Contrary to popular belief, Lightyear is not about the toy from Toy Story...well, not exactly. Lightyear, as a film, exists within the world of Toy Story, and the Buzz Lightyear toy (Chris Evans in Lightyear, Tim Allen in Toy Story) is based on this movie. The toy was introduced in 1995 and belonged to Andy, the main human protagonist of the Toy Story films. The title cards of Lightyear inform the audience that this was Andy’s favorite film in 1995. Respectfully, Andy, you might not have great taste in movies.

Lightyear is a science-fiction adventure about Buzz and the Space Rangers. Their goal is to keep the peace in the galaxy and explore unknown planets. When they crash land on the planet T'Kani Prime, Buzz and his captain, Alisha (Uzo Aduba), make plans to get the crew back home. After a year’s worth of work, Buzz takes the first test flight to try to reach hyperspeed.

When the test fails and Buzz lands back on T'Kani Prime, he discovers that while only four minutes passed for him, four years passed on the planet. Buzz keeps testing new planes and losing years of time with his friends. Eventually, he ends up 60 years in the future, where he meets Alisha’s granddaughter, Izzy (Keke Palmer). She informs him that the planet has recently been attacked by robots under the command of a shadowy leader named Zurg (James Brolin).

As is the case with most time travel media, there are aspects of Lightyear that simply do not add up. There’s a large twist toward the end of the movie (it will not be spoiled here) that is extraordinarily half-baked. The usually extremely reliable writers of Pixar have used deus ex machina, by way of an alternate timeline, to wrap up the plot of Lightyear. The twist either needlessly overwrites a character from the original Toy Story or sets up another meaningless in-universe movie. It’s hard to say which outcome is worse, but it seems as though Pixar has taken a page out of Marvel’s book, where post-credit scenes hold more weight than the film itself.

Pixar is known as the studio that can effortlessly tug on the heartstrings of the audience. The opening of Up comes to mind immediately. Lightyear never caused any of those familiar emotions. If the entire audience had dry eyes, it wouldn’t be surprising. The side characters (Taika Waititi and Dale Soules) feel like underwritten rejects from other Pixar films that didn’t make the cut. The one exception is Buzz’s robotic cat, Sox (Peter Sohn). Pixar may have missed with the humans of Lightyear, but they do have a way with plucky animal sidekicks.

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. There was very little in the movie to warrant its existence in the universe of Toy Story. It’s a disappointment that feels especially poignant, given that Toy Story was the film that launched Pixar. Lightyear, along with Toy Story 4, effectively snuffed out the impact of the original trilogy.

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