I had goosebumps when I saw the first trailer for Lightyear, last year. It's the bit where David Bowie singing Starman kicks in that just gets me. Now, having seen the film, I have had some thoughts.
This post contains a few spoilers below the video for the trailer, so maybe watch the trailer and then go off and do something else if you don't want to read any spoilers before seeing the film yourself.
So, the headline meta stuff about this film is that it is meant to be the movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear action figure who is one of the main stars of the original Toy Story film. In Toy Story, a little boy called Andy is given a Buzz Lightyear figure as a birthday present. In the Pixar universe, this is the film Andy saw in the cinema that made him so excited to get his own Buzz Lightyear.
As a way of extending a successful franchise without continuing an established storyline, this struck me as genius. It's as creative as anything in the movie and starts things off on a clever footing. It's also not really a kids' film - but it is the film for the people who were kids when Toy Story came out 25 years ago!
The opening few scenes include Buzz exploring an alien planet and saying lines of dialogue that will be immediately recognisable to anyone who has watched the Toy Story several times. That cracked me up. The dialogue worked in the film even if you weren't aware that it was lifted practically verbatim from the first movie. But knowing how those phrases will be repeated in Andy's bedroom by action figure Buzz after Andy's birthday party just filled me with joy.
So, on to the story. Buzz causes an exploration spaceship to crash, marooning 1,200 people on a planet, without any hyperfuel to get home. He wants to make amends and starts repeatedly testing potential hyperfuel compounds, trying to find the one that would enable the ship to leave the planet. Unfortunately, when he tests the fuel by slingshotting around the nearest sun, he experiences time dilation, skipping forwards years compared to the people he leaves behind. Each time he returns a few hours older from a mission, everyone else has aged a few years.
There's a thoughtful core to that idea, of someone so depserate to make amends for their mistake, they actually end up missing out on life. While his friends and colleagues find love and start families, and live happy, fulfilled lives, Buzz singlemindedly perseveres on his quest to redeem himself - a quest that nobody asks him to undertake.
Driven by failure and guilt, Buzz doesn't share in his friends' big moments, as they celebrate births and graduations and anniversaries. And in a heartbreaking scene he misses saying goodbye to his best friend and supporter as he returns from a mission after she passes away from old age. I found the scene where he played her recorded goodbye message in her room that now lay empty very emotionally moving.
That idea gave core meaning to the film, with the question of what really makes a person a hero. There is a grace in accepting the situation and making the best of it - in this case raising a family to be proud of while founding a functioning society on a new planet.
Then, of course, Buzz lands after one final trip to find the colony city under siege from robots that all say the word "Zurg" and the adventure part of the story kicks in. Buzz and some new friends have to save the day in a way he never expected.
So, in summary, this felt like Pixar have rediscovered a bit of their soul after a real mix of duds and delights lately. I realise I am one of the few people who really did not like Toy Story 4 and am on record as saying I never needed another Toy Story film. But this isn't a Toy Story film. It had something different to say and said it well, which leaves me feeling like I would be interested in seeing another Lightyear movie.
In the last few days I've seen Kung Fu Panda 3 and
Zootropolis. Both were pretty solid animated films with some surprisingly
mature themes. This post includes minor spoilers.
Don't upset the Dragon Warrior
Kung Fu Panda 3 pretty much continues where the second one
left off, with Po meeting his real panda father who was a post-credits reveal
at the end of Kung Fu Panda 2. The plot is split between Po discovering his panda
heritage while also having to fight a new baddy – General Kai, who has returned
from the Spirit Realm to steal the chi life force of the living.
For fans of the first film, Ugwe, the turtle who chose Po as
the Dragon Warrior is back. I always liked Ugwe. The animation is top drawer,
especially a sequence with an elemental dragon towards the end. There are also
lots of very cute baby pandas.
If I was a bit critical I’d say the members of the panda
tribe were a bit overdone in being goofily clumsy and fat. It was funny at
first, but there is only so many time you can see someone bouncing off a
massive panda tummy in slow motion and still laugh at it.
The more mature storyline is the conflict between Po’s
panda dad and his adoptive goose dad, who has raised Po ever since he
discovered him in a box of radishes. I think it covered the difficulty faced by
foster fathers and birth fathers quite sympathetically, even if it resolves it
more neatly and quickly than things like this get resolved outside animated
films. What is telling is that both panda and goose want to see Po happy, and that
enables them to get over their differences. Po ends up with two dads, instead
of replacing one. That’s a very positive message.
Zootropolis (called Zootopia everywhere else besides the UK)
is the latest Disney film. I really enjoyed it. The plot is a nod to police
movies and unlikely buddy movies – a rabbit, Judy Hopps, becomes the first
bunny to become a police officer in the city of Zootropolis but struggles to be
accepted because of her status as a prey species. She teams up with a
streetwise fox, Nick Wilde, in an ‘unnatural’ partnership between a predator
and prey species to solve a missing persons case that turns out to be much
bigger than she first realised.
Wait, this isn't the Number 8 bus...
There were some good jokes along the way. The scene in the
DMV run by sloths was no less funnier for being one of the
extended trailers for the film, and Flash the sloth pops up again later in the
movie in a moment that really made me laugh out loud. There is also an very nice
homage to the Godfather as well. The animation is really outstanding,
particularly when Judy sits in the observation car of the train taking her to
Zootropolis and we see the city, with its different climate zones revealed one
after the other. That whole sequence knocks most science fiction movies out of
the park for the level of detail and wonder.
The big plot theme here is the relationship between predator
and prey species in a clever parallel to racial tensions in the human world.
With predators seemingly falling victim to their ‘biology’ and going savage, the
prey species are being urged to take action. It’s no accident that one of the
more prominent prey politicians has a hairpiece reminiscent of Donald Trump. The
assertion that ‘we outnumber them ten to one’ and therefore need to crush them
to protect ourselves from them is a bit like the anti-Muslim rhetoric you
sometimes hear. Removing a predator cheetah (who is only really a danger to
doughnuts) from the front desk of the police station because the powers that be
feel as a predator he doesn’t project the right image, really rams the point
home about stereotyping. (Even if the love
of doughnuts is in its own way also a stereotype.)
So, Zootropolis has a very deep theme and an important
message. It also boasts a fine meta joke - Alan Tudyk voices the thief Duke Weaselton, who is a weasel. In Frozen he voices the Duke of Weaselton. When he
is welcomed at Arendel castle as the Duke of Weaselton, he issues a correction and
says it's Wesselton. In Zootropolis his name is mispronounced and he corrects
it to Weaselton. I doubt any kids will even get the link, but that’s the sort
of thing I quite enjoy.
