Lightning Mc Queen - Cars 2 Movie

Cars 2 Movie

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 him. Only after Mater calls in on the television show to defend McQueen does Lightning intervene and decides to join the race after all, having his friends in Radiator Springs 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. Zundapp 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 covinces 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 Axlerod 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.