Chris Evans compares playing Buzz in Lightyear to his Captain America role. After retiring from his shield-wielding role as the Marvel super-soldier Steve Rogers/ Captain America in Avengers: Endgame, Evans is leading Disney Pixar's Toy Story spin-off movie as the test pilot/astronaut Buzz Lightyear. Previously, Tim Allen voiced the toy version of Buzz in the Toy Story movies. But for Lightyear, which Finding Dory co-helmer Angus MacLane is directing in his solo feature debut, Evans has taken over the role to accommodate for the story and world differences. Lightyear is described as an origin story for the titular space ranger, and it tracks the hero's adventure as he finds his way back home through time and space from a hostile, faraway planet.
Following Avengers: Endgame, Evans has played against type in some of his projects, taking on antagonistic roles in movies such as Knives Out and The Gray Man. Audiences have had fun seeing that side of Evans' range, but they'll soon get to see him play another well-meaning hero. When hearing Evans voice Buzz in the Lightyear trailers, it's hard to not think back to his Steve Rogers, and now Evans has compared the two.
Speaking with THR, Evans discussed his experience playing both Captain America and Buzz Lightyear. As the actor points out, there are both, parallels and dissimilarities, between the characters, and portraying each was a uniquely rewarding experience. As the Knives Out star puts it, Both Buzz and Steve are responsible and competent leaders, but as people, they just have different personas. So Evans borrowed the qualities from Steve that would be applicable to his role as Buzz, otherwise, he left the distinguishing features to secure Cap and Buzz's originality. Read what Evans said below.
“The characters themselves have a lot of similar overlap in terms of their sense of responsibility and leadership. But they’re very different men, so you take the things that are useful and you leave the things that make Cap, Cap.”
As Evans had explained earlier, the actor took a minute before he could find his own version of Buzz for Lightyear. His natural instinct when he approached the role was to do a "shameless Tim Allen impression," and he found Lightyear's iconic "To infinity and beyond" line very intimidating at first. But ultimately, with MacLane's help, Evans was able to discover his own Buzz voice, and come into his own for the role. -Screen Rant
