Lightyear (2022) Movie Review

Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be talking about the 2022 movie Lightyear. I wasn't able to see it in theatres, but now that it's on Disney+ I thought I'd take the opportunity to watch it. There will be spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, please do so before reading this review. Let's get into it.

 As someone who is a fan of Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear's evolution in the first three films (I haven't seen Toy Story 4 yet), I was slightly more interested in this movie as I otherwise would've been. I knew it would have nothing to do with the Toy Story movies and honestly that's what appealed to me about it if nothing else. Yes, it takes a character from those movies and turns him into something else, but if this had just been about the original toy version of the character, it wouldn't've been as interesting.

I really enjoyed this movie. Unlike a bunch of other people, my only expectation for this movie was that it wasn't just Buzz saying all of the lines that the toy says like, "Not today Zurg!" while fighting Emperor Zurg. Which it wasn't. It was way more than that.

Buzz was a really cool lead character and so much less obnoxious than the toy version in the Toy Story franchise. It was fun seeing him get used to Izzy, Mo, and Darby. Unlike other characters in other movies, Buzz didn't abandon them when they got to be too much. Instead he took the time to learn about them and get to know them. Particularly Izzy, since she was Alisha's granddaughter and Buzz easily could've just been a jerk to her on that alone. But he wasn't.

Zurg on the other hand is a different story. I honestly don't know how I feel about him. Not because he's nowhere near what the toy character was in Toy Story 2 (1999), nor what he was in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. I'm not sure how I feel about him because he an alternate timeline version of Buzz, which is exactly what they did with Savitar in season 3 of The Flash (2014-2023). They made him an alternate timeline version of Barry, which made him boring. Here, Zurg isn't boring exactly, but his existence serves more as a what if rather than as a mirror to the protagonist, even though he IS a mirror to the protagonist. This Zurg isn't a bad character, I'm just not sure what to make of him. I think the audience needed to spend a bit more time with him just because his identity was revealed fairly late in the movie and we didn't spend any time with him prior to him taking Buzz back to his ship.

Chris Evans did a wonderful job voicing Buzz. When Pixar announced that he was going to be voicing the character, I wasn't concerned because I knew that Buzz in this movie isn't the toy from the Toy Story movies, and I figured that the original character that the toy is based off of, wouldn't sound like the toy. Though there were a couple of scenes where he sounded more like Tim Allen, it wasn't all that noticeable except for once or twice in the whole movie. And Evans is talented enough to make Buzz sound different from Captain America so people wouldn't be confused.

The other characters were fun. They kind of reminded me of the Circus Bugs from A Bug's Life, pretending to be something they aren't. In this case, Izzy, Mo, and Darby were pretending to be fully trained soldiers, even though they were only trainees. Of course, Buzz saw through the charade fairly quickly, particularly with Izzy, because she was definitely not as competent as her grandmother, Alisha. Honestly, Izzy is the most fleshed out character of the trio. Sure, Darby's a felon, and Mo is a klutz, but they're both pretty one note compared to Izzy. Which worked for me because trying to keep the backstories of four characters at the same time can be difficult. Plus, Mo and Darby had plenty to do in the movie, so it's not a huge deal that they weren't as developed as Izzy was. 

Overall this was a really good movie. It was a fun Sci-Fi film, which is something you don't get a whole lot of these days. Particularly in mainstream cinema. Did it need to be a Buzz Lightyear movie? Personally, yeah, I think it did. Just because it might've flown under the radar if it had been a completely original Science Fiction movie. As it is the movie didn't do well at the box office, most likely because Jurassic World Dominion had come out the weekend before and Top Gun: Maverick was still dominating the box office despite having been out for two weeks by this point. So if it had been an original film rather than based on a character that everyone knows, I don't think anyone but the most hardcore Pixar fans would even have cared about the movie, but who knows. I would definitely recommend it to those of you who haven't seen it yet, even if you've never seen the Toy Story movies before, because it has nothing to do with those movies, despite focusing on a character named Buzz Lightyear. It's on Disney+ and it's due to come out on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K in September. 

Alrighty that's going to be it for me for today. I've got plenty of reviews coming up in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for those. Until then have a great rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.