Lightning McQueen
Characterization Edit
During the initial research for the film, John Lasseter met with General Motors designers to discuss the new Corvette design [ 2 ] but subsequent changes to the storyline left both Lightning McQueen and rival Chick Hicks as generic.
“He’s the new rookie, he’s sexy, he’s fast, he’s different. So he’s invented. We took the best of our favourite things, from GT40s to Chargers … just sketching them out, we came up with what McQueen looks like.”
—Bob Pauley, one of two Cars production designers [ 3 ]
In order to create a cocky but likeable character for McQueen, Pixar looked at sports figures like boxer Muhammad Ali. basketball player Charles Barkley. and football quarterback Joe Namath. as well as popular musician Kid Rock .
“For the other race cars, we looked at how race cars drive. For McQueen, we looked at surfers and snowboarders and Michael Jordan. these truly great athletes and the beauty of how they move. You watch Jordan in his heyday against every other player, he’s playing a different game. We wanted to have that same type of feeling, so that when they’re talking about ‘the rookie sensation,’ you’re seeing that he is really gifted.”
—James Ford Murphy, Cars directing animator. [ 3 ]
The end result is a character which, despite the usually-meticulous approach to truth to material in which each car’s animation is mechanically consistent with its respective model’s capabilities, can occasionally bend the rules to move more like an athlete than a motorcar. [ citation needed ]
In the original film, Lightning is one of three contestants in a Piston Cup tiebreaker race before an audience of more than two hundred thousand cars in Los Angeles, California. It is revealed in a sequel [ which? ] that he won the Piston Cup from 2007-2010. [ citation needed ]
Lightning McQueen appears in Kinect Rush: A Disney/Pixar Adventure . [ citation needed ]
Cars movie Edit
Over the course of his stay in the town, he comes to form friendships with the residents of the town. He falls in love with a former city-dwelling attorney named Sally and gains a deep respect and reverence for the town’s judge and doctor, an ex-race car named Doc Hudson. These experiences lead McQueen to understand the importance of friendship and love, and that fame is not the most important thing in life.
Soon after realizing this, he is found by his crew and the media and taken to Los Angeles for the big race.
It is established (while initially en route to California and when driving with Sally to the Wheel Well Motel) that not only did McQueen not have any close friends but also secretly found his life unhappy. When Sally told McQueen the reason for leaving her lifestyle as an attorney, being that she wasn’t happy, McQueen began to agree but immediately puts on a surprised emotion to hide it.
As the tie-breaker race begins, McQueen’s thoughts keep drifting back to Radiator Springs, distracting him from the competition. However, he is surprised to discover that his new friends have come along to serve as his pit crew with Doc – once again outfitted in his old racing colors – serving as McQueen’s new crew chief. Heartened by their presence and recalling the tricks they taught him, McQueen is able to counteract Chick Hicks’ dirty driving tactics and take the lead of the race.
McQueen manages to make it to the finish line before Chick and The King, but after seeing The King being deliberately spun out of control by Chick, and remembering the crash that had ended Doc’s career, McQueen stops before the finish line to help the long-time racer.
As Chick Hicks triumphantly crosses the finish line in first place, McQueen helps push The King to the end, allowing him to complete his last race and retire with dignity, much to the crowd’s pleasure. Although the King reminds him that he just gave up the Piston Cup, Lightning recalls Doc’s statement earlier in the film: It’s just an empty cup.
McQueen gains a large measure of respect from the public for his act of sportsmanship, while Chick is booed and jeered by the crowd for his reckless cheating. McQueen is offered the Dinoco sponsorship by Tex (a longtime King #43 fan and the owner of Dinoco Oil) but turns it down, saying that he would rather stay with the Rust-Eze team that brought him this far.
McQueen returns to Radiator Springs and decides to move his team’s headquarters there, helping to revitalize the town and its businesses. The movie ends with Lightning and Sally racing to Flo’s and Mater flying on a Dinoco helicopter (as Lightning had promised him earlier in the movie).
Cars video game Edit
In the Cars video game, written by Pixar and considered a continuation to the story started in the movie, Lightning McQueen finds himself at the start of the next Piston Cup season. With the help of the citizens of Radiator Springs, McQueen readies to start his quest for the Piston Cup, taking lessons in powersliding from Doc, boosting from Fillmore, and racing backwards from Mater. With his new skills, Lightning once again makes a championship run in the Piston Cup, much to the irritation of Chick Hicks.
Fearing his title is in jeopardy, Chick enlists the assistance of The Delinquent Road Hazards – DJ, Boost, Wingo, and Snot Rod — the same rowdy cars who detoured McQueen to Radiator Springs, to hijack McQueen’s racing gear from Mack on Interstate 40. Lightning is able to retrieve his equipment and bring the delinquents to justice before winning the next race, which sends Chick into a frenzy.
Lightning challenges Chick to a Grand Prix in Radiator Springs, followed by one more Piston Cup race in L.A.. Lightning wins these events, taking the Piston Cup in his sophomore season.
At the end, Lightning, Mater, and Sally decide to take a celebratory trip across the country. When asked if he brought his trophy, Lightning notes he did not, but left it in a good place, revealed to be at Doc Hudson’s clinic next to the racing legend’s own three Piston Cups.
Though Lightning McQueen is still sponsored by Rust-eze, players are able to unlock McQueen with a Dinoco paint job while playing as him in Story Mode, Arcade Mode, and VS. Mode.
Cars 2 movie Edit
At the beginning of the movie, Lightning’s shown to have won 4 Piston Cup titles in a row and has returned to Radiator Springs in the off-season, even sending his pit crew away on vacation. While McQueen is happy with his victories, he misses his friend and mentor, Doc Hudson. who had died sometime between the first and second Cars movies. McQueen enjoys his time with his best friend Mater and his girlfriend Sally Carrera before learning about the first ever World Grand Prix, sponsored by former oil tycoon Miles Axelrod to promote his new biofuel, Allinol.
Even though he’s invited to join, Lightning had declined, until he sees on television the Grand Prix’s favorite to win, Francesco Bernoulli, taunting and trashing talking about him, something Lighting’s friends do not appreciate. Only after Mater calls in on the television show to defend McQueen does Lightning intervene and decides to join the race after all, after his friends in Radiator Springs unanimously decide to fill in as his pit crew, with Mater joining only when Sally convinces Lightning to let him come as his spotter.
Upon arriving in Tokyo, Japan for the pre-race party, Lightning becomes embarrassed by Mater’s antics throughout the party, making him start to regret bringing him along. It continues in the first race through Tokyo. Lightning initially dominates the race, but Mater, unwittingly caught up in a spy mission with Finn McMissile and Holly Shiftwell, has a miscommunication with McQueen that ultimately costs him the race.
Angered, McQueen confronts Mater afterwards, telling him that he doesn’t need Mater’s help anymore, explaining this as his reason of why he doesn’t take Mater along to his races.
Hurt, Mater decides to head back home, only to end up continuing his mission with McMissile and Shiftwell and McQueen ends up feeling guilty that he would mistreat his best friend and continues feeling sad about it as the Grand Prix continues to Italy. There, while at a party for his pit crew members Luigi and Guido, who have met up with their family, he is told by Luigi’s aunt and uncle that even the best of friends will argue every now and then, which inspires Lightning to patch things up with Mater.
McQueen wins the second race in Porto Corsa, Italy, though many cars end up damaged, which causes the public to blame Allinol, which is fueling all the cars in the race, but is actually due to the evil Prof. Zündapp, Professor Z, sabotaging the cars’ race by igniting Allinol with EMP weapons disguised as World Grand Prix cameras.
Zündapp and a criminal organization of lemon cars are planning to sabotage the Grand Prix under their unseen superior to turn all vehicles in the world against alternative energy and rely on gasoline. Miles Axelrod decides to remove Allinol from the final race, allowing the cars to choose their fuel. Lightning decides to stay with Allinol based on advice from his pit crew member Fillmore.
Upon hearing this, Zündapp gets his orders from his superior that McQueen mustn’t win the last race and instead be killed. Mater overhears this and tries to warn McQueen, but is captured along with McMissile and Shiftwell before doing so.
Lightning goes on with the third and final race of the Grand Prix, in London, England, with Sally and most of the friends from Radiator Springs coming to London to help support him and find Mater (with the help from Scotland Yard and the Army). Axelrod also paid a temporary visit to McQueen, giving his full support to win the final race and show the world what Allinol can do.
The race begins and Zündapp tries to destroy McQueen with the infrared beam that he had used to sabotage the cars in the previous races, but it inexplicably fails for some unknown reason. This causes Zündapp to go with plan B, which turns out to be using a bomb that had been planted on Mater’s air filter to blow up McQueen as a backup plan. Mater, who is unaware of the bomb planted on him, escapes and tries to warn McQueen when he comes for a pit stop, until McMissile and Shiftwell inform him of Zündapp’s plan.
McQueen, upon seeing Mater, tries to apologize to him, but Mater, terrified, tries to drive away to avoid possibly killing McQueen, though McQueen takes pursuit, until the bomb is out of range of Zündapp’s detonator. After stopping in an empty intersection, McQueen finally realizes what’s happening when Mater explains the plot to him and when Shiftwell and McMissile appear with a captured Zündapp.
They fight off Zündapp’s henchmen, with help from their friends from Radiator Springs, as well as Scotland Yard and the Army. Just when all hope is lost, as no one cannot diffuse the bomb from Mater (not even Professor Z nor his henchmen can deactivate it), Mater realized the final clues pointing out to the true identity of Zündapp’s superior behind the criminal plot of sabotaging the World Grand Prix, Miles Axelrod himself. Mater also figured out that Axelrod came up with the idea of creating Allinol to give alternative energy a bad name to the world, as he still owns the largest untapped oil reserves in the world alongside the lemon criminals.
Upon learning this, Mater is initially unable to take action, seeing that people take him as a fool because of his silly personality, but McQueen convinces him to stand up for them in order to prove his point. It was then Mater races to the Buckingham Palace with McQueen, where he angrily confronts Axelrod of the plot, pointing out the leaking oil incident back in the party in Japan and the bolts depicted in the photo of the unseen mastermind.
Axelrod attempts to deny Mater’s claims, calling Mater insane and delusional, but eventually was forced to deactivate the bomb with a voice command to prevent killing himself, proving Mater’s claims correct. After Mater shows that Axelrod’s engine proving to be exactly the same one in the photo, Axelrod is arrested, along with Zündapp and his henchmen, on the charges of conspiracy to crime, murder, arson, and embezzlement, and an investigation is made over the Grand Prix and the Allinol following Axelrod and the Lemons’ arrest.
Amazed that Mater has actually foiled a criminal conspiracy plot by using his own wits, McQueen officially declares to Mater that he can come to all of his races around the world from now on, much to Mater’s delight. McQueen also served as a witness alongside his friends as Mater gets knighted by the Queen for foiling Axelrod’s plans for good.
After McQueen and Mater return to Radiator Springs with their friends, they receive a visit from Finn and Holley, who wishes to pick up Mater for a new mission (to which Mater respectfully declines). With the World Grand Prix unfinished (due to the investigation following Axelrod’s arrest), Lightning gets the other racecars in the race (including Francesco) to join him in a race at Radiator Springs with nothing at stake.
Before the race begins, Fillmore reveals that Sarge actually replaced McQueen’s Allinol supply with Fillmore’s organic bio-fuel, since he was skeptical what Allinol can really do after what happened in Japan and Italy, which explains why McQueen escaped the radiation in the first place. This was backed up when Holley pointed out that the investigation concluded that Allinol was actually gasoline engineered to ignite by the EMP beams to discredit alternative energy, just as Mater earlier suspected. The film ends with Lightning taking first place during the Radiator Springs Grand Prix, and Mater ends up joining, thanks to rocket boosters that he had gotten from Finn and Holley.
Lightning’s paint job at the beginning of the movie is almost the same as it was in the first movie (his large lightning bolt is repainted dark red, and a smaller bolt is threaded through his number), though it is modified for the World Grand Prix with green-tinted flames on the end of his large bolt and a Piston Cup logo on the hood instead of his usual Rust-Eze logo, and his reflective lightning decals are removed and replaced with actual headlights.
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