Lightyear Cast Interview
“Lightyear’s” Chris Evans (Buzz Lightyear), Keke Palmer (Izzy Hawthorne), Taika Waititi (Mo Morrison), Dale Soules (Darby Steel), and James Brolin (Zurg), as well as Writer/Director Angus MacLane, Producer Galyn Susman and Composer Michael Giacchino join CinemaBlend to dish on everything you need to know about the Disney/Pixar film.
Watch to hear how Evans approached the voice of the iconic character, how it felt for Palmer and Waititi to join the "Toy Story" franchise and more!
Watch to hear how Evans approached the voice of the iconic character, how it felt for Palmer and Waititi to join the "Toy Story" franchise and more!
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 These are his words, you know,
00:01 and they'll never not be his words.
00:03 So you have to at once acknowledge that,
00:05 but still, you can't just do a shameless Tim Allen impression.
00:09 You have to find a way to add your own interpretation.
00:13 - To infinity.
00:14 - And?
00:15 Obviously, "To infinity and beyond" is the most iconic line,
00:25 and that's one of the most intimidating ones
00:27 just because Tim did such an amazing job with it.
00:30 And I really like what Pixar did
00:33 in terms of understanding why that's the catchphrase,
00:36 that it was with him and Alicia,
00:37 and that was kind of their thing together.
00:40 I just thought that was such a clever spin on it.
00:42 But again, you're trying to find a way to make it your own
00:47 while also honoring the amazing work that Tim did.
00:51 What Tim did is why we love this character.
00:54 - Buzz Lightyear to Star Command.
00:55 - Coming to Star Command.
00:57 - Why don't they answer?
00:58 - Oh man, it was a dream come true.
01:00 When I heard about the idea,
01:03 I immediately was like, "Oh my gosh,
01:04 "I really would love to be a part of this."
01:06 And so when I got the opportunity and I got the role,
01:09 I was just thrilled.
01:10 I mean, this is an iconic legacy character.
01:13 It's a film, "Toy Story" is a film
01:15 that I've always known growing up.
01:17 I don't remember really a time without it.
01:19 So to be able to be a part of that story is awesome.
01:22 - Yeah, me too.
01:23 I was honored to be asked,
01:24 and it didn't take much to convince me
01:27 except just hearing the word Lightyear
01:29 and knowing that Chris was gonna do it.
01:31 Yeah, and they were wonderful.
01:33 Again, I went in, I knew nothing.
01:35 I was reading scenes and then halfway through
01:39 trying to figure out still what was going on,
01:41 what the scene was following.
01:43 But despite that, it all works, and it's a great film.
01:48 - Well, I was real excited.
01:52 I was amazed.
01:55 The most difficult thing was getting information
01:58 about the character. - Yes.
02:00 - And the character, they're very secretive.
02:02 I said, "But you gotta tell us."
02:04 Anyway, that was great.
02:08 It was also great that it didn't have any anxiety
02:12 attached to it.
02:14 Just like, "We'd like you to do this."
02:16 And I said, "I'd like to do this."
02:18 And then, "Bob's your uncle."
02:20 That was that.
02:21 - I do this and they shave a little time off my sentence.
02:24 - Okay, and what about you?
02:25 - Well, I thought this was gonna be
02:27 like a fun bootcamp workout thing.
02:29 But it is not.
02:31 - Just talking about it now,
02:33 I was there for "Toy Story" on the ground floor as a kid.
02:37 And if this was double featured with that back then,
02:40 I would have just been on the floor.
02:41 - Oh yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.
02:43 I mean, that was the goal, was to make a movie
02:47 that would put kids on the floor, as it were.
02:51 That was really our goal.
02:52 They need to be floored by this.
02:54 'Cause that's the way I was for so many movies as a kid.
02:57 And films had a tremendous impact on me.
02:59 And it changed the course of my life.
03:00 And I wanted to do a film like that
03:02 that could do the same thing for a small kid today.
03:05 - Well, it's a weird thing,
03:06 'cause actually Angus said something this morning
03:08 which made me go, "Wow, I hadn't thought about it that way."
03:10 And he's like, "Yeah, but we're now actually
03:12 in the 'Toy Story' universe
03:14 because we are the filmmakers who made the movie
03:17 that Andy saw as a kid."
03:20 And I'm like, "Oh, that's so weird."
03:22 That means that I was living in that universe
03:25 scoring movies and he was...
03:28 It's just, the more you think about it, the crazier it is.
03:31 But it's really cool.
03:31 It's really fun.
03:32 So yeah, and in that, the movie that Andy was watching
03:37 was one of his favorite movies.
03:39 We treated this as the movies that we loved
03:41 when we were kids growing up.
03:42 This was, we were gonna make the movie
03:45 that we would have always loved to have seen
03:48 right alongside of "Star Wars," "Back to the Future,"
03:50 "Gremlins," whatever it is, all of those movies,
03:53 this could have been just thrown in right alongside of them
03:56 in somewhere in the 1980s.
03:58 And we would have been perfectly happy with that
04:00 'cause we love it.
04:01 Everything we do is sort of born out of all of the things
04:04 we watched growing up and all the things we loved.
04:06 And this movie is just a giant love letter to all of that.
04:11 - To infinity.
04:12 - Are you trying to get me to pull your finger?
04:13 - Don't fall for it.
04:14 - No, not like that.
04:16 - Sorry, it's a thing your grandma and I used to do.
04:18 - Yeah.
04:19 - Maurice, Izzy, and Darby are this ragtag group
04:22 of junior rangers who are just,
04:23 they come to Buzz's rescue in his hour of need
04:26 and they're all such a delight.
04:28 What is the most heroic trait that you see
04:30 in your character for Lightyear?
04:32 - In my case, I'd say she's willing to put herself
04:35 in danger to try and protect the others.
04:39 - You there, grab it!
04:42 - It's a violation of my parole!
04:45 - My guy, Mo Morrison, his most heroic trait
04:49 is perseverance.
04:52 He will try and try and try to get,
04:54 to find a use for his pen or for any other thing.
04:59 And he'll try until there is a use.
05:01 - And don't die.
05:02 - Don't die, it's just something you wanna do every day.
05:05 - It's still an objective.
05:06 - If I may.
05:07 - I think Izzy's most heroic trait
05:11 is that she knows how to get her team engaged and empowered.
05:16 She knows how to get everybody involved.
05:18 And I think a team is always the best way to finish a goal.
05:21 - The probability of survival with an inexperienced crew
05:25 is 38.2%.
05:27 - Seems a bit low.
05:28 - We have to talk about Sox.
05:29 - Sure.
05:30 - Because everybody is just over the moon
05:34 for Peter Stone's character.
05:36 How did Sox come into play?
05:40 And why does Andy not have one?
05:42 - Well, we have an answer for this
05:43 that we've recently discovered.
05:44 Andy's mom, it was a very expensive toy.
05:48 It was like the,
05:50 like because it was a talking toy at that time,
05:53 in like 1986, '87,
05:55 it maybe had like a little cassette deck in the back.
05:58 Like it was a little out of the price range
06:01 for that family.
06:03 And so there were plenty of toys.
06:05 And I was talking about,
06:06 we were just talking about this with Michael Cicchino,
06:07 how he and I both wanted an AT-AT from Star Wars,
06:10 from "Empire Strikes Back."
06:11 We never got it.
06:12 It was the one we didn't have.
06:13 So Andy doesn't have all the toys.
06:15 He has some of the toys.
06:16 That's the way it was when I was a kid.
06:18 I had some of the figures,
06:19 and then oddly, my dad and I made all the vehicles
06:23 for things.
06:24 That's the way that I grew up.
06:25 And so that's the idea behind it.
06:27 He didn't have the Sox.
06:29 But Sox was always a sidekick for Buzz.
06:32 Buzz is a side character in "Toy Story."
06:35 So if you're gonna make Buzz a main character,
06:37 he needs a sidekick.
06:38 And that sidekick can't be sarcastic.
06:41 It has to be loyal.
06:42 And I wanted to find something that was naturally funny
06:44 from an animation perspective.
06:46 And animatronic robot cats seemed like the right way to go.
06:49 - It's figures like this that are kind of hard to nail,
06:52 especially on a comedic level,
06:54 because you could very much just have him keep saying,
06:57 "I just want you five minutes."
06:58 And that's the guy.
06:59 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:00 - But there's just such a life to him.
07:01 - Yeah.
07:02 Well, I think because of the voice actor,
07:05 I think that, well, it's the animation.
07:07 Tim Pixton, he's a directing animator.
07:10 He did a lot of the hard work,
07:11 and Michael Comet, who built the character.
07:15 But it was Peter Soane, who is genuinely
07:19 like that kind of appealing, nice guy.
07:22 Like everyone feels, the way they feel about Sox
07:24 is how everyone that knows Pete feels about Pete.
07:26 And so having Peter as the voice takes it a long way.
07:31 It was hard to find someone that was more warm
07:33 in the right way, without feeling sarcastic or cynical.
07:37 And Peter has the ability to be hilarious
07:39 and be totally true.
07:40 And that truth, since comedy is two truths
07:43 that come together to form a new truth,
07:45 Pete has that in spades.
07:47 - Buzz, that was utterly terrifying,
07:49 and I regret having joined you.
07:50 - So you did go in a little cold,
07:53 not knowing many specifics about the role of Zurg.
07:57 - I did not.
07:58 - As you moved forward,
08:00 what helped influence your performance?
08:02 Because I don't think many people realize this,
08:04 you're the second Brolin to play a Disney villain
08:07 besides your son Josh in the Avengers films.
08:09 - Yeah, it's been the talk of the town
08:12 for the last two days here.
08:14 But I don't know that anybody outside know,
08:17 but it sounds like it's gonna be part of the latest news
08:22 that we're gonna finally have it out, you know?
08:25 I gotta start going to Gold's gym and catch up with him
08:28 because this is gonna be one nasty fight.
08:31 - He's already killed half the universe, man.
08:34 I gotta catch up.
08:35 - That's what sequels are for.
08:37 - I mean, I hope so for very selfish reasons.
08:42 There's a lot of room, there's a lot of places to go
08:44 and a lot of great characters in this.
08:46 And so, yeah, I hope we have a chance
08:48 to explore them further.
08:49 - This is exciting, a new adventure.
08:51 - "Lightyear" is the film that Andy watches
08:54 and it inspires the toys.
08:55 - That's right.
08:56 - So your "Lightyear's Buzz Lightyear,"
08:58 Tim Allen is obviously the toy.
09:00 - Right.
09:01 - Do you have any Captain America merchandise
09:03 that has another voice to it?
09:05 And how weird is it?
09:07 - All of the Captain America merchandise has another voice.
09:10 I've never done any voice for any of the toys.
09:13 I don't even know if they can use my voice
09:16 from the films in those toys.
09:17 You know, a funny story, actually,
09:19 there was some toy that they put out
09:22 that they wanted me to do the voice for,
09:24 but I ended up having my brother do it.
09:27 My younger brother, who sounds similar to me,
09:30 is the voice of one of the main original toys
09:34 of Captain America.
09:35 But again, that was one of the reasons
09:37 why I was able to at least wrap my head around this project
09:41 when they explained what it was gonna be
09:43 to understand why maybe it wouldn't be Tim Allen's voice.
09:47 - Okay, you just sent us further down the rabbit hole
09:49 with that because you pulled a Tom Hanks
09:51 because his brother Jim tends to step in for him
09:55 on some of the "Toy Story" projects.
09:56 - Does he?
09:56 Does he sound like Tom?
09:57 I mean, that's an iconic voice.
09:59 I mean, does he sound like Tom Hanks?
10:01 - It's close.
10:02 It's not a one for one, but it's close enough
10:04 that it's never really been distracting.
10:06 - Yeah, yeah.
10:07 - Wow, just the official Disney policy, I guess,
10:10 or if not, it probably should be in the book.
10:12 - Ready, Captain Lightyear?
10:13 - Ready as I'll ever be, Commander Hawthorne.
10:15 - So going back to Hawthorne,
10:17 in the lead up to the film's release,
10:20 Lightyear almost removed an LGBTQ+ moment from the film,
10:24 but then it was reinstated as it was announced.
10:27 What did the cut look like?
10:30 What did the altered version look like
10:31 without that sequence?
10:33 - The montage was in there.
10:34 The whole montage was in there.
10:35 The only thing that changed was the 40th anniversary party
10:40 instead of this.
10:42 - It kind of held hands awkwardly.
10:44 - No, she put her head on her shoulder.
10:46 - No, it was just a, it was a grab.
10:48 It was like a grab and like a, no, she tilted.
10:50 I don't know if it was on the shoulder.
10:51 - Okay, we're gonna sit here and argue about this.
10:53 Anyway, you get the idea.
10:54 - It was a little weird.
10:55 And so it just felt a little bit like, what is that?
10:59 It just felt like something was missing.
11:00 - It's the 40th anniversary.
11:01 You're gonna kiss your spouse.
11:02 - So it was more natural that way.
11:03 And we just wanted to get that in the film.
11:05 - But everything else was the same.
11:07 - But Sox, how long were we gone?
11:08 - Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
11:09 62 years, seven months, and five days.
11:13 - What?
11:14 - I thought of Sox's point of view of the montage,
11:18 of him just like waiting around,
11:19 like killing time, poking at the computer.
11:22 But we haven't--
11:24 - Oh, look at that face.
11:24 - I know, I'd love to.
11:26 - Aw.
11:27 - But we just finished this one.
11:28 Come on, look at what we gave you on Tuesday.
11:31 Come on.
11:32 - I demand a lot, okay?
11:33 You said to us, "In beyond," and that means beyond.
11:36 - Yeah.
11:36 Well, we'll take that under advisement.
11:38 I'm glad to hear that something extra
11:40 would be exciting to you.
11:42 - He's purring.
11:43 He likes it.
11:43 - Sox, do you like that?
11:45 - I do.
11:45 - Huh.
11:46 (dramatic music)
11:49 (upbeat music)
11:52 [MUSIC]