That much we knew, of course, as buzz has been building ever since Lightyear was first announced as part of The Walt Disney Company’s Investor Day event in December 2020. The idea for the film, however, dates back to the very first Toy Story. As Pete Docter, Pixar Animation Studios’ Chief Creative Officer, explained during the Investor Day presentation, Buzz had always been inspired by a character from an epic blockbuster film. It just wasn’t until the last few years, however, that Pixar decided to bring that story to the big screen.
“Buzz, as a character, I’ve always been pretty close to as a fan—mostly because of his overlap into the sci-fi genre,” MacLane said. “I’ve always wanted to know about Buzz.” As fate would have it, he’d get the opportunity to pitch his idea for Lightyear: “I said, ‘Maybe there was a movie starring Buzz Lightyear, and that’s what Andy saw that made him want a Buzz Lightyear action figure. Why don’t we just make that movie—and make it awesome?’”
Speaking of making things “awesome,” it’s clear from the trailer that Lightyear has a different aesthetic than the other Toy Story features and shorts. “There’s a very specific cinematography aesthetic I was chasing, which is a lot of chiaroscuro—a lot of light and dark,” MacLane said. “I also wanted to make the world feel really tactile and chunky. There’s a lot of different sci-fi design aesthetics, but especially in that era that, the ships and the materials were very chunky and the industrial design for them was really robust.”