Before the CW started adapting every DC property they could get their hands on and the MCU owned the box offices, fans got their dose of live-action superheroes from Sky High. The movie took superpowers as a metaphor for identity and showed superpowered teenagers trying to survive supervillains and the more mundane trials of high school.
The movie was colorful, fun, and the perfect balance of a coming-of-age movie with the superhero genre, a fantastic combination that made fans want an intended sequel (even if it came seventeen years later). Fans of the film found characters that they could see themselves in making their way through similar struggles that they dealt with themselves, including dating drama, the fear of disappointing parents, and the fight for popularity. Each character shows a different side of the high school experience and had the potential to make viewers feel seen as potential heroes, whether they are nerds, preps, loners, or anything in between.
The Commander
Will's father is undoubtedly a hero, but he ends up being a weak one because the Commander is all about his own ego. He collects trophies from all of his fights to support his own swollen pride, which ends up being his downfall. In addition, he puts all of his needs for glory on Will— even considering throwing his son into a vat of toxic waste so he doesn't have to live with the shame of a powerless son.
Reduced to a baby during the final battle, the Commander doesn't have the opportunity to show off his powers when it really matters. A character renowned for his strength and ability to save the day didn't end up mattering because his need to be honored at Homecoming resulted in him being easily taken down.
Zach
Zach is an important character for audiences to see because he uses his bravado to cover up how much he wants other people to like him. His brags about his power come across as someone desperate for people to notice and like them. With that being said, Zach's insistence that he is amazing becomes a problem, because his own insecurities get projected onto others, like Will, who are in worse situations.
As far as his power goes, Zach's ability becomes useful during the final battle because he can help light up the air shaft everyone is crawling through. However, for the most part, his bravery becomes his power. Even without an ability that can actively cause harm toward an enemy, Zach is willing to stand and fight for his friends and school.
Will
Despite being the main character, Will Strong is a jerk. Like other popular teen movies, Will, as the main character, is swayed by the idea of popularity and acceptance (which leads him to reject the people who truly accepted him for who he is all along). While he is able to come back from that, it seemed too little, too late for some fans.
Will develops both of his parents' powers, which represents the fact that he has both his father's ego and his mother's caring nature. While the super-strength seems to be the most valuable power, it is actually his ability to fly, which is typically shown as a support role, that is truly able to save the day.
Gwen
Gwen is a powerful villain, both when taking up her mantle as Royal Pain and when masquerading as the most popular girl in school. She is brilliant, thinking ahead to sabotage Will's friendships, appealing to the Commander's ego, and generally understanding what she needs to do to manipulate everything to her will.
It's hard to imagine that it could possibly be true that control over technology was ever seen as irrelevant, but Gwen's narrative is actually very interesting with her power. After going through high school once, scorned and rejected for her identity, she felt the need to take revenge on those who didn't recognize her inner beauty. Her molding herself into a perfect and popular student is her claiming that position of power that she always wanted, where her powers will be recognized for the strength they always were.
Ethan
Ethan is the epitome of the nerdy, unpopular kid who has been not only rejected but actively harassed by the bullies of his world. For those who felt like they were living that role in their own lives, Ethan was a way to see themselves as heroes, whose abilities are valuable, even if they don't seem that way at first.
His power, which seems like a way of escaping, ends up being a strength for him as he is able to hide in plain sight to trip up and surprise his enemies. Ethan has to be cleverer than others with active powers to find a use for it, but that means that he is more creative and adaptable than those whose strengths are more readily available.
Jetstream
Contrary to her husband, Jetstream is an example of a good parent and superhero, who genuinely seems to care for everyone around her. While she treats Will like a child a little too often, the worst that can be said is that she is embarrassing for her son. She genuinely cares about Will and his friends and accepts him with or without superpowers.
Like the Commander, Jetstream was quickly taken down during the takeover of the school. However, her support for Will led her son to save the day, and her powers (through Will) end up being the ones capable of saving him and everybody else on the falling school.
Ron Wilson, Bus Driver
In a world of superheroes, the worst thing a person could be is ordinary. Ron Wilson is set up as a parallel for Will early on in the film, showing what could become of him from having one foot into the superpowered world without truly belonging there. Because of that, he often seems like nothing more than comic relief. Instead, though, he really represents complete self-acceptance, claiming his role as part of his name and loving himself for it.
Despite his lack of powers, Ron Wilson is useful in getting Will to school, stopping the villains from escaping with the child heroes, and getting everyone home safely. He didn't need to be a superhero to be a hero. He just needed to be himself and honor what skills he did have.
Magenta
Magenta never seems to be concerned with what others think of her, which makes her an empowering figure for audiences to look up to. While the other characters bemoan being labeled sidekicks, Magenta continues to be exactly who she is, without worrying about how she is seen by the world.
One of the best messages in Sky High is that a hero's worth doesn't need to be immediately obvious in order to be useful. Magenta is scorned during power placement for what seems to be a very limited power, but the ability to get into small spaces ends up being absolutely vital to saving the school in the third act.
Warren
Warren has one of the best arcs in the movie because he starts out as such a morally complex character. Unlike all the others, who start as sympathetic heroic types, Warren is on the line between hero and villain and is set up as a loner and a bully. Because he started there, his concern for Layla, display of heroics in the final fights, and acceptance of the other sidekicks show a lot of development for his character. He shows that anyone can be a hero, even if they don't look it.
Warren's powers are also undeniably strong and useful in the fight. Unlike most of the other characters, Warren does have an active power, producing and throwing fireballs in a way that makes him instantly reminiscent of Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender. This power comes in handy when the group has to fight against Gwen's gang and allows the others to complete their more specialized tasks while Warren holds the enemies off.
Layla
Layla is often one of the fan favorites from this film because her arc of pining for Will and being ignored by him is so relatable. Layla is first and foremost a person, not a superhero. Layla doesn't need to be perfect to be lovable, and that is why fans love her so much. Compared to Gwen, she is much more human and relatable to audiences.
As stated in the film, Layla's powers were never weak. She just doesn't feel like they are the most important, central part of her. When the situation demands, Layla becomes one of the most powerful characters in the film, with abilities similar to that of Poison Ivy. However, her discretion with using her powers only when needed means that she is able to be both useful as a hero and valuable as a person, an arc that nobody else really gets to explore in this film.