Pixar's Cars (2006)

Cars is a 2006 American computer-animated road-comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed and co-written by John Lasseter from a screenplay by Dan Fogelman, it was Pixar's final independently produced film before its purchase by Disney in January 2006. Set in a world populated entirely by anthropomorphic talking cars and other vehicles
== Plot ==
In a world populated by anthropomorphic talking vehicles, the final race of the Piston Cup season ends in a three-way tie between retiring veteran Strip "The King" Weathers, frequent runner-up Chick Hicks, and brash rookie sensation Lightning McQueen; the tiebreaker race is scheduled for one week later at the Los Angeles International Speedway. Lightning is desperate to win the race, not only to be the first rookie to win the Piston Cup, but also because it would allow him to leave the unglamorous sponsorship of Rust-Eze, a bumper ointment company, and take The King's place on the prestigious and lucrative Dinoco team. Eager to get to California as soon as possible, he pushes his big rig, Mack, to travel all night long. While Lightning is sleeping, Mack nods off and is startled awake, causing Lightning to fall out the back of the trailer and onto the road. Lightning wakes up in the middle of traffic and speeds off the highway in search of Mack, but instead ends up in the rundown desert town of Radiator Springs, where he inadvertently damages the pavement of the main road.
The next day, Lightning is ordered by the town judge, Doc Hudson, to leave town immediately, but the local lawyer, Sally, requests that Lightning should instead be assigned community service to repave the road, to which Doc reluctantly agrees. Still in a rush to leave town, Lightning repaves the road shoddily, and is ordered to repave it again. During this time, he begins to warm to the town, and befriends several of its residents. He learns that Radiator Springs was once a popular stop along U.S. Route 66 until it was bypassed with the construction of the Interstate System and mostly forgotten, and that Doc was a famous three-time Piston Cup winner whose career ended prematurely from a serious crash. He bonds with Sally, who found happiness when she gave up a fast life in LA to live in Radiator Springs, and now dreams of putting the town back on the map. Lightning finishes repaving the road, reinvigorating the town's residents, and decides to spend an extra day in Radiator Springs with his new friends, but his time there is cut short when Mack and the media descend on the town. Lightning reluctantly leaves to reach California in time for the race while Sally chastises Doc upon discovering that he was responsible for tipping off the media to Lightning's whereabouts.
At the race, Lightning races distractedly and soon falls into last place. He is then surprised to discover that Doc, having a change of heart, has taken over as his crew chief and several of his other friends from Radiator Springs are helping in the pit. Inspired and recalling tricks he learned from Doc and his friends, Lightning quickly emerges to lead the race into the final laps, but at the last minute, Chick, refusing to lose to The King again, sideswipes and sends The King into a dangerous crash. Recalling Doc's fate, Lightning stops just short of the finish line, allowing Chick to win, and drives back to push The King over the finish line. As a result, the angered crowd and media condemn Chick's victory while also praising Lightning's sportsmanship. Lightning is offered the Dinoco sponsorship, but declines and insists on staying with Rust-Eze out of loyalty for their past support. Back at Radiator Springs, Lightning reunites with Sally and announces that he will be setting up his racing headquarters there, putting Radiator Springs back on the map.
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== Voice cast ==
* Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen, described by John Lasseter in the Los Angeles Times as "A hybrid between a stock car and a more curvaceous Le Mans endurance racer".[8]
* Paul Newman as Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet who is later revealed to be the Fabulous Hudson Hornet and is Newman's last non-documentary role before retirement in 2007 and death in 2008.
* Bonnie Hunt as Sally Carrera, a 2002 996-series Porsche 911 Carrera.
* Larry the Cable Guy as Mater, a 1951 International Harvester L-170 "boom" truck[9][10] with elements of a mid-1950s Chevrolet[11] One-Ton Wrecker Tow Truck.
* Tony Shalhoub as Luigi, a 1959 Fiat 500.
* Cheech Marin as Ramone, a 1959 Chevrolet Impala Lowrider.
* Michael Wallis as Sheriff, a 1949 Mercury Club Coupe (police package).
* George Carlin as Fillmore, a 1960 VW Bus.
* Paul Dooley as Sarge, a 1941 Willys model jeep, in the style used by the US Military.
* Jenifer Lewis as Flo, a 1957 General Motors Motorama show car.
* Guido Quaroni as Guido, a custom forklift, resembling an Isetta at the front who speaks only in Italian.
* Richard Petty as Strip "The King" Weathers, a 1970 Plymouth Superbird.
* Michael Keaton as Chick Hicks, described by Pixar as a generic 1980s stock car[11] resembling a 1978–88 General Motors G-Body such as a Buick Regal or a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
* Katherine Helmond as Lizzie, a 1923 Ford Model T.
* John Ratzenberger as Mack, a 1985 Mack Super-Liner.
* Joe Ranft as Red, a 1960s style fire engine (most closely resembles a mid-1960s) and Jerry Recycled Batteries, the mean Peterbilt truck whom Lightning McQueen mistakes for Mack while lost. These were Ranft's last two voice roles before his death in August 2005.
* Jeremy Piven (US) / Jeremy Clarkson (UK) as Harv, Lightning McQueen's agent, never seen on-screen.
* Bob Costas as Bob Cutlass, a 1999 Oldsmobile Aurora, announcer for the Piston Cup races and friend of Darrell Cartrip.
* Darrell Waltrip as Darrell Cartrip, a 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Piston Cup announcer and friend of Bob Cutlass.
* Humpy Wheeler as Tex Dinoco, a 1975 Cadillac Coupe de Ville and owner of Dinoco.
* Lynda Petty as Lynda Weathers, Strip Weathers' wife.
* Dale Earnhardt Jr. as "Junior" #8.
* Michael Schumacher as Michael Schumacher Ferrari.
* Tom and Ray Magliozzi as Rusty and Dusty Rust-eze, a 1963 Dodge Dart and a 1967 Dodge A100 who are the respective owners of Rust-eze.
* Richard Kind and Edie McClurg as Van and Minny, a 2003 Ford Windstar and a 1996 Dodge Caravan.
* Lindsey Collins and Elissa Knight as Mia and Tia, the identical twin 1992 Mazda MX-5 ("Miata") sisters.
* Mario Andretti as Mario Andretti #11
* Sarah Clark as Kori Turbowitz
* Jay Leno as Jay Limo
* Jess Harnell as Sven the Governator, a Humvee caricature of Arnold Schwarzenegger
Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Billy Crystal, John Goodman and Dave Foley reprise their vocal roles from previous Pixar films during an end-credits sequence featuring automobile spoofs of Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and A Bug's Life. Cars was the final Pixar film worked on by Joe Ranft who died in a crash a year before the film's release, aged 45. The film was the second to be dedicated to his memory, after Corpse Bride. The memorial showed the roles he had done in the other films directed by John Lasseter during the credits. This is also the last (non-documentary) movie for Paul Newman before his retirement in 2007 and his death in 2008. It turned out to be the highest-grossing film of his career.
== Production ==
=== Development ===
The genesis of the film came in 1998 as Pixar began wrapping up production on A Bug's Life. At that time, Jorgen Klubien began writing a new script called The Yellow Car, which was about an electric car living in a gas-guzzling world inspired by The Ugly Duckling, an idea triggered by the poor reception his fellow countrymen gave the Mini-El car.[16] Some of the original drawings and characters were developed in 1998 and the producers agreed that Cars could be the next Pixar film after A Bug's Life and be released in early 1999, particularly around June 4. However, the idea was scrapped in favor of Toy Story 2. Later, production resumed with major script changes, like giving Mater, Doc and a few other characters bigger parts.
John Lasseter said that inspiration for the film's story came after he took a cross-country road trip with his wife and five sons in 2000. When he returned to the studio after vacation, he contacted Michael Wallis, a Route 66 historian. Wallis then led eleven Pixar animators in rented white Cadillacs on two different road trips across the route to research the film.[18][19][20] In 2001, the film's working title was Route 66 (after U.S. Route 66), but in April 2002, the title was changed to Cars in order to avoid confusion with the 1960s television series of the same name. In addition, Lightning McQueen's racing number was originally going to be 57 (a reference to 1957, Lasseter's birth year), but was changed to 95 (a reference to 1995, the year Pixar's first film Toy Story was released).
In 2006, Lasseter spoke about the inspiration for the film, saying: "I have always loved cars. In one vein, I have Disney blood, and in the other, there's motor oil. The notion of combining these two great passions in my life—cars and animation—was irresistible. When Joe (Ranft) and I first started talking about this film in 1998, we knew we wanted to do something with cars as characters. Around that same time, we watched a documentary called 'Divided Highways,' which dealt with the interstate highway and how it affected the small towns along the way. We were so moved by it and began thinking about what it must have been like in these small towns that got bypassed. That's when we started really researching Route 66, but we still hadn't quite figured out what the story for the film was going to be. I used to travel that highway with my family as a child when we visited our family in St. Louis."
Years later in 2013, Klubien said the film was both his best and most bitter experience because he was fired before it premiered and because he feels Lasseter wrote him out of the story of how the film got made.
=== Animation ===
For the cars themselves, Lasseter also visited the design studios of the Big Three Detroit automakers, particularly J Mays of Ford Motor Company. Lasseter learned how real cars were designed.
In 2006, Lasseter spoke about how they worked hard to make the animation believable, saying: "It took many months of trial and error, and practicing test animation, to figure out how each car moves and how their world works. Our supervising animators, Doug Sweetland and Scott Clark, and the directing animators, Bobby Podesta and James Ford Murphy, did an amazing job working with the animation team to determine the unique movements for each character based on its age and the type of car it was. Some cars are like sports cars and they're much tighter in their suspension. Others are older '50s cars that are a lot looser and have more bounce to them. We wanted to get that authenticity in there but also to make sure each car had a unique personality. We also wanted each animator to be able to put some of themself in the character and give it their own spin. Every day in dailies, it was so much fun because we would see things that we had never seen in our lives. The world of cars came alive in a believable and unexpected way."
Unlike most anthropomorphic cars, the eyes of the cars in this film were placed on the windshield (which resembles the Tonka Talking Trucks, the characters from Tex Avery's One Cab's Family short and Disney's own Susie the Little Blue Coupe), rather than within the headlights.[17] According to production designer Bob Pauley, "From the very beginning of this project, John Lasseter had it in his mind to have the eyes be in the windshield. For one thing, it separates our characters from the more common approach where you have little cartoon eyes in the headlights. For another, he thought that having the eyes down near the mouth at the front end of the car feels more like a snake. With the eyes set in the windshield, the point of view is more human-like, and made it feel like the whole car could be involved in the animation of the character.[17] This decision was heavily criticized by automotive blog Jalopnik.
In 2006, supervising animator on the film Scott Clark, spoke about the challenges of animating car characters, saying: "Getting a full range of performance and emotion from these characters and making them still seem like cars was a tough assignment, but that's what animation does best. You use your imagination, and you make the movements and gestures fit with the design. Our car characters may not have arms and legs, but we can lean the tires in or out to suggest hands opening up or closing in. We can use steering to point a certain direction. We also designed a special eyelid and an eyebrow for the windshield that lets us communicate an expressiveness that cars don't have."[17] Doug Sweetland, who also served as supervising animator, also spoke about the challenges, saying: "It took a different kind of animator to really be able to interpret the Cars models, than it did to interpret something like The Incredibles models. With The Incredibles, the animator could get reference for the characters by shooting himself and watching the footage. But with Cars, it departs completely from any reference. Yes they're cars, but no car can do what our characters do. It's pure fantasy. It took a lot of trial and error to get them to look right."[
John Lasseter co-wrote and directed the film.
Lasseter also explained that the film started with pencil and paper designs, saying: "Truth to materials. Starting with pencil-and-paper designs from production designer Bob Pauley, and continuing through the modeling, articulation, and shading of the characters, and finally into animation, the production team worked hard to have the car characters remain true to their origins."[17] Character department manager Jay Ward also explained how they wanted the cars to look as realistic as possible, saying: "John didn't want the cars to seem clay-like or mushy. He insisted on truth to materials. This was a huge thing for him. He told us that steel needs to feel like steel. Glass should feel like glass. These cars need to feel heavy. They weigh three or four thousand pounds. When they move around, they need to have that feel. They shouldn't appear light or overly bouncy to the point where the audience might see them as rubber toys."[17] According to directing animator James Ford Murphy, "Originally, the car models were built so they could basically do anything. John kept reminding us that these characters are made of metal and they weigh several thousand pounds. They can't stretch. He showed us examples of very loose animation to illustrate what not to do."[17]
Character shading supervisor on the film Thomas Jordan explained that chrome and car paint were the main challenges on the film, saying: "Chrome and car paint were our two main challenges on this film. We started out by learning as much as we could. At the local body shop, we watched them paint a car, and we saw the way they mixed the paint and applied the various coats. We tried to dissect what goes into the real paint and recreated it in the computer. We figured out that we needed a base paint, which is where the color comes from, and the clearcoat, which provides the reflection. We were then able to add in things like metallic flake to give it a glittery sparkle, a pearlescent quality that might change color depending on the angle, and even a layer of pin-striping for characters like Ramone."[17] Supervising technical director on the film Eben Ostby explained that the biggest challenge for the technical team was creating the metallic and painted surfaces of the car characters, and the reflections that those surfaces generate, saying: "Given that the stars of our film are made of metal, John had a real desire to see realistic reflections, and more beautiful lighting than we’ve seen in any of our previous films. In the past, we’ve mostly used environment maps and other matte-based technology to cheat reflections, but for Cars we added a ray-tracing capability to our existing Renderman program to raise the bar for Pixar."[17]
Rendering lead Jessica McMackin spoke about the use of ray tracing on the film, saying: "In addition to creating accurate reflections, we used ray tracing to achieve other effects. We were able to use this approach to create accurate shadows, like when there are multiple light sources and you want to get a feathering of shadows at the edges. Or occlusion, which is the absence of ambient light between two surfaces, like a crease in a shirt. A fourth use is irradiance. An example of this would be if you had a piece of red paper and held it up to a white wall, the light would be colored by the paper and cast a red glow on the wall."[17] Character supervisor Tim Milliron explained that the film uses a ground–locking system that kept the cars firmly planted on the road, saying: "The ground-locking system is one of the things I’m most proud of on this film. In the past, characters have never known about their environment in any way. A simulation pass was required if you wanted to make something like that happen. On Cars, this system is built into the models themselves, and as you move the car around, the vehicle sticks to the ground. It was one of those things that we do at Pixar where we knew going in that it had to be done, but we had no idea how to do it."[17]
Technical director Lisa Forsell explained that to enhance the richness and beauty of the desert landscapes surrounding Radiator Springs, the filmmakers created a department responsible for matte paintings and sky flats, saying: "Digital matte paintings are a way to get a lot of visual complexity without necessarily having to build complex geometry, and write complex shaders. We spent a lot time working on the clouds and their different formations. They tend to be on several layers and they move relative to each other. The clouds do in fact have some character and personality. The notion was that just as people see themselves in the clouds, cars see various car-shaped clouds. It’s subtle, but there are definitely some that are shaped like a sedan. And if you look closely, you’ll see some that look like tire treads. The fact that so much attention is put on the skies speaks to the visual level of the film. Is there a story point? Not really. There is no pixel on the screen that does not have an extraordinary level of scrutiny and care applied to it. There is nothing that is just throw-away."[17]
Computers used in the development of the film were four times faster than those used in The Incredibles and 1,000 times faster than those used in Toy Story. To build the cars, the animators used computer platforms similar to those used in the design of real-world automobiles.
== Soundtrack ==
: Main article(s): Cars/Soundtrack The Cars soundtrack was released by Walt Disney Records on June 6, 2006. Nine tracks on the soundtrack are by popular artists, while the remaining eleven are score cues by Randy Newman. It has two versions of the classic Bobby Troup jazz standard "Route 66" (popularized by Nat King Cole), one by Chuck Berry and a new version recorded specifically for the film's credits performed by John Mayer. Brad Paisley contributed two of the nine tracks to the album, one being "Find Yourself" used for the end credits.
== Release ==
Cars was originally going to be released on November 4, 2005, but on December 7, 2004, its release date was moved to June 9, 2006. with Chicken Little taking over its original release date. Analysts looked at the release date change as a sign from Pixar that they were preparing for the pending end of the Disney distribution contract by either preparing non-Disney materials to present to other studios or they were buying time to see what happened with Michael Eisner's situation at Disney. When Pixar's chief executive Steve Jobs made the release date announcement, he stated that the reasoning was due to wanting to put all Pixar films on a summer release schedule with DVD sales occurring during the holiday shopping season.
The theatrical release was accompanied by Pixar Animation Studio's 2005 Academy Award-nominated short film One Man Band.
=== Marketing ===
McDonald's promoted the film with a set of 10 happy meal toys featuring the characters from the film.
State Farm promoted the film for its new Cars mechandise.
The film was backed by a large marketing campaign, with toys, books, games, clothes, and many other items becoming available throughout 2006 and again in 2011 with the release of Cars 2.
==Trailers==
* The film's first teaser trailer was released on November 5, 2004, and was later shown in theaters in front of The Incredibles, The Polar Express, The SpongeBob SqaurePants Movie, National Treasure, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Zina and the Vivid Crew, Pooh's Heffalump Movie, The Pacifier, Robots, Ice Princess, Madagascar, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Bewitched, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sky High, Valiant, Corpse Bride, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
* Another teaser trailer was released on November 4, 2005, and was later released with Chicken Little, Zathura: A Space Adventure, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
* The first theatrical trailer was released on November 23, 2005 and was shown in front of other films like Yours, Mine, & Ours, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Hoodwinked!, Roving Mars, Nanny McPhee, Glory Road, The Pink Panther, Curious George, Eight Below, Doogal, and Aquamarine.
* The second theatrical trailer was was released on March 9, 2006 and was shown with The Shaggy Dog, Ice Age: The Meltdown, The Wild, Akleah and the Bee, RV, Stick It and Hoot.
* The third and final theatrical trailer was released on May 10, 2006 and was shown before Beastz, Over the Hedge, and X-Men: The Last Stand.
TV spots began to air between February and June of 2006.
=== Home media ===
Cars was released on DVD, in wide- and full-screen editions, on November 7, 2006 in the United States and Canada. This DVD was also released on October 25, 2006 in Australia and New Zealand and on November 27, 2006 in the United Kingdom. The release includes the DVD-exclusive short film Mater and the Ghostlight and the film's theatrical short One Man Band as well as a 16-minute-long documentary about the film entitled Inspiration for Cars, which features director John Lasseter.[28] A limited run on VHS was distributed to members of Disney's home video clubs.
According to the Walt Disney Company, five million copies of the DVD were sold the first two days it was available.[30] The first week, it sold 6,250,856 units and 15,370,791 in total ($246,198,859).[31] Unlike previous Pixar DVD releases, there is no two-disc special edition, and no plans to release one in the future. According to Sara Maher, DVD Production Manager at Pixar, John Lasseter and Pixar were preoccupied with productions like Ratatouille.[32]
In the US and Canada, there were bonus discs available with the purchase of the film at Wal-Mart and at Target.[33] The former featured a Geared-Up Bonus DVD Disc that focused on the music of the film, including the music video to "Life Is A Highway", The Making of "Life Is A Highway", Cars: The Making of the Music, and Under The Hood, a special that originally aired on the ABC Family cable channel.[34] The latter's bonus was a Rev'd Up DVD Disc that featured material mostly already released as part of the official Cars podcast and focused on the inspiration and production of the movie.[35]
Cars was also released on Blu-ray Disc on November 6, 2007, one year after the DVD release. It was the first Pixar film to be released on Blu-ray (alongside Ratatouille and Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1),[36] and was re-released as a Blu-Ray Disc and DVD combo pack and DVD only edition in April 2011. The film was released for the first time in 3D on October 29, 2013, as part of Cars: Ultimate Collector's Edition, which included the releases on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, and DVD.
Cars was released on 4K Blu-Ray on September 10, 2019.
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== Video game ==
: Main article: Cars (video game)A video game of the same name was released on June 6, 2006, for Game Boy Advance, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Xbox. It was also released on October 23, 2006, for Xbox 360 and November 16, 2006, for Wii. Much like the film, the video game got mainly positive reviews. GameSpot gave 7.0 out of 10 for Xbox 360 and Wii versions, for PlayStation 2, 7.6 out of 10 for the GameCube and Xbox versions, and 7.4 out of 10 for the PSP version. Metacritic gave 65 out of 100 for the Wii version, 54 out of 100 for the DS version, 73 out of 100 for the PC version, 71 out of 100 for the PlayStation 2 version, and 70 out of 100 for the PSP version.
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== Sequels ==
: Main article(s): Cars 2 and Cars 3 A sequel to the film, titled Cars 2, was released on June 24, 2011. It was directed again by John Lasseter, who was inspired for the film while traveling around the world promoting the first film. In the sequel, Lightning McQueen and Mater head to Japan and Europe to compete in the World Grand Prix, but Mater becomes sidetracked with international espionage. The film failed to meet or exceed the critical success of its predecessor, but was still a box office success.
A second sequel, titled Cars 3, was released on June 16, 2017. Lasseter didn't return to direct so Brian Fee took over the director's chair (though Lasseter was still involved as executive producer). The film again concerns Lightning McQueen, now a veteran racer, who received instruction from a young race car, Cruz Ramirez, to help him to cope with an increasingly high-tech world. The film also received positive reviews from critics, who praised it as an improvement on its predecessor.
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