# The Ecology of Cars (The Movie) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 7, 2007, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153 "2007-05-07T20:34:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/21 "2007-05-08T03:06:48Z")
[QUOTE=El\_Kabong] Maybe I missed it, but just like you never see baby pigeons, there don’t seem to be any infant cars and any cars we see venturing out on the road seem to have a developmental age of at least the late teens, even if they are only a couple of model years old. [/QUOTE] I believe there is at least one baby car shown, in one of the racetrack scenes, cheering with delight as the jets fly over. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/22 "2007-05-08T03:45:18Z")
[QUOTE=Charger] I also wonder where the “soul” resides. Is it in the engine, the interior, the body, or some other part. If you took two cars of similar models and interchanged parts, when does one car cease to be that car and start being the other. Maybe it’s all in the VIN tag. [/QUOTE] On the disk they have some dropped storylines and one of them had McQueen’s engine (and his personality) transferred to Old Bessie for his road-paving sentence. 'Mater “borrowed” his stockcar body which upset him greatly. 'Mater’s truck body was shown somnolent in the background while this was going on. > [@mobo85](#): > > These characters come from Pixar’s Oscar-winning short film **For the Birds**. Pixar always puts references to their previous (and sometimes their future) work in their films. Although this in-joke confuses things even more, as these birds are the only non-vehicle figures in the film. I’m not so sure. I recognized the sound they made when they zipped by and had the same thought about them being the only non-mechanical creatures in the film. I step-framed the moment they were in view and they’re awfully blurry – too much to tell whether they’re organic or not. Speaking of self-references: The Pizza Planet Toyota pickup’s _gotta_ be there somewhere – in a crowd scene, perhaps? And what about the Luxo Jr. ball? ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/23 "2007-05-08T05:36:21Z")
I saw this movie for the first time a couple of weeks ago and promptly started asking the same questions. Thank you, Dopers, because now I know I’m not the only sane person in a loopy world. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/24 "2007-05-08T07:46:09Z")
I wondered the same thing about the movie _Robots_. Everything is made of metal, glass and plastic - there’s no organic life at all, so where does the cardboard come from for the boxes? ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/25 "2007-05-08T07:57:03Z")
[QUOTE=El\_Kabong] Others still remain, however. How and why did Guido and Luigi end up in America? [/QUOTE] That was my idea for a _Cars_ prequel. In the 50’s, Guido and Luigi leave their economically depressed town in Italy and visit the racing capitals of Europe (Le Mans, the Nürburgring, etc.) as travelling tire salesmen. Luigi would be the charmer, the fast-talking salesman. Guido would be the silent clown, in the tradition of Harpo Marx, and always with one eye on the pit crews, studying their every move. Eventually, they cross the ocean and head west, finding their way to emerging boomtown of Radiator Springs. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/26 "2007-05-08T10:34:42Z")
The teaser trailer for _Cars_ also had the bug that gets smeared over Mater’s windshield that he gets all emo about, and then a whole swarm of gnats that McQueen runs into. **Terrifel** , I love that setup. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/27 "2007-05-08T14:50:56Z")
I just wanted to welcome all y’all to my personal Hell. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/28 "2007-05-08T15:19:11Z")
The thing I’m curious about is that I’ve heard several people asking these questions about _Cars_. Why didn’t these people have simular difficulties with the idea of talking toys or insects or monsters or fish? ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/29 "2007-05-08T15:40:19Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] The thing I’m curious about is that I’ve heard several people asking these questions about _Cars_. Why didn’t these people have simular difficulties with the idea of talking toys or insects or monsters or fish? [/QUOTE] I’m glad you asked. The first draft my my OP addressed this issue. Talking toys, insects, and fish make sense, because there are people around. It’s just that people are clueless and don’t notice that their toys play when they’re not looking, etc. But in _Cars_, there are no people to have the wool pulled over their eyes. ---
**Author:** ![anamnesis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@anamnesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anamnesis)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/30 "2007-05-08T16:42:09Z")
[QUOTE=Robot Arm] That was my idea for a _Cars_ prequel. In the 50’s, Guido and Luigi leave their economically depressed town in Italy and visit the racing capitals of Europe (Le Mans, the Nürburgring, etc.) as travelling tire salesmen. Luigi would be the charmer, the fast-talking salesman. Guido would be the silent clown, in the tradition of Harpo Marx, and always with one eye on the pit crews, studying their every move. Eventually, they cross the ocean and head west, finding their way to emerging boomtown of Radiator Springs. [/QUOTE] Best. Idea. _Ever._ My hat is off to you. Guido was my favorite character, with Luigi a close second. The only thing is, like most comic relief bit players, they are lovable but best taken in small doses. I’m not sure they can carry an entire story, but it would be a great 10-15 minute episode in a collection of Cars “featurettes”, with each episode focusing on a sidestory or background tale for each character. Mater already had his with the “Mater and the Ghostlight” DVD featurette. 🙂 To those over-analyzing: You can’t be serious. If the premise of sentient cars (with giant cartoon eyes in their windshields and big toothy mouths where their grilles should be) actually causes you to question the reality of the humanless world they’re in, I pity you. Pixar’s whole schtick is to anthropomorphize things. I find it strange that I have to suggest the whole concept behind their work is to explore how things that aren’t human might behave if they could speak. Great, there were humans in the other films but none in Cars. The plot doesn’t allow for a symbiotic control relationship between man and machine. So what. Next thing you’ll be going “ohmigod, how does Luxo Jr. screw in his own light bulb if there aren’t any humans there to do it for him?” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/31 "2007-05-08T17:02:06Z")
All this is cornflakes compared to the mental gymnastics I performed trying to unravel the details of the secret history behind **Who Framed Roger Rabbit?** I still don’t have that one totally worked out to my satisfaction… ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/32 "2007-05-08T17:05:42Z")
[QUOTE=anamnesis] To those over-analyzing: You can’t be serious. If the premise of sentient cars (with giant cartoon eyes in their windshields and big toothy mouths where their grilles should be) actually causes you to question the reality of the humanless world they’re in, I pity you. Pixar’s whole schtick is to anthropomorphize things. I find it strange that I have to suggest the whole concept behind their work is to explore how things that aren’t human might behave if they could speak. Great, there were humans in the other films but none in Cars. The plot doesn’t allow for a symbiotic control relationship between man and machine. So what. Next thing you’ll be going “ohmigod, how does Luxo Jr. screw in his own light bulb if there aren’t any humans there to do it for him?” :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] Spoken like someone who’s only sat through the film fewer than ten times. (No, I do not use the electronic babysitter. The boy is allowed to watch one movie during the weekend, if he’s been good. The rest of the time he’s either outside running around or playing with his cars or trains in the playroom.) ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/33 "2007-05-08T18:04:55Z")
This is something I wrote for another site but didn’t quite finish, on this very subject, so pardon the bloggishness of the prose: > [@](#): > > I’ve often been accused of overanalyzing movies, and it’s a charge I’ll admit to gladly. In some cases though, films seem to invite further inspection, with implications beyond their surface, leading to implications beyond what I think the makers of the film pondered. One such film is Pixar’s latest, Cars, set in the world of auto racing with sentient cars. > > It’s their first film to substitute their usually inanimate objects directly for humans, as opposed to anthropomorphizing animals (A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo), showing secret worlds beyond our notice (the Toy Story movies, Monsters Inc.), or a fantasy world of superheros (The Incredibles). This leads to an incredibly odd situation for a viewer. If the vehicles in Cars were ferrying around humans, that would be one thing. But no, there are no people (or even animals, except for one brief in-joke) anywhere to be seen. The racers are cars, the fans in the stadiums are cars, the announcers are cars, the shop owners are… well, you get the picture. > > Where the problem comes in is that this world doesn’t make much sense. A car is something that very clearly needs to be designed and built. Evolution is an incredibly complex process, but an inorganic vehicle evolving would probably prove those Intelligent Design nuts right. What’s more, the world they live in is adapted from the human world and defies belief that it could be constructed by them. Those four wheels, although given incredible articulation by the animators, don’t really make up for the lack of opposable thumbs. > > As well, the structures don’t make a lot of sense for use by a race of vehicles. Would a car build itself a regular, human-style house? A natural habitat for vehicles would necessarily look very different (multi-story buildings, of which there are a few seen, make absolutely no sense), and aside from the hotel managed by the Porsche character in the film, little seems to be well adapted to them. So, we’re pretty much forced to conclude that there were humans at one time. > > Then what happened to them? Taking a religious bent, was this, perhaps, the aftermath of the Rapture? All those bumperstickers might be right. If that’s the case, I wonder if the left behind (sorry) vehicles have a philosophy to explain the absence of their owners, some form of… Carstianity. While this is a possibility, according to my understanding of Revelations, not all the humans would disappear anyway. So, we can probably dismiss this probability. > > What seeming more likely to me is that this world is the aftermath of an uprising of vehicles and machinery after they achieve sentience, a la Maximum Overdrive. One day, all these vehicles woke up, destroyed their human masters and decided to take over their world. It’s possible they also absorbed their essence, as evidenced by the existence of Michael Schumacher the Ferrarri and Mario Andretti as another race car, but that’s not entirely certain. Anyway, our protagonists are blood-thirsty murderers of all mankind. Enjoy your popcorn! > > Which leads us to the behavior of the cars themselves. Racing is of course, a natural sport for cars. One can imagine little else they could compete in, beside feats of strength. But racing with the cars driving themselves is a very different animal. Early on in the film, Chick, the race car character voiced by Michael Keaton (the principle antagonist of the film) deliberately causes a wreck in order to impede Lightning McQueen (our protagonist) causing serious injury to most every other vehicle in the race. It’s one thing to crash a car as a human – the cars are designed to take the brunt of the impact in racing, saving the fragile cargo inside. But in this world, the car is all there is, and one suspects that it’s entirely possible for a car to be totaled beyond even the repair abilities of the “doctors of internal combustion” in the film. This, then, is sociopathic behavior on the part of Chick which seems to go unnoticed or unpunished when really it’s multiple counts of attempted murder. > > Another interesting but disturbing aspect of the film is the semi-rigid caste system of the car world. While most of the standard model cars seem to have a decent choice of career, there are a lot of specialized vehicles that really don’t have that choice. What, for instance, are the tire changing cars supposed to do beyond being tire changers? Hopes and dreams seem to be limited for all but an elite few. The world is populated by more than cars, with helicopters and jet fighters at the minimum seen in the film. The presence of fighter jets also implies the possibility of war – among national lines? Country of manufacture? And over what? Probably the same things we humans fight over I suppose, but the analogous protest chant of “No Oil For Oil!” doesn’t quite scan. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/34 "2007-05-08T18:21:01Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] The thing I’m curious about is that I’ve heard several people asking these questions about _Cars_. Why didn’t these people have simular difficulties with the idea of talking toys or insects or monsters or fish? [/QUOTE] There are a number of reasons, but it all comes down to suspension of disbelief in the end. It’s very easy to anthropomorphize toys. Heck, most of them _look_ like people, so it’s easy to imagine them acting like people, too. Insects and fish don’t look very human, but they behave in ways that are easily translated into human motivations. Many of them are already social animals, so it’s easy for us to imagine these social interactions in human terms. The monsters from _Monsters, Inc._ are probably the easiest thing to accept, as they don’t have any real-world analogue to compare to. _Toy Story_ requires the audience to believe that inanimate objects have a secret life all their own. _Monsters, Inc._ merely requires that you accept that there are non-humans living in a non-human world, with only brief and occasional contact with our own. The only part of that concept that requires suspension of disbelief is the “brief and occasional contact” part of it, and that’s already been an element of 75% of all science fiction stories ever told. Cars, in general, are not as easily anthropomorphized. (and when they are, it’s usually in a negative fashion: “That fucking Mercedes just cut me off!”) There’s nothing in the behavior or appearance of cars that easily translates into human actions. The idea of two cars falling in love is a much harder sell than the idea of two toy cowboys falling in love. Real cars don’t have any sort of behavior that remotely mimics that. Of course, none of that’s insurmountable. It’s possible to have a movie about talking cars that doesn’t bog the audience down in those sorts of questions. _Cars_ was not that movie. Why? Because ultimatly, it simply wasn’t very good. The plot was stale and cliched. The characters were not very compelling. The writing wasn’t particularly clever. You could nitpick a lot of other Pixar movies in the same fashion that’s been done here: how the hell does a vegetarian shark even survive? What does he eat? Seaweed? But _Finding Nemo_ was an amazing movie. The characters are well drawn and interesting, the plot exciting and inventive, the dialogue by turns witty and moving, that the audience is much more forgiving of the implausibilities of the concept. Pixar’s movies always require a degree of suspension of disbelief, but _Cars_ required much more heavy lifting than their previous features, and gave much less reward for doing so. It is no surprise, therefore, that many in the audience declined to do the work, and instead amused themselves by picking the film’s premise apart. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/35 "2007-05-08T18:49:05Z")
That’s the funny thing: yeah, it wasn’t that good of a story. But to me, _including_ humans always demands _more_ of a suspension of disbelief than completely doing away with them (so the humans _never_ notice a toy moving? Riiiiiiiight. Pull the other one.) _Cars_, while having its ecological and functional questions even when I first viewed it, at least doesn’t have The Grand Illusion problems that movies that try to imply that they take place alongside humans in some secret world do. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/36 "2007-05-08T18:59:45Z")
[QUOTE=Maus Magill] My son is on a big _Cars_ kick. I think I’ve seen that movie at least 25,000 times in the last few weeks. I’d say it was a hellish experience, but it was a pretty good movie, so it held up through the 10,000th viewing. To preserve my sanity (quiet now), I’m now on to deconstructing it.. [/QUOTE] Consider yourself lucky, my kids moved onto Barnyard. Bulls with udders [shudder] ---
**Author:** ![Ferd\_Burfel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecccb3/32.png) [@Ferd\_Burfel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferd_Burfel)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/37 "2007-05-08T19:20:38Z")
[QUOTE=pinkfreud] I bet you’re remembering Roger Zelazny’s story [Devil Car](http://www.lib.ru/ZELQZNY/devilcar.txt). [/QUOTE] I was thinking that it might be Asimov’s "[Sally](http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/Asimov/Stories/Story231.html) ", but that’s completely different. ---
**Author:** ![anamnesis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@anamnesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anamnesis)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/38 "2007-05-08T19:27:13Z")
I’m curious why the people who rake this film over the coals for being a logical fallacy feel the need to share the philosophical masturbation about how cars can’t exist in a world by themselves. Guess what? We get it. Yes, it’s a logical fallacy. I get it now, and I got it before I ever saw the first frame of the film. I find it particularly ironic that ‘Cars’ was, by John Lasseter’s own admission, the one film he’d been working his way towards throughout his career at Pixar, and turned out to be one of their least popular films, probably due to overestimating the American public’s familiarity with car culture. I’m not sure where all the claims of the film having no story, or a bad story, are coming from either. What was the plot of ‘Finding Nemo’? A lost and found story, with fish. What was the plot of ‘Toy Story’? A lost and found story, with toys. What was the plot of ‘Cars’? Why, a lost and found story, with cars. From my perspective, if ‘Cars’ had a bad story, then the others had bad stories as well. Anyone who knows anything about Pixar knows that Lasseter is a consummate car enthusiast. His office wall is filled with dozens of model cars. Virtually every frame of the movie was a tribute to all corners of car culture, past and present. The film is positively brimming with inside references and faithful homages to car culture and automotive history. It’s a bit sad that the fixation on “cars needing people to do things” prevents some from enjoying what was truly a labor of love for the folks at Pixar, and for Lasseter in particular, a dream come true. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/39 "2007-05-08T19:48:06Z")
Again, you’re missing the point. **Miller** expressed it quite well; it’s that the film was fairly blah that led those of us that are nitpicking it to start filling in these blanks. (and for the record, I didn’t think the film was bad, just the least of Pixar’s features) The problems are slightly larger than in other Pixar films, though not insurmountable. If they’d spent just a little more time on the details, it would have been a much better film for it. It may be a labor of love for Lasseter, et. al, but there’s no obligation on my part to find that entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2007, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153/40 "2007-05-08T19:49:24Z")
[QUOTE=anamnesis] I’m curious why the people who rake this film over the coals for being a logical fallacy feel the need to share the philosophical masturbation about how cars can’t exist in a world by themselves. Guess what? We get it. Yes, it’s a logical fallacy. I get it now, and I got it before I ever saw the first frame of the film. [/QUOTE] Again - I liked the movie. This just started as an intellectual excercize for me after hearing, “I wanna watch the _ **Mater** _ movie!!” for the 25,000th time. I haven’t seen anyone come into the thread and mention how awful the movies is, because it’s not an awful movie. There’s just this… disconnect about how this world must work. See, I’m odd in that world full of sentient automobiles doesn’t bother me, as long as I can figure out its rules. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-ecology-of-cars-the-movie/403153.md?page=3)