Man oh man, what a disappointment this was. I was expecting great things from this movie. I thought this would be Disney's best and most memorable space adventure since Wall-e. From the trailers, I was expecting to be a darker space tale made for a more mature audience that were expecting Pixar's answer to Interstellar or something along the lines of that, because the movie does play with the time dilation concept, but I thought they could have exploited it a little bit more creatively and unconventionally.
But instead of getting a darker origin story of Buzz Lightyear and an awe inspiring space exploration movie full of mystique, wonder, intrigue and goosebump inducing sequences that are epic in scale, we get a pretty corny standard Disney comedy with goofy characters that is once again restricted and watered down to the PG rating. It feels like Disney has done this a hundred times, and Pixar just puts up with it.
Pixar knows that most of the people that payed to see this are adults who probably grew up loving most of Pixar's earlier movies, some of which like The Incredibles and Toy Story 3 wern't afraid to go dark at times and overall leave you with an emotionally richer experience because the spectrum of what was presented in its story and themes were much wider and more engrossing. Even younger kids who haven't seen all those movies going into this deserved better than this.
The main thing that bugged me about this film is that Buzz Lightyear HAS. ABSOLUTLEY. NOWHERE. TO. GO. He is marroned on the same planet with his crew the entire runtime and to figure out why Star Command have imprisoned him there. Sure he gets to explore one planet I guess, but the trailer promised exploration of several planets. The movie is also focused on family friendly comedy which feels out of place for the tone of this movie, I just thought they could have pulled off something darker and more desolate, and themes of isolation in the bleakness of space, with enough lightheartedness sprinkled through to still feel hopeful with some nice comedy every now and then, but no, the gags are non stop and not really that funny.
Even though the robot cat character gets a laugh every now and then, and has a few heartwarming moments, the majority of it falls flat and I found him pretty forgettable. I don't remember any of the names of any of the other characters except for the fact Taika Waititi voiced one of them. The only saving grace for this movie is that it has a pretty nice twist and it looks like Disney are setting up a couple of sequels with this with Buzz's crew and could actually pull off a film that fixes all the problems of this one. For example, actually going to other planets.
But instead of getting a darker origin story of Buzz Lightyear and an awe inspiring space exploration movie full of mystique, wonder, intrigue and goosebump inducing sequences that are epic in scale, we get a pretty corny standard Disney comedy with goofy characters that is once again restricted and watered down to the PG rating. It feels like Disney has done this a hundred times, and Pixar just puts up with it.
Pixar knows that most of the people that payed to see this are adults who probably grew up loving most of Pixar's earlier movies, some of which like The Incredibles and Toy Story 3 wern't afraid to go dark at times and overall leave you with an emotionally richer experience because the spectrum of what was presented in its story and themes were much wider and more engrossing. Even younger kids who haven't seen all those movies going into this deserved better than this.
The main thing that bugged me about this film is that Buzz Lightyear HAS. ABSOLUTLEY. NOWHERE. TO. GO. He is marroned on the same planet with his crew the entire runtime and to figure out why Star Command have imprisoned him there. Sure he gets to explore one planet I guess, but the trailer promised exploration of several planets. The movie is also focused on family friendly comedy which feels out of place for the tone of this movie, I just thought they could have pulled off something darker and more desolate, and themes of isolation in the bleakness of space, with enough lightheartedness sprinkled through to still feel hopeful with some nice comedy every now and then, but no, the gags are non stop and not really that funny.
Even though the robot cat character gets a laugh every now and then, and has a few heartwarming moments, the majority of it falls flat and I found him pretty forgettable. I don't remember any of the names of any of the other characters except for the fact Taika Waititi voiced one of them. The only saving grace for this movie is that it has a pretty nice twist and it looks like Disney are setting up a couple of sequels with this with Buzz's crew and could actually pull off a film that fixes all the problems of this one. For example, actually going to other planets.