Just about anyone who has seenToy Storymore than once has wondered whyBuzz Lightyeargoes rigid when people are around if he doesn’t truly believe he is a toy.Souldirector, and Pixar’s chief creative officer, Pete Docter, was recently asked about the Buzz plot hole, and his answer may surprise long-time fans who have always wanted the real answer about the character. You can read what Docter had to say below.
“We went through a lot of discussion onToy Story, the first one, about like, ‘If Buzzdoesn’t know he’s a toy, why does he go rigid when a kid walks in the room?’ We had a lot of explanations and talk about that, too. And in the end, nobody cared.”
Pete Docter went on to say, “I think the short answer is you just have to kind of try to guess where the audience is going to find importance, or at least push their interest there.” For Buzz Lightyear, Pixar just doesn’t really seem to care about that specific plot hole and they really don’t think anyone else should care either. “Our editor [forSoul], Kevin Nolting, on his big whiteboard in his office has ‘logic’ in a big X,” producer Dana Murray says. Basically, stop thinking logically when you’rewatching a Pixar movie. “Stop going there,” Murray reiterates.
Pete Docter also directedMonsters Inc., which is where anotherpopular Pixar plot holecomes from. In this instance, it’s about the Boo character and what her parents do while she is gone. Did they think she went missing? “This is one of these questions that we asked ourselves,” says Docter. “And we went through a lot of different machinations of writing scenes. We didn’t actually board any, but we felt like, OK, the audience doesn’t need to know this because Sulley doesn’t know. And we’re with Sulley. So who cares?”
When watching Pixar movies, Pete Docter wants the audience to go somewhere else and leave life behind for a little bit, while relating to the story at the same time. “I’d like to hope that the things that we’re talking about in the film ― you know, what is going on in our lives? What’s important? ― all of that will still be questions that we’re asking,” says Docter. Whatever the case may be, Pixar is at the top of their game, no matter how many plot holes fans keep finding. The interview with Pete Docter was originally conducted bythe Huffington Post.