Disney releases first trailer for 'Lightyear': five main takeaways

Pixar released the first trailer for Lightyear, a film that will tell the origin story of Toy Story’s beloved spaceman Buzz Lightyear.

Set for release in June 2022, it will tell the tale of the astronaut on which the toy is based.

Captain America’s Chris Evans will voice the young astronaut, and the star has shared his excitement for the role on social media.

"Animated movies were an enormous part of my childhood. They were my escape. My adventures. My dreams," he wrote on Twitter.

Throughout the Toy Story films, we see Buzz coming to terms with the fact that he is a toy and not a real spaceman. He spends a lot of time trying to reach Star Command, which he believes has abandoned him on a strange planet, to no avail.

However, Lightyear shows us that, like the astronaut himself, Star Command is very real, and about to send him off on a very important mission.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation from the trailer is Buzz has hair. Throughout the Toy Story films, the character’s head is covered with a purple lining inside his helmet. It turns out, however, that Buzz is a brunette, with the young astronaut sporting thick brown hair once his helmet is off.

While the trailer doesn’t give too much away when it comes to the plot, diehard Toy Story fans will recognise the troupe of yellow robots featured in the trailer from the opening scene of Toy Story 2, when in a Buzz Lightyear television show the character enters the lair of his arch-nemesis, the Evil Emperor Zurg. Those same robots are back, suggesting the we might get an explanation as to what happened between the emperor and the astronaut.

He may not have Woody, but the real Buzz still has a number of loveable sidekicks, it seems. From a ginger cat to a talking robot, expect plenty of new characters to be added into the mix.

There’s only one line of dialogue in the 90-second trailer, and fans will know it well. In the last scene, we see Buzz, accompanied by a female astronaut, about to embark on a mission. Before they do, they touch fingers, saying “To infinity, and …”. Of course, we all know how that phrase ends, but it leaves viewers with a nice dose of nostalgia.