“Lightyear” has landed … on VOD and Disney+.
This Pixar movie retells Andy’s 1995 love story about Buzz Lightyear. The cartoon-y look of this action figure is likely to be a Saturday cartoon spin-off. “Lightyear”It’s a wild ride. This Buzz version (now voiced and narrated by Chris Evans) attempts to save a group of colonists from hostile planets. Their ship crashed into a wall, their fuel cell was damaged, and they are forced to abandon ship. It combines hard sci-fi and the emotionality that you would expect from Pixar movies. Although it may have been overlooked in theaters, it can be loved by many.
As with all Pixar movies, “Lightyear”undergoing major revisions on the way up to its final version. These are some versions “Lightyear” that you’ll never see, with commentary from co-writer/director Angus MacLane and producer Gayln Susman. (We used the fantastic “Art of Lightyear,”Source: Chronicle Books Also, we recommend you to check out the deleted scenes portion of the digital version of “Lightyear” too.) Susman mentioned this at one point in our conversation. “Trust me, you saw the best version of the movie. This was not that.”
Spoilers are next “Lightyear.”
The Version with an Additional Team Member
Eventually Buzz and his robot cat companion Sox (Peter Sohn) joins forces with some, let’s call them, InexperiencedSoldiers who are on a mission to track the enemy when Zurg invades. By sheer happenstance, this team winds up being the last line of defense, even if they aren’t even trainees yet. This group is known as the Junior ZAP Patrol, because they initially hunted nasty space-bugs but were also woefully unprepared. It includes Izzy Hawthorne and Darby Steel (Dale Soules), and nervous Mo Morrison. (Taika Waititi). However, at one point in “Lightyear’s”Development, there was also a fourth (! The fourth (!) member of the team was added. Meet Cosmo.
“Cosmo had been a boy and at one time been a girl. Cosmo was another character in their group, and for running time reasons, we had to lose a character,”MacLane explained. “We just got into the issue that we can’t fit anymore dialogue into the second act. Also, Cosmo’s character ended up k fighting with Izzy. There are attributes of Cosmo that ultimately got fused into Izzy. Izzy was, at one point, a little bit more like Buzz, hard-nosed, militaristic. And then Cosmo was a little bit more…”
“Young and techy and fan-girly almost,”Susman was also added.
“She was hilarious and it was sad to lose her but we didn’t have enough time to fill it out,”MacLane also added. (You can see Cosmo with all her zany energy in deleted scenes from the digital release.
The loss of Cosmo required the addition of another character: a confused, slow-moving robot that attempts to assist Buzz and ZAP Patrol on their journey to the hostile planet. (This robot returns in one of the movie’s very funny post-credits scenes.)
“When we lost her, we only had two ZAP Patrol members,”MacLane stated. “That’s why we added that robot because we just visually needed the story point of like, These are the toughest group of soldiers you could hope to meet. But yeah, that’s why.”
Buzz and his gang never got to take the robot with them. “The robot was a late edition, which is why the robot doesn’t go on the adventure,”MacLane stated. It served a comic purpose, at most according to MacLane. “In my mind his name is Derek, and it was funnier to have the toughest looking square robot, not be able to get out of the barn. It’s literally, ‘Oh, that reminds me.’ Then just him going back to doing the thing.”
Derek is truly a hero. We’d follow him anywhere.
The Version with Multiple Soxes (Soxes)
During Buzz’s quest to find a workable solution off the planet, he goes on a series of daring test runs, attempting to figure out if the highly unpredictable fuel will be viable. This is the combination of “Top Gun: Maverick”Buzz is a combination of thrills and somber grace notes. Every time he attempts to escape the planet, he ages in minutes, while his friends live years. Imagine the Kick-ass version. “Married Life”Montage starting from “Up.”
This section of the movie also introduces us to the movie’s breakout star: the talking robot cat Sox.
Buzz’s emotional support animal, Sox, is Sox. He can help him transition back into everyday life after his stressful, possibly psychologically draining, time in space. He was originally a monkey during development. This is a riff of the early space pioneers. This was wisely modified. Apes can be hard to love! Sohn, a Pixar veteran who will be directing the next Pixar feature, says so. “Elemental”Sox opens next year. Sox is easygoing and extremely endearing. At one time, there were many more.
In an animated version of the movie Buzz received a new Sox every time he returned to Star Command after one of his test flights. He soon had a small army full of cuddly creatures. And while this might have gone a long way in creating a super merchandisable character (collect them all, now at Target), it didn’t serve the story in any profound way and was jettisoned into the cold void of space.
One extra Sox made it into the final version: Buzz meets an older version of himself in the alternate universe. He also meets another version of his Sox when he confronts him. This Sox has been severely damaged and is almost like the Terminator. He also has a glowing red-eyed eye. They have not yet made toys from this Sox.
The Version where Zurg Had Dogs
As Sox would become the sidekick of our hero’s, there was a time when vicious looking robotic dogs performed the bidding of James Brolin (Zurg). They even followed Buzz around after his last (successful!) hyperspace run.
“There were dog robots, yes,”Susman confirmed.
“Originally, when Buzz came to the planet, there was a scene where he crashed. This is before Sox was on the planet. Sox used to stay behind and so Buzz went to the future. The first place he went was back to his apartment and Sox was there, and dusty, and waiting for him. That kind of thing. But there was a whole scene where robot dogs chased Buzz,”MacLane explained.
The scene contained an additional element that was missing from the final. “Lightyear:” Buzz’s talking suitcase.
“He had this suitcase that would talk to him like Ivan,” MacLane said, referring to the onboard navigational computer that Buzz can’t stand.
“That sounds really awful as he’s mentioning it,” Susman interjected.
“No, it was awesome,”MacLane kept going. “He would go, ‘Oh, you have selected a flare gun. Excellent choice.’ That kind of thing. So the suitcase would offer a color commentary about what items would be selected from the emergency kit.”
I said it when we initially chatted and I’ll say it again now: I am very into the suitcase character. (There’s a throwaway reference to the suitcase robot in one of the deleted scenes on the digital release.) How about Susman. “No. Not so much,”She spoke.
The Version Where Buzz’s Dad Was the MacGuffin
One of the most contentious aspects about “Lightyear” was the fact that Zurg turns out to be an alternate version of Buzz, instead of Buzz’s father. Your reaction to this joke was probably directly proportional to how outraged and serious you were. “Toy Story 2”(A film MacLane was a young animator on). It turns out that there was also a version of “Lightyear” where Buzz’s dad, named Lawrence Lightyear (a reference to Buzz’s original name being Lunar Larry in the early development stages of the first “Toy Story”), featured prominently.
“We did try Buzz’s father being what Buzz was looking for,”MacLane stated. “At the beginning it was like, Buzz is looking for his dad, and his dad went missing, and then you can imagine where that went. But the whole time the audience is like, ‘Yeah, get to it. I know.’ Because either you’re paying that off [or you’re not].”
During production “Ad Astra,” James Gray’s sci-fi movie where astronaut Brad Pitt goes looking for his father (Tommy Lee Jones), an astronaut that has gone AWOL and is now hiding out with a doomsday device on the far side of the galaxy. “It was very similar,”MacLane stated. You can see tons of material related to this version of the story, including a great scene where Buzz interacts with his dad’s robotic pet, a parrot named Polly, in the deleted scenes section of the digital release.
However, there were also other issues with this storyline. “What you’re actually setting up is, I don’t know if I want to see a dude fight his dad. You know what I mean? I think that there’s a limit for me, what we were finding emotionally,”MacLane stated. Understood.
The Version where Alicia was the Villain
Zurg is revealed as an alternate universe Buzz, and ultimately defeated by our good Buzz. However, there were many other villains that were suggested and abandoned, including one truly shocking idea that the creative group explored. This information is not found in official materials so be careful.
“There were versions where the antagonist was different,”MacLane stated. “And there was always the questions of, ‘What do I want to watch? What is satisfying to the audience?’ There was even a version where there was the antagonist ended up being what is now the Alisha character.”
Alisha is Izzy’s grandmother and Buzz’s original Space Ranger partner (she is voiced by “Orange is the New Black” star Uzo Aduba). Buzz is trying to figure out a way to leave the planet. He watches Izzy grow up, marry, and have a family. Buzz only grows a little each time. Their relationship is the heart of the movie. To make her bad, would have thrown audiences off their feet.
“It was surprising, but it was upsetting because you’re like, I don’t want them to be against each other. They’re best friends. I don’t have the energy to deal with that,”MacLane stated. Susman added: “Yeah, that was really dark.”
“Lightyear”You can watch it on Disney+ and VOD now.
