Everybody Loves Raymond star Patricia Heaton recently had some strong words for Disney and Pixar after they passed over Tim Allen for the new Buzz Lightyear movie.
Ever since he became a household name thanks to Home Improvement , Allen has earned a legion of dedicated fans and has lent his talents to some of the most beloved characters we grew up with.
But while he’s about to harken back to the material that put him on the map alongside Richard Karn — the Al Borland to his Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor — it seems that Allen won’t be able to reprise all of his iconic roles.
Indeed, as early as December of 2020, a trailer for Lightyear revealed that the famous space ranger would instead be played by Chris Evans .
But while Allen largely seems to have kept mum about this decision, it’s clear that one of his famous friends is less than impressed by it.
If you’re wondering why Tim Allen isn’t voicing Buzz Lightyear in the new movie, it apparently comes down to the difference between the toy and the ranger who inspired it.
In an interview with Vanity Fair , Lightyear director Angus Maclane described Evans’ Lightyear as being the movie character that Andy would have seen before buying the toy who would be Allen’s Lightyear.
In his words, “Tim’s version of Buzz is a little goofier and is a little dumber, and so he is the comic relief. In this film, Buzz is the action hero.”
As he saw it, Evans has “the gravitas and that movie star quality” that separates his Lightyear from Allen’s.
But if you were to ask Patricia Heaton, recasting Lightyear takes something fundamental about the character away from him.
Or as she put it in a tweet posted on June 14, “Why would they completely castrate this iconic, beloved character?”
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This outrage came after she watched the trailer and ended up feeling extremely disappointed.
As she sees it, there is no replacing Allen as the brave but occasionally bumbling space ranger.
As she said, “All I can say is Disney/Pixar made a HUGE mistake in not casting my pal Tim Allen in the role that he originated, the role that he owns. Tim IS Buzz!”
Although the move completely baffled her at first, she wasn’t any more impressed once she learned the reason for this decision.
In another tweet posted later that day, she acknowledged that this was Lightyear’s origin story that takes place before the toys that bore his likeness were even made.
Nonetheless, she maintained that it was still a “stupid Hollywood decision” and argued that the only reason Buzz Lightyear had enough cultural cachet to make a movie like this viable was because of Allen’s work.
In her words, “Why remove the one element that makes us want to see it?”
Needless to say, it doesn’t sound like she’ll be buying a ticket when it hits theaters on June 17.