This story about “Lightyear” first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Pixar’s “Lightyear” is built on a nimble and clever premise: Rather than just another entry in the “Toy Story” franchise, it’s the movie that young Andy saw and became obsessed with the character of Buzz Lightyear (here played by Chris Evans) before the events of the first “Toy Story” movie. As envisioned by co-writer/director Angus MacLane, “Lightyear” is a muscular sci-fi movie (MacLane’s avowed favorite is “Aliens”) that must also exist within the pre-existing framework of the “Toy Story” franchise and the cumbersome mythology that ever existed. has already been established. One of the most delicious thrills of “Lightyear” is watching it collide with myths and gleefully subvert the audience’s preconceived notions.
And nowhere is this tug of war greater than when Buzz comes face to face with Zurg, the movie’s big bad. The giant robotic suit opens to reveal… Buzz. Not this Buzz, mind you, but an older Buzz (voiced by James Brolin) from a different dimension, one where he let his relentless drive corrupt everything else. This, of course, is a departure from “Toy Story” canon, as “Toy Story 2” revealed that Zurg was Buzz’s father, sort of a nod to another pop culture classic (in this case, “Star Wars”). Wars”) that was popular in the movies of the time.
Pixar worked on a version of Lightyear in which Zurg was Buzz’s father, but that idea (which can be seen on the digital release) was dropped because the similarly themed “Ad Astra” was opened while they were in production. “A lot of it comes down to how much value you have as an audience watching a person fight his father,” MacLane said.
Instead, MacLane used the sequence (and the idea of an evil time-traveling Buzz) to zero in on one of the larger themes of “Lightyear.” “One of the things the movie dances around is how nostalgia can poison us into repeating ourselves or falling into the same routine over and over again,” MacLane said. “And be convinced that if we look back, the solutions we had in the past were better than the present we have.” Plus, he said, the idea of multiple Buzz Lightyears is something that is inherently “Toy Story.” “I wanted to have echoes,” MacLane said.
As for the look of the scene, MacLane and his collaborators had some surprising inspirations. “Lighting-wise, it’s heavily influenced by ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ when Dreyfus enters the mothership,” MacLane said, adding that there’s also a fair amount of Japanese anime influence. During what he said was his “first week at Pixar,” MacLane was one of Zurg’s main designers when the character was first revealed in “Toy Story 2,” so like Buzz, he was able to travel back and try a new solution “The super robot of the 70s influenced the original Zurg,” said MacLane. “In the reinvention, it would be a more real robot.”
Old Buzz’s look was a completely different model, inspired in part by the Evil Queen’s transformation into the old woman in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and Julian Glover drinking from the wrong cup in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” “I would imagine that his dogged determination to accomplish the mission would cause him to stop eating,” MacLane said. “Still recognizable (as) the hero, but (with) a fragility. The years of obsession had driven him crazy.
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