This is not your 1995 Buzz Lightyear.

Lightyear takes pains, at the beginning, to point out that this is not the story of Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. The opening caption tells us that Andy’s Buzz Lightyear toy was merchandise from a movie – this movie.

In Lightyear, Buzz, a Space Ranger in Star Command, here voiced by Chris Evans, detour from their mission to take the exploration vessel and all its inhabitants to their home planet, in order to check out the planet T’kani Prime. He and his best friend and fellow Ranger Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) The planet proves inhospitable and as the crew attempt an escape, the energy crystal powering the ship is damaged, stranding the crew.

A year later, the crew have formed a colony on-world, and have repaired their ship and have a new energy crystal that’s ready for testing. Buzz, still wracked with guilt for his part in the shipwreck, volunteers to test the energy source for the first time.

The test run isn’t quite successful, as the energy crystal proves too unstable for use, and worse, because of time dilation, Buzz’s four minute test flight at light speed kept him away from T’kani for four years. Alisha gives Buzz a robot companion called Sox, an adorable (and very useful) cat voiced by Peter Sohn, but Buzz is still conflicted. To him, nothing is more important than completing the mission.

To that end, Buzz continues to test the energy crystals, with each mission taking him off world and out of the timeline for four years. Everytime he returns, Alisha has hit another milestone; she is engaged, she is married and pregnant, she and her wife Kiko are watching their son graduate, she has a granddaughter, and eventually, he finds she has passed away.

Alisha’s replacement, Commander Burnside (Isaiah Whitlock Jr.), doesn’t want Buzz to keep testing the crystal. He wants to stay on T’kani and abandon the idea of leaving. However, Sox has figured out the formula for the energy crystal, so Buzz defies the Commander and tests the new formulation, successfully this time.

However, when he returns, he finds that 22 years has passed, and now the colony is under threat by the evil Emperor Zurg and his robot army. They have the colony pinned down and no one can escape the siege. Luckily for Buzz though, a few colonists were training outside the perimeter and area available to get him up to speed, if not actually help him.

One of those colonists is Izzy, Alisha’s granddaughter, all grown up now and voiced by Keke Palmer. She’s out training with Mo Morrison (Taika Waititi) and Darby Steel (Dale Soules), who are in no way qualified to help, but they are the only ones who can.

This movie also gives us the back story of Emperor Zurg, which is a major plot twist that shouldn’t be spoiled. Director Angus MacLane keeps the plot moving at a rapid pace, focusing not only on the mission, where everything that can go wrong does, but also gives us a look at the interior lives of Buzz, Alisha, and Izzy, as they grapple with owning up to their mistakes and finding the strength to push through the guilt and, of course, finish the mission.

Though the character is derived from the G-rated Toy Story movies, Lightyear is rated PG. It seems aimed more at older children and adults because of the emotional core of the story, but aside from a few scares it is not inappropriate for younger kids, no matter what you may have heard on the news. It’s a good popcorn movie, certainly not one of Pixar’s best, but it has enough humor and depth to rank above average, especially given the great voice performances from Aduba, Palmer and Evans.