Cars
Year: 2006
Director: John Lasseter
Starring: Larry the Cable Guy, Bonnie Hunt, Paul Newman & Owen Wilson
Runtime: 117 mins
BBFC: PG
Published: 14/11/22
Director: John Lasseter
Starring: Larry the Cable Guy, Bonnie Hunt, Paul Newman & Owen Wilson
Runtime: 117 mins
BBFC: PG
Published: 14/11/22
Having successfully partnered with Disney for over ten years on seven films, Pixar were offered a deal they couldn’t really refuse. Become a Disney owned animation studio to secure permanent guaranteed funding for future projects, and they can have near unlimited freedom to make what they want, with the only caveats being that Disney got the final say on everything, and the studio would be mandated to make sequels to films that proved to be financially lucrative.
This was a deal that would seem to be beneficial for both parties. Pixar wouldn’t face the danger of not potentially being able to secure funding for future projects, and they could mostly continue to operate as they always had done; and Disney would not only own the fastest growing animation studio in Hollywood, but they would also now own all intellectual property the studio had previously created including such money makers as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.
This put Cars under an extraordinary amount of scrutiny, as despite the merger not affecting Cars’ creation as the film was well underway before Pixar was bought out, people couldn’t help but pick the film apart for ways that Disney ‘interfered’ with how Pixar do things. Cars proved to be the black sheep of Pixar’s career as an independent studio, not bad but hardly living up to the stellar reputation the studio had garnered. So, what went wrong with Cars?
Hot shot rookie Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) has made a name for himself this racing season and has landed himself in a tied three-way lead for the Piston Cup, his competition is veteran racer The King (Richard Perry), and McQueen’s rival Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton).
But when Lightning becomes stranded in the forgotten scenic town of Radiator Springs, he must repair the damage he inadvertently caused to their road before the final race of the Piston Cup championship. Seeing these simple folk as inferior to himself, Lightning soon learns lessons in humility, and appreciation of living life in the slow lane.
This was a deal that would seem to be beneficial for both parties. Pixar wouldn’t face the danger of not potentially being able to secure funding for future projects, and they could mostly continue to operate as they always had done; and Disney would not only own the fastest growing animation studio in Hollywood, but they would also now own all intellectual property the studio had previously created including such money makers as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.
This put Cars under an extraordinary amount of scrutiny, as despite the merger not affecting Cars’ creation as the film was well underway before Pixar was bought out, people couldn’t help but pick the film apart for ways that Disney ‘interfered’ with how Pixar do things. Cars proved to be the black sheep of Pixar’s career as an independent studio, not bad but hardly living up to the stellar reputation the studio had garnered. So, what went wrong with Cars?
Hot shot rookie Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) has made a name for himself this racing season and has landed himself in a tied three-way lead for the Piston Cup, his competition is veteran racer The King (Richard Perry), and McQueen’s rival Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton).
But when Lightning becomes stranded in the forgotten scenic town of Radiator Springs, he must repair the damage he inadvertently caused to their road before the final race of the Piston Cup championship. Seeing these simple folk as inferior to himself, Lightning soon learns lessons in humility, and appreciation of living life in the slow lane.
What really works against Cars is the fact that the story is just fine. For so long Pixar had been redefining the animation genre and especially with recent hits like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, to produce something with the narrative qualities of Cars is a significant step back. Had this been any other animation studio, including Disney, nobody would have batted an eye. But the fact that this was Pixar, the golden boys of computer animation, this was a massive blow to their reputation, and it took audiences by surprise.
Personally, I find it difficult to connect with the characters in Cars the same way I do the characters in Toy Story for example. Despite both real cars and real toys being inanimate objects, I feel that Pixar did a much better job of bringing the toys in Toy Story to life and humanising them. Even a toy car, RC, felt like he exuded more character than many of the cast in Cars and he didn’t have a voice.
McQueen is also a horrible person. I get that he’s supposed to be unlikable at the start, but I feel like Pixar made him too nasty that his redemption often doesn’t feel entirely genuine or deserved. For example, McQueen doesn’t like rusty cars, a clear riff on racial stereotyping, yet in Radiator Springs he is forced into befriending Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), a rusty tow truck. His entire ‘friendship’ with Mater is built on McQueen lying to him and intentionally deceiving him because he perceives Mater to be stupid and beneath him. This is suddenly fixed at the end of the film because one thing he promised Mater throughout the film is followed through on.
The story is literally about McQueen paving his own road to redemption, as he lays fresh tarmac down for Radiator Springs after accidentally destroying the old road. During this stint he is mean spirited, sees the locals as backwards hillbillies, and intentionally does a bad job just so he can get back to the glitz and glamour of his life as a racer. But he begins to fall in love with Sally (Bonnie Hunt), and despite all the nasty things he says and does she actually does fall for him because he says nice things to her (and that's only because she’s a Porsche). The only major ‘selfless’ act that McQueen does is overshadowed by the fact that he just wants Sally to like him, at his core he’s still doing it for his own personal gain.
Doc Hudson (Paul Newman) acts as Radiator Springs’ authority figure and he’s just as mean as McQueen, the only difference between them is that Doc’s mean nature is directed towards McQueen because he sees him as a disrespectful young delinquent...which he is.
The only truly selfless act that McQueen does is right at the end of the film, and because we haven’t seen him change all that much it doesn’t feel natural for him to do what he does. It feels like it needed to be there for the sake of the film, rather than because McQueen’s character progression takes him there.
Personally, I find it difficult to connect with the characters in Cars the same way I do the characters in Toy Story for example. Despite both real cars and real toys being inanimate objects, I feel that Pixar did a much better job of bringing the toys in Toy Story to life and humanising them. Even a toy car, RC, felt like he exuded more character than many of the cast in Cars and he didn’t have a voice.
McQueen is also a horrible person. I get that he’s supposed to be unlikable at the start, but I feel like Pixar made him too nasty that his redemption often doesn’t feel entirely genuine or deserved. For example, McQueen doesn’t like rusty cars, a clear riff on racial stereotyping, yet in Radiator Springs he is forced into befriending Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), a rusty tow truck. His entire ‘friendship’ with Mater is built on McQueen lying to him and intentionally deceiving him because he perceives Mater to be stupid and beneath him. This is suddenly fixed at the end of the film because one thing he promised Mater throughout the film is followed through on.
The story is literally about McQueen paving his own road to redemption, as he lays fresh tarmac down for Radiator Springs after accidentally destroying the old road. During this stint he is mean spirited, sees the locals as backwards hillbillies, and intentionally does a bad job just so he can get back to the glitz and glamour of his life as a racer. But he begins to fall in love with Sally (Bonnie Hunt), and despite all the nasty things he says and does she actually does fall for him because he says nice things to her (and that's only because she’s a Porsche). The only major ‘selfless’ act that McQueen does is overshadowed by the fact that he just wants Sally to like him, at his core he’s still doing it for his own personal gain.
Doc Hudson (Paul Newman) acts as Radiator Springs’ authority figure and he’s just as mean as McQueen, the only difference between them is that Doc’s mean nature is directed towards McQueen because he sees him as a disrespectful young delinquent...which he is.
The only truly selfless act that McQueen does is right at the end of the film, and because we haven’t seen him change all that much it doesn’t feel natural for him to do what he does. It feels like it needed to be there for the sake of the film, rather than because McQueen’s character progression takes him there.
Despite Cars’ story and characters not being up to Pixar’s usual standard, the visuals certainly are and then some. Where Toy Story 2 marked the first significant leap forward in Pixar’s visual fidelity with each subsequent film pushing that envelop further in some small but brilliant way (hair with Monsters, Inc., water with Finding Nemo, and particle effects with The Incredibles), Cars marks the next significant leap forward in visual fidelity for Pixar by greatly improving the lightning techniques used and introducing new details like real-time reflections. The most obvious way to make a computer animated film look better is to make the lighting more realistic, but to do that requires a lot of time and computer processing power. The Incredibles for example, a visually stunning film by all accounts, the characters and environments look comparatively flat against those in Cars because the lighting methods used are less sophisticated.
This is immediately obvious in the opening scene of Cars, where under the harsh fluorescent floodlights of a racing stadium a lot of colour is drained away. The only thing that really pops are the racers and their bright, highly reflective paint jobs. Compare this to the warm, somewhat dusty sunlight of Radiator Springs where cold colours really pierce through the more reddish-orange hue. Shadows are dynamic and are not only cast by characters but by objects and they react to each other and will vary in how dark they are dependent on the light source they are blocking. One of the characters, Ramone (Cheech Marin) can often be seen sporty a sparkly paint job, and each individual sparkle glistens dynamically dependant on where he is in relation to the light sources.
What that all sounds a bit techy and uninteresting to the average viewer, the difference is quite literally night and day. It’s progress you can really see without needing to really look. Objects look considerably more lifelike, the world looks far more convincing, and the depth of colour is far greater than it ever has been with Pixar before. We wouldn’t see other animation studios attain this level of detail until the 2010’s, so the fact that Pixar managed to do this with Cars in 2006 really is quite impressive.
Cars may not have the same kind of storytelling pedigree that we are used to seeing from Pixar, and that does have a big impact on how much the film can be enjoyed; however, its technical achievements should not be overlooked. It’s a far better tech demo than a film, but that being said Cars does have moments where the beating heart of Pixar breaks through. Cars would prove to be a big success at the box office, and outstanding merchandise sales ensured that this was a film that Disney wanted to franchise at its earliest opportunity. A less than stellar end to Pixar’s time as an independent animation studio, but the technological progress Cars made would ensure future films would stand head and shoulders above the competition.
This is immediately obvious in the opening scene of Cars, where under the harsh fluorescent floodlights of a racing stadium a lot of colour is drained away. The only thing that really pops are the racers and their bright, highly reflective paint jobs. Compare this to the warm, somewhat dusty sunlight of Radiator Springs where cold colours really pierce through the more reddish-orange hue. Shadows are dynamic and are not only cast by characters but by objects and they react to each other and will vary in how dark they are dependent on the light source they are blocking. One of the characters, Ramone (Cheech Marin) can often be seen sporty a sparkly paint job, and each individual sparkle glistens dynamically dependant on where he is in relation to the light sources.
What that all sounds a bit techy and uninteresting to the average viewer, the difference is quite literally night and day. It’s progress you can really see without needing to really look. Objects look considerably more lifelike, the world looks far more convincing, and the depth of colour is far greater than it ever has been with Pixar before. We wouldn’t see other animation studios attain this level of detail until the 2010’s, so the fact that Pixar managed to do this with Cars in 2006 really is quite impressive.
Cars may not have the same kind of storytelling pedigree that we are used to seeing from Pixar, and that does have a big impact on how much the film can be enjoyed; however, its technical achievements should not be overlooked. It’s a far better tech demo than a film, but that being said Cars does have moments where the beating heart of Pixar breaks through. Cars would prove to be a big success at the box office, and outstanding merchandise sales ensured that this was a film that Disney wanted to franchise at its earliest opportunity. A less than stellar end to Pixar’s time as an independent animation studio, but the technological progress Cars made would ensure future films would stand head and shoulders above the competition.