In December 2020, Pixar Animation Studios announced during Disney Investor Day that it would create a new film featuring a popular character. This film, the company said on Twitter, would be “the definitive story of the original Buzz Lightyear.” And Chris Evans of “The Avengers” franchise would voice the iconic character.
Now, fans initially found this a bit confusing, given that Tim Allen has played Buzz all along in the “Toy Story” movies featuring Buzz, Woody and all of Andy’s toys. In fact, Evans himself issued a clarification trying to enlighten viewers, explaining that Tim Allen voiced the toy — not the actual person, Buzz Lightyear.
“This is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on,” he posted to Twitter.
And just to be clear, this isn’t Buzz Lightyear the toy. This is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on
— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) December 11, 2020
And now, the trailer is out. After dropping last Wednesday, the new trailer offers about a minute and a half of footage from the CG-animated movie, showing Buzz Lightyear blasting off into space, slingshotting around the sun (“Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” time-travel style) and having adventures on other planets to the tune of David Bowie’s “Starman.”
According to Deadline, the trailer is getting a bit of buzz: it received 83 million views in the first 24 hours after its release, which makes it the second-best first-day debut for a Pixar release ever (“The Incredibles 2” got 114 million views).
You can take a look at the trailer on Pixar’s YouTube page:
If you check out some of the social media chatter, you’ll see that some fans are still finding the idea of the movie confusing. If this is an origin story that predates “Toy Story,” and if the human Buzz Lightyear’s world features spaceships and aliens, does that mean Andy and the other toys live in a futuristic sci-fi universe?
Angus MacLane, “Lightyear” director, however, tried to explain the timeline via D23.
“Maybe there was a movie starring Buzz Lightyear, and that’s what Andy saw that made him want a Buzz Lightyear action figure,” he said.
This logic, then, says that “Lightyear” represents a fictional movie telling the fictional backstory of a fictional human who then became an action figure in the fictional “Toy Story” world. Makes sense.
“Lightyear” is due in theaters June 17, 2022. Confusing or not, it sounds like plenty of people may be interested in watching this one!
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.
