Hacker Cinema
Cars 2
2011 · Film · 106 min
Part of Cars Collection
Directed by John Lasseter
AnimationFamilyAdventureComedy
Star race car Lightning McQueen and his pal Mater head overseas to compete in the World Grand Prix race. But the road to the championship becomes rocky as Mater gets caught up in an intriguing adventure of his own: international espionage.
1 positive25 negative3 mixed9 neutralfrom 38 commenters
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40 comments on Hacker News
I wholeheartedly disagree. Pixar does not have a monopoly on attention to detail. They're flush with cash and their leadership has decent taste.
There are so many creators putting in intense work, and doing it on low budgets. You can't claim these folks don't have attention to detail. Check out A24, low and mid and low budget films, or independent films and you'll see a wide assortment of highly meticulous storytellers.
Pixar, on the other hand, isn't low or mid budget:
Toy Story - $30 Million A Bug’s Life - $120 Million Toy Story 2 - $90 Million Monsters, Inc. - $115 Million Finding Nemo - $94 Million The Incredibles - $92 Million Cars - $120 Million Ratatouille - $150 Million WALL-E - $180 Million Up - $175 Million Toy Story 3 - $200 Million Cars 2 - $200 Million Brave - $185 Million Monsters University - $200 Million Inside Out - $175 Million The Good Dinosaur - $200 Million Finding Dory - $200 Million Cars 3 - $175 Million Coco - $175 Million Incredibles 2 - $200 Million Toy Story 4 - $200 Million Onward - $175 Million Soul - $150 Million Luca - Unknown but probably around $150 Million Turning Red - $175 Million Lightyear - $200 Million For that amount of money, they had better pay attention to detail.
Miyazaki is doing way more with much less.
Voices of a Distant Star was one person -- Shinkai. That's the kind of thing we'll see more and more of. Small creators reaching audiences and building studios. Gooseworx, psychicpebbles, Vivienne Medrano. That's the algorithm of tomorrow.
AI, as a tool, makes this more possible. One of the first people to do it successfully was Joel Haver, and he's just the first of many to come.
> Now it’s just more Disney nonsense, the soul has been lost.
Did you see any of them? Soul is probably their best movie; Luca and Turning Red were great. Onward was surprisingly good. Elemental was a new genre for them, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was still really good.
I didn’t see Lightyear, but this is also the Pixar that did Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur, so it’s not like every movie knocked it out of the park.
I have a complicated relationship with Cars 2. I'm southern, so Mater as a character represents a lot of stereotypes for better and for worse. They went over-the-top with his "stupid" moments so that he could have an internal character reckoning about tactfulness, while also being the hero of the movie. If they had just made him more normal, he wouldn't have had to be so shamed, and it's the shame aspect that made me feel weird. I just feel like the weakest part of the plot was the fake gasoline conspiracy. I haven't seen Cars 3 yet but my friends have told me "it's the sequel Cars deserved," and I'm hoping they're right.
At some point in the 2000s Pixar shifted from making movies for everyone to making movies for certain demographics, or people with certain issues in their life. Moving, strained relationship with parent, a purpose in life etc. Not every movie resonates with everyone, but almost every movie has its defenders. Maybe Brave doesn’t work for you if you and your mom don’t have trouble. Maybe Soul doesn’t work for you if aren’t a bit down.
They are also perfectly ok making simpler movies like Luca, that aren’t trying to be some sort of epic treaties.
What Freddie is getting wrong here is projecting his ranking onto everyone else, even when he is calling out the critics as being the wrong audience for the movies. A lot of the movies aren’t made for critics, but because the director or storyteller has something really personal to say to a subset of society.
Cars 2 and The Good Dinosaur (which I’m not sure I’ve even ever finished) are their only real true misfires. A lot of their whelming movies (Onward, Lightyear) feel that way because they feel like a waste of premise and opportunity more than actually bringing bad.
My son loved Cars, so we ended up getting him Cars 2. When he (probably about 4 at the time) saw cars being tortured in Cars 2, he got so upset that he started screaming and punching the TV screen. We turned it off immediately because it was just too intense for him (found out later that he had autism). He didn't end up watching Cars 2 until he was about 10.
He still often watches the first and third movie, but rarely the second.
> I don't understand what went wrong with Cars 2
Cars 1 was a cute fish out of water movie where a self-centered braggart is humbled and finds true friendship and how to be a better person. Cars 2 is a kids movie full of gunplay and violence that opens with a torture scene, progresses towards murder, and finishes with the protagonists escape a death trap to prevent mass murder for profit. I mean, I don't know what anyone was thinking with this one.
There have only been a few Pixar movies I haven’t liked Cars 2, The Good Dinosaur and Finding Dory and not all of the others have had drawn an emotional response from me. That said anything that draws you in and makes you feel something is by definition good art. Art is completely subjective. This blog post is just another “I don’t like other people having fun” post
I loved Cars 1 (theme: It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice) and Cars 3 (a time comes when you need to step aside, make peace with it, use it). I don't understand what went wrong with Cars 2 (theme: Idk, some short story expanded by chatGPT ;) to a long story) but I find it a very bad movie, really unwatchable almost.
So many thinkpieces have come out about Pixar and... I disagree with all of them. Pixar has put out a lot of masterpieces. They've put out a lot of movies that, while not masterpieces, are still really great. They've put out a few mediocre movies, and they've put out one or two real stinkers (Cars 2, The Good Dinosaur).
They can put out some mediocre movies, or some merely very good movies, without having lost their way. Look at their release schedule! 2 movies a year some years! You can't release movies that quickly and have every one be a masterpiece. And that's okay.
Lately I’ve just been looking out for movies that have a decent beginning, middle and end. Just some solid fundamentals. Never mind if they are masterpieces. Pixar is definitely consistent in that regard. Entertaining movies. Some are stellar. Almost all are competent. Only Cars 2 really irks me.
Unfortunately, I feel like Disney has also been unmagicking Pixar. I used to be so excited for each new Pixar movie and felt like Pixar could do no wrong (I’m a weirdo who even liked Cars 2), but the last couple of years have been lackluster from my perspective.
I'd argue the only real misses were the cash grab sequels (Cars 2, Cars 3, and I can only assume Lightyear is in that group but looking at RT it seems like both ratings are still "fresh"). The rest of the movies on the post-acquisition list were good, if not great. Critically, I think the worst one on the list is the Good Dinosaur and even that's still generally well liked.
Inside out was good, but not great, IMO.
Counter-counterpoints:
Cars 2, Brave, Monsters University, The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Coco, Onward, Luca, Turning Red, Lightyear.
The (not very original) point is: You can no longer count on a Pixar movie being excellent.
I've not had any interest in it, so I haven't really say through it.
The weird thing is that Cars has this emotional center around facades and regret and abandonment and the differences between the journey and the destination and it's this beautiful look into a town that got bypassed. And more to the point it has this emotional weight that was still really accessible to a young me that a lot of other kids studios didn't really trust kids with (except for like Miyazaki films and stuff).
And then Cars 2 was a mistaken-identity spy movie a la Johnny English or Get Smart. I don't doubt it was an entertaining movie or something, but it felt so outside the Pixar brand, like something Disney or Dreamworks or any other studio would make.
It was also the first sequel outside of the Toy Story series, from a studio that somewhat famously refused to do sequels if the world didn't have more story to tell.
Like I said, it was just such a weird departure to do seemingly do a sequel just because the world was popular enough.
> Worst for me would be Cars 2
TBH I keep forgetting that movie exists. It was such a weird moment for them.
I guess it's subjective. I found brave quite decent and there were some moving moments.
Worst for me would be Cars 2 and in the context of general films, it's still okay.
Well, it reviews worse than a lot of Pixar movies. Although the idea that all Pixar movies review well is a bit of a selective memory thing too. I observe there's basically two tiers of Pixar movies, the ones that get 9+ out of 10, and the ones that come in at 7 or below. There's not a lot of "OK" Pixar movies, though Incredibles 2 happens to be one of them.
Also, somewhat ironically, I disagree that Cars (Metacritic: 73) is one of Pixar's worst, on the grounds that there are quite a few worse movies from Pixar, not least of which are the two sequels Cars 2 (Metacritic: 57) and Cars 3 (Metacritic: 59) and the spinoff Planes (Metacritic: 39 (!)). Cars is slow, and dripping with nostalgia callouts for people who are now in their 70s or 80s (I asked my father, currently mid-60s, and he said it was even older than anything he was nostalgic for), but it's at least watchable once.
TL;DR: No conspiracy - it's (slightly) different movies.
At least for Cars 2 - Australian version (right at the start of video) is literally different from other English versions (around 3:30) - https://youtu.be/SaYmI7xANCg
Many other movies (and especially animated) have different versions with such tweaks so story/jokes still continue to make sense around the world.
Considering it looks like I'm the first one to point this out - it probably never crossed mind of Apple systems engineers that such things might need to be handled. And even if it did - feature probably got bumped by other things that impact bigger % of customers...
i.e. Why the movies Cars 2 and Cars 3 exist.
Last year I did an analysis of YouTube videos by mass-scraping as much data as possible. (http://minimaxir.com/2015/06/cars-2/)
I found out that the most-viewed Gaming video...is a random video of the game-of-the-movie Cars 2, due to kid viewership alone. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urHuO7Zbhhw)
(I'd love to look at YouTube data again in light of the recent controversies, but it appears the API limitations have not changed since, which makes data scraping again a major hassle)
While yes, the Washington Post has become more focused on new media, its really only them and the NYTimes that have successfully transitioned (as much as one could really expect) into new media.
The websites and mobile apps for these companies are awesome, especially compared to many TV channels and other old newspapers.
Additionally, in todays day and age, its clickbait that pays the bills, but that doesn't mean that it takes away from real journalism, you just have to recognize that not ever article will be as high quality. Movie Production companies have been doing this forever, I.E. Cars 2 pays for Inside Out. Even Buzzfeed has real journalism tucked in there.
Its sad, but quality journalism both makes less money and costs more to produce, and budgets for these stories have to come from somewhere.
Cars 2 was the only movie with generally mixed reviews (per Metacritic) - everything else was positive, with some (Ratatouille) absolutely phenomenal.
Cars (first one) was good, agree that Cars 2 was complete rubbish. I love animated movies, always have - but I could not get through Cars 2.
This reddit comment by Hyroero:
>It's kids. They literally all have ipads or some other tablet (most of the children I look after even at the age of 1 or 2 have their own tablet...).
>Cars 2 was craaaaazy popular with children, it's the same as how frozen is crazy popular right now.
>That explains a few other entries in the list like Pocoyo which is a popular kids show too.
>These children basically watch the same video over and over and over (not sure if that gives additional views or not) then select what ever looks cool in related videos, rinse and repeat.
>Edit: Just felt like adding another example, one of the children I care for is obsessed with the Lego movie and is often watching random game play from the Lego movie video game as if it were a show. He doesn't understand it's a game, in fact his parents don't play games either so he's had no contact with games.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/38xjhp/i_created_a_list_of_the_top_mostviewed_gaming/cryoei0
I strongly dislike Marvel movies. I have no respect at all for films that are released in 3D (and sometimes IMAX and IMAX 3D) when they are not filmed in 3D or using IMAX cameras. It is a pure money grab. Disney does not care about quality, they care about profits. The endless sequels and prequels and spinoffs are simply greed. They will not withstand the test of time. A decade or two from now, people will look back at Nolan's Batman series as the definitive super hero films of the day. They use real sets and stunts instead of endless poor quality CGI action scenes that move too fast for you to see what is even happening (hint: it's because what's happening is meaningless, but bright colors and fast movement stimulate your brain). Marvel exists to sell children disposable plastic action figures and made in China clothing that will fall apart before the next sequel comes out.
Children are marketed to and manipulated with cartoons and "happy meal" toys. It is insidious.
On top of that, Disney expends a tremendous amount of money on marketing to force their products into the prevailing culture. Have you noticed how many television shows have references to Marvel super heroes? Those jokes aren't because the writers are fans, Disney pays for them. Actors don't wear super hero t-shirts randomly. It's all marketing.
They are doing the same thing with Star Wars. There has been an insane amount of hype for the new movie and various spinoff products already. Quite frankly I am sick of it. I am not going to see the new Star Wars movie in theaters because this type of behavior should not be rewarded.
Disney buys up treasured parts of global culture and exploits them to death. It was heart breaking to see them do this to Pixar. Cars 2, Monsters University... just shameful cash ins.
To make matters worse, Disney doesn't even pay it's fair share of taxes on the massive income generated by these franchises: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30412293
The only thing that you can do is to vote with your dollars and time. Please stop supporting this exploitative behavior.
I think Wall-E was the pinnacle, and was apparently the last of the original ideas they brainstormed up in the beginning. After that was Cars 2 and Brave, which I think were perceived as ok, but not at the level of their previous films.
> Pixar is still making (some) good movies under Disney.
Pixar movie quality seems to have dropped, while Disney's have gone up after the acquisition.
http://i.imgur.com/H2s4hVL.jpg
Cars 2 was clearly a release for money (they make more money of Cars merchandise than they do from films), but the other films?
I would say it's debatable as to whether YouTube has been harmful. I think many aren't a fan of the licensing changes and other experience elements, but maybe those would have happened anyway.
I agree w/ Pixar to some extent, but it seems they have seen a slight decline in quality recently (Cars 2, Monsters University, Brave). I think particularly, they may be looking for more opportunities to exploit previous franchises vs. making quality films. Cars 2 was the best example of this, as was evident by the mounds of merchandise on store shelves following the release.
Again, both of these are debatable, but I still don't think you can say in either case that the acquisition was favorable to the consumer.
You see the same problems in students going to film school because they like to see themselves as a director. You see the same problems in big studios making blockbusters for money.
To be Primer, you have to have a specific, burning idea. To be Fassbinder, you need to have something to say (and be a genius).
Else, you can only aspire to be Cars 2 or The Phantom Menace.
I appreciate the clear description of local vs global illumination. This isn't quite what the article is discussing though.
Pixar have had a global illumination system in place at least since Up, and maybe earlier [1]. However, it was one that integrated with their rasterizer.
The article is now claiming that Pixar have switched to Raytracing exclusively, which really is actually a HUGE change, as Renderman only introduced raytracing at all with Cars 2. Every prior Pixar movie exclusively used a micropolygon rasterizer for rendering.
The article also claims:
> ray tracing is a relatively advanced CG lighting technique
Well, not really. Ray tracing - at least Whitted-style ray tracing - is about as simple as physically-based rendering gets. It's making it fast that gets complex, but it's possible to write a basic ray tracer in a few hours if you know what you're doing.
[1] http://graphics.pixar.com/library/PointBasedGlobalIlluminationForMovieProduction/paper.pdf
Agree. Cars was fantastic. I have watched it a hundred times with my kids. Cars 2 with the guns, torturing of cars, was to me a horrible movie. Saw it once in the theater, and I have no interest in buying the movie or watching it again.
Playings devil's advocate: There are many ways to incentivise even complex, large scale investment absent copyright. From project finance to Kickstarter, it is well beyond self-evident. On the flip-side, the cost of supressing academic and sciendific knowledge through academic publishers dwarfs whatever entertainment value might come from their library (~12 films)[1]. I think your comments on this are too simplistic.
________
[1] Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3; Monsters, Inc.; Finding Nemo; The Incredibles; Ratatouille; WALL-E; Brave; A Bug's Life; Cars, Cars 2
Pixar is part of Disney now, which is about as Hollywood as you can get.
Will that impact the quality of their titles? Well, their last film was Cars 2... not exactly a high water mark for them by any measure.
Top ten movies for 2011-
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
4. The Hangover Part II
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
6. Fast Five
7. Cars 2
8. Thor
9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
10. Captain America: The First Avenger
Yes, every single one is a comic book or a sequel. That's why they get made, they're what people pay to see. Everyone complains about it, everyone sees 'em.
If you want different movies to be made, go see different movies.
Cars and Cars 2 suffer from some of the same problems that Shrek 2 & 3 suffered from: creating a self-consistent universe based on adult puns based on characters of modern society.Unless it is done with restraint and real skill it soon behinds to feel insincere and contrived (see Sharks Tail, Chicken Run).
Toy Story & Shrek did something far cleverer. Shrek especially is smart, sophisticated humour for smart, sophisticated kids. The references are all from children's literature and culture. Kids know the references and are able to understand the clever puns.
Shreks 2&3 are dumb adult humour forced into the Shrek world. Many of the puns are above children's heads and are not sophisticated enough for the adult audience. Adding plot-lines about lawyers, unions etc just confuse small kids and leave adults slightly cringing.
Pixar and Dreamworks are at their best when they choose their target audience and focus on it. Toy Story & Nemo are for smart young kids; Ratatouille & The Incredibles are for smart older kids. Then enough is added for the rest of the family: everyone gets a clever joke every few minutes; the stories are understandable by all. Wall-E and Up are very adult in the big story (but full of great fun in the small story) I thought they were wonderful but I do understand your point (although they are I no way 'awful'—even if you are 5).
I'm not convinced that Pixar have mad a bad film yet. Cars grows on me the more I see it (and believe me if you have kids you end up seeing these films any times). Nemo (by far the funniest film Pixar have made) still makes me laugh despite having seen it 20+ times.
{I'm told that Cars 2 is relentless: too fast and too complicated for young kids, but as I haven't seen it I can't judge. The fact that I haven't seen it says something: I normally see every Pixar film the week it comes out.}
The problem that Pixar has had is that we have had to judge Pixar by Pixar standards as until recently no-one was making anything as good. This has now changed. Wonderfully for us Pixar now has serious competition. Dreamworks has made a number of films that are as good as Pixar's. Some of them are as good as Pixar's best: How to Train Your Dragon, Megamind, Kung Fu Panda. Walt Disney Animation Studios is back on form with Tangled (Monsters v Aliens wasn't bad either).
How to Train Your Dragon & Tangled are thankfully free of transfer-modern-society-into-cartoon-world puns. Instead you are given a detailed, self-consistent world that complements the story (rather than being the story). This is a very good thing—something I hope that Pixar will move back towards (although I don't hold out much hope for Monsters Inc 2).
They usually are, but that's often the last defense of truly awful movies. I've never seen Cars 2 so I wouldn't know about it in particular, but we can all think of some truly bad movies that did good box office.
I think that's a very apt comparison. It's hard to overestimate how deeply personal Cars and Cars 2 are to John, but it's also hard to overstate how tricky they were to pull off.
Sure, you can criticize Cars 2 for having a story that didn't hit the bullseye. Totally fair, by Pixar's own "story, story, story" standards. But don't think the Pixar Brain Trust didn't do so first (as mentioned in the article, things had indeed gone wrong) or that they didn't do heroic acts to make things work. Ultimately it's an artistic process within a movie studio and you sometimes have to put things into production and trust that you can work out the problems. Pixar will bend everything out of shape to delay that point but it still happens. It's the fact that Pixar had done so well rescuing movies from a burning story that makes the rest of us forget that sometimes.
Still, where Cars and Cars 2 started from and how well the stories they had were executed — I think those things are hard to criticize. These movies are love letters to the automotive culture that came of age as John did, and they are both put on the screen with a huge amount of artistry, character, cleverness and humor.
Actually, John Lasseter defends Cars 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/movies/john-lasseter-of-pixar-defends-cars-2.html
Apparently the "critics" were far harsher than audiences.
Liked Cars at least better than Monsters Inc. Cars 2, meh. I keep going to see these under the guise that I'm seeing what Pixar technology is capable of, but I think it's at least as much that I like the films.
I really worried they'd lost the plot after Wall-e and Up! (The 2 worst releases imho). So Toy Story 3 was great to see.
Story outlines usually sound rubbish IMHO. So I'll give cars 2 the benefit of the doubt. Glad there's a new movie with characters my kids love in it.
Wall-e and Up! catered mainly to parents/intellectuals so it's nice to see some good fun movies in the pipeline.