Lightyear (2022)
Directed by Angus MacLane
Legendary Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear embarks on an intergalactic adventure alongside a group of ambitious recruits and his robot companion Sox.
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Sci-fi movie buffs will spot the homages to 2001 , Tremors , Alien , Interstellar and The Martian , but ticking off film references isn't enough to make Lightyear enjoyable for adults.
The marooned crew have been stuck for several decades (time moves quickly in the same vein as the ocean planet in Interstellar) and across that time, guided by generational growth, they come to see the planet as a new home.
With its classic science-fiction framework, “Lightyear” borrows from “The Twilight Zone,” “Star Trek,” Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” and others.
Director Angus MacLane and his co-writer Jason Headley then pilfer a concept from Interstellar as Buzz deals with time dilation in his attempts to finish the mission as a Space Ranger should.
Now, we’ve had funny robot sidekicks for yonks; from Lost in Space , Buck Rogers and Star Wars all the way to Interstellar .
Sometimes playing like Starship Troopers 4 Kidz, and at other points like Interstellar crossed with Pixar’s own Up, Lightyear follows the title space ranger (voiced here not by Allen but Evans) as he struggles to find his way back to Earth after becoming marooned on an alien planet with thousands of other scientists during an expedition gone awry.
Given the source material and the hugely popular quartet of "Toy Story" movies (the most recent unwrapped in 2019 ) it was a no-brainer to premiere "Lightyear" theatrically, although quality-wise, it's certainly no better than recent Pixar/Disney animated titles, "Soul" and more recently "Turning Red," which bypassed theaters and went directly to Disney+.
Sci-fi movie buffs will spot the homages to 2001 , Tremors , Alien , Interstellar and The Martian , but ticking off film references isn't enough to make Lightyear enjoyable for adults.
After the trailer debuted the film with stunning animation and First Man : The Animated Film vibes, it immediately jumped to one of my most anticipated films this year.
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While the locations resemble countless other outer space stories with little to set them apart, the execution illustrates how much the medium has advanced in the twenty years since animation went into space with “Titan A.E.,” “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” or “Treasure Planet,” none of which triumphed critically or at the box office.