Disney+ Day’s presentation on Friday morning featured a number of first looks at upcoming Disney projects, and the streaming service managed to sneak in a new look at Buzz Lightyear in the upcoming Pixar film Lightyear. Voiced by Chris Evans, fans online have been pointing out ever since the first trailer dropped that the Toy Star space ranger is surprisingly handsome, and a new photo of him on Pixar’s Disney+ banner kept that trend going. You can see for yourself below.
Described as “The origin of Buzz Lightyear,” this new film is meant to be the in-universe source material the Buzz Lightyear toy from the Toy Story franchise as based on. Director Angus MacLane explained how the new movie fits into the Toy Story universe in a recent interview with Fandango.
“There’s a core idea about Buzz that we noticed when we really drilled down looking at all of the Toy Story movies: That Buzz has a disagreement over the nature of reality,” MacLane began. “In the first Toy Story, he believes he’s a space ranger when Woody says he’s a toy. In the second movie, they had to bring in another Buzz Lightyear to kick jumpstart that again. And he had to convince his other self that HE was a toy. And there’s Spanish Buzz in [Toy Story 3], and then the inner monologue in [Toy Story 4]. That was a bedrock for something we knew we needed to pay off.”
“Buzz is somebody who takes his job very seriously, and is very much a rule follower,” the director added. “And has a steadfast belief in himself. There’s these tropes of that kind of hero that we’re recognizing, feeding on, and playing with. But he’s such an amalgam of weird sci-fi cliches. How do you make that more than a punchline? That was really the charge of [the] film.”
In a separate interview with Collider, MacLane explained why Evans was the “first and only” choice to voice the character, originally portrayed by Tim Allen.
“I wanted the film to have like a gravitas to it and a seriousness to it, but also have an actor who could bring comedy with that seriousness. He was really the first and only choice. I didn’t have a number two,” MacLane said. “It was very clear from the get-go. It was like, ‘If you were gonna make a legitimate sci-fi film about Buzz Lightyear, who would you get? Well, Chris Evans.’ You need someone that has that star power. If it had to be live-action, who would do it? He can do both. Although that chin would be so weird in live-action. You could never get around that. But he was the first choice and he’s been such an amazing partner. He totally got the material right away and felt the sense of responsibility to figure out the translation to the character, for this larger context of this sci-fi movie and really deliver on it. He’s just been a wonderful creative partner in the whole process.”