Lightyear

In 1995, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine released “The Visitor,” now considered one of the best episodes of the series. In it, an engine room accident causes Captain Benjamin Sisko to become unmoored in time, resulting in his son’s heartbreaking, lifelong quest to rescue a father he can only see for minutes every few years. This episode bears a striking similarity to the main plot of Lightyear, the sequel (of a sort) to Pixar’s Toy Story franchise. At times both wildly inventive and painfully rote, Lightyear only manages to be a pale imitation of shows like Deep Space Nine and its ilk.

An opening title card teaches us that Lightyear – the Lightyear we are about to see – is the favorite movie of Toy Story’s Andy. Buzz Lightyear (Evans) is a decorated Space Ranger in charge of an important mission: to bring a population of terraformers safely to their new home on a distant planet. But when the ship crashes on an uncharted world, Buzz and his commanding officer Alisha Hawthorne (Aduba) work tirelessly to rebuild their faster-than-light travel. And when these experiments accidentally dump Buzz into the near-future, where Hawthorne’s granddaughter Izzy (Palmer) leads a colonist rebellion against an invading extraplanetary force, Buzz must decide where the true heart of a Space Ranger lies.

As a studio, Pixar is synonymous with many onscreen elements – heart-wrenching montages and iconic supporting characters chief among them – but their biggest strength has always been their depth of storytelling. Pixar films are a master class in tone. Each film combines grownup concepts with childlike wonder to create movies that evolve alongside us as we grow older. But Lightyear is a unique miss in Pixar’s catalog, a film that neither commits to its sci-fi imagination nor tries to find authentic moments for kids. Some of the magic is still on display – Sox (Sohn), Buzz’s feline android companion, is an absolute delight – but there’s a disconnect in the storytelling that defies the studio’s track record.

Part of the problem is with the supporting cast. Taika Waititi proves himself once more incapable of showing up for a narrative he did not have a direct hand in creating, and the found-family message that is such a core strength of Pixar movies flails aimlessly in the background. This is a shame, especially since Lightyear is often a wonder of animation and production design. From the Ridley Scott-esque opening DOS crawl to the fantastical creature and robot designs, Lightyear is an unabashed attempt at classic space opera, and the visuals of the film are often the movie’s biggest strengths. Throw in a score from Michael Giacchino – the only composer Hollywood knows by name these days – and the recipe for success is tantalizingly close.

But whatever magic Lightyear musters onscreen is undermined by the unfulfilled potential of the narrative. The true nature of Emperor Zurg deserved better than the film gave it, and for every big idea introduced, the narrative retreats into undeserved platitudes about collaboration and trust. It is wild that Lightyear should find itself in common thematic territory with a science-fiction classic like Deep Space Nine and botch the landing so thoroughly. Pixar is not usually one to fall short when it reaches for the stars.