Weary Lightyear director tries once again to explain how real Lightyear is or isn’t
It's all very clear: The Tim Allen-voiced Buzz Lightyear was based on the Real Ghostbusters version of Lightyear. Simple!
Aux News Lightyear
Lightyear, the new film from Pixar that’s set sort of in the studio’s venerable Toy Story universe, opens with a three-line text crawl that is, essentially, a Hail Mary pass to explain the movie’s whole premise: “In 1995 Andy got a toy. That toy is from his favorite movie. This is that movie.” It’s actually a little marvel of screenwriting ingenuity, apparently supplied by producer Andrew Stanton in an effort to cut off the confusion stemming from a film premise that has only ever been fitfully clear, vis a vis how “real” or “not real” the film is supposed to be in regards to the wider Toy Story world.
And yet! And yet, Uproxx has still posted an interview with the film’s director, Angus MacLane, tonight that re-muddies those intergalactic waters a bit. Helmed by writer Mike Ryan, it is, by Ryan’s own assertion, an incredibly dork article, despite MacLane’s best efforts to note that the whole entire premise was really just an excuse to make “ a cool sci-fi movie.”
Which is all well and good, except MacLane immediately blows the whole conceit of that little title crawl up, revealing that the Buzz doll played by Tim Allen in Toy Story is not based off the movie Lightyear that’s about to be in theaters; it’s actually based on a cartoon based on that film, with MacLane drawing direct comparisons to animated series The Real Ghostbusters. (Is that the animated series Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, which existed in our world? Ryan’s failure to address this question is damning.) We don’t know why MacLane felt moved to note this, but it does force him to grant that Tim Allen, who presumably provided the voice of animated Buzz and its attendant dolls, while the version from Lightyear was played by a time-shifted Chris Evans (see: Avengers: Endgame) might qualify as the Lorenzo Music of the Toy Story universe. Then they talk about Rhoda. It’s a wild interview.
Tragically, at no point does either party address the question that is currently driving us insane: Within the fiction of Lightyear, are the toys also secretly sentient, watching their masters age away and die with every passing year? How does Sox the robot cat fit into this grim synthetic cosmology? Are we real, or just a dream Buzz Lightyear had once? We need to know!
39 Comments
“Is that the animated series Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, which existed in our world? Ryan’s failure to address this question is damning.”…. What the hell else would he be talking about? Especially since he actually DID work on the show (albeit only on the opening parts).
It’s very likely to be a saving throw towards the cartoon’s small, but very loyal, fanbase.
Damn you Warp Darkmatter!
The funniest twist, then, is that Tim Allen didn’t voice Buzz in the cartoon show. So in-universe Tim Allen is really playing the role of a guy standing-in for Patrick Warburton standing-in for Chris Evans
Maybe it’s me, and I’m just hyper-evolved or an idiot-savant in this incredibly specific way, but I really don’t get why people struggle (or pretend to struggle) with this. In the Pixar universe, Buzz Lightyear is a media franchise. This film is a film from that franchise. The toy we meet in the Toy Story movies is from a toy line based on that franchise. It’s perfectly simple.Seriously, I can’t help but imagine people who complain about this gaping in wild confusion at a Batman film, a Batman cartoon and a Batman action figure before screaming “But I don’t understaaaaaaand!”
So… you’re saying… there’s some kind of connection between Glory and Ben?
Wow.
Don’t start that again. Lance Hunt wears glasses. Captain Amazing doesn’t wear glasses.
“He takes them off to fight crime”“That doesn’t make any sense. How would he see?”
Funny you say that about Batman, because WB is notoriously afraid of that very thing. Hence, if a character is in active use in the movies (with a few exceptions) then they’re mostly forbidden from being used in the TV shows, especially live-action ones.
Yeah the Bat-embargo of the late 90’s to…. I dunno mid/late 00’s? Was dumb as hell. But they still were doing that shit a few years ago with the Arrow shows. So I dunno.
They’re still doing it. Batwoman was only allowed to use Pamela Isle for 3 episodes and while it hasn’t been confirmed, it’s likely that the main character of the upcoming Gotham Knights show is a new character because all of Bruce’s other kids are in use by other DC shows.
It seems like when some WB exec FINALLY got around to reading *Flashpoint*, it finally occurred to them that they COULD, in fact, have a TV Flash AND a movie Flash and the self-selecting audience would not, in fact, be confused. Of course, this came AFTER 30+ years of awful decisions.
Now, if they can just re-edit Ezra Miller’s movie so that at the end, Grant Gustin is the ‘new’ DCEU movie Flash, we’ll have two major problems solved.Now if we can just get them to greenlight a *Batman Beyond* film w/ Keaton playing the elderly Bruce Wayne…
Not understanding simple things is being smart and media literate now.
I blame the entire mini-industry of YouTube videos explaining the end of every movie that comes out, whether it’s confusing or not.
I mean, if it wasn’t for this article, I would’ve thought it was just as the title card said – it’s Andy’s favorite movie; there’s not really anything that offers the presupposition that it’s part of a franchise. I think the idea that it’s an established franchise certainly helps clear things up though, because A) it seems rather weird that a young boy’s ‘favorite movie’ would be a slightly more kid-friendly version of Interstellar, and B) the toy he actually gets has a way more retro sci-fi ‘rockets and ray guns’ vibe to it than the movie.
Ultimately, I think a lot of people were expecting some sort of twist where the curtain is pulled back and we’re back in the Toy Story world. It’s admittedly strange territory, doing a sincere movie based on a fictional franchise – on the Batman front, imagine if WB made a Gray Ghost movie and they were like “this was young Bruce Wayne’s favorite TV show.”
Okay but I do want a Gray Ghost movie (rip Adam West)
I would guess plenty of people don’t really get that distinction between Batman toys personally. Like I do because I grew up on BTAS and other Batman shows but my parents would always buy me whatever random Batman (or other superhero) toys they found and claim it was all the same.I do think anyone who cares enough to complain about this point should know enough to understand your points though.
I definitely get it. And also pretty much roll my eyes at the hoops they have to go through to justify their pre-existing ip bullshit at this point.
Buzz Lightyear is physiologically based on Walter Brennan The Searchers who the Malibu Colony gate guard imitates the voice of in the movie The Long Goodbye Earnest Borgnine playing the character Cabbie in the movie Escape from New York who is the boatman on the river Styx in Egyptian Greek Pharonic lore the sword that sticks in the scabbard in the movie Gladiator when they try to murder him in the freezing forest the cab door that won’t open in the New York Taxi luxury Uber livery Town Car hotel luxury apartment building courtesy limo the Lincoln Continental Coach Edition Neiman Marcus Dallas that won’t open in the movie The Bone Collector Ralph Waite Will Geer in the television series The Waltons Nikita Khrushchev Bob Hoskins Enemy at the Gates Bo Peep is Shelley Duvall in the movie The Shining who beats her child to death with a baseball bat in the Overlook Hotel in Florida in the movie The Mean Season is there anything else you’d like help with or is all that horrific enough
I’m reading this article and thinking, “people are struggling with this? Am I a genius?” I feel like I just walked out of the theatre after Inception again.
Overanalyzing things that don’t need to be overanalyzed is the best way to find new things for the internet to be needlessly upset about, and being needlessly upset about something is now a currency. It’s like the spice in Dune.
I think it started with Chris Evans posting immediately his now-famous tweet “clarifying” what the movie is about; I think most people “got” the premise, but that tweet makes the premise sound 5x as sweaty as it really is. Since this idea is an extra step or two removed from sequel or premise or spinoff, this movie has been really easy to mock online. I’m guessing the director is misinterpreting this mockery as genuine confusion, and press outlets like the AVClub are more than happy to keep stirring the pot.
Exactly but also who cares? It’s a movie about Buzz Lightyear but it’s different. Do we need article after article trying to explain it. I think it might be age thing. Toy Story came out when I was 17. It’s a fun movie. I enjoyed it. But I’m not invested in the characters like I think younger millennials and Gen Z are. And Gen Z is use to having franchises that are over thought out and explained. So I think that is why there is this needed to map out exactly where this fits into the Toy Story “canon”. That being said my kids love it and the sequels. My youngest loves Buzz and is super excited about the new movie.
I wonder if he’s making reference to how ‘Ghostbusters’ is, in one sense, based off ‘The Real Ghostbusters’ If so, amazingly deep cut.
Plus there’s the fact that the show was called The Real Ghostbusters because there was a show in the 70s called The Ghost Busters (completely unrelated), which was then adapted into an animated series in 1986 called Ghostbusters, which premiered five days before The Real Ghostbusters. I wonder if The Ghost Busters or Ghostbusters exists in either the Ghostbusters/Real Ghostbusters shared multiverse.
I don’t know, but Larry Storch is still alive, and if he’s at all lucid (he’s 99 years old!), he should get a cameo in whatever Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel Sony is cooking up.
In the Toy Story universe there is a show called “The Real Buzz Lightyear” that has Buzz hanging out with a Gorilla
Even better reference in that story is that in the Disney Owned Lightyear they STILL had to clear the Disney Owned Aliens references with legal! Well, Disney owns Aliens now, so…
Angus MacLane: It turns out when the same company owns the property, you still have to go through legal.
Galyn Susman: Oh yeah.
Angus MacLane: Oh yeah. So the very direct Aliens references in this film were cleared through the legal departments of both Disney and 20th Century Fox.
Why would that be necessary?
Angus MacLane: I don’t know. But boy, was it hilarious to me. I was like, how many hours can you bill having the same company talk to itself? That was pretty exciting.
Galyn Susman: That might actually be why, now that you said it.
Or maybe they have to ask James Cameron or something like that?
Angus MacLane: Yeah. That might be the case.
Yes, the “why” is very simply to figure out if they have to pay anyone involved with Aliens for any references. It always comes down to money. And also, corporate attorneys don’t have billable hours like that; they’re on salary.
So what is the actors name, that Chris Evans is playing? since he is an actor playing Buzz Lightyear, so it’s not Buzz.
Man, this is stupid.
At some point, he just needs to go full Shatner and start screaming “IT’S A MOVIE!!! GET A LIFE!!!!”
Eh, I think the premise behind the movie is stupid. As such, I think Pixar brought the inane questions on themselves.
So, the cops knew that internal affairs was setting them up?
What are you talking about? There’s nothing like that in there.
The trailers and ads make it really clear: “this is the movie Andy saw in 1995!” Which imo really overestimates how much I trust anything that dangass freak has to say.
So what’s the e.t.a. on the ‘actual’ live-action version that Lightyear is based on?
Maybe it’s me, and I’m just hyper-evolved or an idiot-savant in this incredibly specific way, but I really don’t get why people struggle (or pretend to struggle) with this.
No one actually struggles with this. It’s a meme that began with Chris Evans’ Tweet about the “real Buzz Lightyear” that has somehow snowballed to articles that hinge on the idea that audiences are legitimately stupid.
Lightyear, the new film from Pixar that’s set sort of in the studio’s venerable Toy Story universe, opens with a three-line text crawl that is, essentially, a Hail Mary pass to explain the movie’s whole premise: “In 1995 Andy got a toy. That toy is from his favorite movie. This is that movie.”Actually, that’s pretty simple, so it’s more of a “dump-off to your running back in the flat” than it is a “Hail Mary.”