Pixar is Making A Buzz Lightyear Film
By: Connor Jim Andrei
Tags: Film, Pixar, Disney, Movies

Pixar is Making A Buzz Lightyear Film

Image: Disney/Pixar

In an exhausting slew of project announcements from Disney, we recently learned that Buzz Lightyear is getting his own stand alone Pixar film. It’s been named in the fashion of most Disney/Pixar films these days, one word: Lightyear. A very meme-worthy Chris Evans moment let us know that it is not actually about the toy, but rather about a real person that the toy is based on. I have a lot of thoughts about this news. No, not about Buzz Lightyear being a thirst trap (eww). This just isn’t the information I need about the Buzz Lightyear toy.

What do you mean “the human Buzz Lightyear the toys are based on”?

Granted, we’ve only seen a teaser so this is a bit nit-picky. Feel free to disagree with me (and leave your disagreement in the comments because no one ever comments on my articles and I’m feeling pretty down about it). Why is the Buzz Lightyear toy based on a real person? Why not on a TV show or movie?

Growing up, most of my toys were based on Star Wars. You know, the movies that aren’t actually based on real life. The more I think about the basic premise of this film the weirder this feels. I’m not against it. I’m just curious.

Is he a Space Ranger? Does Toy Story exist in a universe where some white guy with a Jay Leno chin fights an evil Emperor named Zurg? In Wall-E, could the humans have just gone to claw-machine alien planet and ruined a new world instead learning about recycling from an adorable trash bot?

Or, more hilariously, was Buzz Lightyear just some regular astronaut who sold his story rights to Disney because he was terrible at managing his NASA money? Maybe he blew his pension on blackjack and the only way he could support himself was by selling his life story to a greedy company who changed pretty much every detail of his entire life so they could make a cartoon and a bunch of toys (toys that are programmed by a mad scientist to take over the world — more on that in a second). God, I really hope that’s the plot.

Why are all the space toys like that?

In the Toy Story franchise, all the toys know that they are toys. They get it. Rex knows he’s from a subsidiary of Mattel even. They know that they’re toys and they know to stop moving around and talking when people show up (so as to not terrify literally everyone — just that kid they hate). That’s how toys work in the movies (and also in real life, obviously).

The first Toy Story film revolves around how Buzz doesn’t know he’s a toy. Which is weird. Presumably none of Andy’s toys have ever encountered a toy that doesn’t know it’s a toy. If it were common, they’d have some sort of protocol other than “angry, jealous cowboy tries to kill him while everyone else just humors him”. Despite believing that he is, in fact, the real-life, voiced by Chris Evans space ranger, Buzz still knows to freeze and be played with.

Why? It’s not just Buzz either — the toy aliens from the claw machine suffer from this delusion as well. So does the Zurg toy and the other Buzz from Toy Story 2, and in Toy Story 3 Buzz gets reset to “evil” and maybe forgets he’s a toy. Word is out on whether Spanish language Buzz knows he’s a toy or not. Honestly, that whole plot line was a mess. But this tells us that “100% believes he is an actual Space Ranger” is the default setting on a Buzz toy.

So, all the space toys that we encounter are suffering from the delusion of reality while still instinctively doing the thing that toys have to do to avoid all-out war with the terrified Sids of the world. Why do they do this? Why is it just the space toys? What isn’t Pixar telling us? Why are they making a movie about the “human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on” instead of about the crazy mad scientist who is programming these toys?

Buzz Lightyear is a bad character

Look, I know a lot of people like Toy Story. I do too. But let’s be honest here — Buzz is not a compelling character. He is in the first movie, of course, but then Pixar doesn’t know what to do with him.

In Toy Story 2 they bring in a new Buzz toy who doesn’t know that he’s a toy. It returns Buzz to the original character dynamic, to an extent. Toy Story 3 sort of does the same thing, as mentioned above, reprogramming Buzz to not have his memories of what he’s doing here and why. And then we have Toy Story 4. They didn’t do any of that in Toy Story 4. They just turned him into an idiot.

Maybe Lightyear is being made because Pixar finally figured out a new angle for the character. I hope that’s true, but I really don’t have high hopes about this. I’d rather that they make… any other movie, to be honest. If you disagree, that’s fine. Come at me in the comments. Or share this article with your commentary about how I’m dumb. Please? I don’t get enough views.

Buzz Lightyear is not a thirst trap

Stop putting that image in my head. He reminds of Jay Leno and all these “thirsty for Buzz” tweets are giving me nightmares. I don’t have the money for all the therapy I need to unpack this mental image (but you could share my articles so that maybe I can afford therapy, just saying).