“Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins,” or “Buzz Lightyear,” as some may call it because that’s how they are familiar with the film, released in 2000, is not really a sequel to the famous “Toy Story” and the historic “Toy Story 2,” nor does have any of the same characters, in the slightest way, outside of a short opening scene which is only on the home video version. This is a strange time to use in terms to a home video-exclusive release, but obviously, the sneaky thing about this movie – as its 69-minute runtime should be enough to tell you – is that it was the pilot for the “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command” TV show, which premiered some two months after the movie was released. This was the same method that the company had previously used with their first direct-to-video sequel, “The Return of Jafar” (which shares director Tad Stones with this film), but as it may not have been the case there, the “Buzz Lightyear” movie was later made into a three-part episode that was included into the series’ syndicated airing, with two changes: the major one was that Tim Allen, who voiced the protagonist in the “Toy Story” franchise, stayed on for the direct-to-video film, while in the syndicated three-part episode, he was replaced by Patrick Warburton, the character’s regular voice in the series. The smaller, more necessary, and largely more irritating change is that the video version of the story starts with an incredibly strange prologue with several of the characters from “Toy Story,” congregated to watch the brand-new release of a new home video film starring Buzz Lightyear: Rex (Wallace Shawn) is there, and Sarge the green army man (R. Lee Ermey) and Wheezy the penguin (Andrew Stanton). Hamm was originally voiced by John Ratzenberger, the only man to do voicework in every movie produced by Pixar Animation Studios, as he became their lucky charm. He just skipped this moment which shows just how lucky he is.
Brayton said, “he peculiar part is that, of course, the toys are all watching the very movie we are, a fact confirmed when we see the cover- which, I want to point out, is accurate down to the inclusion in its bottom-left corner of the little "Featuring the star of Toy Story" graphic, which suggests that the characters from Toy Story exist in a world where Toy Story the movie also exists, presumably as a documentary.” Obviously, the other strange part is that Buzz Lightyear does not have the star of “Toy Story,” a fact which this little opening wave flags on: it stars the character (fictional within the “Toy Story” universe) was shaped: but Buzz no longer has the illusion that he is a real space ranger, and does not act as if he were. What we are going to watch is not a story about a character we know at all, and the whole thing is a shameful amount of lies.
Anyway, Woody puts in the VHS tape, and as strange is it looks today, we’re about to watch for the next hour a shameful lying Buzz doppelganger.
Inevitably, the main course of “Buzz Lightyear” is very pilot-like: set up all the new characters that the greatest of all space rangers, Buzz Lightyear, will be meeting with over the course of the next (hopefully) 65 minutes, which giving a look for the type of adventures he’ll be having. They are very engaging adventures, mostly giving chances for Buzz to shoot his laser at armies of things or individual things as frequently as he can. Brayton admitted, “it reminded me to an unexpected degree of the cartoon shows from my own childhood, which were about as arbitrary and driven to find excuses for pitched battles at least once per 8-minute act, and I do not know whether to bemoan the fact that children's television did not evolve more in the 15 years separating Buzz Lightyear from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, or to celebrate Buzz Lightyear for so wonderfully capturing the banality of TV shows meant to sell toys to children (for in-universe, that's exactly what it is; and in our universe as well, I fear), and proclaim it a satire. I mean, obviously, I know which of those to do, because the possibility that this is a satire is one my overheated brain cooked up just to deal with the fact of what I was watching.”
Brayton continued, “I do not spend any time covering the plot, because there isn't one; there's a scenario, which is that Buzz must stop Evil Emperor Zurg (Wayne Knight) - the impression one gets is that "Evil" is part of his address, like "Mister" or "Doctor" - from taking over the universe with a mind-control laser that can work without any concern for distance. But at the micro-level, there's a lot of shouting, then quipping - there is a staggering amount of quipping - and then they rush off to a battle, or rarely, a space battle. It took me about a minute to decide I hated the thing.”
Brayton went on, “And not to keep going back to Toy Story, because, well duh this isn't Toy Story, but those aliens were not, to my recollection (and my recollection where Pixar is concerned is flawless), part of the Buzz Lightyear toy universe, but promotional toys unique to the Pizza Planet restaurant chain.” Unless in an amount of unbelievably convenient cross-promotion, the producers of “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command” and the owners of Pizza Planet made a deal, there’s absolutely no reason for them to show up in this series at all, and plenty of reasons to wish they hadn’t for, they are suddenly made into a strange race of psychic machines given all the worst lines, and frequently given with the worst animation.
Anyway, they are there, and they motivate a huge part of the first two episodes’ worth of story, much that we can use the word “motivated” without getting heated.
We meet everyone essential: Buzz’s old partner, Warp Darkmatter (Diedrich Bader), who dies tragically and will not show up as a villain later, Buzz’s boss, Commander Nebula (Adam Carrolla), the sad, giant red janitor alien Booster (Stephen Furst) who wants to be a space ranger, rookie ranger Mira Nova (Nicole Sullivan), tasked to be Buzz’s new partner despite him not wanting one, mis-programed robot XR (Larry Miller), and obviously Zurg himself, who gets a large amount of screentime making his evil plans, and is hands down the most entertaining character, shown less as, in the words of Brayton, “the ominous, shadowy monster that one might ordinarily predict, and more of a kid with way too much sugar in his system, prone to giddy bursts of weird enthusiasm, and all of the silliest lines of dialogue in the picture (not the same as the quips, though he gets his share).” In fact, there’s a lot of silliness in “Buzz Lightyear,” which is just about the only thing that saves it from being a completely dull, useless film, mainly since it increases so much in each episode. Brayton admitted, “not having seen the show, I'd like to imagine that this trend continues, and by the end of the series run it was just 22 straight minutes of pie fights.”
Visually, the film looks like exactly what it is: a cheap piece of TV animation made in Hong Kong with a little help from Disney’s Tokyo studio. Occasionally, it goes beyond real visual inspiration, but this does not happen often enough to make a huge deal of it.
Mostly, it’s just typically brightly colored, low on detail, and light on top-notch drawing, with every character given about three or four expressions that aren’t that interesting to begin with, and indicate a really limited range of emotions, though since the script itself only calls on, maybe, two emotions per character to begin with, this is less of a limitation than it is a by-product of storytelling that doesn’t aspire to anything more complicated than simple lines of bravery, disobedience, and grinning sarcasm.
Criticizing “Buzz Lightyear” for being this way seems silly, however, since artistry was never even part of the talk: even by the standards of direct-to-video Disney films, this film was light on integrity of any kind, meanly mainly to work at the surprisingly low-quality level of afternoon TV animation. If ever Disney attached its name to completely mindless entertainment, it was with this film. Since Pixar had its name put on the cover – the fact that Pixar gave even a couple of minutes of animation, which shamefully means this project is mainly viewing for the radical Pixar completist – is embarrassing to that company, who even with “Cars 2” didn’t come within any distance of something this empty and mercenary and dull ever again. One may thing that the relationship between the two companies had fallen apart to such a horrible place by the middle of the 2000s, if this is where Disney was willing and anxious to take the nice resources of the “Toy Story” franchise.
Brayton admitted, “But for me to dislike the thing is almost disingenuous. Of course it's not worth liking; whipping up the energy to dislike it seems entirely disproportionate to how trivial and disposable the product is. Is it fun, diverting entertainment for the kids and (optimistically) tweens it was made for? I am happy to say that I have no reason to know or care. All I know and care about is that it's lazy, vanilla adventure storytelling so inconsequential that it doesn't even register as a slight against a character who deserved, and frequently got, so much better than this.”
Brayton had one note: “in one scene, Buzz takes his glove off, and it freaked me the heck out far out of anything resembling sense, proportion or reason. I do not know if this makes it good filmmaking or bad, but I'm not apt to forget it, any time I watch Toy Story ever again.”
For someone who never watched the show, I’m not sure who might get into this. Although it seems harmless for kids, I don’t know how many adults will get into this. I guess you can see this fine, and it wouldn’t hurt, but it would be up to you. The show must have been good, but I never saw it, so I can’t say for sure.
Look out tomorrow when I review a novel adaptation in “Disney Month 2022.”
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