Sotiris wrote:It's kinda lazy they reused the cover of the 'Art of' book for the new poster.
Yeah, it's true. I personally prefer the book cover. Regarding the new trailer, the teaser trailer is still my favorite of the three they've released (I love how mysterious and epic it felt), but I liked that this one revealed more about the story and the characters and it looks like the movie will be fun. By the way, the new references to
Toy Story were nice, like Buzz doing the mission log or when he can't communicate with the Star Command.
Sotiris wrote:I hadn't realized Buzz's goal was to go back in time. Isn't that too similar to Chris Evan's other popular character, Captain America?
I didn't know that was his goal either. Well, from what I remember Captain America only tries to go back in time in the last Avengers movie, but yes, the fact that Buzz is "a hero out of his own time", as the director described him, is very reminiscent of Captain America. I bet that's why they thought of Chris Evans to voice him.
Sotiris wrote:Is he saying Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is canon?
I'm not sure if he's talking about that show specifically, but I guess they could make it canon now if they wanted to. He also talked about the animated TV show in another interview:
While speaking exclusively with Screen Rant to discuss the Pixar film, Lightyear director Angus MacLane opened up about the Toy Story prequel. When asked how the character's previous spinoff and its place alongside the movie, MacLane revealed he didn't keep Buzz's TV show spinoff in mind while developing Lightyear and a specific comparison for canon explanations. See what MacLane said below:
"Well, that show was developed when we were doing Toy Story 2, and I always imagined that it was like the Ewoks or the Droids to the Star Wars universe. I feel like when they were making Return of the Jedi, they weren't thinking about Droids and they weren't thinking about Ewoks, so that's about as much as I thought about it. [As in] not at all, because in my mind, that hasn't gotten produced [yet]. Say that exists in the universe of the Toy Story universe, there's that animated Pixar intro that, incidentally, I directed many years ago for that. If anything, that's a metaphor for the way we viewed that, that's a separate thing, there's a wall of a TV between them. So really, that's meant to take place in the same timeline as Star Wars to Ewoks."
Source:
https://screenrant.com/lightyear-movie- ... explained/
Sotiris wrote:The robo-cat wasn't an Aliens reference, after all.
Oh, OK. Thanks for the info. Though, who knows, maybe they were unconsciously influenced by that film's cat. Apparently, Buzz's sidekick was going to be a monkey at first:
At what point in the process of making this did Sox come into the picture, and did you know that character would just take over?
MacLANE: Pretty early. It was originally a helper monkey. That changed to a cat, mostly because I think that it was gonna be funnier to animate a quadri-ped. Animating a monkey was never gonna be funny in the way that a cat with a simple robotic head would be. It just became a comedy in motion decision.
SUSMAN: And then, if you’re telling a story about a guy who gets separated from everybody and is alone, how do you know what he’s thinking, if he has no one to talk to? You don’t want him walking around, talking to himself. He needs somebody. It was pretty clear that it could either be really depressing, or we could come up with something cute and comedic that would help balance out the heaviness of the idea of basically outliving everybody you know and love.
MacLANE: And more people have cats than monkeys, so that became a better comic well.
Source: https://collider.com/lightyear-director ... iew-pixar/
Sotiris wrote:I think it would have been fun had they released a featurette online with the "actor" who plays Buzz giving an interview within the Toy Story universe or have fake bloopers at the end of the movie like they used to do for their films. It would have made perfect sense, especially with the film's concept and it would have been a nice nod to the Toy Story bloopers. A missed opportunity, if you ask me.
It's true, though I understand the director too. I guess he wants the public to immerse in the film and not think of it as a movie within a movie while they're watching it. I have to admit that at first I wasn't a fan of the bloopers when they were first introduced in
A Bug's Life. Though I knew it was just meant as a joke and to have people entertained during the credits, it sort of made you remember it was all fake and broke the illusion a bit. Now I think they're cool, even if I still get that same feeling to a lesser degree.
Come to think of it, they could still do something like what you described in a future short, for example. Or reference
Lightyear in the next
Toy Story movie, if they make more of them.
Kyle wrote:About the Zurg being buzz's father thing, one way you could write around this without writing it off as just a quick joke/starwars reference necessarily is that zurg was just trying to manipulate buzz by lying to him. Maybe this happened in the cartoon spin off for which the Zurg toy comes from. (whether that's buzzlightyear of star command or not, who knows) The toy version doesn't know about the big reveal (that it was a lie) yet, since at the time he was made, the show had not revealed this to the audience yet. that would probably be a season 2 thing.
But of course, in the movie canon, he doesn't have to even mention being his father, misdirection or otherwise.
That's actually not a bad idea. I wouldn't mind if they did that. That way they could include that element in the movie without it feeling too much like
Star Wars or the scene in
Toy Story 2. But there's another thing I hadn't realized until now; Zurg is a robot in this movie, so unless there's someone inside controlling the machine or something like that, he can't be Buzz's father. At least not a biological one; maybe he could be his adoptive father.
Also, the part in bold in the following quote by director Angus MacLane sounds like they may not include all the Buzz backstory details mentioned in the
Toy Story films:
"From early on, because the voice is so iconic, you run the risk of imitation. And I never wanted someone that was going to imitate that character voice, but I wanted something to be different. The complexity of the timeline of it is that, and this is more information than you probably wanted, is I imagine this was a movie that then later there was the spinoff cartoon, and then the 'Toy Story' toy was made off of that cartoon design. Because that very much was the way it would be in the eighties and early nineties, that there would be a big budget movie, like a serious movie, and then would get ported to a TV show. It's not diminishing anything, but it does feel like the events of what happens on the back of the package for Buzz Lightyear don't happen in this movie and that's like a future story."
Source: https://www.slashfilm.com/833694/why-ch ... lightyear/
Speaking of Zurg, here's more info about the character, including why they decided to change his design and make him a robot in this version. It also sounds like there might be a twist or something about Zurg, since the filmmakers say they can't talk much about him:
Where Buzz Lightyear goes, his arch nemesis Zurg can’t be far behind, and indeed, as the trailers show, he is a part of this movie – the leader of the robots who attack the Star Command castaways while Buzz is away.
There is still some secrecy around Zurg (voiced by James Brolin in this incarnation) in Lightyear though, with Maclane telling Fandom, “We’re not really allowed to say a thing, but I wanted Zurg to be even more formidable in this film than he had been before and to kind of reset his level of intensity so that he would be a true villain for Buzz.”
Said Peltz, “Probably the single-most exciting thing I got to personally work on was Zurg. He’s a key character in the Buzz Lightyear mythos and I can’t really talk about the mechanical design of our film without taking a look at our villain. Adapting Zurg for our film was a tall order. The original design from Toy Story 2 is iconic, and we wanted to draw from that source material as much as possible. But at the same time, our movie has a look that is more mature and detailed than the original toy version of the character, so we needed our Zurg to fit within that new aesthetic that we’ve developed for a sci-fi world. But above all, Zurg, he needs to be a threat. His design had to be intimidating so that he could carry the menace and the presence that our story demanded. So taking all of those goals together, reimagining the character as a giant robot was sort of a natural fit for the character and the world that he occupies.”
Peltz added that while Zurg’s design is based on what we’ve seen before, “Zurg also takes a couple of cues from super robots and mecha in Japanese anime, which I am personally a massive fan of. It was so much fun reimagining this character into a form that exudes power and presence. Zurg is a force to be reckoned with in our movie, and he has a crazy array of awesome features that you’ll get to see him use in the film. But most importantly, Zurg’s new mechanical form doesn’t mean he’s a mindless anto-automaton. He’s a fully rounded character, just like the rest of our cast. But to find out what kind of a character he is, you’re gonna have to watch the movie…”
Source: https://www.fandom.com/articles/buzz-li ... ifferences
