 Starring: Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry The Cable Guy
Director: John Lasseter
Year Of Release: 2006
Plot: Cocky racing car Lightning McQueen accidentally ends up in the backwater town of Radiator Spring. After destroying the road that goes through the town, he’s sentenced to repair it before he’s allowed to leave town. All Lightning wants is to get back to the Piston Cup, however he soon comes appreciate the other cars in the town and the simpler pace of life, especially when he realises Radiator Spring’s elder statesman, Doc Hudson, used to be one of the greatest racing cars of his age. |
I love Cars. Although I’m not particularly an auto-enthusiast, Pixar’s film has a wistful nostalgia that I think is beautifully handled. It’s very deliberately done, as apparently early in production John Lasseter’s wife told him that he had to make sure he didn’t just make a movie that would only appeal to car obsessed young boys. The result is that although bookended by racing sequences, the film is largely quite sedate, concentrating on loss and the memories of glories past.
Cars plays on a nostalgia for the 50s that’s common in popular culture, but which looks through rose-coloured glasses at the decade (no mention of racial or gender issues, or indeed any other problems, seep into Hollywood’s love of the 50s). However Cars is actually based on real issues that many small US towns have faced.
After America started building its first highway system in the 1920s, the towns these roads went through became bustling hives of activity, with their entire economies based on serving the new motorists. In some places entire communities sprang up virtually overnight, just because someone realised services such as gas stations, shops and motels were needed at that spot on the highway, as it was so far to the next nearest town. Many people see the 30s to the 60s as the golden age of the motorcar, when driving became an entire culture, rather than just a means of getting from A to B.
However from the late-50s onwards, the government decided to replace these old two-lane highways with a network of massive interstates. Rather like motorways in the UK, these were designed to avoid going through towns wherever possible, and even where they did, there was no way for motorists to use the community’s services without getting off the interstate completely and deliberately deciding to go into the town. Although this meant people could get places quicker, it resulted in crisis for thousands of towns that had previously relied on cars going through on the old highway. As soon as the Interstates arrived, those cars didn’t come anymore.
Just as in Cars, even towns that were only a mile or two off one of the interstates might as well have been in the middle of nowhere, as while the enormous new roads started to take more and more traffic, virtually none of it headed into nearby towns.
Some towns died completely while most ended up rather like Radiator Springs, slightly stuck in the 1950s, because there was no longer any money to update anything. They were, and many still are, decaying communities based on the memory of their past glories. Cars taps into this beautifully, and while it rather simplifies the issues (particularly as to whether these past glories were really as glorious as people like to remember them as), and does it all with computer-generated automobiles, it’s dealing with real problems faced by many American communities.
50s nostalgia seems to be something John Lasseter is keen to explore, as it also featured heavily in the Toy Story movies. This is perhaps not surprising as it's the decade he grew up in.
Cars is also a good lesson in the economics of family films. On its release, the film was considered a comparative flop by many, as it made the smallest amount of money of any Pixar film since A Bug’s Life. While a $461 million worldwide gross is great by most standards, it wasn’t seen as particularly impressive for a Pixar movie. However in terms of merchandising, it’s the most successful film Pixar has ever released.
Toys based on Cars sold in their droves and the film became to first Pixar movie to sell over a billion dollars worth of merchandise. People often like to talk about how Pixar is based around story and that this is how it differs from other studios, but what’s less often noted is that from the ground up their films are also designed to be merchandise friendly. The makers know that one of the things they have to take into account form day one, is the inevitable McDonald’s Happy Meal, toy lines, colouring books and every other opportunity there is to monetise the characters. Pixar is stunningly good at this, and its merchandising prowess is just as important to the company’s success as the films themselves.
In fact merchandise is believed to be the single biggest grossing element of the Pixar empire, and when Disney paid $7.4 billion for the studio, a massive chunk of that was for the billions they knew they could make from the studio’s characters. Indeed, realising the prospect in terms of both box office and merchandising opportunities, Pixar head-honcho Steve Job delayed the release of the Cars for nearly a year, because he realised what a powerful bargaining chip it was in negotiations with Disney (they were initially arguing over a new distribution deal, but then the House of Mouse decided to purchase Pixar outright).
In the past 15 years, nearly all the biggest new toy lines based on animated movies have stemmed from Pixar films. While Dreamworks has had some success with Shrek, generally other studios have paled in comparison to the success Pixar has had, largely because the studio’s characters are so memorable and toy friendly (having Disney on their side doesn’t hurt either).
Although there are a lot of wonderful films to choose from, Cars is probably my favourite Pixar movie, partly because the issues it deals with seem more real than in some of their other movies. It’s also undoubtedly been incredibly successful on the merchandising front. And we can expect more from Lightning McQueen and co. as Cars 2 is currently in the works for 2011.
TIM ISAAC
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