Press Release BVHE Press Release: Lightyear (4k UHD) (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[Jake Lipson]

My pre-order of Lightyear arrived a day early in the mail.

Boy, how times have changed. The sticker on the slipcover promotes "over one hour of bonus." I remember when Pixar used to load up their home entertainment releases with the most robust extras slate of any studio. This is definitely a lighter package.

The product shot of the steelbook was not incorrect. It is, in fact, only two discs (1 UHD + 1 Blu-ray) instead of the usual Pixar standard three discs. Even Turning Red which just came out in May had a dedicated extras disc, although there was less on it than there would have been years ago.

I plan to go through what extras there are tonight.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I went through the Blu-ray. As expected, the video presentation of the movie is in scope throughout. The IMAX version which is on Disney+ is not offered here.

This is definitely the lightest extras package I've seen for a Pixar film in quite a while.

By far the most substantial of the extras are the audio commentary and deleted scenes sections. I think those will be of the most interest to fans.

"Building the World of Lightyear" is as close to a general making-of documentary as the disc gets, but really isn't one because it focuses specifically on the area of production design rather than the whole picture. That being said, it's pretty good. "The Zap Patrol" is a very general featurette with filmmakers and cast talking in a promotional way about their characters. It doesn't really tell you anything you wouldn't already know from seeing the film and feels like something that was produced to promote the theatrical release. "Toyetic" is about Pixar's consumer products division working with the filmmakers and toy manufacturers to produce merchandise related to the film.

And that's it.

When you load the disc, there is a trailer for Beyond Infinity, the documentary about the movie that was produced for Disney+. But the documentary is not actually included on the disc. Also, there are no trailers for Lightyear itself. Theatrical trailers have been such a fixture on Pixar releases that even Soul and Turning Red had them, even though those films didn't receive theatrical releases in most countries.

Lightyear is still my favorite movie of the year to date and I am glad that I have it in my collection. None of the featurettes here are necessarily bad. But it's noticeably light. The last few Pixar releases have had less on them than they used to, and this release is another step downward from what we have been getting.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

By far the most substantial of the extras are the audio commentary

I'm surprised they didn't include the runtime of the commentary to say 'Over 3 hours of bonus features!'.