Inside My Brain: June 2022

Monday, June 20, 2022

'Lightyear' Review

I wasn't going to write much more than an "I Loved It", for this one... but as I'm still typing an hour later, I guess I had some feelings:

The internet seems very confused about what this movie is or what this movie should be...

It's the movie Andy saw in 1995 that made him want a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday.

It's the movie the 2000s animated prequel series 'Buzz Lightyear of Star Command' was spun-off from.

'Lightyear' is Andy's 'A New Hope'; and it does a wonderful job of being just that.

If Toy Story 4 is the ending of Woody's story, it's only fitting to finally see the beginning of Buzz's...

But don't go in expecting 'Toy Story' references; Andy and Woody don't appear, and it's much better for the movie that they don't.

If you're familiar with the 'Toy Story' movies you'll recognize the many "mirrored" shots of previous Buzz moments from the franchise, but aside from a few repeated lines of dialogue there's not much connection to previous films.

Chris Evans is a fantastic Buzz, there's some heavy acting here that I'm not sure Tim Allen's Lightyear could have pulled off, so having Evans in the role was an excellent choice.

The other characters are fun to spend time with; Izzy (Keke Palmer), Sox (Peter Sohn), Mo (Taika Waititi), and Darby (Dale Soules) illustrate once again that Pixar does ensembles better than anyone.

The internet has created all kinds of drama around this movie, and though that might have hurt attendance on opening weekend, I don't think that will last long, especially when it moves over to Disney+ in a few months...

Interpret any way you want of course, but despite what Twitter would have you believe: this movie is not political, it's not "woke"...

It's the movie that a six-year-old fell in love with 26 years ago, that we all FINALLY get to fall in love with now.

To Infinity.

More soon,

Avery