After Buzz crash-lands a colony ship on a hostile alien planet, the daring space pilot becomes obsessed with completing his original mission, reconstructing the technology that would allow the ship to reach hyperspeed and leave the planet behind. (The Toy Story wiki is bitterly conflicted about whether to take this utterance at face value.) In Lightyear, Zurg’s motivations are even more opaque. In the Toy Story movies, Emperor Zurg dresses like Ming the Merciless and sounds like Darth Vader, threatening to destroy the galaxy in the name of ruling it and throwing Buzz off-balance by claiming to be his real father. (It doesn’t hurt that he’s voiced this time by Chris Evans, who even when he’s imitating Tim Allen’s stentorian cadence still has a broader range.) But the movie’s attempt to make Buzz Lightyear a hero worthy of his own adventure eventually strains it to the breaking point, especially when it comes time to reveal the true identify of its antagonist, the mysterious Zurg. (What a state of affairs that that’s even an intelligible sentence.) As befits the idea that we’re watching a human actor rather than a sentient chunk of plastic, Lightyear’s Buzz is a slightly more nuanced creation. This is that movie.” That eccentric setup-this isn’t the origin of Toy Story’s bellicose action figure, but the concept behind him-at least frees the movie from needing to dovetail seamlessly with its source IP. Ĭhris Evans sent the tweet that launched a thousand memes when he tied himself in knots trying to explain the premise of Lightyear, and even after 18 months of Disney/Pixar’s marketing machine preparing the path, the movie still feels the need to open with a recapitulation of its premise: “In 1995, a boy named Andy got a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday.

This post contains spoilers for Pixar’s Lightyear.

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