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Lightyear Teaser Trailer
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Pixar have released the first teaser trailer for Lightyear.

It appears to feature the Toy Story astronaut. But without any of the other toys and doing serious space stuff.

What?

Thankfully Entertainment Weekly have interviewed its director Angus MacLane who explains that this isn't Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear.

Toy Buzz was based on a sci-fi character and this movie's Buzz is the young test pilot who blossoms into that space ranger.

The interview covers some interesting ground.

MacLane says he hopes to give audiences the kind of sci-fi movie he grew up watching from 1977-91, but with "more modern sensibilities."

This is what many Star Wars fans had hoped for from the recent trilogy. Speaking of which...

Star Wars is a name that comes up in the conversation. A scene from the trailer shows Buzz and a droid hiding behind a collapsed tree trunk on an unidentified misty planet, one that gives off major Dagobah vibes from The Empire Strikes Back.

MAJOR Dagobah vibes.

Granted, swamps are a thing and ships are going to land in them sometimes but a sci-fi adventure origin story is going to put just about everyone in mind of Star Wars, and this shot with a similar looking ship will cement that.

"I would say at Pixar, Star Wars was the common language when I started in '97. That was the thing that we couldn't get out of our minds," MacLane explains. "The world was forever changed once we saw Star Wars. It's pretty inextricable, that sensibility. I think that [parallel to Lightyear] isn't necessarily intentional. I'm not really interested in repeating stuff or reminding audiences of better movies, but there are a lot of visual lessons from movies of that era."

The parallel between Star Wars and Lightyear "isn't necessarily intentional". It's his movie. He knows whether it was intentional or not and he didn't say not.

Transparently it is. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But he stresses that he doesn't want to repeat stuff or remind audiences of better movies.

That's one of the more common criticisms of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was essentially the same story as A New Hope and also drowning in references to it.

Embarasingly unoriginal.

So our reading of this interview is that Lightyear is intended to be a Lucas era Star Wars style epic, but its own original thing. That could be brilliant.

Pixar have made some great films and this trailer looks good, so we're hopeful.

It's set to premiere in Australia on June 16, 2022.

[ Main Image: Trailer. Credit: Pixar via YouTube. ]

References

Pixar (October 27, 2021). Lightyear | Teaser Trailer. YouTube.

Romano, Nick (October 27, 2021). Chris Evans goes to infinity and beyond in Pixar's first Lightyear teaser trailer. Entertainment Weekly.

The AU Review. Australian Cinema Release Dates. (viewed October 29, 2021)