Beyond Infinity: Buzz and the Journey to Lightyear

This is "Toy Story", Disney Studios,

February 4th, 1995. Recording Tim Allen as Buzz.

So, this is that beginning section where you must have written.

Do you read me?

Buzz Lightyear to Star Command. Come in, Star Command.

Star Command, come in. Do you read me?

Why don't they answer?

When we were making Toy Story, the first one,

it was just director John Lasseter and a very small group of us

coming up with the characters and situations.

And, of course, the toy version of Buzz.

And now we're about to release a film

about the origin story of this Buzz Lightyear character.

We get to grapple with this question,

"Who is Buzz Lightyear?"

I'm Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger, Universe Protection Unit.

His job in the first films is to show up and basically push Woody's buttons.

He's the best of the best, and he knows it.

He understands everything in all the manuals,

he's studied the hardest.

Woody, are you all right?

He's the strongest, he's the fastest, he's the estest.

Buzz is the most upright citizen...

We will not rest until he's safe in Andy's room!

...and takes his policing job very, very, very seriously.

Watch yourself! Halt! Who goes there?

He's the straight guy, he's the very literal guy.

Everything that's on the box is the sum total of his knowledge.

I protect the galaxy from the threat of invasion.

He doesn't understand that he's the toy

based off of this character on the big screen,

He thinks he is that character.

Very impressed with Andy's new toy.

-Toy? -T-O-Y. Toy.

Excuse me, I think the word you're searching for is "Space Ranger."

And the comedy all comes from that disagreement over the nature of reality.

It was Woody's movie, but you need one for the other to work.

It's a dance.

Good morning, I'm Pete.

Today we'll learn how to animate in less than two minutes.

We type in the magic UNIX commands.

In 1990, Pixar had done a bunch of short films.

I knew that the goal was to eventually do a feature,

and the thought was,

"Let's do an intermediate step, we'll do a Christmas special."

Using characters from one of the short films, "Tin Toy".

That just seemed like a very appealing, fun world,

the world of toys. Seeing things from the toys' point of view, way down low.

The thrill was this must be what it feels like to be this small

on the floor and encounter a giant reckless baby.

At the same time, Disney said, "Hey, you know what?

"We'd be willing to spring for a feature.

"What do you want to do?" And we were like, "I have no idea."

So we thought, what if we just use the Christmas special

that we are writing as the first act

and then we'll just go from there,

because we had no idea what we were doing.

In animation at that time,

it was musical, musical... Only musicals.

So the idea that we could do some other kind of storytelling

was really attractive.

One of the first things that happened, in our story, was that

Tinny met this other ventriloquist doll, the old established toy.

And this new toy comes

and is now threatening this old toy's place in Andy's room.

This new cool, amazing tin toy?

So we're like, "Okay, that doesn't quite work."

What was the toy we all wanted as kids?

We wanted action figures, you know,

with, like karate chop action or exploding briefcases,

all kind of like, these moving parts.

Tinny had to go up on the shelf,

and his part was taken over by this brand new character that we were creating,

named Buzz Lightyear.

Initially, Buzz was more of a golden age space hero from the '30s.

I did all these things that almost looked like water heaters with fins on them.

Things that were based on Roman legionnaire helmets

and all that older, classic stuff.

We have so many drawings of Buzz

that sometimes it's hard to differentiate.

This is one that we have nicknamed Big Hair Buzz.

It's a distinguishing part of this stage of character design,

because in the end Buzz has no hair.

Buzz Lightyear wasn't always called Buzz Lightyear.

He was even called Lunar Larry.

One of the suits has, like, the LL on it.

This is from an early animation test.

Woody is Slim, and the character that would become Buzz is Tecor,

But it looks like they weren't necessarily satisfied with that

because on this particular script, they've made all these other acronyms for him.

He could have been TOLAR or MICROZ.

And then one of them was Tempus from Morph.

I don't know if we use that for more than that one test.

Hey, pal, whatcha doin'?

I'm Tempus from Morph...

Yeah, what's this button?

Say, you weren't thinkin' of flyin', were ya'?

-Well... -You know, Andy loves toys that can fly.

Really?

When we look at the final drawings,

we think that was the right Buzz to choose.

But how did we get there?

So fun to just see all the iterations.

Just warming up still. Yes.

When I came on, John Lasseter wanted to have a contemporary new toy

and asked if we could do something more like an astronaut.

So we looked at NASA. We looked at the astronauts.

Same time, we're going to the toy stores,

we're taking things apart, figuring out how they work, how they articulate.

And the wings needed to function like we're going to make this thing.

So I came up with the way that they would swing out to the side.

I thought you could make that. I can see a toy being built with that.

The minute we said 12 inches like G.I. Joe, "Yes".

The minute we said new, "Yes".

Let's give him karate chop action, "Yes".

The minute Bob Pauley said "What if we make it white

and give it a little accent with color?"

we are all like, "Yes."

And he should have some declarative thing that he says.

To infinity and beyond!

That just made everybody laugh.

We loved that it made no sense.

There is no beyond infinity. Infinity is infinite.

Henceforth there is no beyond infinity.

Felt like it really captured the essence of who he was.

They had a sense of who Buzz was and who they wanted him to be.

But once the decision was made to cast Tim Allen as Buzz,

so much of his character just clicked into place.

It was actually Tim Allen's idea to play Buzz like an average street cop.

They've been watching Sid in the backyard,

the mean kid, blow up the Combat Carl with the M-80.

-I coulda stopped him. -Right.

What's going on?

So instead of being this unrealistic, kind of,

"I'll save you, eager young space cadet," kind of guy,

he's playing it more like, "Yeah,

"I'm going to be hanging out around the corner."

There's a kid over in that house who needs us.

Now let's get you out of this thing.

He's a bit more realistic.

He's a little more earthbound.

No, no, no. Go, go. Just go. I'll catch up.

And it really shaped the way we wrote the character,

the way we thought of him, in major ways.

Sheriff!

Sheriff?

There you are.

When we were designing Buzz, I thought we had something.

You know, it was cool.

But we didn't have a clue that this was going to become some kind of phenomenon,

that Woody and Buzz would be household names.

To infinity and beyond.

Space Ranger.

Buzz, this is the Oscars.

It's supposed to be formal.

Well, that would explain all the penguins then

The whole thing was shocking.

I remember when the film came out and driving down the freeway and be like,

"There's a billboard for "Toy Story".

And it was really wild to see Buzz go up on the International Space Station.

That was wow.

You created this character who wants to be in space,

and now he's literally gone further than most of us ever will.

For us to think we would get to do anything more

would have been just crazy thinking.

Buzz Lightyear mission log.

The local sheriff and I seem to be at a huge refueling station of some sort.

Buzz was kind of a deluded sidekick, and somehow he really spoke to kids.

I'm not sure exactly what that means.

We tried to design a toy that would be really cool for Andy,

that Andy would set aside Woody for.

Turns out that we created a toy that in the movie was a good character,

but also actually a pretty darn good toy in reality.

He is the toy that all the kids want.

There's always an interest in continuing the exploration of Buzz as a toy.

How else can we have fun with Buzz?

He's this superhero that every kid either wants to be like

or wants to be friends with.

Buzz appeals to adults and kids of all ages,

of all genders,

And that's why you see Buzz everything.

There's Buzz costumes, Buzz sneakers.

We work on action figures, pencil toppers, apparel...

Buzz backpacks,

lunchboxes, juice boxes, paper towels,

anything you can think of.

Stickers on bananas, socks.

I love my Buzz and Woody socks.

I love how Buzz is everywhere

and people have made their versions of him.

A lot of it's handcrafted.

a lot of it's not coming out of factories.

It's just people making cool little wooden pull toys or puppets.

People just love the characters.

I guess, in a way, the design worked out, and it looks good

because you can be still so far off

and you know there's a Buzz in there somewhere.

I have seen some bizarre ones.

They look like Buzz was put in a microwave.

It's not really the real Buzz, but you can tell it's Buzz Lightyear.