About

Lightyear is an upcoming 2022 origin story animated film about the "real Buzz Lightyear," referenced in the character from Pixar's Toy Story franchise. The film was announced on October 27th, 2021, with the teaser trailer inspiring memes about the design of the character.

History

On October 27th, 2021, Disney and Pixar announced Lightyear, an origin story film about Buzz Lightyear set from the Toy Story animated film series, with actor Chris Evans voicing the character. On the same day, a teaser trailer for the film was released, gaining over 7.8 million views on Twitter^[1] and over 6.1 million views on YouTube^[2] in one day (shown below).

Fandom

Immediately following the announcement, the choice of voice actor for the role became the subject of memes and jokes on social media. For example, on October 27th, Twitter^[3] user @MumOnRun drew parallels between the film and the MCU film Captain America which stars Evans, with the post gaining over 4,900 retweets and 22,900 likes in one day (shown below, left). On the same day, IGN tweeted^[4] a still image of Lightyear from the trailer, expressing surprise that the character has hair. The post received over 17,700 retweets and 156,200 likes in one day (tweet and image shown below, left and right).

The still image of Buzz Lightyear inspired edits, most notably edits in which Lightyear was reimagined as protagonists of various FPS video games. For example, on October 27th, 2021, Twitter^[5] user @lishainik posted a photoshop of Lightyear as B.J. Blazkowitz from the Wolfenstein franchise that gained over 500 retweets and 3,400 likes in one day (shown below, left). On the same day, Redditor^[6] whytoter posted an edit of Lightyear as Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life franchise, with the post gaining over 4,700 upvotes in /r/HalfLife in one day (shown below, center).

Search Interest

External References