don’t worry about it

i'm doing this for revenge / i'm doing this to try and stay true

happy apollo court debut day!!!!! this guy is about to have a Bad Time

my thoughts on Cars (2006) & Cars 2 (2011)

my qualifications: i watched Cars (2006) & Cars 2 (2011) back to back on an airplane yesterday, having slept for approximately 2 hours the previous night.

my past experience: some sources suggest i did see the first Cars movie around the time of its release to dvd (my mom et al. 2026). however, prior to today's self-inflicted double feature, i have no memory of watching any film in the Cars franchise. over the years, i have engaged in sporadic Cars-related debates with my dear friend @persep0nee19, convincing both her and myself that i hold knowledge and strong opinions regarding either movie (i do not).

general impressions across both movies

(this is mostly things i noticed in Cars that are also present in Cars 2)

in the context of early-mid 2000s 3d animation, i do think cars were a good choice in terms of subject matter—it eliminates the need for complicated textures/rendering on clothing or hair, while still leaving room for a lot of personality and movement. that being said, the mapping of human features onto motorized vehicles invites an inherent grotesqueness to the world of Cars. leading me to my next point...

i HATED the visual (and in McQueen's case, narrative) prominence of the cars' tongues. from both a character design and linguistic perspective, i understand why the cars have humanoid mouths. but for the love of GOD please put that thing AWAY!!!!

maybe i've been taking too many Woke Mind Virus pills, but i kinda forgot how animated stuff* had to undeniably prove that a non-human character is a Female Lady Girl Woman and she desires a Normal Heterosexual Romantic Relationship with one of the male leads. so that also grossed me out a bit, but in a different way than the tongue thing.

*i'm specifically talking about animated stuff from large western studios, bc that's what i grew up watching & am most familiar with. obviously this is not the case with everything that has ever been animated.

thoughts on Cars (2006)

a solid story with lovable characters—it makes a perfectly good "baby's first hero's journey narrative", which means it felt a bit slow and predictable at times (because i'm an adult who knows about tropes and themes). i still laughed and got invested and enjoyed it overall.

i don't mind Sally as a character, but all her scenes with McQueen just felt so drawn out in the interest of establishing them as The Couple of the movie. she has an interesting past, but it's painfully obvious that her future is just Lightning McQueen's Girlfriend. give me a Cars prequel courtroom drama starring Sally or give me nothing at all.

what can i say, i love a doctor with a mustache and life-altering trauma! Doc Hudson might be on my hear me out cake (although idk if that even counts as a hear me out? depends on the audience i guess). a classic grumpy mentor figure who wants to see the hero succeed in a meaningful way.

Doc & the sherrif are old man yaoi; the hippie bus & the military jeep (i forgor their names) are old woman yuri.

my summary: local man (car) discovers the value of community, the concept of bisexuality, and the beauty of the American Southwest.

thoughts on Cars 2 (2011)

this movie was, in a word, chaotic. there were a lot of story elements all overlapping each other, which made for an action-packed (but occasionally confusing) story. don't get me wrong, all the spy stuff was a lot of fun & the cities were cool, but i think there were just too many characters going on.

right off the bat and then throughout the rest of the movie, they (presumably) kill a LOT of cars. it's still unclear to me exactly what death constitutes for a car, and that opens up a lot of questions about the Cars universe that i can't think about right now. the only car death-related question that matters is:

did Doc Hudson die between the two movies?????? like plot-wise, i get why he couldn't be there with McQueen, but at least show him to me!! he can be retired, i don't care just let me see him :(

my biggest annoyance with this movie is how dumb/annoying Mater was—they dialed up his goofy sidekick energy to 11 in a way that just flattened his character. also, i don't like how mean McQueen was to him, especially since the previous movie established them as best friends. i know it's a common trope/plot device, but it's not one that i particularly enjoy.

in terms of tropes i do enjoy, i'm a sucker for a villain relying on the loyalty between the hero and their partner/best friend/companion in order to get to the hero. and i love the "i know you're happy to see me again, but you have to stay away from me because i am dangerous/volatile and don't want to hurt you" trope. (i'm normal i promise)

my summary: the first rule of preventing an international incident is to have fun & be yourself. the second rule is to be heavily armed with military-grade weapons.

the ultimate question: which is better?

overall, i think both movies were fine. it's hard to compare them on the same metric because they are such different stories. Cars (2006) has a stronger narrative and more cohesive story, but Cars 2 (2011) was more fun to watch.

i wouldn't say that Cars 2 (2011) is a bad movie, but it is a bad sequel. McQueen isn't much of a character in it, and the extrapolation & development of Mater's character kinda missed the mark. they made a thematic pivot from Cars (2006) that could have worked, but there were just too many story ideas shoved into one movie.