When it comes to Pixar, two films constantly vie for the ranking of “worst” and those films are Cars and A Bug’s Life. I have no idea how A Bug’s Life became so underrated, but the placement of Cars as a least favorite makes sense. For one the first film had the most pedestrian and predictable plot of any Pixar film up to that point, and for another the most interesting character in the movie was played by Larry the Cable Guy. And – as the joke was at the time – no one understood why Pixar would go to the trouble of making a CGI version of Doc Hollywood. What may be interesting about the film is that it could conceivably be John Lasseter’s final feature length directing gig as he’s now one of the main movers and shakers behind Disney.
Well, for those who didn’t like the first film, the new teaser trailer for Cars 2 suggests a film that will have little or nothing to do with the original! There’s a new teaser for the film and it hints that the returning characters Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Mater (Cable Guy) are (accidental?) spies on a globe-hopping adventure. Pixar doing a comic riff on James Bond? I could get down with that. Cars was one of Pixar’s biggest merchandising successes, so a sequel was coming, and the original story didn’t promise something interesting. Credit where credit is due, it looks like they took a couple of characters and abandoned the rest. In this case, a Cars sequel “in name only” is the best way to go.