TheMovieStory

Cars is a 2006 animated feature film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter and the late Joe Ranft. It was the seventh Disney/Pixar feature film, and the final film by Pixar before it was bought by Disney. Set in a world populated entirely by anthropomorphic cars and other vehicles, it features the voices of Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Paul Newman, Cheech Marin, Tony Shalhoub, John Ratzenberger, George Carlin, and Larry the Cable Guy, as well as cameos by several celebrities.

Cars premiered on May 26, 2006 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina and was released on June 9, 2006 to generally favorable reviews. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It was released on DVD in late 2006 and on Blu-ray Disc in late 2007. Related merchandise, including scale models of several of the cars, broke records for retail sales of merchandise based on a Disney/Pixar film, with an estimated $1 billion in sales.

Plot

Cars opens in the final race of the 2005 Piston Cup stock car racing season and championship in the Motor Speedway of the South, where a skilled but arrogant rookie racecar, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), has overtaken his opponents, avoided a car accident, and built a large lead over two other prominent figures; the cup’s defending (and soon retiring) nine-time champion, Strip “The King” Weathers (Richard Petty), and perennial runner-up and cheater Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton). Because of his refusal to make regular pit stops for new tires, opting only to refill his gasoline tank, Lightning’s worn rear tires burst on the final lap, causing him to skid and ultimately crawl to the finish line, barely managing to tie The King and Chick Hicks in a photo finish. Race officials announce that, because the three racers are also tied in overall season points, they will compete in one final tiebreaker race to be held at the Los Angeles International Speedway, and give them one week to prepare.

While traveling down Interstate 40 to California, McQueen becomes separated from Mack (John Ratzenberger), his transport truck, and while trying to catch up he becomes lost on U.S. Route 66, catching the attention of the local sheriff (Michael Wallis) in the process. A chase ensues, during which McQueen crashes and gets tangled in wires, damaging part of the main street of a town called Radiator Springs. McQueen is taken to traffic court, where the town’s attorney Sally Carerra (Bonnie Hunt) pleads against McQueen. He is sentenced to repave the road using “Bessie”, a non-anthropomorphic asphalt-laying machine. McQueen attempts to escape to California, only to find that his gas tank is drained to a minimum, much to his dismay.

McQueen rushes through his first day of paving; as a result, the new road surface is so bumpy, uneven, and unusable that he is ordered to scrape it off and start again. The town’s judge and doctor, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), offers McQueen the chance to leave, provided that he outrace Doc in a race around Willy’s Butte. McQueen eagerly accepts, and leaves Doc behind at the starting line, but loses control on a sharp turn in loose dirt and crashes into a cactus patch. Doc effortlessly cruises to the finish line, remarking that McQueen races as badly as he fixes roads. McQueen is forced to scrape the botched pavement clean and start paving again.

As the ensuing days pass, McQueen starts to befriend the town’s residents, from whom he learns that Radiator Springs was once a thriving town until the completion of the nearby interstate highway, which bypassed the town, depriving it of its business traffic and visitors and ironically, depriving those passing visitors of the natural beauty found in the scenery along the old highway. He also learns that Sally had left behind a wealthy but unhappy life as a lawyer in California, and that Doc Hudson was once a famous racecar (the “Hudson Hornet”, and a three-time Piston Cup champion at that). When Doc catches him looking at his trophies, McQueen asks the reason for which he abandoned racing in the first place. Doc, suddenly offended by this, shows McQueen a newspaper article and states that a crash in 1954 ended his racing career. Doc bitterly refuses to reveal much about his past, dismissing his old trophies as “a bunch of empty cups”. McQueen comes to realize that the same racing world that brought Doc fame eventually destroyed him.

By the time McQueen finishes repaving Radiator Springs’ main road, he has formed a friendly bond with the town and its residents. Rather than immediately leaving for California (as he had initially intended to do), he spends the day touring the town’s businesses, receiving a fresh coat of paint, organic fuel, stickers for his bumper, and new tires in the process. When the town throws a cruise party that night, he is suddenly found by a multitude of journalists, then whisked away in his truck, Mack, without even a chance to bid farewell to Radiator Springs. The town’s residents are sad to see him leave, while Sally, who has fallen in love with McQueen, is angry to learn that it was Doc who informed the media of McQueen’s whereabouts.

The final race between McQueen, The King, and Chick Hicks is described by commentators Bob Cutlass and Darrel Cartrip as the “biggest race in history”. Country Gas, East Honkers and Ermyville are closed for the Dinoco 400, while nearly 200,000 cars watch the race at the racetrack. McQueen is distracted by his memories of Radiator Springs, losing time to the other racers. To his surprise, Doc arrives at the race, accompanied by others from Radiator Springs (except for Sally, Lizzy and Red who stayed behind to watch the race on TV), to serve as McQueen’s pit crew. With Doc’s coaching, a record-breakingly fast and efficient pit stop for new tires, and a few tricks learned from the small town’s inhabitants, McQueen is able to get back into the race after being two laps behind .

As McQueen approaches the finish line, Chick sideswipes McQueen into the infield. McQueen initially skids through the infield, turning this skid into a controlled drift and heading into first place. Chick sideswipes The King in a desperate attempt to avoid finishing behind him, sending The King into a terrible rollover crash. McQueen sees this on the Jumbotron and fears that The King’s racing career will end in the same way as Doc’s had ended. McQueen comes to a full stop before the finish line, allowing Chick to cross. He then backtracks to push The King across the finish line ahead of him, saying that “I think The King should finish his last race” and quoting Doc’s description of the trophy as “just an empty cup”. Chick’s official victory is hollow, as he is jeered and despised for taking out The King, while McQueen is cheered as a hero for his good sportsmanship. Dinoco corporation offers to sponsor McQueen, but he respectfully declines, saying that his current sponsor Rust-Eze gave him his big break and that as a result he wants to continue with them.

Two days after the race, McQueen returns to Radiator Springs, announcing that he will establish his racing headquarters there, helping to revitalize the town, with the once-abandoned Route being reclassified as “Historic Route 66.”

Production

Unlike most anthropomorphic cars, the eyes of the cars in this film were placed on the windshield (which resembles the Tonka Talking Trucks, as well as the characters from Tex Avery’s One Cab’s Family short and Disney’s own Susie the Little Blue Coupe), rather than within the headlights. According to production designer Bob Pauley, “From the very beginning of this project, John Lasseter had it in his mind to have the eyes be in the windshield. For one thing, it separates our characters from the more common approach where you have little cartoon eyes in the headlights. For another, he thought that having the eyes down near the mouth at the front end of the car made the character feel more like a snake. With the eyes set in the windshield, the point of view is more human-like, and made it feel like the whole car could be involved in the animation of the character.”[3] The characters also use their tires as hands and feet, the exceptions being the various tow truck characters who sometimes uses their tow hooks, and the various forklift characters, who use their forks.

The original script (called The Yellow Car, about an electric car living in a gas-guzzling world) and some of the original drawings and characters were produced in 1998 and the producers agreed that Cars would be the next movie after A Bug’s Life, and would be released in early 1999, particularly around June 4. However, that movie was eventually scrapped in favor of Toy Story 2. Later, production resumed with major script changes.

In 2001, the movie’s working title was Route 66 (after U.S. Route 66), but in 2002, the title was changed to prevent people from thinking it was related to the 1960 television show with the same name. Also, Lightning McQueen’s number was originally going to be 57 (Lasseter’s birth year), but was changed to 95 (the year Toy Story was released), the number seen in the movie today.

Cars was originally going to be released on Friday, November 4, 2005, but on December 7, 2004 the movie’s release date was changed to Friday, June 9, 2006.[4] Analysts looked at the release date change as a sign from Pixar that they were preparing for the pending end of the Disney distribution contract by either preparing non-Disney materials to present to other studios, or they were buying time to see what happened with Michael Eisner’s situation at Disney.[5] When Jobs made the release date announcement, he stated that the reasoning was due to wanting to put all Pixar films on a summer release schedule, with DVD sales occurring during the holiday shopping season.[4]

Cars is the last film worked on by Joe Ranft, who died in a car crash in 2005. The film was the second to be dedicated to his memory, after Corpse Bride. This is also Paul Newman’s last movie before he retired in 2007.

The international versions of the film have some English text replaced by text in the local language. For the DVD it becomes the language that you choose upon inserting the disc. It’s the first Walt Disney Animated Feature dubbed to Ukrainian language. The replaced text includes for instance the “Cars” movie logo, Doc’s newspaper clippings, the “Closed” signs in Los Angeles and the “Lead lap” text during the last race. The Russian title of the film is “Тачки” (TAh-chki), which translates to “wheelbarrows,” and is in common usage as a slang term for cars.

Soundtrack

Awards

Cars had a highly successful run during the 2006 awards season. Many film critic associations such as the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review named it the best Animated Feature Film of 2006. Cars also received the title of Best Reviewed Animated Feature of 2006 from Rotten Tomatoes. Randy Newman and James Taylor received a Grammy Award for the song “Our Town,” which later went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (an award it lost to “I Need to Wake Up” from An Inconvenient Truth). The film also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, but it lost to Happy Feet. Cars was also selected as the Favorite Family Movie at the 33rd People’s Choice Awards. Perhaps the most prestigious award that Cars received was the inaugural Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Cars also won the highest award for animation in 2006, the Best Animated Feature Annie Award.

Merchandising

The Mattel-produced 1/55 scale Toy Cars were some of the most popular toys of the 2006 Summer Season. Dozens of characters are represented, with some having multiple versions available. Several stores had trouble keeping the toys in stock, and some models are still difficult to find because of being shipped in lower numbers than other characters. Some online Disney enthusiasts are comparing it to the same shortage that Mattel faced with its Toy Story line in 1995. Some of the die-cast cars are only readily available on eBay. On August 14, 2007, the die-cast Sarge car, made between May and July 2007, was recalled due to “impermissible levels of lead” used in the paint.[18]

On June 22, 2006 Disney Consumer Products announced that Cars merchandise broke records for retail sales based on a Disney-Pixar product, recording 10-to-1 more volume than Finding Nemo.[19] DCP reports that product expansion will take place in the fall alongside the DVD release of the film. Mattel has announced that Cars toys will continue through 2008 with the release of at least 80 new vehicles. A 36 car pack called “Speedway of the South” will feature most of the race cars seen during the opening race sequence of the film.

Estimates from the New York Daily News indicate that sales of Cars merchandise two weeks out from the release of the film amounted to $600 million USD. Estimates put out in November by the Walt Disney Company peg total sales for the brand at around $1 billion.[2]

Kelley Blue Book, the de facto resource for appraising values of vehicles, has humorously “appraised” four of the cars, Lightning McQueen, Mater, Sally Carrera, and Doc Hudson according to their make/model and personalities. [1]

The United States Department of Transportation has used scenes from the movie in a commercial regarding the Click It or Ticket campaign.

In conjunction with the film’s release, a chocolate ice cream on a stick resembling a car tire was released in Australia. These ice creams were called ‘Burnouts’. The naming of the particular product sparked controversy as the name ‘Burnouts’ was believed to have encouraged street racing and committing burnouts. These acts are illegal and heavy fines and convictions are issued to those committing these acts in Australia. It is unknown as to whether the products have been discontinued or not.

In Norway, the candy company Nidar produced candy with the characters on the outer packaging and pictures of the characters on the packaging of the assorted candy on the inside. These bags also came with Cars themed tattoos.

In the U.S., an animated Wal-Mart truck can be seen on a Wal-Mart ad and Wal-Mart TV commercial for Cars. In the Wal-Mart TV commercial the Wal-Mart truck was talking to Mater.

In South Africa, Italy, and several other countries where Opel is present (or with Opel models under Chevrolet and Vauxhall brand), GM has a campaign featuring an General Motors Astra, a Opel Meriva, and a General Motors Zafira as characters in the world of Cars, including TV ads made by Pixar, with the Opel models interacting with Lightning McQueen, Mater and Ramone.[20] The first ad involved the Opels coming to Radiator Springs as tourists. The second involved their failed attempts at auditoning for Mater. In the end the Opels lost the part to the real Mater.

In July 2006, greeting card giant Hallmark unveiled its line of 2006 Keepsake Christmas ornaments. Among the collection was an ornament featuring Lightning McQueen and Mater.

There is also a Cars clothing line, which produces various t-shirts and shorts; however, these are only found in children’s sizes.

In May 2007, the Cars video game was announced to be a “Platinum Hit” on the Xbox, “Greatest Hit” on the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable, and “Player’s Choice” on the Nintendo GameCube. A sequel is on its way to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles.[21]

A Cars-based attraction opened at Walt Disney Studios Paris in 2007 and scheduled to open in Disney’s California Adventure in 2010.

Settings

The track on which the opening race (Motor Speedway of the South) takes place is actually based on an enlarged version of the real life Bristol Motor Speedway. The venue for the Piston Cup tiebreaker race (the Los Angeles International Speedway) is a conglomeration of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena where the Rose Bowl is located, as well as the California Speedway in Fontana. The landscape in the background behind Radiator Springs is made up of rock formations intentionally reminiscent of Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. The road map shown in the montage history of the town calls the area “Cadillac Range.” Some of the mountain peaks in Cadillac Range, shown during the movie, resemble the quarter panels of late-50’s Cadillacs, with their distinctive tailfins.