“Buzz Lightyear” – The Story of the Legendary Ranger Coming to DVD on September 12!

Disney and Pixar present the Buzz Lightyear animation – an extraordinary story of the hero who inspired the creation of the legendary toy. Go to the skies with the Space Ranger, a group of ambitious recruits and the cat robot Kotex, and experience an intergalactic adventure! The movie will be released on DVD on September 12th.

 

We all like to watch a good hero – someone to admire and cheer on. The heroes we love overcome insurmountable obstacles to save the world, and the best of them, those who are still alive long after their films hit the big screen, are the heroes who are deep down the most human. They have their faults and digest their fears, which is why we can fully identify with them, even when they eventually rise to heights of greatness.

Buzz Lightyear is just such a hero – in fact, it is the big screen phenomenon that inspired the toy line. This is what the filmmakers wanted to achieve by creating the character for the movie Toy Story produced by Pixar Animation Studios in 1995. In this story, the Buzz Lightyear toy came into the spotlight as a brand new, highly coveted gadget that won the competition with the wind-up sheriff – Skinny – for being Andy’s favorite mascot. More than 20 years have passed and the director Angus MacLane, a creator associated with the world of Toy Story for years , author of short films Toy Story : Toy Story: Horrorhe asked himself: what movie could have made Andy want a fantastic figure with lasers, a karate punch and aerodynamic space wings?

“Buzz Lightyear” is a movie that Andy, his friends and probably most of the world saw, says the director. – I wanted to do something that would faithfully reflect the atmosphere of these light, high-budget, popular films.

The plot of the film is therefore the result of a long reflection and analysis of the genre cinema of that period.

“Buzz Lightyear” is a sensational science-fiction film about intergalactic adventures and the origin of Buzz Lightyear. I’ve been doing a long research analyzing the nature of genre thrillers, says MacLane. – I knew Buzz was going to have to face a serious problem and I liked the science-fiction element of time dilation. There are many films about heroes outside of their time: Captain America, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers – these are just some of them.

As producer Galyn Susman admits, Buzz Lightyear has given filmmakers ample opportunities:

Ever since we met this character, Buzz has had an innate interesting inclination to see the world in a unique way. His version of reality is never the same as the others, and there is something very funny about it. She’s an inspirational character, and the world really needs heroes like that right now. Tormented by guilt for making a serious mistake, Buzz is consumed by the urge to fix it. Our story takes place in space, but it’s about something that everyone has to face at some point. We make bad decisions, but if we feel sorry for them all our lives, instead of engaging in the reality around us, is this really life?

The creation of a character, on the one hand, well-known to viewers from the Toy Story series , on the other, completely unknown in fact, was an interesting challenge for the creators, as told by executive producer Andrew Stanton:

We are used to the fact that Buzz is a comic character. This movie reminds us that it was originally intended to be awe-inspiring. The comedy really came from the toy not knowing it was a toy. But Buzz as a hero is serious and ambitious.

The filmmakers were faced with the challenge that the Buzz Lightyear had to be recognizable, but not a toy that viewers would know. As production designer Tim Evatt says:

We had to include some elements of the toy in the design – but it’s as if we took it to NASA and in collaboration with experts actually involved in space travel, they added authenticity to the suit.

The artists did visit NASA, and Buzz’s final appearance is a mix of NASA and military inspiration.

In the Buzz Lightyear animation, unexpectedly, the issue of time comes to the fore. When, as a result of a pilot’s error, the entire crew is trapped on an alien planet, and Buzz Lightyear makes more attempts to solve the problem and bring everyone back to Earth, time literally speeds up and life passes by his nose. With each test flight in which he tries to achieve hyperspeed with the help of successive versions of fuel, the main character experiences time dilation. The initial four-minute test flight of Buzz lasts four years on the planet T’Kani Prime, and with each subsequent flight, the effect is even more pronounced. Life begins to run away and so does his friends. Alisha and the rest of the crew live their own lives – pursuing their interests, starting families, getting older, and Buzz practically does not change. The scientific rationale for this phenomenon is complicated,the faster I go, the farther I go into the future. I see.

When it comes to the visual aspect and atmosphere of the film, director Angus MacLane clearly deviates from what viewers have become used to in the Toy Story films . First, the action takes place far in space, about 4.2 million light years from Earth.

It’s true that our movie is a tribute to some science fiction themes, but it is also largely a tribute to cinema in general, says MacLane, who is known in Pixar as the walking encyclopedia of the movie. – Graphic effects look great against a dark background. Jurassic Park was created in the early 90’s and it still looks amazing because most of the scenes were shot at night. I wanted to take advantage of this. Overall, our design moves in a retro aesthetic. It’s a slightly crude film from the early 1980s, inspired by films such as “Star Wars”, “Crime Syndicate”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and various anime from the time. I wanted this film to be tangible, vivid and highly contrasting, like in the French New Wave.

As producer Galyn Susman adds:

Overall, the visuals are a cool mix of retro and futurism. The knobs, dials, buttons look like they can be touched. The edges are rounded to reflect the impression Angus wanted.

John Duncan, who worked on Star Wars , was involved in the creation of the visual side of the film . He made a model of the spacecraft as if it were to be used in a feature film. As Susman relates:

We took this model and built it on a computer because we wanted to find out what makes computer graphics lack the heat that can be obtained by using physical props, like on the set of “Star Wars”. Based on this, we developed a cinematic language that returned heat to computer models. Curved lines popped up where you normally get straight, we’ve eliminated harsh edges just to deviate from that super sharp, super crisp computer graphics look.

But Buzz Lightyear is not only a fantastic, stylized cartoon story about a space hero. There is also a lot of space here to introduce new, hitherto unknown characters, among which Kotex turns out to be the most faithful ally – a robot cat, given as an aid in emotional adaptation to reality, and which throughout the story can surprise the viewer the most, like and the hero himself. Later in the film, we finally get to know the great opponent of our hero – Zurg, known to us from Toy Story 2 . And it is here that we finally learn what their conflict was about.

Buzz Lightyear debuted in Polish cinemas on June 17, 2022. Almost 300,000 viewers watched it. It will debut on DVD on September 12th.

Special extras:

• Developer Comments

Our review of Buzz Lightyear animation can be found at this link .