4 / 10
Official trailer
Lightyear is the Pixar feature framed as the in-universe movie that made Andy from Toy Story want a Buzz Lightyear action figure. Angus MacLane directed. MacLane and Jason Headley wrote. Chris Evans voices Buzz Lightyear in this version of the character. Tim Allen, who voiced Buzz in all previous Pixar releases, wasn’t invited back. Keke Palmer voices Izzy Hawthorne, a young recruit who turns out to be the granddaughter of Buzz’s commanding officer. Peter Sohn voices Sox, a robot therapy cat assigned to help Buzz. James Brolin voices Zurg.
The plot follows Buzz stranded on a hostile planet, attempting hyperspace tests to get the colony home, and the time dilation that ages everyone he knows while he stays the same.
Lightyear left me cold, and it’s a bigger disappointment than a plain bad movie would be, because every so often you can see the Pixar film it should have been. The Buzz on screen is stiff and humorless, the story keeps telling him he’s the problem, and the only stretches where I felt anything were the hyperspace test flight and Sox’s scenes.
The film made approximately two hundred and twenty-six million dollars worldwide on a two hundred million dollar budget. After marketing, the film was a major commercial disappointment for Pixar. The reviews were mixed. The film is one of Pixar’s most public commercial failures and the moment Disney+ release patterns and Disney corporate creative interventions visibly destabilized Pixar’s brand.
What Made It a Woke Disaster
Two specific decisions made this a woke disaster instead of a Pixar misfire. The first was the Tim Allen replacement. Allen had voiced Buzz across all four Toy Story films and the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command animated series. He was the voice of the character. Allen wasn’t asked to reprise the role for Lightyear. The studio’s stated reason was that Chris Evans gave the production “the leading-man energy” the film needed. Allen’s public political profile (conservative, vocal about it) wasn’t stated as a reason.
Disney employees and industry observers identified it as the reason throughout the production. The replacement read as a political decision dressed as a creative one.
Whatever the reason for the switch, I missed Tim Allen’s Buzz the whole way through. Evans does what he can with a character the script won’t let be funny, but Allen’s voice was half of who Buzz is, and the film never fills the hole.
The second was the same-sex kiss controversy. The film contained a brief scene in which Izzy’s commanding officer grandmother kisses her female partner. The kiss was originally cut from the film during production. Pixar employees protested. Disney corporate’s response was the public “Don’t Say Gay” Florida legislative fight in early 2022. Disney leadership pledged opposition to the legislation.
The Lightyear kiss was reinstated. The reinstatement was announced publicly. The scene became a test case for whether American audiences would accept same-sex content in a Pixar film marketed to families.
The kiss wasn’t the problem. The framing was the problem. The kiss became the public discussion of the film weeks before release. Families who had concerns about animated content felt their hesitation framed as bigotry. Families who had no concerns felt the film was using a brief moment to make a political statement instead of to tell a story. The film’s marketing position turned a thirty-second scene into the central conversation about the work. The actual film, which had different and larger problems, became impossible to evaluate without the kiss as the lens.
For Writers
A production that becomes a public statement about a culture-war fight stops being evaluated as the work it is. Lightyear’s same-sex kiss controversy turned the film into a referendum on Disney’s politics. The film’s actual craft problems went undiagnosed because the public conversation was elsewhere. The lesson is that production decisions which generate political controversy generate political evaluation. The work then exists primarily in relation to the controversy. If you want the work judged on its own terms, the work can’t be the front line of a political fight.
The Replacement Narrative
The script structures the film’s plot as a passing-of-the-torch story.
Buzz spends the runtime trying to be the hero he was raised to be. Izzy Hawthorne (younger, female, Black, a Pixar replacement for the white male character at the center of the franchise) turns out to be the better protagonist for the kind of mission the script wants to run. Buzz learns that his lone-hero instincts are wrong. He learns to work with the team. Izzy emerges as the actual lead by the third act. Buzz becomes the legacy figure handing off to her.
The structure is the same replacement narrative The Last Jedi ran with Poe, the same narrative MIB International ran with Tessa Thompson, the same narrative Charlie’s Angels 2019 ran with its three leads. The legacy white male protagonist learns that his instincts are wrong, defers to the new generation, and accepts the role of stepping aside. The audience that came to a Buzz Lightyear film to see Buzz Lightyear be Buzz Lightyear received a film about Buzz Lightyear learning that being Buzz Lightyear is the problem.
Buzz Lightyear’s whole appeal is that he’s a confident, slightly ridiculous hero, and the story’s worst habit is that it starts teaching him lessons before it ever lets him be one.
For Writers
When a franchise repeatedly tells the same replacement story across different properties, the audience identifies the pattern. Lightyear’s replacement narrative came after audiences had already seen the same arc in multiple Disney-era projects. The lesson is that recurring structural choices across a studio’s output read as policy instead of as story. Audiences pattern-match. If every legacy hero in your slate is learning to defer to a replacement, the audience reads the slate’s politics instead of the individual stories. Pick a structural template that the rest of your output isn’t also running.
The Sox Distraction
Peter Sohn’s Sox, the robot therapy cat, is the film’s marketing-focused merchandise character and the only element of the film that audiences responded to with widespread affection. The character is well-designed.
The deadpan voice work is well-calibrated. The marketing wisely featured Sox heavily because Sox was the part of the film least entangled in the political conversation. Children responded to Sox. Plush toys sold. The character had a life beyond the controversy.
Sox’s success also tells you what Pixar could still do. The Sox character is built on the studio’s traditional strengths. It’s a vivid creature with its own voice and a clear bond with the protagonist. The Sox sequences are the film’s strongest individual passages. The contrast between the Sox material and the surrounding narrative work tells you that Pixar still had the craft to make a charming character but had lost the craft of building a charming film around one.
Sox is the one character I’d take home. I laughed every time that deadpan little robot opened its mouth, and I think Sohn’s timing is the funniest thing in the film by a wide margin.
For Writers
A character that works inside a film that doesn’t signals preserved craft inside damaged storytelling. Lightyear’s Sox shows the studio could still make characters. The film around Sox shows the studio could no longer build film-length structures around them. The lesson is that craft preservation at the character level doesn’t guarantee craft at the structural level. Both have to work for the film to work. A great character in a weak film is an audience disappointment shaped exactly like a great character.
Craft Note
The hyperspace test sequence is the film’s most accomplished individual passage. Buzz launches on an experimental flight that takes about four minutes of his subjective time. He returns to find that decades have passed for the colony. The sequence stages the time dilation through a single tracking shot across the airfield as Buzz watches his commanding officer age, marry, and die. The passage is real craft and shows what the production could do with material that didn’t have to carry an ideological position. The hyperspace sequence is the film’s best argument for itself.
Should you skip Lightyear?
4/10. A Pixar film whose production decisions and structural template made it the studio’s most public commercial failure. Sox and the hyperspace test sequence are the only stretches where I could feel the old Pixar, and they can’t carry a flat, lecturing space adventure that forgot to make its own hero fun. That’s the choice I hold against the people who made it. Watch the four Toy Story films instead.
