My Beef With "Cars 2"

Rather than put forth a typical review for Cars 2, I'm opting for something a little different. Mostly because I don't feel like going into extreme detail about the film, but I still wanted to let out my anger at why it's such a horrific failure. I'm no huge fan of Cars, but it does have its considerable moments, and I hoped that that might be the stem that John Lasseter was drawing from for the sequel. The thing is, this is a complete and total betrayal of what the first film meant, and perhaps of what this particular series is about.

They could've gone a considerable amount of routes for this sequel, continuing the story from the first film with an emotional tie to continuing the arc of these characters. Unfortunately, Cars 2 wasn't a continuation of anything so much as a rehash of characters and situations. As is the foil of a great many Pixar films, it does a complete 180 and makes it an action spectacle. This isn't just placing an action plot at the end of the film to enhance the already laid out story, much like WALL-E or Up. This is a full fledged action spy film.

Every line that is delivered drops like a ton of bricks, being too obvious and self-indulgent to take seriously. I didn't care about the characters of McQueen or Mater, and I still don't. If I were to make a list of the absolutely worst Pixar characters, they'd land somewhere on that list. Paul Newman's death was bound to make an impression on the plot, but it's a side note rather than an emotionally resonating plot point that enhances the characters' viewpoints on the world. Wasted potential is a word I use quite often in these cases.

The visuals are flashy, but they're oddly enough not interesting at all. The cars zip around in such boring and banal patterns that I'm not really invested in any of the racing. Not to say that I'd care about racing anyway. I'll put aside the unnecessary amount of death in this film, all of which fails to impact us. My biggest problem is that there's no progress or change at the end of the film compared to the beginning of the film. Nothing changes, and Pixar always said they'd never make a sequel unless they felt like something needed to be told. This just didn't.