the Emperor Zurg (James Brolin), who has glowing red devil eyes? The identity of this dastardly droid turns out to be a lot closer to home than you’d expect. And “Lightyear” is full of elegantly fun chases and escapes and droll bits of gizmo business, like IVAN the auto-pilot Buzz despises, plus a witty gag about the evolution of the sandwich. Taken on its own eager-to-please terms, the movie is a winning diversion. But given that it’s a spinoff of the “Toy Story” series, which is the greatest and most sustained achievement in contemporary animation, it should be noted that this is one of those Pixar movies that feels like it has 50 percent Disney DNA.

A confession: The first time I saw ”Toy Story,” not knowing who the voice actors were, I was sure that Buzz, with his handsome thrusting chin and delirious assurance, had the look and the voice of George Clooney; I was shocked when I learned that he was voiced by Tim Allen. Through all three sequels, Allen has done a brilliant job of portraying Buzz with that inimitable fusion of heroism and fatuous narcissism, though I still think of the character as Clooneyesque. In “Lightyear,” however, he’s voiced by Chris Evans , who does a creditable job of recreating Buzz’s pilot-as-game-show-host-of-his-own-legend persona, though a bit of that Allen snap gets lost. The character seems less funny, a notch more ordinary.

Of course, part of that may be that in the “Toy Story” films, he is a toy — that’s part of the joke, one that Buzz is never quite in on. He thinks he’s a real Space Ranger! So when you actually turn Buzz Lightyear into a Space Ranger, you enlarge him and diminish him at the same time. You tone down his buzz. Throughout the movie, Buzz keeps trying to get home; he wants to resume his life of space exploration. He doesn’t realize that with his friends around him, he already is home. That’s a touching, if standard, message, but I couldn’t help but agree with Buzz — that as solid an entertainment as “Lightyear” is, it feels like he belongs in a more special movie. It makes you wonder: Is “Woody’s Wild West” going to be next? Because that sounds like a way, through sheer spin-off opportunism, of taking the toy, and maybe the joy, out of “Toy Story.”

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Reviewed at amc lincoln square, june 8, 2022. mpaa rating: pg. running time: 100 min..

Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures production. Producer: Galyn Susman. Executive producers: Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton.
Crew: Director: Angus MacLane. Screenplay: Jason Headley, Angus MacLane. Camera: Jeremy Lasky, Ian Megibben. Editor: Anthony Greenberg. Music: Michael Giacchino.
With: Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, James Brolin, Uzo Aduba, Mary McDonald-Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Efren Ramirez, Keira Hairston.

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Lightyear review: Like Buzz, impressive but not subtle

Chris Evans steps in to voice the role made famous by Tim Allen in the Toy Story films.

Pixar has made us fall in love with action figures , cheer for insects , and sob uncontrollably over an imaginary friend . So maybe it shouldn't be surprising that the animation studio's latest release is most effective when it's focused on an emotional-support robot kitten named Sox.

Specifically, Sox is an emotional-support kitty for Buzz, the space ranger at the center of Lightyear . The film begins with a title card that informs us that Toy Story 's Buzz was merch sold in 1995 to promote "Andy's favorite movie. This is that movie." And let me tell you, if Lightyear had been released in 1995, it would have been everyone's favorite movie. The computer animation is stunning, at times so realistic it makes the groundbreaking Toy Story look like, well, child's play.

The Pixar team chose toys as the subjects of their first feature because they had not yet figured out how to make humans look realistic (a problem they've very clearly solved over the years). Yet Andy's room housed an entire community of complicated and nuanced plastic playthings — the exception being Tim Allen 's Buzz Lightyear, who had yet to accept he was a toy and not a space ranger on a singular mission: defeat Emperor Zurg. Allen's Buzz was a co-lead, but really a supporting character to Tom Hanks ' Woody, a selfish and petulant cowboy doll whose complex relationship with being Andy's "favorite" was at the heart of a very human story.

In Lightyear , Buzz takes center stage. (Here he's voiced by Chris Evans , modulating his Captain America charm into a lower register to mirror Allen's delivery while making the character entirely his own.) After his large crew's ship is marooned on a strange planet, he takes it upon himself to play the hero — despite being the one to maroon them in the first place. When robots take over the planet, he begrudgingly works with a band of volunteer rangers to save the colony.

This Buzz isn't a toy, but he still has the singular goal of defeating Zurg. And he's going to do it alone, because this Buzz doesn't need anyone's help, as he reminds those around him (and the audience) approximately 746 times during the hour-and-45-minute movie. Director Angus MacLane ( Finding Dory ) and his co-writer Jason Headley ( Onward ) surround their title character with quirky cohorts (voiced delightfully by Dale Soules, Taika Waititi , Keke Palmer , and more) — but Buzz doesn't bother learning most of their names, so neither do we.

The space ranger does grow a close connection with Sox, a doe-eyed companion clearly included to melt hearts and sell toys. Buzz's bond with this Swiss Army knife of a robot kitten (voiced by Peter Sohn) becomes the emotional center of the film. Sox one of the few things beyond the mission our hero comes to care about during our time with him. When the feline is in peril, or using one of his seemingly infinite (and beyond) skills to save the day, the film crackles with that Pixar magic we've come to expect over the past quarter century. The jokes may skew juvenile at times, but mostly in a Shrek way more than the worst of Saturday-morning cartoons.

Buzz's connection with Sox is rivaled solely by his bond with the only space ranger he considers his equal, Alisha ( Uzo Aduba ). Buzz and Alisha begin the film side by side, but — because of a timey-wimey plot twist that leads to some borderline canon-breaking that we won't spoil here — Alisha goes on to live a full life while Buzz doesn't age, physically or emotionally.

We, like Buzz, view his friend's milestones though vignettes akin to the universally praised opening of Up : Alisha meeting the love of her life, starting a family with her wife, becoming a grandmother, and celebrating her 40th wedding anniversary (the setting for that incredibly brief same-sex kiss at the center of so many headlines earlier this year ). Thanks to Sox's telecommunication abilities, Buzz enjoys a final moment with his friend at a pivotal moment of the film. In the middle of what's essentially an action flick, it's a touching deep breath, one you wish had been replicated in tone a few more times throughout the story.

Kids will love Lightyear . Adults will enjoy it. The only reason it falls short of what we've come to expect from Pixar is that they've set their own bar so damn high. Grade: B

‘Lightyear’ Transforms a Pixar O.G. From Action Figure to Disney Action Hero

By David Fear

He was the delusional do-gooder that made up one half of Pixar ‘s O.G. dynamic duo, the Toy Story space cadet with the square chin, a savior complex and an unstoppable quest to rid the galaxy of the evil Emperor Zurg. His name was Buzz Lightyear, defender of decency and good dentistry throughout the cosmos, and thanks to his chemistry with a cowpoke named Woody, this popular (and highly merchandisable) plastic-fantastic hero became an interstellar superstar. He’s more recognizable as a brand ambassador than Pixar’s signature animated desk lamp, as well as the company’s reverse Pinocchio — an action figure based on a fictional movie character who transformed into an actual movie character beloved enough to become a real-life action figure. To Intellectual Property, and Beyond!

Yet with the possible exception of Disney board members and desperate imagineers, it’s tough to picture anybody clamoring for a big-screen Buzz origin story. It’s also odd to think that a company like Pixar, while anything but sequel-shy, would devote time and resources away from their other, more “personal” projects to develop what initially sounded like nothing more than a quick, superficial cash-in. When the film was first announced and the news spread that Chris Evans would voice the “younger” (?) Buzz, you could practically hear the sound of snarky laughter and knives being sharpened. So, what, we zoom into a factory assembly line, and then 12 inches of plastic gets a paint job, and suddenly we hear, in the ultra-sincere tones associated with Captain America, “By the mighty power of Hasbro, I am alive! …” ? GTFO.

Lightyear, thankfully, takes a different and slightly more tongue-in-cheek tack. We’re informed via opening title cards that long ago, in the year 1995 A.D., a young boy named Andy Davis went to see a movie about a space ranger. Thrilled and delighted by spending two hours watching those shadows on a wall, he then purchased an action figure based on the hero of said film. This, we are told, is that movie. As in: We’re now watching the same mid-Nineties sci-fi blockbuster that inspired Andy’s Buzz-worthy obsession. Neat!

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It’s a high-concept setup which falls apart quicker than Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead during a 7.5 earthquake, and one that virtually does not matter. You are always aware that you are watching what, in so many ways, feels like a corporate Mouse House flex — a sort of exercise in I.P. cherry-picking that borrows from the deep benches of one of the company’s many subsidiaries and plops a character into a slightly generic template. You’ll also find yourself slowly warming to what could have been a far more soulless product than what you get here, where everything seems to go down remarkably easy. It is, in essence, a light, breezy, better-than-average Disney movie that just happens to feature a most-valuable Pixar player, while barely feeling like a Pixar movie at all.

As for Buzz, he’s still the arrogant and extremely serious guy you know, and still prone to Captain Kirk-like monologuing for no real reason whatsoever; not even his fellow rangers understand his need for turning every stray observation into melodramatic mission logs. (“You’re narrating again,” he’s informed as he chatters away into his wrist recorder. “It helps me focus,” he meekly replies.) Thanks to Buzz’s hubris, he and a number of fellow astronauts and crew members are marooned on an island populated by tentacled beasts. They establish a base camp, with the hope that Lightyear can fix a broken crystal that will allow everyone to leave. His commander/best friend, Alisha (Uzo Aduba), authorizes a four-minute test flight around the planet’s orbit so he can attempt successful hyperdrive jumps. When he returns, however, four years, three months, and two days have passed on the planet. The colony’s base seems a lot more built out, and a lot less temporary. Undaunted, Buzz keeps tweaking his starcraft and testing their exit plan. And every time he returns barely mussed from his seemingly brief jaunts, time has slipped a little further and further away into the future….

These sequences are the trace evidence that Pixar had a hand in this endeavor, as old friends get older, babies turn into college graduates, camps turn into cities, and once-bustling offices become vacant rooms. Director Angus MacLane — an animation veteran who’s been with the company since the 1997 short Geri’s Game — and his fellow screenwriters Matthew Aldrich ( Coco ) and Jason Headley ( Onward ) work the emotional pressure points here, offering a kinder, gentler version of the famously tear-duct-clearing Up opener as life moves on in Buzz’s many absences. And it’s after another, definitely unauthorized but successful test flight that our man Lightyear returns to find the now-domed home base under attack by killer robots. The only help he’s got when it comes to saving everyone from certain doom is a ragtag group of has-beens and never-weres, led by a young woman named Izzy ( Keke Palmer ). The fact that she happens to be the granddaughter of Alisha and Alisha’s longtime wife only adds to the urgency of Buzz’s mission. (We personally don’t remember big-budget studio tentpoles from the mid-Nineties — which, again, is what Lightyear is allegedly supposed to be — having such a progressive attitude toward same-sex marriages at the time, but perhaps our memories are fading. It remains a welcome addition to the Buzziverse canon, even if that sentiment is regrettably not shared by all .)

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EVIL EMPEROR – Disney and Pixar’s “Lightyear” is a sci-fi action adventure and the definitive origin story of Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans), the hero who inspired the toy. The story, which follows the legendary Space Ranger on an intergalactic adventure, features none other than Zurg—a seemingly invincible adversary of Buzz who would go on to inspire his own toy. Featuring the voices of Uzo Aduba, James Brolin, Mary McDonald-Lewis, Keke Palmer, Efren Ramirez, Peter Sohn, Dale Soules, Taika Waititi and Isiah Whitlock Jr., “Lightyear” releases June 17, 2022. © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

The fact that a certain arch-nemesis may be behind the attacks and is actively searching for Buzz also comes into play, and it’s at this point that Lightyear switches into something that’s all momentum, set pieces, chase scenes, sight gags and standard-issue sound and fury. Any attempts at moralistic takeaways are limited to variations on “teamwork makes the dream work” and “you can’t enjoy the future if you don’t let go of the past.” Chris Evans does a great job of both referencing Tim Allen’s old-school Buzz and sounding like someone parodying the rugged tones of Chris Evans, Handsome MCU Movie Star. Taika Waititi voices an incompetent boob who has a knack for conveniently screwing things up when the plot requires it, and is less a character than a delivery service for the actor-director’s wacky, eccentric comic relief. We’re not saying that multiverses may be involved, but we’re not not saying they don’t play a part here, either.

There’s also a robot cat named Sox, who serves as Buzz’s purring, all-purpose watchdog/companion/walking-and-talking hard drive, but whose actual presence is predicated on being the movie’s one saving grace. As voiced with impeccable timing and a deadpan wit by animator Peter Sohn, Sox is hands-down the breakout star of this semi-prequel, equal parts awww and ahahaha, a delightful creation served up franchise-ready ASAP; you can probably expect to see Sox in any number of upcoming Disney+ shorts, or gracing any number of shirts (and mugs and backpacks and key rings, etc. — perhaps even, ironically, on socks!) throughout the known galaxy.

A colleague wondered if the feline android with the killer timing had been cooked up in a lab for the sole purpose of breaking down her defenses to this exercise in brand extension, to which the only sane reply is: Resistance was always going to be futile. Lightyear is definitely a lark that’s fast enough and fun enough to keep your attention, if adding next to nothing to the Toy Story legacy or your feelings about the mint-condition guardian of the galaxy or Pixar as a whole past an adorable, tranquilizer-dart spewing cybertabby. It doesn’t want or feel the need to go anywhere near infinity, much less beyond. It’s happy to modestly stop right at “90 or so minutes you won’t actively regret,” with future detours to the Disney gift shop scheduled along the way.

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Lightyear’s a stiff-as-plastic deconstruction of heroic space dramas

Lightyear’s a visual stunner with a predictable story.

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

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Buzz Lightyear gazing at something in space.

Pixar and Disney have hyped director Angus MacLane’s Lightyear up by making it out as a mysterious reworking of Toy Story ’s canon that reveals all-new details about Andy Davis’ favorite space explorer . Though a new version of Buzz anchors the film, its story about how reaching for the stars can lead to people losing hold of the important things right in front of them is actually more about taking its titular astronaut off a pedestal and unpacking why we tend to frame people like him as heroes.

Lightyear tells the story of Buzz (Chris Evans), one of the headstrong Galactic Rangers of Star Command who’s committed his life to the organization’s exploration of deep space. After years of working closely only with his commanding officer Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), Lightyear’s left convinced that it simply isn’t safe (or really worth it) for him to partner up with newbies to the force, an assumption that ends up spelling disaster for them all. Though no one’s fatally injured when Buzz decides that he doesn’t need help during a routine mission, an accident leaves him and countless others stranded on a strange planet, and on some level everyone knows who’s to blame for their misfortune.

Rather than tiny green aliens who think with a hive mind and worship a claw in the sky, Buzz’s guilt is what haunts him as Lightyear opens and zooms in on the space hero as he searches for a way to put right everything that’s gone wrong. Though everyone on the strange planet wants to go home, no one explicitly tries to saddle Buzz with guilt about their being marooned. And because they’re all highly trained survivalists, it isn’t long before they begin to build a colony.

But for Buzz, a lantern-jawed boy scout with a penchant for dramatically narrating his mission logs, moving on with his life would be tantamount to admitting failure — something he refuses to do.What drives Buzz as Lightyear kicks into gear is his sense that, if he simply keeps trying on his own to solve a problem involving unstable fuel sources, he alone can save himself and his fellow Galactic Rangers from having to tough it out on a planet full of murderous plant life.

Most everything about the way Pixar renders Lightyear ’s lush and vibrant alien world at first makes it seem like the movie will focus on Buzz and Alisha encountering strange creatures they’re unsure of how to deal with. There is some of that spotlighted in Lightyear ’s action sequences. But its story is much more keen on following Buzz’s obsessive quest to prove himself, which feels much more in line with films like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and Ridley Scott’s The Martian .

Buzz and Alisha saying goodbye before a mission.

A significant chunk of Lightyear ’s runtime is spent following Buzz as he rockets off into space hoping to use a nearby sun’s gravitational pull to slingshot himself back to the stranded Star Command base in hopes of figuring out a way for them to return to their home planet. Before Lightyear really gives you a chance to get to know Buzz and Alisha’s dynamic, or really what it’s like working for Star Command, the movie quickly makes clear that it truly is a movie more about Lightyear himself than anything else. With each of Buzz’s trips into space, he loses a number of years due to the way time dilates for those moving at incredibly high speeds, and every return to Star Command’s ever-growing colony is a reminder that his life’s passing him by.

Lightyear makes this reality abundantly clear to the audience, but Buzz can’t really bring himself to see the truth of things until he comes face to face with Alisha’s granddaughter Izzy (Keke Palmer) and Sox (Peter Sohn), a Star Command issued robotic cat, after a handful of his trips lead to decades passing. For all the charm that Evans and Palmer bring to their performances, they never quite manage to make either Buzz or Izzy feel like people who’d actually enjoy spending time together, even though their burgeoning friendship is meant to be the emotional center of the movie.

In Izzy, Buzz sees the passage of time, and his decision to forego carving out a new life for himself alongside his fellow Galactic Rangers. Lightyear repeatedly puts Buzz and Izzy in situations meant to push both of them to recognize how working together’s both beneficial to them as individuals and in line with Star Command’s idea what what makes for good explorers. But even though the movie is consciously trying to illustrate how Buzz’s tendency to take matters into his own things isn’t always the best idea, it can’t stop itself from hitting many of the same beats as the exact kind of movies that it’s trying to comment on.

As occasionally uninspired as Lightyear tends to feel, the movie is also a visual triumph for Pixar and Disney, who’ve managed to translate the whole design lexicon surrounding Toy Story ’s original Buzz into an aesthetic language that reads as lived-in.

By the time that Lightyear gets around to introducing its true villain and their dastardly plan that underscores many of the movie’s larger existential ideas, you can easily see why Disney decided to run with the “what if Buzz Lightyear was a real guy” conceit and how the studio could return to this reality-within-a-reality down the line should the new Buzz prove to be a hit. What’s harder to tell is whether Lightyear ’s moments of visual strength will end up being enough to sell people on the idea of sitting down for a big, flashy, but ultimately formulaic spin-off about a guy who acts like a toy learning to get out of his own way.

Lightyear also stars Taika Waititi, James Brolin, Dale Soule, Mary McDonald-Lewis, and Isiah Whitlock Jr. The movie is now in theaters.

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Lightyear (2022)

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Lightyear review – a trudge through outer space

Buzz is back on a mission – but it’s a disappointingly pedestrian one that lacks the wit and wonder of previous Pixar animations

“A t Pixar, we do sequels only when we come up with a great idea.” So said former Pixar head John Lasseter. And for a while, give or take Cars 2 , the company adhered to this ethos, delivering remarkably consistent quality in their franchises. But there’s something precision-tooled and soulless about Lightyear , an aggressively adequate film which gives the sense that Pixar are, for once, just going through the motions. The film links back to the very first Toy Story , which starts with Andy thrilled to receive a Buzz Lightyear action figure for his birthday, merchandise from his favourite movie. And this, we are told, is that movie. It’s not a great idea, but it’s potentially a good one. However, the aspect that’s traditionally elevated Pixar animations, the dizzy wit and inventiveness of the screenplay, is missing from this dispiriting trudge through outer space, via some box-ticking messaging along the way. Space ranger Buzz (voiced by Chris Evans) is responsible for a crash which leaves his fellow crew members stranded on a hostile planet. He makes it his personal mission to fix the mess, while his colleagues are busy making lives for themselves. For a film which shoots for the stars, this is disappointingly pedestrian stuff.

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Lightyear Review

17 Jun 2022

Lightyear , and its connection to the world of Toy Story , sparked confusion the moment it was announced. Is it a spin-off, completely separate from the franchise that began in 1995? Is it based on a real-life astronaut in the Toy Story universe, meaning Andy, Woody and the like live in a time where we’ve achieved intergalactic space travel? Thankfully, the film clears all of this up with an introductory title card, explaining that in 1995, a boy called Andy got a toy which was inspired by a movie. Lightyear is that movie.

Its relation to Toy Story aside, Lightyear is a fun, frenetic experience. It wastes no time plunging you into the mayhem of alien fights, space-ship flights and robot cat delights, and barely lets up for a second. Whilst this gives it propulsion, a moment or two to breathe wouldn’t go amiss — and providing more context as to the world Buzz and his crew come from, and the one they’re trying to get back to, would give the emotional beats (and Buzz’s determination) much more impact. The animation is beautiful; landscapes are regularly doused in gorgeous golden sunsets, the pitch-black backdrop of deep space feels like it would swallow you whole, and the moment Buzz achieves hyper speed is brilliantly climactic.

Sox is an adorable, quick-witted genius, and Sohn’s deadpan delivery is excellent.

Unsurprisingly, Chris Evans voices a hero just as well as he depicts one in live action, and his new crew Izzy, Mo and Darby are brought to life with vigour, humour and humanity by Keke Palmer , Taika Waititi and Dale Soules respectively. The star of the show, though, is Peter Sohn’s Sox, Buzz’s ‘Personal Companion Robot’, assigned to him by Alisha ( Uzo Aduba ) after his efforts to get the crew home lead to some unexpected timey-wimey effects. Sox is an adorable, quick-witted genius, and Sohn’s deadpan delivery is excellent. Plus, he spins his head round and says “meow meow meow” a lot.

If Sox is Buzz’s C-3PO, Emperor Zurg ( James Brolin ) is his Darth Vader. His presence is heard and felt before he’s seen, but the use of him as a villain doesn’t fully land. The script works hard to give Zurg an identity that feels like a cohesive part of the story, as well as making him a fearsome antagonist, but his motivations never seem aligned to his actions, and he’s the film’s most forgettable element.

Whilst that title card provides somewhat of an answer as to how Lightyear fits in with Pixar’s pioneering original animation, it doesn’t necessarily justify its existence. There’s certainly some enjoyment to be had here, but the film is weighed down by genericness and loyalty to the existing IP, coming up short against fully original, specific-yet-universal Pixar output like Turning Red , Coco or Inside Out . Though the underlying themes of teamwork, family and leadership are nicely played, they’re also fairly surface-level — never quite reaching the heights of infinity, nor beyond.

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Pixar's 2025 sci-fi movie is more important than any of its other upcoming releases.

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12 Scariest Pixar Characters Ever, Ranked

Pixar's 9 biggest box office bombs explained, the mistborn movie's biggest challenge is the part of the books i love the most.

Pixar's upcoming 2025 sci-fi movie Elio has a lot riding on it as the studio's future success depends on original hits.
Previous Pixar sci-fi projects like WALL-E were successful, but recent efforts like Lightyear fell short at the box office.
While Pixar's focus has been on sequels, the release of Elio will determine if the studio can still thrive with original ideas.

Pixar is at a huge turning point in the studio's history, with its 2025 science-fiction movie arguably needing to be the biggest financial success of all its other upcoming films. Pixar has several upcoming movies and TV shows , but 2025's feature-length release has a great deal riding on it as far as the studio's future is concerned. Although there is a lot of hype around Pixar's other future projects , they fall under the same umbrella that could prove unsustainable going forward.

Every Pixar movie is a visual marvel, but that's seemingly not enough for their projects to always turn a profit. Several Pixar projects have bombed at the box office in recent years , with the last original movie to become a smash hit being 2017's Coco . The top five most profitable Pixar movies of all time are all sequels, with 2015's Inside Out coming in sixth overall. The studio's 2025 release is an original release, so it doesn't have the comfort blanket of a pre-existing fan base.

Pixar's scariest characters subvert expectations of the studio's joy and lighthearted tone by providing audiences with captivating evil-doers.

Elio Needs To Prove Pixar's Original Releases Can Still Be Big Box Office Hits

Pixar's non-sequel movies haven't thrived in recent years.

Elio is currently scheduled to be released in 2025 , after being pushed back from its original 2024 release window. The fun-looking outer space adventure has the huge responsibility of making sure everyone knows that Pixar still has what it takes to succeed at the box office with a new idea. It's tough to argue with Pixar's immense financial success with sequels like 2018's Incredibles 2 and 2019's Toy Story 4 , but the studio's original concepts have long been an issue when it comes to box office sales.

Unfortunately, Elio's delay from 2024 gives the movie some stiff competition, as it now releases in June 2025 - the same month as Dreamworks' live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon.

2023's Elemental did eventually make Pixar some money, but it was nowhere near what their other movies have made, and Elemental 's success was incredibly slow-burning after a concerning start . So, Pixar is certainly capable of recapturing its past successes, but it remains to be seen if Elio will help reestablish the trend. Unfortunately, Elio 's delay from 2024 gives the movie some stiff competition, as it now releases in June 2025 - the same month as Dreamworks' live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon .

Elio Needs To Fix Pixar's Mixed Record With Sci-Fi Movies

Wall-e & lightyear didn't achieve the same level of success.

Science-fiction isn't a genre that Pixar delves into all too often, and even when it is has done, success hasn't been guaranteed. Pixar's first sci-fi effort came in 2008 when the heart-warming 29th-century space opera WALL-E was a huge critical and financial success. It wasn't until 2022's Lightyear that Pixar returned to sci-fi , and even then, the studio didn't repeat the triumph it had with WALL-E 14 years earlier. However, the main difference between the two movies is that WALL-E is an original concept, whereas Lightyear is a confusingly meta prequel to the entire Toy Story franchise .

If Elio bombs, then it could see the end of Pixar's sci-fi efforts, and it could be a major blow to their plans for more original movies.

Elio looks to be taking a route much more akin to WALL-E than Lightyear , as the upcoming 2025 movie is set within a new universe rather than toying with the framework of an existing franchise as Lightyear did. As Pixar's third sci-fi movie, Elio could tip the balance of the studio's back catalog within the genre . If Elio bombs, then it could see the end of Pixar's sci-fi efforts, and it could be a major blow to their plans for more original movies.

Pixar's Other 2 Upcoming Movies Are Sequels

Inside out 2 is out in june 2024.

Elio is currently Pixar's only upcoming movie that isn't a sequel, showing the studio's focus on follow-ups over developing original ideas. Inside Out 2 is scheduled for release on June 14, 2024, and Toy Story 5 's release date has been confirmed to be June 19, 2026. Based on how much money each respective franchise has made Pixar through the years, it's understandable that sequels would be priorities in the wake of certain failures. However, Pixar will eventually run out of sequels to make .

Pixar is known for box office hits and critically acclaimed films, but not all of its great animated movies have found such commercial success.

If Elio does well, then not only does it prove that Pixar can still succeed with original ideas, but it also opens up another potential franchise for the studio. In short, there could be Elio sequels that follow on from the 2025 animated feature-length movie. However, the debut of Disney+ in 2019 could also have contributed to recent box office failures, as the family-focused nature of Pixar movies means it can sometimes be more convenient to await the movie's arrival on the streaming service. Unfortunately, only time will tell whether Pixar 's Elio will be the savior the studio needs.

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This giant gas planet is as fluffy and puffy as cotton candy

This illustration provided by NASA depicts the planet WASP 193-b. Scientists reported Tuesday, May 14, 2024, that the exoplanet has such low density for its size that it’s the consistency of cotton candy. (NASA via AP)

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have identified a planet that’s bigger than Jupiter yet surprisingly as fluffy and light as cotton candy.

The exoplanet has exceedingly low density for its size, an international team reported Tuesday. The gas giants in our solar system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — are much denser.

“The planet is basically super fluffy” because it’s made mostly of light gases rather than solids, lead author Khalid Barkaoui of Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a statement

Scientists say an outlier like WASP-193b is ideal for studying unconventional planetary formation and evolution. The planet was confirmed last year, but it took extra time and work to determine its consistency based on observations by ground telescopes. It’s thought to consist mostly of hydrogen and helium, according to the study published in Nature Astronomy.

The planet is located some 1,200 light-years away. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. It’s the second-lightest exoplanet found so far based on its dimensions and mass, according to the researchers.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

'Inside Out 2': Release Date, Cast, Plot, and Everything We Know So Far

Prepare your emotions, there really is an 'Inside Out' sequel on its way!

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When does 'inside out 2' release in theaters, when will 'inside out 2' be on disney+, is there a trailer for 'inside out 2', who is starring in 'inside out 2', what is 'inside out 2' about, who is making 'inside out 2', where can i watch 'inside out'.

Whether it's their more recent films like Elemental and Turning Red , or classic franchise powerhouses like Toy Story and The Incredibles , Pixar has a long list of acclaimed movies that are consistently referred to as some of the best animated films out there One such movie that is about to spawn its own franchise is Pete Doctor's 2015 film Inside Out , which released to an enormous amount of both public and critical fanfare. Beloved by millions for its tender and honest portrayal of the feelings children go through, this feature really struck a chord with families across the world by being both funny and touching, which seems to be Disney and Pixar's ultimate combination. Now, eight years later, fans are even more excited about the upcoming sequel than they seemingly were for the original release, which stands as a testament to just how well-received that original was. So, with all that in mind and news and speculation constantly revealing itself, here is everything we know about Inside Out 2 so far.

Editor's Note: This piece was updated on May 14, 2024.

Inside Out 2

Follow Riley, in her teenage years, encountering new emotions.

Inside Out 2 will receive an exclusive theatrical release on June 14, 2024 . This comes almost exactly nine years after the release of the original, with summer a perfect season for some of Disney's biggest hits to drop.

The project was announced back in September 2022 during the D23 Expo's animation showcase, in which lots of exciting new projects were announced . The D23 announcement joined by a confirmation tweet.

Inside Out 2 will be getting an initial theatrical release before it eventually comes to Disney+ sometime after. This will keep fans of both viewing mediums happy, with the sequel of a smash hit like Inside Out surely deserving its time on the biggest of screens.

A 90-second teaser trailer for Inside Out 2 was released by Pixar on November 9. The trailer, set to Ozzy Osborne 's "Crazy Train," quickly reintroduces us to our favorite emotions before seeing their control center being demolished in the middle of the night and the unwelcome arrival of Anxiety.

The full trailer for Inside Out 2 was released on March 7, 2024.

One of the major factors in the success of the original was its talented voice cast, with an enormous variety of celebrated performers turning out some of their best work. For that reason, fans have been desperate to know exactly who will return for the sequel and, possibly, which new faces (or rather voices) will be joining them. Although the full cast list has not yet been revealed, it has been confirmed that the likes of Amy Poehler will be reprising her role as Joy, Phyllis Smith will be returning as Sadness, and Lewis Black will be back in his role as Anger. In regard to the other emotions from the original, unfortunately, both Mindy Kaling and Bill Hader will not be returning for the sequel in their roles as Disgust and Fear respectively. Their absence is due to reported contractual issues, with Kaling saying to The Wrap ,

“I had a great time working on Inside Out and am sure Inside Out 2 will be great. But I'm not working on it".

Replacing Kaling and Hader as Disgust and Fear will be Liza Lapira ( NCIS ) and Tony Hale ( Toy Story 4 ). Riley will also be getting a new voice, with Kengsington Tallman ( That Girl Lay Lay ) replacing Kaitlyn Dias , the latter having voiced the character in the first movie.

Also confirmed to return from the first film are Academy Award nominee Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan as Riley's parents, John Ratzenberger as Fritz, Bobby Moynihan as Forgetter Bobby, Paula Poundstone as Forgetter Paula, Paula Pell as Mom's Anger, Flea as Mind Cop Worker Jake, Dave Goelz as Subconscious Guard Frank, and Frank Oz as Subconscious Guard Dave.

New cast members for the emotions of Inside Out 2 include Maya Hawke ( Stranger Things ) as Anxiety, Ayo Edebiri ( The Bear ) as Envy, Adèle Exarchopoulos ( Passages ), Paul Walter Hauser ( Black Bird ) as Embarrassment, and Academy Award nominee June Squibb ( Nebraska ) as Nostalgia. Additionally, Ron Funches ( Harley Quinn ) as Bloofy, a character from Riley's favorite childhood TV show, and Yong Yea will be voicing Lance Slashblade, a video game character whom Riley previously had a crush on.

Voicing the humans of Inside Out 2 are Lilimar ( Bella and the Bulldogs ) as the popular girl Val Ortiz, newcomer Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green as Riley's friend Bree, Grace Lu ( Fright Krewe ) as Riley's other friend Grace, and Yvette Nicole Brown ( Community ) as Coach Roberts. Also cast in undisclosed roles Sarayu Blue ( Expats ), James Austin Johnson ( Saturday Night Live ), Kirk Thatcher ( Werewolf by Night ), and Olympic Gold Medalist and professional ice hockey player Kendall Coyne Schofield .

As Inside Out came to a close and Riley's rollercoaster was coming to a gentle end, Joy spots a button that reads 'puberty' and hesitates to press it. It is that moment that directly influences the plot of Inside Out 2. The official plot synopsis for Inside Out 2 reads:

Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up.

With Inside Out doing such a wonderful job of tackling the emotions of an 11-year-old, it would only be right for Riley to have aged into her next most challenging period as a teenager. It certainly seems as if the mental trials and tribulations associated with our most formative teenage years will be challenged head-on, especially considering the aforementioned new emotions at play. For families across the world, this period in our lives, whether in our past, present, or future, is pivotal to who we are today, and can often come with some of our life's most challenging emotional periods. Disney is likely to do just as wonderful a job at tackling this subject as it did in the first film and, with the current awareness and conversation surrounding mental health at its most positive ever, Inside Out 2 looks like it will be a truly poignant movie.

While attending Disney's CinemaCon 2024 presentation, Collider's Britta DeVore was shown the first 35 minutes of the movie .

Riley is a well-rounded 13-year-old in the first 35 minutes of Inside Out which were shown during Disney’s presentation. The leading character in Disney and Pixar’s highly-anticipated sequel is facing things like growth spurts, braces “with extra rubber bands,” and a strong growing sense of self. The emotions are more than joyful to help Riley carry on with her hockey career and keep all of those unpleasant memories shoved way down deep where they’ll never see the light of day again. But, when the puberty alarm sounds off, the emotions find themselves in the middle of a control room demolition that they can’t stop. With huge changes happening in her social life and inside of her body, Riley steps into adolescence with her new emotions — Anxiety, Envy ( Ayo Edebiri ), Embarrassment ( Paul Walter Hauser ), and Ennui ( Adèle Exarchopoulos ) — and makes some new pals along the way.

Inside Out 2 stands as the full-length feature debut of Kelsey Mann ( Onward ) who has already plied his trade to numerous other Pixa projects including Lightyear and The Good Dinosaur . Inside Out 2 is written by Meg LeFauve ( Captain Marvel ) who returns after writing the original, with a producer credit going to Mark Nielsen ( Toy Story 4 ).

Whilst fans wait patiently for Inside Out 2 , it may be wise to remind oneself of what happened in the original. Inside Out is currently and unsurprisingly available on Disney+. For those without a subscription, Disney+ can be purchased for $7.99 per month, with a premium no-ad version available for $10.99 per month. Alternatively, an annual subscription can be purchased for $109.99.

Watch on Disney+

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Lightyear movie review & film summary (2022)
The score by Michael Giacchino is one of his best, a delectable spoof of bombastic space movie music that elevates every scene it plays under. Advertisement. Of course, every great hero needs a great sidekick. "Lightyear" gives us Sox ( Peter Sohn ), an adorable cat whose job is to offer emotional support to Buzz.
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Rated 2.5/5 Stars • Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 10/23/22 Full Review Camden C While not necessarily a film that goes to infinity and beyond, Lightyear did have some stunning animation, characters ...
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The simple, charming premise of "Lightyear" is explained in an onscreen text. "In 1995, a boy named Andy got a toy from his favorite movie. This is that movie.". In other words, it's the ...
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Pixar returns to theaters with Lightyear, a sort of spin-off of their Toy Story franchise featuring the in-universe inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear toy (voiced here by Chris Evans).The first reviews of the movie celebrate its animated sci-fi action and adventure story and visuals, as well as its scene-stealing robot cat for comic relief, but it's not necessarily the studio's greatest ...
Lightyear (2022)
Lightyear: Directed by Angus MacLane. With Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi. While spending years attempting to return home, marooned Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear encounters an army of ruthless robots commanded by Zurg who are attempting to steal his fuel source.
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Legendary space ranger Buzz Lightyear embarks on an intergalactic adventure alongside ambitious recruits Izzy, Mo, Darby, and his robot companion, Sox. As this motley crew tackles their toughest ...
Lightyear Movie Review
Lightyear Movie Review. 1:05 Lightyear Official trailer. Lightyear. Community Reviews. See all. Parents say (42) Kids say (40) age 9+ Based on 42 parent reviews . MamaMiaChaChaChia Parent of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12-year-old. June 20, 2022 age 10+ Not worth the time or money
Lightyear
Lightyear was exciting, suspenseful, funny and heartfelt, and animated action film is a category I didn't realize I was missing out on. Full Review | Sep 28, 2022 Prahlad Srihari News9 Live (India)
Pixar's 'Lightyear': Film Review
June 13, 2022 2:00pm. 'Lightyear' Courtesy of Disney/Pixar. The conflict in Pixar 's ageless 1995 breakthrough feature, Toy Story, hinged on the displacement anxiety of old-fashioned pull-string ...
Movie review: Pixar's 'Lightyear'
Movie review: Pixar's 'Lightyear' Buzz Lightyear flies to infinity and beyond in Lightyear, the fifth film in Pixar's Toy Story saga.
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Lightyear writer-director Angus MacLane (co-director of Finding Dory) and co-writer Jason Headley (Onward) give Toy Story its own in-world movie, explaining Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger history.
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Lightyear is a good movie — and an even better IP grab. Lightyear will makes lots of money, and sell even more toys. Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses ...
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A sci-fi action adventure and the definitive origin story of Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans), the hero who inspired the toy, "Lightyear" follows the legendary Space Ranger after he's marooned on a hostile planet 4.2 million light-years from Earth alongside his commander and their crew. As Buzz tries to find a way back home through space and time, he's joined by a group of ...
Lightyear review: Like Buzz, impressive but not subtle
Specifically, Sox is an emotional-support kitty for Buzz, the space ranger at the center of Lightyear.The film begins with a title card that informs us that Toy Story's Buzz was merch sold in 1995 ...
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Lightyear features striking visuals, strong performances, and a love-out-loud lesbian relationship that we're thrilled to see on screen. All of those things deserved a stronger story, though. It ...
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By David Fear. June 13, 2022. Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans) in the Pixar movie 'Lightyear.'. PIXAR/Disney. He was the delusional do-gooder that made up one half of Pixar 's O.G. dynamic ...
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Buzz shooting a laser at Zerg. Pixar. As occasionally uninspired as Lightyear tends to feel, the movie is also a visual triumph for Pixar and Disney, who've managed to translate the whole design ...
Lightyear (2022)
User Reviews. Opening thoughts: Expectations actually weren't low for 'Lightyear', despite its polarising critical reception and the controversy it garnered for a same sex couple and kiss. Buzz Lightyear is one of Pixar's greatest creations and more than interesting enough to warrant his own prequel origin story.
Lightyear
Movie Review. In 1995, we met a boy named Andy and his two favorite toys: Woody and Buzz Lightyear. The latter, of course, was the star of Andy's favorite movie. "This," Lightyear tells us before the story commences, "is that movie."
Lightyear review
The film links back to the very first Toy Story, which starts with Andy thrilled to receive a Buzz Lightyear action figure for his birthday, merchandise from his favourite movie. And this, we are ...
Lightyear Review
Plagued by guilt, Buzz sets about trying to find a way to get the crew home, and finish the mission. by Sophie Butcher |. Published on 13 06 2022. Release Date: 17 Jun 2022. Original Title ...
Lightyear (film)
Lightyear is a 2022 American animated science-fiction action-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.The film is a spin-off of the Toy Story film series, but does not take place in the same fictional universe as they do; rather, it is presented as a film that characters in the main Toy Story films have ...
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Buzz Lightyear recruits a new crew in Disney's new "Lightyear" film. (Image credit: Disney/Pixar) Through the concept of time dilation, each failed flight skips ahead four years for everyone ...
Pixar's 2025 Sci-Fi Movie Is More Important Than Any Of Its Other
Pixar's upcoming 2025 sci-fi movie Elio has a lot riding on it as the studio's future success depends on original hits.; Previous Pixar sci-fi projects like WALL-E were successful, but recent efforts like Lightyear fell short at the box office.; While Pixar's focus has been on sequels, the release of Elio will determine if the studio can still thrive with original ideas.
Cancelled PS4 Game Is Returning With a Release on PS5
By Tyler Fischer - May 16, 2024 09:28 am EDT. A cancelled PS4 console exclusive has been revived and is returning with a new release on both the PS5 and Nintendo Switch. The game in question hails ...
This giant gas planet is as fluffy and puffy as cotton candy
The planet is located some 1,200 light-years away. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. It's the second-lightest exoplanet found so far based on its dimensions and mass, according to the researchers. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational ...
'Inside Out 2'
A 90-second teaser trailer for Inside Out 2 was released by Pixar on November 9. The trailer, set to Ozzy Osborne 's "Crazy Train," quickly reintroduces us to our favorite emotions before seeing ...

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