He… he has hair?…
The first proper trailer for Lightyear, the upcoming eponymous Pixar film about beloved Toy Story character, Buzz Lightyear, has dropped and people are confused, to say the least.
For one thing, he has hair!
Starring Chris Evans who will be taking over from Tim Allen – who voiced the character for more than 26 years – the trailer seems to show the start of a surprising origin story for a character we thought we knew pretty much everything about.
https://twitter.com/PixarsLightyear/status/1453342799168868360?s=20
Back in 2020, Evans himself announced the film and had to respond to fans who were even more confused back then as to how the movie could do an origin story.
A little messy though it may be, the Captain America and MCU star briefed social media last year on the premise that Lightyear is based on the real Buzz that existed within the Toy Story universe. All sounds a bit meta and Inception–esque—’Disneyception’ if you will—but ok.
https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/1337204197641629696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1337204197641629696%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.insider.com%2Fchris-evans-buzz-lightyear-toy-story-spinoff-plot-explained-2020-12
A press release from Disney added more context, introducing the film as a “sci-fi action-adventure [that] presents the definitive origin story of Buzz Lightyear—the hero who inspired the toy—introducing the legendary Space Ranger who would win generations of fans.”
Moreover, director Angus Maclane shed more light on the background too, explaining to Entertainment Weekly that, “In the Toy Story universe, it would be like a movie that maybe Andy would have seen, that would have made him want a Buzz Lightyear figure.”
Nevertheless, upon first glance, most people are understandably confused and social media is currently awash with people learning that the character has a much deeper backstory than they realised.
think of it as the movie in the toy story universe that they made the buzz lightyear toy based off of (or maybe in the toy story universe its a real story…but nah i think its a double layer of a movie in another movie universe)
— Nathan Angel (@GhostGhost39) October 27, 2021
This particular user even went on to show a clip from Toy Story 2 which shows Woody holding up a copy of ‘Star-Command’: the fictional animated series that features the real-life Buzz (in the franchise’s universe), meaning this film is also part of canon.
This isn’t just a spin-off, it’s serious lore and world-building stuff from Pixar:
the star command show is canon as a show in toy story i believe so in that universe that show is probably a spinoff/reimaging of this pic.twitter.com/bGd0Toki8W
— Spoooookathan Angel (@GhostGhost39) October 27, 2021
Beyond that, most people (us included) just can’t get over the fact he has hair; we know that we’ve always seen him wearing that instantly recognisable flight gear underneath the spacesuit itself but it just looks so strange.
I thought he’d be blond
— S-W-C (@CunningSc175420) October 27, 2021
Regardless, one thing we can’t deny is it looks absolutely gorgeous; hard to believe how far animation has come since the first Toy Story blew people away back in 1995.
Lightyear blasts off ‘to infinity and beyond’ Summer 2022 and we can only hope they rinse some Bowie tracks even more than they do in that trailer.
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