Everybody all over the world, from all walks of life, seems to love Pixar,
and why wouldn’t they? Their films are full of great stories, strong world-building,
and above all else, lovable characters. Unfortunately, not every character is a home run,
and that’s true even for a studio with as good of a batting average as Pixar’s. Some
characters are just plain unlikeable, be it for one reason or another, and
that’s what we’re here to talk about today! After all, you can’t appreciate the great
characters if you don’t also look at the bad ones, so let’s get this list started!
I’m Brad with WickedBinge, and this is The Worst Pixar Characters (And Why They Suck)
First up on the list is a truly despicable villain, Lotso from Toy Story 3! Now, to be
fair to this strawberry-scented plush bear, Lotso is detestable on purpose. After all, he is the
villain of the movie, so he’s not supposed to be a pleasant character. However, even when you look
at him from that perspective, he’s still less likable than the vilest of Pixar antagonists.
What really makes Lotso so awful as a character is a combination of his status as the film’s villain
and his initial kind-hearted demeanor. Most Pixar villains are evil straight from the start,
and even their character designs hint towards their darker intentions. Lotso
is the complete inverse of that. He looks nice and friendly, and puts on an act of hospitality when
Andy’s toys arrive at the daycare. However, that’s nothing more than a mask over his real identity,
which is that of a corrupt and cruel dictator. In many ways, he’s the total polar opposite
of Sid’s mutant toys from the first film, who looked evil but were actually quite pleasant.
He’s also easily the most villainous out of any villain in the entire series. Don’t forget that
Woody and the others were very nearly incinerated thanks to Lotso’s interference! In conclusion,
Lotso’s general unpleasant nature, as well as the fact that he’s just a whole lot less likable
than most Pixar villains, is more than enough to get this toy the first spot on the list!
Going from a character we’re supposed to hate to one we should love, Mater from the Cars
franchise races into sixth place! If we had to summarize our problems with Mater into one word,
it would most definitely be “annoying” with a capital “A”! Mater is the Buzz Lightyear to
Lightning McQueen’s Woody, but while Buzz was charming and intriguing as a character, Mater
is anything but. On the surface, he seems like a good parallel to Lightning’s character. While
Lightning is a sleek racecar that loves fame, Mater is a tow truck that’s as rusty and as beaten
up as can be. It’s the execution of this character where things start to fall apart. Mater is the
main source of comic relief in this series, but his jokes and demeanor are more obnoxious than
they are charming or clever. Things get even worse with this character in the sequels, with Cars 2 in
particular being a huge spotlight on Mater’s flaws as a character. Remember how we compared him to
Buzz? Well, while Buzz was able to hold an entire storyline of his own together in the second Toy
Story, Mater isn’t a compelling enough character to make that work. He spent so much of the series
as the joke character, but now we’re supposed to buy him as the main character in this spy story,
even more so than Lightning himself? Sorry, but we don’t buy it, and it seems like most felt the
same way, considering how the second film is universally agreed upon to be one of Pixar’s
weakest films. We’ve been harping on Mater for a while now, so why is he so low on this list? Well,
though we dislike him, we cannot deny the fact that he has his fans. Pixar wouldn’t have made
the second film almost entirely focused on him if that weren’t the case! Besides that,
it’s also undeniable Mater has found a place for himself in Pixar’s vast catalog of characters.
He’s just as memorable as some of the greats, and while that might not be for the reasons intended,
that sense of familiarity does give him something future characters on this list lack.
Up next, we have Flik from A Bug’s Life! A lot of you might be typing
away at your keyboards at this choice, but for those who feel that way, we have a quick challenge
for you. If you had to sum up Flik’s personality in just a few words, what would they be? That more
than anything else is our main problem with Flik. Mr. Incredible is a family man, Lightning McQueen
is a hotshot, Sully is a blue-collar worker, and Flik is…smart? The anxious type? Some might
say he’s the type to go against the grain, but that sums up a lot of Pixar characters,
so it’s not enough to make Flik stand out from the rest of his fellow protagonists. He’s not
that memorable of a character, and when stacked up against other heroes in Pixar’s filmography,
he seems even more forgettable. We’d go one step further and say that, when you look at the other
characters in his film, he still doesn’t seem that memorable! When people think of this film,
they usually discuss the villain Hopper, or the lovable Circus Bugs. How many times do you hear
about Flik in relation to this movie? Admittedly, Flik’s lackluster character
can be forgiven to some degree. This was Pixar’s second movie, and when your first
one introduced the world to instantly memorable characters like Woody and Buzz, it can be a hard
act to follow up. Still, when you talk about the best Pixar characters, it’s unlikely to
ever hear Flik come up in that conversation, earning him an unfortunate spot on this list.
Speaking of forgettable characters, let’s talk about Evelyn Deavor from The Incredibles
2! The second Incredibles film has long been criticized as a film that lives in the shadow
of its predecessor, and that kind of sums up Evelyn. She feels too similar to Syndrome
to really stand on her own, and when compared to him, she’s nowhere near as interesting.
Evelyn’s main goal is to make sure superheroes are outlawed, as she sees them as the ones responsible
for the death of her parents. Right off the bat, that’s a lot more generic and a lot less
imaginative than Syndrome’s plan to profit off his weapons and make everyone superpowered. It’s
a pretty cliche motivation that we’ve heard in superhero movies time and time again,
and it’s especially disappointing considering how much of a breath of fresh air the first film felt
to this genre. However, even once you divorce her character from Syndrome and look at her for her
own merits, she remains a weak antagonist. The name “Evelyn Deavor” is a funny pun admittedly,
but it feels out of place in a series like The Incredibles, which had a far more serious and
mature tone than most animated movies. It seems like something that would fit more inside a
Saturday morning cartoon than this franchise. It makes it so that it’s no big surprise when
it turns out she’s the mastermind behind the Screenslaver. We could see it coming a mile away!
Evelyn Deavor feels like one of the worst examples of the now infamous “twist villain” trope commonly
found in modern Disney and Pixar movies. While she is a twist villain, it’s hardly a surprise,
and although she has clear intentions, they aren’t that interesting compared to her predecessor or
when looked at on their own. While she might not be the absolute worst Pixar character,
she’s most certainly the weakest villain the studio has ever brought to life.
Flying into third place is Buzz Lightyear! No, not the lovable toy who thinks he’s a space ranger,
the actual space ranger from the Lightyear movie! While we criticized Flik as the most
unmemorable Pixar hero, this incarnation of Buzz is easily their most generic. He doesn’t seem all
that different from your typical Marvel movie superhero, a comparison that’s only made more
apparent by the fact he’s voiced by Captain America himself, Chris Evans. While the Buzz
Lightyear toy was charismatic and funny, the real Buzz is stoic…and not much else. He’s played as
straightforward as you would expect the real Buzz to be, and while that would be fine if
this character was merely left to our imagination, in an actual movie about him you kind of expect
something more. There’s no real interesting subversion or alteration to what we know of
this character, apart from the lackluster reveal that Emperor Zurg is an evil future version of
him. He also doesn’t really bounce off the rest of the cast in any sort of engaging way. As cute as
Sox is, he doesn’t exactly have much of a strong relationship with Buzz in this movie. A superhero
with less characterization than a literal toy, Buzz is one of Pixar’s blandest protagonists,
and a far cry from the legendary toy this character supposedly inspired. Honestly, it’s kind
of surprising Andy latched onto Buzz so heavily considering how dull the original character was!
In second place, we have Merida from Brave! A Scottish princess, Merida is pretty rebellious,
especially towards the traditions of her royal family. Now, would we be wrong to
say that that doesn’t really sound like a Pixar character? If anything,
that’s more akin to a Disney character. It’s not too different from how one would
describe Princess Jasmine or Mulan. That is the big issue with Merida as a character. Not
only is she generic by the standards of other Pixar characters, but she feels generic even
compared to characters from Disney films made two decades before Brave was released. If Merida was a
character who appeared in that 90’s era of Disney films, maybe that would be forgivable, but this
was 2012. She also feels akin to a rejection of Pixar’s primary storytelling goals. Pixar
prided itself on being unique from Disney. While Disney movies predominantly feature fairytales,
musical numbers, and talking animals, Pixar has focused more on strange concepts held together by
strong characters. Merida feels like a rejection of Pixar’s mission goals, but if you do choose to
look at other princess characters in the Disney library compared to her, she still doesn’t stand
strong! Part of that can be attributed to Merida being a rather unpleasant character. Merida
is pretty stubborn and combative, and while she does grow as a character, it doesn’t suddenly
make those elements of her character any more tolerable. She doesn’t have the charm or underdog
quality found in a lot of Pixar heroes, which makes her character feel pretty flat. Merida
feels like an animated protagonist of a bygone age more than anything else. Between that and
her unlikable and bland personality, it makes you wonder who could be a worse character than her?
Finally… our worst character medal goes to… a group of characters. From The Good Dinosaur,
we have…literally everyone. Remember how we asked earlier to think of Flik’s character
in just a few words? Try that again, but for literally anyone from this entire movie. You
can’t can you? That was bad enough in Flik’s case, but considering we’re talking about a
cast of over a dozen characters, it’s a huge misfire on the part of the filmmakers. The
cast of this film feels like an amalgamation of all the problems we’ve had with the prior
characters on this list. The characters aren’t just forgettable, but also unlikeable, bland,
and derivative. You have a villain with weak motivations, the father who takes on the role
of a mentor, and the goofy side characters. We’ve seen all of these characters in many
animated films before and we’ll likely see them in many more to come, and that’s something that
can’t be said for the characters in most of Pixar’s films. Even their weaker films have
at least a character or two who is memorable in some way. The Good Dinosaur isn’t like that. Once
you finish the movie, the characters don’t stick with you in any meaningful way, be it good or bad,
and that’s their criminal flaw. We’ve looked at a lot of bad characters in this video, but even some
of the worst Pixar characters are memorable in one way or another. The characters in this film are as
forgettable as they come, and in our eyes, that’s even worse than being just a bad character. Being
hated is one thing, but nobody wants to be forgotten. That’s what ultimately seals the
cast of The Good Dinosaur’s fate as the worst Pixar characters of all.
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 more of our videos. But most importantly, stay wicked.