I kinda like the “you blew it all to hell” Charlton Heston interpretation of Cars myself.
PS, either your spell checker is tits up or you’ve hit the Wild Turkey a bit too early today 
Dude, I was being clever. Charlton = CARlton, Heston = HAULston.
Genius is never appreciated in it’s time.
-Joe
Hoping the typo was unintentional, because I’m loving the juxtaposition 
Also, some of the films, like Up and Ratatouille, don’t really make for great toys. Can you imagine playing with a toy Carl, Russell or Remy?
Edited to add that I fully expect to see someone link to toy versions of all of those characters.
And another thing Disney wants is to be able to exploit a film title in other ways, such as theme park rides, television series, ice shows and so forth. So from Toy Story they made the animated series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and several park rides. I don’t think they did that with Up, Ratatouille or Wall-E.
(I think the ultimate example of this sort of thing was High School Musical, which spawned several sequel films, multiple albums, live shows and video games.)
For those of you wondering why this movie has such a toy oriented push, have any of you ever seen John Lasseter’s office?
Only half the Pixar movies lend themselves to merchandising, so though it’s not primary, it is a factor they consider at times. Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and Cars had a huge merchandising push, while A Bug’s Life, and The Incredibles, had medium level merchandising success, and Ratatouille, UP, and Wall-E didn’t do much toy marketing at all.
It’s not at the forefront, but if the opportunity is there, they’ll exploit it. They are still also Disney, remember, and John Lasseter loves toys and collectibles.
Personally, I think the death of Joe Ranft had a subtle but signifigant effect on Pixar. Ranft had a number of roles at Pixar but the one I think was key was that he was the story supervisor. I think he was the guy that would look at the overall project and ask “Are we making a good movie?”
My friend argued that the movie is a “movie for kids of rednecks” and that it was aimed at a rural demo.
Anyone want to shoot that one in the head for me, or agree with it?
I’m pretty sure Wall-E did have some associated toys, including this pricey fellow.
Some, but not much. I have a little Wall-E figure myself, and there were Eve figures too, of various formats. But not much else.
More importantly, idiots (like me) never see it
Though I was wondering how you were getting the spelling THAT bad.
They screwed up on the original Toy Story by not producing the mutant toys from Sid’s room. A snap-together set so you could make your own mutants would have been the geek toy of the century. Every IT department in the world would be festooned with them.
I found a plush toy Russell in an opshop, I really should have bought it.
Doesn’t the lost couple (Minnie and Van?) make some comment like “Oh, for the love of Chrysler?”
You mean that stupid Panda movie wasn’t the failure? Meh.
My son wants to see Cars 2, and I’m sure I’ll go, but I’m not looking forward to it. There aren’t that many kids movies I like. But he LOVES Cars and has been talking about this for months, so <shh>, don’t tell him he’s going.
Kung Fu Panda was Dreamworks, not Pixar.
After he did that movie, Jack Black said in his announcement for best animated feature at the Oscars: “Every year I make an animated feature for Dreamworks, and every year I bet my entire wages on Pixar getting the Oscar.” (paraphrased)
Well, the last Pixar film to not win Animated Feature was Cars. I think it’s a fairly safe bet the sequel will not do much better for the 2011 awards.
I don’t know that I would say it’s for kids of rednecks, but I think it was aimed at a more, um, conservative demo.
What about Kevin and Doug?
Squirrel!
I brought my son and nephews to this, and it was not very good. I didn’t like Cars though, so take my opinion for what it’s worth.