To infinity – actually, let’s go back: why can film franchises no longer look to the future?

The best known line of dialogue from Toy Story – the best known line from any Pixar film, in fact – is Buzz Lightyear’s gloriously nonsensical catchphrase, “To infinity – and beyond!” It’s hardly surprising, then, that he says it once every 15 minutes in Lightyear, the new Pixar cartoon which is, supposedly, the sci-fi blockbuster which prompted Andy’s mother to buy him a Buzz action figure back in 1995. What is surprising is that Buzz’s exploits in the film are the exact opposite of what that catchphrase implies. He doesn’t hurtle away to the edge of the universe, let alone beyond it. He spends most of the cartoon stranded on one desolate desert planet, like Matt Damon in The