Yes. It’s the world of Stepher King’s Trucks and Maximum Overdrive, but made all warm and fuzzy and brightly colored.
Yes, but it seems the responsible party is Disney and the marketing people. The Pixar creatives aren’t terribly happy about doing this movie.
Of course, nobody’s perfect and nobody’s universally awful. Dreamworks has been improving greatly of late and Pixar isn’t staffed by Muses.
Pixar’s John Lasseter has been the CCO (Chief Creative Officer) at Disney for a few years now, so as much pressure as he might get from other suits, he’s still calling the shots from a creative output perspective. I think the original is easily the weakest of all the Pixar features, but I’ll still see this out of curiosity.
Perhaps the humans destroyed themselves, leaving only cars behind.
How to Train Your Dragon impressed me far more than Cars did (and I assume far more than *Cars 2 *will). If Dreamworks can keep doing work like that, Pixar will have real competition.
The problem with Cars is the their world not only makes no sense, it doesn’t have any internal consistency. How did these cars build their technology without hands? The creative team worked around a lot of that by having stuff controlled with plates they could drive over, but how do you build a plate with no hands? Every other Pixar movie at least attempted to work within the limitations of the reality of the characters - the fish in Finding Nemo didn’t have any technology, nor did the rats in Ratatouille. But the cars had a whole world that could not possibly be created by them.
I felt “Kung Fu Panda” was the finest Dreamworks cartoon yet, and is better than Pixar’s weaker efforts. “How To Train Your Dragon” wasn’t bad but it seemed to borrow a lot from Sony’s “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.”
Better’n “Cars,” though.
To add to this, a recent Entertainment Weekly article about Lassiter and Pixar also suggested that Cars 2 was his brainchild and he had the idea for the sequel way back when they made the original. The article doesn’t seem to be online, but in an interview Lassiter describes a deleted scene from Cars in which McQueen and his date watch a drive-in movie featuring a James Bond-type car named McMissle. Lassiter thought at the time it would be fun to make a Cars spy caper in that vein. And now he has.
Of course, the billions of dollars in merchandising also helped, but I’m not going to claim there was no artisitic inspiration.
Also, my six-year-old can’t wait to see this.
Eh. I can see some of the similarities you’re thinking of (misunderstood nerd with misfit inventions, the giant fishbowl/the torch tower falling down), but the character archetype isn’t unique to Cloudy and much of what happens is a natural consequence of the personality. Besides, Cloudy was released in September 09 and HTTYD came out the following March; unless there were folks sharing ideas during production, it seems unlikely that that’s a large enough window to allow for lifting ideas.
Besides, while Cloudy is a fun movie, HTTYD is IMO simply superior in plot, writing, and aesthetic. Even if it did borrow ideas, I personally don’t count that against something that does those ideas better than the original.
Steeeeeve
As one who didn’t like, nay, detested, the first movie (especially the faux sentimentality about towns along the US Route system being destroyed by “evil” highways), I’m experiencing a bit of schadenfruede (sp!) at the RT ratings.
Didn’t like Cars very much, largely because of that “Tomato” person. He bugged the crap out of me. Learning that he’s playing an even larger role in the sequel makes me very unlikely to want to see it.
Alright, looks like the Tomatometer is finally setting down.
Near-final tally: 35% based on 113 reviews. For reference, that’s 1% less than that Dreamworks Will Smith fish movie,Shark Tale.
There is a God in the Cars universe. (They call him “the manufacturer.”)
But why the hell did they have anthropomorphic libidos?
The truth is dark and disturbing.
There are people everywhere in Cars; the cars just choose not to see them. Their world is a construct of their own minds, where they see only what is important to them, and imagine the rest. The whole movie is one giant Brazil-esque mindfuck.
Carlton Haulstons: Speed bumps are people! Peeeeeeeople!
-Joe
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was pure and unadulterated awesomeness. (I liked Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon as well, but not nearly as much.)
I will probably watch this one anyway but I am disappointed that they have apparently dropped their standards just to sell merchandise. I have always thought that making money and good storytelling went hand in hand for Pixar and it appears they have sacrificed the second for the first.
I haven’t seen Cloudy but I think How to Train is the best of the non-Pixar films and would probably rank it somewhere in the middle of the Pixar pack. I liked KungFu Panda too.
Even if they are going for the merchandising dollars, don’t most movies have toy tie-in opportunities? I’ve seen plenty of Buzz Lightyears and Woody the Cowboys, and while I haven’t seen as many Incredibles toys, there’s no reason they couldn’t be made.
Indeed, but none have sold as much as Cars. Plus much of Toy Story was built around existing toys; better to make your own, from a purely profit standpoint.