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Thoughts about the world of "Cars"
When I first saw the teaser trailer, Pixar's "Cars" did not look like a movie I'd like. The teaser shows two main elements: Mater and racing. I've never been interested in racing, and... well, let's just say I don't have a very high tolerance of redneck "culture". But then babsbunny told me she absolutely LOVED it, and she invited me to see it with her and sqrlly, and I ended up loving it!

Reviews of the film have been mostly positive; rottentomatoes.com gives it a rating of 76% fresh. Most of the negative reviews of the film tend to be along the highly subjective lines of "the plot's not interesting" or "the characters aren't appealing". My only comment about such things is "well, I disagree". Oh, and some reviewers felt the plot was similar to Doc Hollywood. Not having seen that movie, I can't comment on that. :}

But I've had some interesting thoughts pop up from some comments I've been reading, and I decided to illustrate them.


One criticism I've been seeing a lot, typified by this quote from Sean of filmjunk.com: "The film really drags towards the middle." I think I know specifically why some people are saying this: they're racing fans who were lured to the film by the promise of racing, and they can't tolerate anything slow!



Also, some people don't like the windshield eyes; they think Pixar should have stuck to the Aardman method of putting the eyes in the headlights. Me, I could accept the characters either way, though I do think windshield eyes at least are more logical.



A few critics don't like the idea of a world populated entirely by cars. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times refers to "the story's underlying creepiness, which comes down to the fact that there's nothing alive here: nada, zip." Funny, I thought the whole point was that the cars themselves were alive. The lack of humans didn't bother me, although I think it'd be interesting to imagine a world in which humans coexist with talking cars. What would our relationship be? If it were the same as it is now, I guess cars would be our slaves.



I think that would be unpleasant, because hey, slavery always is. There'd be people whipping their cars, holding up the title and shouting "I OWN YOU", stuff like that. And the inevitable violent uprising would be horrific.



I don't like to imagine such things. I'd hope that cars would have civil rights. Would they be paid servants?



Even in this case, your typical garage would be a dreary place for a car, unless you fixed it up with a TV or other such comforts and amusements. Or maybe houses would be built to accommodate both humans and cars, and the car would live inside with the people, and only go into the garage to sleep. Maybe the family car would be just that—a family car.



And when you grew up and went off to college and got a new car, the two of you could be buddies!



Garages could be built with a large car-sized door leading into the house as well as the one leading outside.



And when you got a job, your car would take you to work every day. You wouldn't even have to do the driving!



But where would your car spend the day while you were working? I figure most places of business would have car clubs instead of parking garages, where the cars could hang out all day. There'd be TV, videogames, a bar for serving fuel and oil, and a phone so cars could contact their riders (I figure that'd be the word instead of "owner"; your car calls you its "rider").



And by the way, something that struck me as odd about the movie was that for a movie about cars, it left out a big part of the driving experience: the interior of a car. We never saw any steering wheels, dashboards, seats or any of that. Just one vague metaphorical mention of "as hot as a black leather seat on a summer day". What's inside these cars? Pixar deliberately kept it vague by "greying out" the windows. Some people think this is appropriate, saying they wouldn't want to see the cars' "brains". Except, wait a minute... brains? Organs? I'm not sure I like the idea of cars having organs inside instead of passenger cabins equipped with seats. I'd hate to think that if a car somehow found me stranded in the world of Cars, he wouldn't be able to just pop his door open and offer me a ride.



But what would the view look like? If you got inside a car, would you see a reverse two-dimensional image of the eyes, like KT did in my "McQueen ride" cartoon? Would you see the back sides of a pair of huge car eyes? If I were writing a script about this, I'd imagine some sort of screen thingy inside the car so you can see exactly what the car sees. Or maybe it'd simply work like a two-way mirror. Either way, you'd be able to see out.



And while I'm on the subject of humans plus cars, I came up with a weird fantasy idea I think it'd be fun to explore: What if, when you got into the driver's seat of a car, you merged with it?



I hope this post has been food fuel for thought.