There are so many iconic pop culture characters around that we simply accept as part of the collective furniture that it can sometimes feel as if they have been around forever.
They almost feel like they’re alive, they’re so familiar, and while we know rationally they’re not alive and kicking, it’s all too easy to feel like they are and that we know them.
Buzz Lightyear, who first burst to prominence in 1995’s Toy Story, is one such character according near living status by people who have come to love the super-serious space ranger who takes a while to realise he is not a person but rather a toy, one who becomes every bit as much loved as those he joins, like the equally well-loved Woody, in Andy’s magically ordinary toyroom.
In the short but information-packed mini-documentary, Beyond Infinity: Buzz And The Journey To Lightyear, we are given a behind-the-scenes at how Buzz came to be, and how all of that thinking and planning and drawing and creating gave rise to a character whose origin tale is finally being told in Lightyear, which releases later this week worldwide in cinemas.
It’s an intriguing tale because it reveals just how long it takes, and yet how inspirationally fast it can be for a character we love to come into being and how many iterations they go through before they finally emerge in their final form.
In Beyond Infinity: Buzz And The Journey To Lightyear, we hear from a lot of the creative people at Pixar, including Pete Docter, the current Chief Creative Officer at Pixar who gave us the movingly entrancing delights of Up, Inside Out and Soul (both as writer and director) and Angus Maclane, director of Lightyear, and the man widely regarded as the foremost authority on Buzz from how he’s drawn to how’d react to a given situation, and even what his face might look like in a truly expansive range of circumstances.
Hearing from these two key Pixar people and a slew of immensely talented story editors and artists who have worked on Buzz over the year and who are thrilled that finally the movie that inspired Andy to beg his mum for a Buzz Lightyear doll in the first place is now an actual thing.
The fascinating part of this documentary, which obviously has the new film as its focus and yet which still spends an immensely satisfying time exploring Buzz Lightyear’s history, is the insight it gives you into how an animated feature comes to be.
One startling fact that emerges is that the first two years of the production of an animated film, at Pixar at least, is getting the story right, a process which begins with a script but which continues on via rudimentary but still highly evocative animation, which is used to refine the final story.
The enthusiasm of the whole team at Pixar, and particularly those involved in Lightyear, is palpable and damn near infectious.
One of the people featured in the documentary, Galyn Susman, a long-time Pixar employee and producer on the film – she is not alone; you get the feeling it’s a great place to work and everyone loves what they do which is beguiling in its own way – is a joy to hear from because she genuinely loves that they’ve been able to give the “real” Buzz Lightyear his very own origin tale.
Once you’ve heard from the likes of Susman, Maclane, Docter and a bevy of others, all of whom exude the love giddy love for they they do, even as they acknowledge how tough creating something can be, especially in the midst of a pandemic, you can’t help but appreciate how loved Buzz is and how much it matters to everyone to tell his story right.
And yes, of course, what they do at Pixar is not simply some joyous romp through the sparkling bright and colourful fields of creativity; they are creating a product to be consumed which it is hoped will make everyone a lot of money.
That point is driven home but not in a mercenary way when Beyond Infinity: Buzz And The Journey To Lightyear features Jennifer Tan, Pixar’s Director of Consumer Products, who remarks on the massive breadth and depth of Buzz products and how he’s so recognisable that even one-of-a-kind products are recognisable as the space ranger who has a heart of gold and an entrenched sense of duty. (Even when the products people are speaking, you still get the sense they love the character himself and not simply as a way of feathering the bottom line.)
In the end though Beyond Infinity: Buzz And The Journey To Lightyear is such a wonderful, heartfelt love letter to Buzz and the Toy Story franchise, that you can’t help but be drawn into all the heady enthusiasm and excitement, leaving as excited as everyone at Pixar seems to be that not only did they get to make four Toy Story movies in the end but that a missing piece of the puzzle is now in place, with Lightyear promising to do a brilliant job of explaining why we fell in love with Buzz in the first place and why we’ll likely go on loving him well into the future which we hope will take us to infinity … and beyond! (And yes, rather gloriously Susman giggles as she acknowledges the deliberate absurdity of that catchphrase.)
Who is Buzz Lightyear? Discover the making of an icon in Beyond Infinity: Buzz and The Journey To Lightyear, an Original documentary now streaming only on Disney+