The opening text screen is quite clever:
In 1995, Andy got a Buzz Lightyear action figure after seeing his favorite movie.
This is that movie.
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| Things seem calm at the moment, but that's deceptive; Buzz, far right, and his new companions — from left, Izzy, SOX the cat, Mo and Darby — are about to encounter another bunch of Zurg's malevolent robots. |
To infinity and beyond, indeed.
That said, this definitely is a case where action and momentum cover an increasing number of plot holes and unanswered questions. Considerable care is required, when concocting stories that involve time travel and alternate time streams; let’s just say things get a bit sloppy.
But that comes later.
The story begins quietly, as a massive spherical S.C.0.1 exploration vessel — dubbed “the Turnip” — heads home via automatic pilot, its 1,000-strong complement of crew, scientists and technicians in cryo-sleep during the lengthy journey. Roughly 4.2 million light-years from Earth, sensors detect T’Kani Prime, an uncharted but potentially resource-rich planet.
The ship wakens Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Chris Evans, taking over from Tim Allen), commander Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) and a rookie named Featheringhamstan (Bill Hader). They land the Turnip; Buzz and his companions reconnoiter and quickly discover that this swampy world is laden with giant swarming bugs and subterranean vines that burst through the surface, latch onto anything foreign, and drag it below ground.
Anything … including the Turnip.
Buzz, Alisha and the rookie battle bugs and vines during their frantic dash back to the Turnip. They board; Buzz takes the helm, and tries to defy physics in a heroic effort to get the massive ship free of the vines, and off this inhospitable planet.
He fails.
Worse yet, the resulting crash destroys one of the Turnip’s fuel cells and its essential hyperspeed crystal, without which the journey home cannot be made. The entire crew settles in for a long stay on T’Kani Prime, as it’ll take years to fabricate a replacement fuel cell and crystal that’ll hold up to a test flight.
(It seems unlikely that all of these folks would cheerfully forgive Buzz for the error in judgment that has stranded them, but that’s something we cannot dwell upon.)
(One also wonders how the Turnip could possibly have contained enough raw materials and infrastructure to construct the mini-city that soon houses all of these folks, but that’s something else we cannot dwell upon.)
Time passes. Buzz finally is able to test a first-gen hyperspeed crystal in his beloved XL-01 fighter — a cheekily retro ship that hearkens back to 1970s aerospace designs — which comes with an intrusively nagging auto-pilot dubbed IVAN (Internal Voice-Activated Navigator).
The resulting flight, with acceleration achieved via a “sling-shot” around T’Kani Prime’s sun, fails when the crystal disintegrates before achieving 100 percent hyperspeed. But the results are far more calamitous, when Buzz returns to the planet. To him, the mission has lasted only minutes … but, because of near-hyperspeed, four years have passed for Alisha and everybody else.
Each subsequent test flight carries the same risk.
“I get it,” Buzz finally says. “The faster I fly, the further into the future I travel.”
This adds a somber note to the subsequent montage, and the emotions hit hard. Pixar writers always excel at character development, and this film is no different. Already consumed by guilt over his earlier mistake, Buzz is burdened further by the awareness that he’ll likely outlive all of his friends. This is particularly heartbreaking with respect to the firm bond he shares with Alisha.
Then things get even worse.
After yet another test flight, Buzz lands and discovers that the city is under siege by large, ruthless robots, all controlled by a robotic being dubbed Zurg, who occupies a massive orbiting spaceship. This kicks off the lengthy third act, which finds Buzz — outside the city’s protective force field — teaming up with a gaggle of ambitious Space Ranger recruits dubbed the Junior Zap Patrol, in a madly impossible effort to defeat Zurg and his robot army.
These recruits are Izzy (Keke Palmer), a courageous but reckless young woman whose fear of outer space (“astrophobia”) is likely to be a problem; the directionless Mo (Taika Waititi), who joined the others simply because he had nothing better to do; and tough-as-nails Darby Steel (Dale Soules), a butt-kicking ex-con who isn’t allowed near weapons.
Nor can we overlook SOX (Peter Sohn), Buzz’s amazingly resourceful robot companion cat: a gift from Alisha. SOX is somewhat reminiscent of David’s sentient teddy bear, in 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, but with far more tech tricks up its feline sleeve (and sprouting from other unlikely places).
The story’s heart kicks into gear at this point, with Buzz initially exasperated by — and yet protective of — these raw rookies; in his view, they’re worse than useless. But he’s reminded of his own past mistakes, and the maturity that develops when learning from them. Besides, what choice does he have?
Mo and Darby are something of a bickering Laurel & Hardy duo, with Waititi and Soules trading (respectively) dry, goofy asides and gruffly snarky complaints. Izzy wears her heart on her sleeve; her eagerness, sincerity and never-say-die belief in herself, and in Buzz, carries our emotions in between increasingly dire action scenes.
The nail-biting intensity may surprise you.
IVAN’s constant hectoring is a cute running gag, with a clever payoff during the story’s climax. Buzz’s insistence on “narrating” all of his activity, for a log that nobody ever will hear, is another droll bit.
Unfortunately, the third act’s “big reveal” — Zurg’s identity and purpose — simply doesn’t work; it’s unsatisfying, disappointing and something of a series betrayal. On top of which, it raises fresh paradoxes. It feels like MacLane and his co-writers simply went for “outrageously unexpected,” without considering logic, or the impact on viewers.
Up to that point Lightyear is a heckuva ride, with undercurrents of inclusiveness and “family” woven skillfully into the rat-a-tat action sequences. That said, I suspect this film will remain an odd sidebar to the Toy Story franchise: an entry likely prompted more by commerce, than artistic purity.
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