In a place as vast as space, you’re going to have a large variety of power levels.
Even if Pixar’s newest film, “Lightyear”, doesn’t have very many aliens in it,
its human characters can still pack a punch. But who’s the strongest and who’s the weakest?
I’m Caleb with WickedBinge, and this is Lightyear: Weak to Powerful
Major spoilers ahead for the entirety of Lightyear. As always, we’re going to
be started with our weakest characters before working our way up to the strongest, with the
focus not just being on physical strength, but on skill, resources, weaponry and durability as well.
For our weakest character of the bunch, we had to go with the autopilot program,
I.V.A.N. Like we mentioned in our previous video, we’re considering IVAN as a minor character
of the film. He serves as Star Command’s main navigation and autopilot program, and as such
there’s not really much to him. While autopilots can certainly be useful - which Buzz learns by the
end of the movie - IVAN also seems to have a hard time ‘thinking outside of the box’ as it were.
This is shown during Buzz’s first test flight, where the only solution IVAN offers when Buzz is
thrown off course is to eject, and only seems to make things difficult when Buzz tries a different
tactic. In terms of physicality, while IVAN does seem pretty durable, being able to still
operate even after nearly a century, even this is questionable at times given that we see
Buzz blowing into an IVAN device like an old NES cartridge just to make it work right. Although not
completely useless, it’s pretty obvious that IVAN lands right at the bottom when it comes to power.
The second weakest character of the film is the clumsy rookie Mo. While he certainly
tries to be the best ranger he can be, Mo manages to fall pretty far behind the pack
for the most part. His introduction involves him shooting a harpoon and,
as Buzz says, getting lucky and just barely managing to defeat one of Zurg’s robots.
Things don’t really improve for Mo from there, unfortunately. To put it simply,
Mo is incredibly clumsy. Throughout several points in the film, we see him mess up a plan,
trip, drop something - you get the picture. He doesn’t have the strongest durability, getting
easily airsick while in Buzz’s ship, and when the bugs attacked the team, he was the first to panic
and surrender. So, is there ANYTHING Mo offers that makes him slightly more powerful than IVAN?
Well, in the climax we do see that, when given the chance, Mo is able to prove himself thanks to
some quick thinking on his part. It’s also his pen that allows the team to survive their final crash.
Not exactly a weapon or even a conventional tool, but hey, it works! Unfortunately,
these victorious moments just aren’t enough to keep poor Mo out of the lower half of our list.
Next up, we have Izzy Hawthorne. Being another rookie, Buzz’s brief interrogation of her makes
it very clear that while she may have a ton of enthusiasm and determination,
she has very little experience. We don’t really see her do much hand-to-hand combat on her own,
though she does think fast on her feet and she’s able to work very well in a team. In fact,
Izzy’s greatest strength is her leadership skills, since she’s able to guide both Mo and
Darby - who likely wouldn’t have been able to get as far without her. We also have to mention that
Izzy’s the one who comes up with the “Operation: Surprise Party” plan, so she’s obviously a pretty
smart character who’s able to plan ahead. Looking at her physical strengths, Izzy is pretty agile,
since we see that she was able to save herself from floating out into endless space
despite her fears likely making it hard to think and act in that moment. She’s even fast
enough to save Sox from the same fate! As for flaws, like we said she’s not really a fighter
or even a skilled weapons user like another Team Lightyear member that we’ll get to in a moment.
Izzy’s overeagerness can also sometimes cause her to make some fairly big mistakes - namely losing
the team’s fuel crystal. For these reasons, we felt that we couldn’t really put her any higher.
Keeping with the Team Lightyear rookies, we have the explosive expert and former convict Darby.
Outside of Buzz, Darby is the one we see using weapons the most. From blasters to bombs - both
pre-made and homemade - Darby is without a doubt the team’s most destructive member,
taking out plenty of robots essentially by herself and only occasionally needing assistance from one
of her other teammates. This in addition to being able to keep calm under pressure
and think of back-up plans truly makes her a force to be reckoned with. Honestly, the fact that
she’s able to make a literal bomb out of things like chewing gum, a wrapper, some wires and a
device that she’s never really worked with before - and all in only a few minutes! - just shows how
talented she is when it comes to the ‘explosive arts’. Relating to her past as a convict, she was
smart and skilled enough to steal a spaceship. Even if she was eventually caught, we’d imagine
it’s not a crime that just ANYONE can successfully pull off. Unfortunately, what causes Darby to land
here isn’t her brain or skill, but her body. Being an elder, Darby likely isn’t as physically strong
as the others on her team. Though we don’t get any old-people cliches from her, like her complaining
about back pain or spraining a hip, it’s still likely a concern for her and we’d assume that
she probably depends on the durability of her space suit a lot because of this.
Moving up towards the upper half of our ranking, we have the first of our commanders, Commander
Burnside. Naturally, it’s Burnside’s ranking that allows him a spot this high up. Being a commander,
Burnside is in charge of the Tikana Prime colony and everyone in it, giving him plenty of resources
and power without even having to lift a finger. But don’t go thinking that Burnside is just
“the guy in charge” who doesn’t have any strength of his own. After Buzz’s final test flight,
we see footage of Burnside fighting off Zurg’s robots, showing that he likely does have at least
SOME training and combat experience, which is more than other characters like Izzy and Mo can say.
While he isn’t successful in defeating the robots and is force to make a retreat, staying in hiding
for most of the movie, the fact that Burnside was able to walk away from a robot attack at all
is still impressive considering that he had never fought against them before given that the robots
were from the distant future. We admittedly can’t say much on Burnside’s actual commander skills as,
again, we don’t see much of it in the film, we can’t imagine that he was given his rank for
nothing. For all these reasons, we felt that Burnside deserved a fairly high spot.
Next is everyone’s favorite robo-cat, Sox. Though not the strongest or most powerful robot
that we’ve ever seen on this channel, Sox still manages to be much more powerful than he looks.
Outside of his robotic intelligence - which is nothing to sneeze at,
given that he was the one to figure out the issue with Buzz’s homemade fuel - Sox’s robotic
abilities extend to some pretty impressive hacking skills. He’s able to override commands from the
colony and we see him hacking into ships and other devices to help out during the mission. He also
doubles as both a tracker and a flashlight, and in terms of weaponry, he does have tranquilizer
darts that can knock people out for a minimum of five minutes. Though unsuccessful in the end,
he does attack one of Zurg’s robots and manages to slow it down ever so slightly. Finally,
his durability - while a bit on the fragile side - isn’t the worst that we’ve seen.
He still requires a brief reboot after Mo drops him, but that’s better than completely breaking
at the very least. So, while he may not have claws or fangs, this is no helpless kitty. Of course,
his biggest strength is without a doubt his caring heart. Who says robots can’t feel?
Taking the Bronze Medal of Power is the one and only Buzz Lightyear. It only seems natural that
one of the best Space Rangers around would be in our top 3. Having years of training
and experience under his belt, Buzz is strong, fast, agile and extremely skilled. He knows
hand-to-hand combat as well as weapons, being able to use both a laser sword and a laser with ease,
having extremely good aim with the latter. He’s able to act quickly, thinking of new plans on his
feet when things go wrong and is even smart enough to do complex equations while flying
at near-lightspeed. So yeah, maybe not quite as dumb as the toy version can sometimes be.
Honestly though, Buzz’s greatest strength may just be his durability. The guy takes
a LOT of hard hits in this movie, especially in the climax when he’s fighting against Zurg. But
for as many times as Buzz gets knocked down or knocked into things, he just keeps getting back
up. Not even getting knocked into a spaceship can slow him down! We also see him withstand insane
levels of heat and friction when he helps his team safely land their ship at the end of the movie.
Really, the only weakness Buzz has isn’t with his muscles or his brain but with his ego,
being someone who can be incredibly stubborn and definitely over-confident at times,
which certainly messes with his success rate. Still, since he’s able to move past this drawback
and does end up landing the final blow on Zurg, he’s able to stay in our Top 3.
Moving onto our Silver Medal of Power, we’re giving it to Commander Alisha Hawthorne. Much
of what we said about both Buzz and Burnside can be said about Alisha. As commander,
she not only led the Tikana colony but helped it grow and thrive into something that could become
an actual home for the people trapped there. But while her leadership skills are the best
of the bunch, her skills as a ranger are just as noteworthy. Even Buzz calls her one of the greats,
better than him even! Alisha proves this with how skilled she is in combat and how
well she works with Buzz at the start of the movie, with the two of them fighting
off the alien vines and her doing what she can to save their ship and everyone in it
while also having her partner’s back. It really is a shame that we don’t get to see her being
involved with a ton of the action after the film’s first act, but for the little time we did see her,
we can safely say that Alisha is one of the strongest characters there.
Finally, our Gold Medal of Power goes to the film’s antagonist, Zurg. While Burnside and
Alisha may both be commanders, Zurg is essentially the only one with an entire army. Even if his
robots aren’t impossible to defeat, they’re still able to cause some damage and be enough
of a threat to have Team Lightyear on the ropes for much of the movie. Regarding Zurg himself,
in addition to having all the combat experience and skill that Buzz has - since he’s, you know…
Buzz but older - he also has a pretty powerful robotic suit. The suit stands at least 10 feet
tall and is strong enough to crush things - specifically his timeline’s version of Sox - with
only a single step. It also has decent defenses, a powerful laser blaster and an extend-o arm that’s
able to grab and capture enemies with ease. We also can’t forget Zurg’s massive intelligence,
as figuring out backwards time travel essentially by himself couldn’t have been easy. In the end,
it takes blowing up the fuel crystal to defeat Zurg once and for all… except not really because
the end credits scene showed that he DID in fact survive and will likely be out for revenge. So
yeah, we can check off impressive durability too. With all these factors combined, Zurg
easily manages to rank as our Most Powerful Lightyear character.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking, and tell us what we should
cover next. Remember to hit that notification bell and binge our Weak to Powerful playlist,
where we break down who the most powerful characters are in your favorite cartoons,
shows and movies. But most importantly, stay wicked!