A deleted scene from the recent “Buzz Lightyear” reveals director Angus MacLane’s idea for the origin of the space ranger’s famous line “To Infinity and Beyond.”
The C-siteartoonBrew just released storyboards for a deleted scene from Buzz Lightyear. Entitled “Meet Izzy”, the sequence shows Izzy, the granddaughter of Commander Alisha Hawthorne, meeting Buzz when she was only 7 years old. In the film, Buzz meets the character when she is an adult.
Director Angus MacLane explains at the start of the video: “We couldn’t figure out how to fit it into the first act and keep the rhythm. (…) We needed to give Alisha’s character more time in the first part so we had to remove this scene.”
The scene in question features young Izzy when she first meets Buzz. The child knocks on the door of the hero who is reading while his cat-robot Sox sleeps by his side.
When the little girl sees the animal she can’t help but go pet it and it starts to purr, a noise the ranger doesn’t know. The scene was also used in the film but with an adult Izzy.
Pixar Izzy & Buzz
Count to infinity and beyond
The little girl then proudly announces to Buzz that her brother Maurice can count to infinity and declares: “So I’ll learn to count beyond“. To which Buzz responds: “In fact, you can’t go beyond infinity, it’s mathematically impossible“. A correction that does not please Izzy who declares that it is Buzz who is mathematically impossible.
The spectators will therefore appreciate the childish reflection since we know that the tirade “To infinity and beyond” will become the trademark of Buzz Lightyear.
If the origin of the replica is ultimately not in the film, it is still explained. It’s a phrase Buzz and Alisha say together, followed by a gesture.
The bond between Izzy and Mo
This sequence also tells us that there was basically a link between Izzy and Mo, the two members of the Zap Patrol. Angus MacLane explains: “You will notice that Maurice is actually Izzy’s brother. We were looking for a way to make Izzy represent a family“.
This scene would have added a paternal bond between Buzz and the two members of the Zap Patrol and would have given Buzz what he never could have because of his desperate need to right his mistakes: a family.
By deleting this sequence, the director and the team therefore chose to abandon a complete section of theorigin story of Buzz and in particular the explanation of this phrase which has become cult.
Mo & Izzy kids
While Buzz Lightyear contains references to the line that support the toy’s use of it in Toy Story, this scene cemented the origin of the phrase in a much more definitive way.
Note also in this storyboard, the presence of a nod to Toy Story which was not included in the final version. The young Izzy wears a T-shirt with the drawing of an Alien. A presence that would therefore also have explained the origin of the grappling hook admirers in the original saga since Buzz Lightyear is supposed to take place before the franchise started in 1996 by John Lasseter.
Buzz Lightning is currently in theaters.
Meeting with the French voices of “Buzz l’Eclair”