Woof.
I had always hoped that the day would never come when I watched a Pixar movie that I wasn’t absolutely moved by, but after just getting back from an afternoon matinee of the sequel to the very first Disney movie that my wife and I watched together, well, I guess they say that eventually all good things must come to an end.
Even going into Cars 2, I had heard lots of rumors that it felt more like a merchandising machine than an actual story worth telling like every single one of Pixar’s other movies to date have been able to boast, but honestly being a fan I know that I tend to shy away from the cynical opinions (at least with regards to Disney) anyways and also, despite being the third in its series, Toy Story 3 managed to just blow me away, so ultimately I was willing to give Lasseter & Co. the benefit of the doubt.
I think my biggest problem of all – it didn’t really feel like a kids movie to me.
I don’t know – maybe it makes me sound like an out-of-touch prude who just doesn’t realize what kids are already exposed to these days anyways, but name for me one other Pixar movie that actually features the phrase, “Kill him!” There aren’t any – not in any of the evil battles that The Incredibles face, not in Ratatouille where the kitchen has to deal with a rat infestation, not in Finding Nemo where Bruce actually tries to eat the other fish! The closest I can even think of is from Toy Story 3 near the end, where we saw Woody and his friends nearly gobbled up by the incinerator, and admittedly that seemed a bit traumatic for young kids, too, however I think it ultimately got a pass from us adults who got all choked up recalling the friendships that were built over the other movies and how they all stuck together until the very end.
But frankly, there was nothing nostalgic about Cars 2 – truly disappointing because I have a lot of great memories, even starting with the excitement of the opening credits, from the original. Instead, somebody had the genius to decide that a James Bond-style spy parody somehow fit well with the quaint, Radiator Springs universe, thus thrusting upon us nearly two hours of cars trying to blow up and kill other cars, cars being tortured for information, and bizarrely enough, Mater’s child-like behavior being the only kid-friendly theme to carry the entire movie!
It’s too bad because I actually do like some of the merchandise that has come out of Cars 2, but the merchandise should never be cooler than the property that it’s based on. To me Cars 2 felt like just another one of those horrible, direct-to-DVD sequels that Disney has become infamous for bastardizing its timeless classics with … The Lion King 1 1/2, The Little Mermaid 2, Cinderella 3 … the exact trend that John Lasseter himself specifically spoke out against when he first took over as head of Walt Disney Animation back in 2007. The story sucked, the script was far too edgy for the G audience that it totes, and ultimately it just really missed the mark that up until now most of us would’ve thought Pixar had an unbreakable lock on.
I think the truly telling thing will be whether the trend continues after Cars 2 because unfortunately just like all of those other stupid sequels, I’ve got a feeling that this one is bound to make money hand over fist and if profit is the core value that the storytellers at Pixar are serving these days, I won’t be long before Monsters, Inc. 2 and The Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 become a sad, fiscally-driven inevitability.
How did that old saying from Walt Disney used to go?
“We don’t make movies to make money – we make money so that we can make more movies.”
The original Cars movie had a budget of $70 million and eventually grossed over $460 million worldwide, and that’s purely ticket sales – no merchandising whatsoever (add another cool $250 million for DVD sales), so it doesn’t seem like Disney Studios should be so hard up for money that they need to sell themselves out with lackluster features like Cars 2 to keep themselves afloat…