Who Is Buzz Lightyear Really? Okay, he was a toy in the Toy Story saga, but does he have a history of him? To fill this gap (or rather, to create a megaspinoff) has thought the Disney-Pixar with Lightyear – The true story of Buzz, which sees at the center the sympathetic astronaut with a strong jaw and a heart of cream. No, none of the other Toy Story characters appears on the horizon in an Easter egg version (after all, how could it?): The story is that of Buzz, a member of the Space Rangers team and intent on escaping together with his boss Alicia Hawthorne to the world infested with rapacious creatures they are stuck in. To do this, Buzz will have to circumnavigate a planet aboard his spacecraft at supersonic speed. Too bad that every time he tries for him 4 minutes pass but for the rest of his planet 4 years, and that with each failure the gap between his age and that of Alisha increases. To help him will be an unexpected supporting actor: a hi-tech kitten.
Lightyear engages with many themes of dramaturgical relevance: the relationship between time and space, Space as a mysterious entity, the condemnation of the lonely hero to do everything alone versus the need to form a team, the desire to overcome limits. of technology rediscovering an artisan humanity, and so on.
The film refers to a lot of previous and even coeval cinema, from Top Gun – Maverick to Spider-Man – A new universe, but also Gravity, the Manifest series, the Star Wars sagas and Guardians of the galaxy, Jurassic World – The domain, with to whom he shares an Afro-American and gay fighter character, or Up by Pixar itself, from which he steals the intensity concentrated in the friendship of Buzz and Alisha and the facial features – slightly feminine – of one of the characters). But Lightyear also has the wit and creativity to outdo many of these titles in inventiveness, speed and heart.
The casting follows all the directives of inclusiveness and politically correct: black, Hispanic, Asian characters (the cat, in the original dub), homosexuals and elderly people surround the Anglo-Saxon alpha male, moreover subjected to his superior who helps him as a first gesture to get up from the ground. There is also the multi-ethnic comic relief, clearly inspired by that Taika Waititi who lends him the voice in the original, and who knows if the Z on the armor of our hero’s enemy robots is accidental. Fortunately, however, the writers do not forget to give each character a personality and a functional role to the progression of the story, and even if it is all rather mathematical the result remains engaging.
Above all the action scenes at breakneck speed were successful, starting with an initial prologue to the gun cotton, because unlike many smashing blockbusters of the contemporary world, Lightyear never forgets to weave the action with the human side of the story, and to develop in kinetic form the relationships between the characters.