by Gill Pringle
Voiced by Tim Allen, Buzz won audience hearts with his insistence that he was a real Space Ranger – not just a toy, while the rest of the gang in Andy’s room patiently humoured his fantasies.
Buzz Lightyear was the popular action figure of the day, modeled after an action film hero; quickly surpassing vintage pull-string Sheriff Woody as Andy’s favourite.
Fast forward 21 years, and director Angus MacLane found himself asking: What movie inspired Andy to beg for a fancy action figure with lasers, karate chop action and aerodynamic space wings?
“Lightyear is the movie that Andy, his friends and probably most of the rest of the world saw,” says MacLane, 47.
A sci-fi action adventure and the definitive Buzz Lightyear origin story, Lightyear follows the legendary Space Ranger on an intergalactic adventure.
After co-directing Finding Dory, MacLane makes his solo directorial debut with this Toy Story spinoff, telling FilmInk how his team rebuilt Buzz as a real action hero.
Buzz was always such a popular character. Why did it take so long to get his own film?
“I think it was one of those ideas, that when I pitched it, they had the same reaction like, ‘Why didn’t we do this sooner?’ And then once we figured out this idea, they’re like, ‘Okay, let’s make this movie’, and then that took another chunk of time.”
How did you arrive at the right tone for Lightyear?
“I did a lot of research, breaking down the nature of genre thrillers. I knew Buzz would have to face a big problem, and I liked the sci-fi element of time dilation. There’s a rich history of character-out-of-time heroics: Captain America, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, to name a few.”
But things quickly go wrong for Buzz in the film…
“Yes, we’re witnessing in this movie his first fall from grace. He’s never experienced that before. Life is never what we plan for. It’s not about dwelling on the past and wishing things were different – that seems like a waste of time. But Buzz is obsessed with righting his wrongs.”
What is the relationship with the Toy Story films?
“They’re entirely separate. There is no reference to or acknowledgement of Buzz Lightyear Star Command because in the pantheon of my mind, Andy saw this movie maybe on video cassette, and then the Lightyear TV show happened after that. So, that’s an offshoot of this movie, many times removed. Like, it’s a separate thing and not really connected.”
What were some of the things you were particularly excited to explore in Lightyear?
“Well, for me, I wanted the film to have a sense of excitement and propulsion of the action and sci-fi films of my youth and it was a chance to do a chase scene in an interesting way. I want to have a spaceship battle, like, ‘what are all of the cool things that you would want in that kind of movie?’ So, the goal was to make an amalgam of the kind of movie I wanted to see, but through the lens of Buzz Lightyear, the character. So, the Buzz Lightyear character was a great anchor to allow for an unusual epic that was meant to be first and foremost a movie, and meant to be seen as this straightforward narrative that can be enjoyed by a wide variety of people, but give them a sense of excitement and enjoyment while also having some interesting things to say about how we view our past and our present; how we work with people or choose to do things on our own.”
What are the essential differences between “real Buzz” and Toy Story Buzz?
“The Toy Story Buzz is the actual Buzz Lightyear character, which hasn’t got a ton of moving parts but he starts to change as it goes along and he’s introduced to the concept of him being a toy. He is a caricature two-dimensional character that trades on a lot of kind of weird genre caricatures. So, in making him a main character, we needed to expand the role a bit. We wanted to get to the root of that, and a lot of that was making sure he was really obsessed with duty, with this sense of doing a good job of being a space ranger. He would be fairly humourless and kind of square and would be partnered with somebody that can poke fun at him in the same way that Woody would – which is where we have Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) as his partner. And then we would also have him be a very capable action hero, where you would see the DNA of the Buzz character. So we’d have this more expansive character that would be able to sustain a feature in the sense that you’re taking a side character and making them the main character, which is always the challenge. It was a lot easier than doing Finding Dory, where Dory has a memory loss. Like how can you make that a main character when the main character is forgetting what they want to do? That was the hardest thing ever. So, compared to that, this was easy.”
Let’s talk about the voice casting. Chris Evans is wonderful as Buzz. How did you arrive at the choice of Chris and indeed James Brolin for Zurg?
“Chris was really the choice we wanted for Buzz because we wanted to be separate from Tim Allen in Toy Story, and wanted it to be a different voice and wanting to have it be a little bit more different, like an ’80s action movie. Like who would be starring in that? Who has that kind of gravitas to be a serious action hero, but also have action comedy chops? And that really felt like something Chris had done before but could provide something that was reminiscent, but not be a duplicate. We’re not looking for a repeat event. And as far as Brolin, we wanted Zurg to have this gravelly voice and his voice is so wonderful, and he’s such an amazing performer. I’ve been asked if I cast him because of Josh Brolin? And I didn’t even think of that, I mean we were at the first recording sessions, and he was like, ‘This is cool. I’m the bad guy here and my son. . .’ It hadn’t even occurred to me, that was so weird, the fact that Thanos and Captain America, like that was completely random.”
So, how do you make a story about time travel and also science fiction be more enjoyable for young kids?
“We wanted to put audience members in Buzz’s shoes and have them experience the time trauma with Buzz. The best science fiction films have tangible rules that the audience can get really quickly and they are in here too. So that’s really how we dramatise it by showing a lot of the discovery along with Buzz and at the same time have these definitive tools.”
And Buzz is also a fish out of water character?
“Yes, so we have a story where Buzz would be traveling rapidly through time, because of his job. And because of that, it would separate him from society and his loved ones – just like film production. All joking aside, this felt like a natural fit for Buzz and a well-worn story for the science fiction genre. The idea felt like fertile ground from my our own personal experiences with my job, and the core-defining character trait of Buzz Lightyear. So, Lightyear is a fish out of water story. It’s like a Rip Van Winkle trapped in a future he doesn’t recognise, desperately trying to get back to the past to correct the mistake of his youth. A hero out of his own time.”
Were you able to tap into all the action heroes of your youth in the process?
“Yes, we really worked hard to nerd out and make this the best Buzz Lightyear film we could. We built Buzz’s world out in a way that we’ve always wanted to see it. It’s got everything you’d want in a Buzz Lightyear film. It’s got Buzz, and it’s got some friends, and it has Star Command and spaceships and robots – lots of robots. There’ll be robots trying to kill ya and cyclops robots. We have so many robots, you’re gonna get sick of robots. And just when you get sick of robots, we’re gonna give you one more. And we haven’t even got to the robot cat. We’re gonna give you Zurg. Lightyear is a celebration of movies and sci-fi epics in general, but also inspired by the dark side of nostalgia, and the dangers of living in the past. As a director, it’s the movie I’ve always wanted to make. And as a film goer, it’s the movie I’ve always wanted to see.”
Lightyear is in cinemas June 16, 2022