Pixar’s newest feature film, Lightyear, has finally released exclusively in movie theaters, and I got the chance to see it opening night. And being the huge Pixar fan that I am, I of course had to right an extensive review on the movie. Is it any good? How does it compare in Pixar’s library? And, most importantly, does it live up to the Toy Story series? Here is my ultimate Lightyear review. SPOILER WARNING!!!! PLOT POINTS WILL BE REVEALED!
GENERAL THOUGHTS
Honestly, I was a little disappointed after my first watch of Lightyear. It wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped it to be. If you saw my Twitter post (@RyansFortress) after watching, you’ll see that I didn’t love the movie.
I didn’t hate the movie, in fact it was a fun adventure to watch. But it just wasn’t great at pulling me in and making me feel for the characters, which did seem a little disappoointing.
STORY
I was pretty disappointed in the story of Lightyear. It wasn’t very intriguing and it didn’t pull me in or make me feel for the characters. I also didn’t love how the moral was presented. The story seemed like it was dry and similar to other movies. It didn’t bring me in like any other Pixar movie, where I feel like I’m in the story as well. It just didn’t seem like an interesting enough story to reel me in.
CAST
This is where things get a little weird. Instead of Tim Allen, Pixar had hired Chris Evans to voice Buzz Lightyear. While it isn’t super weird, it is a little. If you are a huge Toy Story fan and love them very dearly, you may think that hearing Evans instead of Allen is definitely strange. I kept thinking I was watching a Marvel movie, not a Toy Story spinoff movie. Next is Taiki Watiti, the last voice actor I want to discuss. While I think Taiki Watiti is definitely a funny actor after seeing Thor: Ragnarok and Free Guy, but I didn’t like his character in Lightyear. It’s not just that the character was modeled to look like Watiti a little, it’s just that he isn’t very fun. Even though his gag with the pen is a little funny, the bit just keeps going and makes the gag not funny anymore. I really didn’t like Watiti in this movie.
STORY ELEMENTS
I did find some plot holes after my first watch. The main one I found was at the end when the robot was about to attack Buzz and his team but the captain shoots the back of its head. If I remember correctly (and if I am wrong let me know) the team said that by destroying the Zurg ship, the robots on the perimeter would be destroyed as well as the robots would all be destroyed. Anywhere. So not this one? Plus, I didn’t like what they did with Zurg himself. In Toy Story 2, when we first meet Zurg, he is supposed to be Buzz’s father, created in a funny way that references Star Wars. But no, in this movie he is a different version of Buzz if he did something different (sorry, I can’t remember what he did). But this itself confused me of how this works — and even getting it explained to me, I’m still confused.
Overall, Lightyear is a decent action-packed, science-fiction adventure, and it was fun to watch, despite not actually pulling me into the story. While I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it, and didn’t think it lived up to any of the Toy Story films.
I give Lightyear a 68% and put at #23 on my 26 Pixar Movie Ranking.