Live and Let Drive (A Post-Credits Postmortem)

Now that we’re through the basics with last week’s post, it’s time, as promised, to get into the good stuff! In choosing the subject of my first real, honest-to-goodness blugpost, it would be tempting to start with a film that I absolutely love: a movie whose ins and outs I’m intimately familiar with, like The Princess Bride. Or an all-time classic, like Casablanca.

I’m gonna start with Cars 2.

Yes, this Cars 2.

If that sounds off-putting, that’s sort of why I picked it. I don’t imagine that many people reading this will be all that familiar with the movie, unless you somehow arrived here by Googling the title (in which case, Hi!). And that’s fine. But I hope you’ll keep reading anyway. Because as I said last week, one of the things that I’d really like to try and do in this blog is take a good hard look at movies that the general public tends to ignore, or not take seriously. If this doesn’t end up being the most thorough and honest analysis of Cars 2 to be found on the internet… well, I’d actually be kind of excited. Because that would mean someone out there is the same beautiful kind of crazy that I am. And better at it, to boot. But I digress.

I have a very interesting relationship with Cars 2. I’d call it a pretty forgettable movie, and its reputation as the all-time worst Pixar film – a ranking I actually disagree with – hasn’t helped matters. But in spite of all of that, I’ve seen it a few times now, and I just… can’t… bring myself to say that it’s bad. It isn’t great, but it’s far from awful, and it’s actually pretty fun while you’re watching it. That’s respectable. For any animation studio other than Pixar, it could even be considered a sort of faint praise. And yet, in this case, it’s not. The movie didn’t leave the same bad taste in my mouth that other, legitimately terrible movies do, but it felt… wrong. Not wrong in a ‘crime-against-nature’ way. Objectively wrong. Like on a test. Except that the question was an opinion question, so getting it wrong should have been impossible. Is this making sense? No? Perfect. We’re all on the same page.

Let’s Git-R-Done!

From a narrative perspective, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Cars 2’s plot. The plot of Cars 2, for those of you who didn’t see the movie/don’t remember it/everyone, is as follows: Lightning McQueen, our hero from the first film, enters the World Grand Prix, a globetrotting series of races meant to promote Allinol, a new alternative fuel. A new addition to Lightning’s pit crew is his best friend Mater, who comes along because he’s been feeling left out lately. After cars begin spontaneously exploding during the races, however, it becomes clear that something is afoot, and Mater is unwittingly recruited by a pair of spy cars to help get to the bottom of things and stop the terrorist who is responsible. None of that is a joke.

But I will say it again: there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that plot. It’s well paced, the action is mostly driven (heh… driven) by character beats, and its logic is internally consistent. There’s a serviceable explanation for why Lightning and Mater are there, and even though I immediately wished that Pixar had saved the wonderful spy setpieces for one of their better properties – Incredibles 2, anyone? – the premise is actually put to decent use in the Cars universe: it milks the ‘spy car’ trope for all it’s worth, and having the villain’s scheme center around Allinol is pretty clever.

Also, the female spy's name is Holley Shiftwell. As in, she shifts well. Get it? It's a sex pun. In a Pixar film.

Another potential cause for concern is that Cars 2 is Mater’s movie through and through; Lightning plays a decent-sized role, but he doesn’t have much agency. So yes, it’s Mater’s movie, but – my inherent dislike for Larry the Cable Guy aside – there’s nothing wrong with that, either. Mater was a pretty static character in Cars, and this should have been his chance to learn and grow. In his best moments, there are hints of depth to his character, and if Pixar wanted to explore those depths, well, I was all for them giving it a try.

The real problem with Cars 2 is that Mater has absolutely no business being the main character in this particular script.

Mater’s arc in this film begins with him feeling insecure, afraid that he might not be good enough for his friends. Before long, though, spy hijinks – spyjinks? – ensue, and take the forefront. By the film’s end, Mater gives up espionage to return to Radiator Springs, content with the knowledge that he can be himself. As Lightning explains, if other people don’t take Mater seriously, they’re the ones who need to change.

Logistical flaws notwithstanding, that kind of message doesn’t do the movie any favors. It’s valid, and I’m firmly in the ‘be yourself’ camp, but it would work much better if Mater had actively sought out the spy lifestyle, or at least fully committed to it after a certain point. Unfortunately, that never happens. He simply bumbles his way through the plot as the same old Mater from the first film, and is rewarded by being told he was perfect all along. I’m glad he learns something, but learning not to change is basically a zero-sum proposition, one that plays a large part in making the film feel unnecessary and pointless.

The bigger issue with Mater’s arc, and the one that makes me say he shouldn’t be starring in this movie, can be expressed as a single question: If Mater needs to learn to accept himself… is the best way to teach him that really to have him thwart an international terrorist?

I’m not saying that simply to be snarky. It’s a genuine question that should always be kept in mind when writing a story: Is this sequence of events the most organic way to teach my character what he or she needs to learn? Obviously, the more nebulous the lesson, the more wiggle room you have. ‘Take charge and be a leader’ works in any number of plots; ‘Come to terms with the fact that your father was a pirate’ is trickier. Still, no matter how many options are at the writers’ disposal, the best movies are going to be the ones that deal most poignantly with their characters’ shortcomings.

The original Cars does this exceptionally well. When we first meet Lightning McQueen, he is shallow, selfish, and obsessed with winning. That competitive nature makes him push his trailer to drive all night, and the resulting accident leaves him trapped in a small town, where he ultimately realizes that there is much more to life than fame. The obstacles he encounters along that journey are personal, flow inevitably from Lightning’s own actions (I can’t stress how important that is), and target his flaws with almost surgical precision.

The plot of Cars 2, on the other hand, comes straight out of left field. Mater’s in Tokyo, eats too much wasabi, goes to the bathroom, and BLAMMO! He’s a spy.

Mater doesn’t set anything in motion, but rather hops aboard a story already in progress. Yes, to the writers’ credit, the ‘be yourself’ theme is treated more than just an afterthought: Mater turns out to be terrible at deception (i.e. being someone else), and is most helpful to his fellow spies when he makes use of knowledge he gained as a tow truck. The villains are ‘lemons’ whose self-hatred is channeled into resentment of other, superior cars. I get it. Self-acceptance is built into this story, and it IS something you could conceivably learn from being a spy… but it’s pretty far down the list of teachable moments. When placed in contrast to its much more grounded and low-key predecessor, the experience of watching Cars 2 just feels… off. Like if The Breakfast Club had a sequel where Bender has to fight an army of giant robots. With such a shift in tone, the least they could have done was give the movie a subtitle.

The Spy Who Towed Me. Goldbumper. Drive Another Day. It's not hard.

So, how do we account for this plot/motive disconnect? I’m no expert, but thus far I’ve come up with two distinct ways to build a premise, if you’re looking to get good character development out of it. The first is to start with the scenario. You take a stab at what a protagonist might learn from the experience, and reverse engineer your character flaws from there. The other option is strictly linear: build your character, find their flaw, and construct a series of occurrences that would cure it. The first is easier – and I say that from experience – but I imagine the latter nets you a stronger story. Looking at Cars 2, I can’t imagine that its writers used either method. They certainly didn’t use the second. My best guess is that the studio wanted a Cars sequel starring the franchise’s breakout character, and happened to have a spy story lying around. I could be wrong, and probably am, but if this movie really was built from the ground up, the writers responsible would seem to have lost sight of everything that Pixar has spent the last 20 years excelling at.

Of course the film is executed well; some of the dialogue is iffy, but other than that it’s all solid. In fact, it’s probably the best possible execution of this particular script. That’s why I can’t say that it’s a bad movie. Pixar doesn’t make bad movies. Or didn’t, until Brave happened. (But more on that later. Wink.) At the end of the day, Cars 2 is just thematically handicapped. And that handicap is something that not even the best animation studio on the planet was able to overcome entirely. The result is a kind of Frankenstein’s monster truck: the parts are all there and working, but it doesn’t have a soul. One thing it does have: lots and lots of Larry the Cable Guy.

That’s funny right there. 

But seriously, you can’t even try to tell me you wouldn’t see this movie.