Pixar's "Cars" Makes No Sense

Having worked for the America's Byways Resource Center, I guess I saw Cars a bit differently than most folks here.

I thought it was a good story about small towns that got cast by the wayside when the interstates came in. Towns with a lot of heart, that were once busy and booming tourist towns and still have a lot to offer if only they could blow off the dust and figure out how people could visit. This is the very purpose of the National Scenic Byway program. To get people off those superhighways and back into what the real America is and has to offer. The situation in Radiator Springs is similar to the real life situation in Winslow, Arizona and many many real life towns that have now largely been abandoned by the masses.

Whether the cars replaced people, or why they have steering wheels was a minor point in my appreciation of the movie.

 

One of the features I liked with my Cars DVD is the featurette about the inspiration for the movie, which involved Lassiter and his family taking a road trip along Route 66 and the interesting towns and people he meets while traveling (Mater was inspired by one of the people he met during the trip).

 

I didn't think The Incredibles was that innovative. What I enjoyed about the movie is that it was a solid and well-done movie with interesting characters that didn't feel like I'd seen it many times before. Considering the comic book stories I've read (Kingdom Come comes immediately to mind as I write this), having superheroes banned by the government is plausible (especially after events like what occurred in Kingdom Come).

I'm looking forward to the next Incredibles movie, I just hope they have a good, worthy and solid story to tell with the next movie rather than just doing a movie to do a movie. I'd rather they take a decade or two and then release an outstanding movie, rather than doing an okay movie in a year or two. Also, I hope they expand the world a bit and feature new heroes/villains who have come to prominence since the previous movie.

 

Monsters Inc. #13? Come on. The Good Dinosaur promotion must have still been going on when that list came out. The Good Dinosaur was horrible. And "Monster University" better than "Cars"? I think not. If toys are any indication, I bet Cars was a big money maker for Pixar. At least "Up" got bumped down to 11. That film was really overrated. I would rate them:

Toy Story
Nemo
Toy Story 3
Incredibles
Monsters Inc.
Toy Story 2
Cars
Etc.


With Cars 2 coming in #329 The worst....

 

The story was from November 2015, and Good Dinosaur came out right around the time the list did. This wouldn't be the first time some hack internet writer dashed out a list of good and bad choices just to annoy readers and generate controversy. I'd agree with you that Monsters Inc. (and the follow-up, Monsters University) were actually not that bad. But the Cars movies were just awful -- to me. I don't dispute they made a lotta money and there are fans out there.

 

http://jalopnik.com/this-disturbing-theory-explains-pixars-cars-1791834045

 

Oh man, does this mean that Pete's Dragon named Elliot doesn't really exist? I am crushed.

 

well that's slightly disturbing, right up there with Wall-E's Soylent Green theory...don't think about that one for too long because it starts to make sense

 

Ah, I love Wall-E. That's a good movie that more or less makes sense.

It's an invisible dragon that lives in a human world. I can buy into that as fantasy. Read the links I posted a couple of years ago and tell me the people who wrote those essays on Cars are confused. Even fantasy has to make sense: Frodo in Lord of the Rings can't suddenly spout wings and fly away. Harry Potter can't bring people back from the dead. I have no problem with Zootopia: that's a world the animals built without any humans existing at all -- it all at least makes sense (and was generally well-done). The story has to be grounded in some kind of reality.

Hell, I can buy into SpongeBob Squarepants and all kinds of fantasy, even if they're in their own world. The problem with something like Cars is the absence of humans, but signs that they once lived on the planet. And it's just creepy and eerie.

 

Few years late to the conversation here, but I just wanted to add my support, Vidiot. I completely understand what you mean, and I totally agree. I don't get why people can't understand the difference between accepting anthropomorphic talking animals or toys that come to life, and accepting a whole world of sentient mechanical cars absent any humans in a world which looks almost identical to our human world.

Lets be super generous and leave aside for the moment how the cars came to be as they are, how they reproduce, age and grow, how they manage, without opposable thumbs, to: write (and read) newspapers; build buildings; create lightbulbs; paint signs; dig for oil; invent TV and so on and on.

To me, the more important question is why the world of Cars looks like it does. Most of the other Pixar films take place in a slightly tweaked version of 'our' world - whether we're seeing it through the daily lives of bugs, toys, monsters, rats, superheroes or fish - and the tweaks are only those required to accommodate the difference. The world of the Incredibles resembles what ours would be like if superheroes were real, the fact that toys come to life doesn't change the fact that people design and make them and kids play with them. When we stray from 'our' world like when we enter Monstropolis, that world is created in a way that makes sense for the inhabitants of that world. The amazing magical portal doors in the Monsters Inc factory have no analogy in our world, but they make sense for the monsters.

With Cars, it's not our world. There are no humans. If cars were the dominant lifeform on the planet, they would build things that worked for cars, not for people. If they could make a TV camera it wouldn't look like ours, it would be designed to be used by a car - without opposable thumbs. It would look completely different. If they could build a gas station, it wouldn't look like our gas stations, with a clumsy lever device to allow cars to work the pump with their tyres. It would be top-down, bottom-up designed for cars to use. I don't know what it would look like because that would take some thought and design skills.

And that's the problem. At no point in the making of Cars asked 'what would that look like if cars invented it, and humans didn't exist?' Instead, they just tried to cram in as many car related images and jokes as possible. For crying out loud, even the vapour trails in the sky have tyre tracks:



What kind of twisted logic makes that make sense? The planes are also cars, and they're driving in the sky? WTF. No thought at all, beyond 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if...'

Then you have to deal with all the stuff that has been mentioned already so many times. Why do the cars have windows, seats, steering wheels, trunks, mirrors? It makes zero sense.

For me, aside from all that, there is the fact that the story doesn't need to be about cars. It could be about people, and hardly anything would need to change (cf Doc Hollywood). Finding Nemo with humans instead of fish would be a fundamentally different movie - sure, you could tell the story of a human father losing his son, but almost everything about it would be different. Same with a Bugs Life and various others. Many Pixar movies wouldn't be possible to replace the main characters with humans - Monsters Inc, Ratatouille, Toy Story, etc - you can't tell those stories with humans. but Cars? Just make Lightning McQueen a racing driver, and give all the other cars lines and personalities to their drivers instead, and hardly anything would change.

So glad I've found someone else who understands.

 

Gabba, gabba, we accept you, one of us.

 

The PIXAR theory!! LOL It's convoluted and has different interpretations, but I think it's pretty cool.
How Cars 3 Fits Into the Pixar Theory
The Pixar Theory
The Pixar Theory

 

Cars 3 was a great movie. Maybe the best of the Cars movies (certainly much better than 2). The ending was not only a surprise but a really positive message at that.

 

There's also Jay Ward confirming that the cars took over humankind and take on the traits of their latest owner.
A Pixar Director Just Confirmed a Dark 'Cars' Fan Theory

 

The first Cars movie was great. It's a fantasy cartoon, doesn't have to make sense.

 

That's a good article:

The most burning question: Where are all the humans? The world seems to be our Earth, since landmarks like London's Big Ben are present and an American flag can be seen at one point. Conspiracy theorists have speculated that Cars is set in a universe where vehicles overthrew mankind, that there was an uprising and no humans were spared. The really scary part? A bigwig at Pixar just confirmed that exact scenario occurred.

And that's the beginning of my problems with the movie. It's basically "Planet of the Apes," only you replace Apes with Cars.

I don't have a problem with a fantasy that isn't quite our world, but it's something close. Hell, even Minions kind of makes sense, it's funny, and they follow their own rules. It works for me. Same with Monsters Inc. and Up and so on... although I do have some problems with Finding Nemo, since the plot hinges on the fish being able to read. (Yeah, I know, they can read because they've been to school, but still.)

 

So we have a kid's movie wherein the (supposedly) lovable and cute little anthropomorphic cars that are the heroes of the story were, in actuality, the instigators of an uprising that slaughtered over 5 billion innocent men, women and children. If that just doesn't give you the warm and fuzzies, I don't know what will.

So, the next time you're thinking about heading to the store and picking up your kids (or grandkids) a new Lightnin' McQueen race car to play with, maybe you should stop and consider gettting them a toy Tiger tank instead.

 

My kids actually weren't too thrilled with it (and my four year old generally loves all things Lightning McQueen). Me, I liked the first Cars movie mainly 'cos Paul Newman was the voice of Doc

 

Eh, this ain't so good...

Another disappointing sequel suggests the studio's
consistent excellence is now a thing of the past.

'Cars 3': Is Pixar Running Out of Gas?

 

Only it's not. In Planet of the Apes, the Statue of Liberty didn't have an ape's face, because it was the one humans made. In Cars (or at least Cars 2) all of the landmarks that 'prove' it's our world aren't the originals.

Look at the Colosseum in this shot:



It's got wheels and radiator grills for decoration. It's not our Colosseum it's the version you'd get if it was created by cars (and you didn't think too hard about how they would create it). Same with Big Ben, Tower Bridge, The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and so on. There's an inscription on Admiralty Arch in Cars 2 that refers to 'Crown Victoria' (instead of Queen Victoria) from 'her most grateful highways' (rather than citizens) in the year 1910 - so if this is our world the cars must have taken over within two years of the Model T coming out. Which doesn't explain all the newer models. Or basically anything else.

Not to mention natural features of the landscape are car-shaped (which never made any sense anyway):



Nope, it's not a Planet of the Apes scenario. It's a 'writers who don't care about internal logic' scenario.

 

Not to mention the fact that the first use of the Crown Victoria nameplate by Ford wasn't until 1955:

Ford Crown Victoria - Wikipedia

 

That's more than enough to keep me far away, thank you very much.

 

Concentrating too much on sequels for films that weren't all that inspiring to begin with is the problem. "Cars" was one of the few Pixar movies I hated--aside from the weird logic of the world being OUR world and the cars existing independently of humans (yeah that was creepy), it just wasn't very well written IMHO.

 

Thanks for the link Marc--

Here's another one related to yours and I agree with all of the points the author of the Atlantic makes.

How Pixar Lost Its Way

 

These are like fashion accessories. Similar to why we wear ties.