There are three movies, that I have seen more than any other films in my life: The Dark Knight, Talladega Nights, and Toy Story. I am not often a repeat watcher of movies, especially as of recent, because there are so many new movies and shows to watch and indulge in, but as a child one movie stood above the rest, and that movie was Toy Story. It was by far my favorite movie, and I cannot even come up with a guess on how may times I have seen it, but the most recent was less than a year ago. My room growing up was light blue, and it had clouds on the ceiling based off the clouds that Andy had on his wallpaper in the movie. I also had Toy Story wall stickers up around my room, and a framed photo of Buzz and Woody on Andy’s bed from the movie. Then even as I grew older, I still an affinity for these characters, and as a teenager, I was still excited to go and see Toy Story 3. It is safe to say that one of the reasons I like movies as much as I do can be traced back to seeing Toy Story and falling in love.
When I saw that there was going to be a movie about Buzz Lightyear, the actual space ranger, not the toy, I was very interested to see what it would be like. It starts out with Buzz on the Flying Turnip, deciding to take the ship on a pitstop to an unexplored planet. The planet turns out to be hostile, there are vines that attack, and massive bugs that swarm. The planet attacks, and when Buzz tries to fly the ship away, he crashes it, and not only does the ship break, but it also breaks the hyper drive, and they are way too many lightyears from Earth to even try to get back without it. So they use the natural materials available, and they try to create a crystal, but there is a catch. Every time Buzz goes out to try the new crystal, four years pass on the planet, even though it is only four minutes for Buzz. Something about hyper speed breaks the time loop, so hyper speed is like traveling to future(?). Then Buzz finally gets the right formula thanks to Sox, a robotic cat that was assigned to Buzz to keep him mentally healthy.
Only the people who had supported Buzz have now passed away due to the amount of time that has passed from all his voyages, and the new leader, no longer supports the space ranger missions. So Buzz sneaks out, and he tries the new crystal, and it is successful, but when he returns, an evil has taken over the planet, Zurg. Zurg has dispatched his army of robot soldiers to take out the settlement, and now Buzz must save them. He finds a group of Space Ranger wannabes, who want to help, but typically end up making matters worse, and they must try to save the planet and give the people a chance to return to space travel!
There is one big message that this film is trying to get across, and that is that teamwork is essential to surviving and succeeding. There are so many times in the movie where Buzz refuses to accept any help, and every time he does this, he ends up failing. They hit you a bit over the head with how many times it happens. It happens for the first time when Buzz crashes the ship when trying to escape the planet, and the rookie tries to help, and Buzz refuses. Then it happens repeatedly with Izzy, Mo, and Darby. They continually try to help as Buzz tries to save the world alone, which is a hard thing to do.
When Buzz is trying to find the new fuel source for Hyper speed, this movie takes a page from the beginning of Up. As Buzz keeps going into space, and more and more time passes on the planet, we see Alisha slowly grow up, she gets married, she has a kid, she gets older, and eventually Buzz returns, and she is gone. It is not quite as emotionally pungent as Up, but it was still sad, despite being a little telegraphed. So there is some strong emotion being pulled from the start. It might have just been the nostalgia meeting the excitement of a new adventure, but I was all in on the opening sequence. From them landing, fighting the creatures, and then the whole sequence of fuel development, I was super engaged. The movie was creating the feels, but once Buzz got back and Zurg was there, and Buzz was with his rag tag group of rangers, my emotions never really heightened again. Not to say it was bad, but it lost some of its emotional pull from the beginning.
This movie also gives off serios 2001 A Space Odyssey vibes. They have a computer system that talks in a robotic voice and gives suggestions. It was basically a different version of Hal, but not quite as evil. My favorite reference was not to any movies at all, but to early video game players. When Buzz is trying to test the crystal the first time, the navigation system is malfunctioning, and he says something along the lines of with these cartridges, sometimes you have to pull them out and blow on them. He proceeds to do so. It was just like with Nintendo 64 games and Super Nintendo games. To make a more contemporary reference, this movie reminded me of the new Top Gun at times. There is a copious amount of time in this movie where Buzz is in the cockpit, and just like in the beginning of Top Gun, when Maverick is trying to get to get to Mach 10, Buzz is trying to get to 100% of lightspeed without his fuel source becoming unstable. If they mashed up these two scenes together, it would look very similar.
The best part of this movie by far was Sox. When Buzz returned to the planet for the first time, and he found out he had been gone for four years, Alisha left him a robot cat named Sox. An orange feline with white paws. It was an emotional support animal, and it was adorable. Sox also was the main source of comedic relief, thus doing an excellent job of being an emotional support animal. Buzz and Sox are the best tandem in the film by far. This also brought up the theme of the movie of needing people around you. This took it in a more mental health space. Initially Buzz is against talking to Sox, but they become close, and he caves, and although there is not a scene where Buzz pours out his heart to Sox, the robot cat definitely did his job in helping Buzz emotionally.
I saved the spoilers for the end. In the movie, we find out that Zurg is Buzz from the future. Again they try to explain the whole time travel thing, where when travelling at lightspeed, you somehow get to the future, and apparently there was a split in time, and one version of Buzz just decides to leave and make robots and then come back, and destroy the world that had been built, so that he can go back further in time and prevent the ship from crashing in the first place. It is a lot, and it is hard to explain. Maybe the children will not even think about it, but I could not help but get hung up on this convoluted idea. It also seems like a big character change from this person we know. Although the Buzz in toy story is a toy replica, he is based on the character in the movie, and he would never come back and try to destroy a base of people, and even the Buzz in this movie, although strongheaded at times, would not have done this. So the idea that a Buzz would turn out this hardened and crazed is hard to believe.
There is one thing that I will never forgive Buzz for, and it does give me some pause about him as a person. When he got his sandwich, he only took a bite, and he just left the rest. That is just so wasteful and a totally despicable action. What is worst, is that this is not the only time that this happens. When Buzz gets back from his first mission, he takes out an easy bake meal, and he takes one bite out of it, and then he just leaves the rest of the food there. Again, this is so imprudent, I do not care that it is some form of gelatinous slop, if you open it, you eat it! Back to the sandwich. It is insane to have a sandwich where the meat is on the outside with bread in the middle. That is absolutely a terrible idea, especially for deli meat. Deli meat is so slimy and gross. Bread is a perfect vessel for holding a sandwich together, and if you only have one slice of meat on top and on bottom, then you really are not getting that much meat, you can get more of the good stuff if you use bread. Deli meat is floppy, and it cannot do a good job of holding extras to the sandwich like pickles and tomatoes. Plus if you set down a sandwich where the meat is the bun, the sliminess will pick up all the dirt and dust, and whatever else you set it down upon. It just is not functional. If you can do the physics to travel at light speed, you can do the science that having meat as a bun is awful.
Considering my love for Toy Story, and how great all those films are, I went into this movie with probably overly high expectations, and initially it felt like they were going to pay off, I was totally engaged and ready for the adventure. It did start to fall off some after the initial surge, but it was not a big drop off, and it was by no means bad. It is a far cry form Toy Story, which is about making relationships and the importance of family, but you cannot get to the family aspect, before you realize that as an individual, you cannot make it. So as an individual you must learn the importance of family, and that does not necessarily mean the family you are genetically made of, it could be the family that is found along the way, both work. I would recommend going to see this movie. Some say that it should have been the Pixar movie that should have been released on Disney+, but I disagree. I think this movie would be better on the big screen. It is cool to see Buzz say some of the lines we know from Toy Story in action/where they come from, but it also great to see something new, and some incredible space landscapes. I give this movie 4 stars. It was originally 3.5 stars, but I saw it twice over the weekend, and I ended up liking it more the second time!
Postscript: So I just did my weekly research of looking at the box office numbers, and I was stunned. Jurassic World Dominion beat out Lightyear. That is a crime. Dominion was a trash movie, and it felt like an eternity passed while watching it. The CGI was terrible, and I think seeing it on the big screen made the CGI look worst! I blame parents mostly, but Disney has a hand in this too. Parents know that they can just wait for the movie to come onto streaming, and this way they will not have to pay the extravagant movie prices. This makes Disney the enabler of all of this. They put multiple Pixar movies out straight to streaming, and the movies that did not go straight to streaming made it their quickly. I do not have the actual numbers, but I cannot imagine that Disney is making more money by losing out at the box office. There is no reason why this should not have been a $100,000,000+ movie on opening weekend. They got third in the dailies yesterday behind Top Gun Maverick, which came out like a month ago. Just terrible. Be better people! Support Buzz!
Other movies this week:
Spiderhead: Some scientists try out a medicine that can change a person’s chemical make-up and how they think, but they are testing the drugs on prisoners, who really cannot say no.
Brian and Charles: A faux documentary about Brian, an inventor, who makes a robot. The robot quickly goes through the stages of development, but a bully in the town kidnaps the root, and Brian must learn to stand up for himself.
New Rankings:
Lightyear: 4 Stars
Brian and Charles: 3 Stars Spiderhead: 2.5 Stars
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