jae

i don't love this way of thinking about media, especially since it's usually couched in some layer of ironic detachment that just sort of bothers me. you can't like something "ironically", if you like it you like it, if you don't you don't, neither of these are judgements on if something is "good" (what makes art "good" is a whole other question that i am not even gonna touch here) just if it meets your personal tastes and preferences.

that said i think my favorite "bad" movie is probably Cars 2. a bizarre, questionable trainwreck from start to finish. weird "bad" movies are dime a dozen but they're usually produced on shoestring budgets by independent or outsider filmmakers. Cars 2 had a $200m budget and was produced and released by fucking Disney/Pixar. while these studios are certainly no strangers to releasing a real stinker every now and then, they're usually bad by virtue of being boring, overly safe, clearly written by a committee with no real vision or direction, etc etc etc. Cars 2 is weird and bad, and that's rare from a major studio setting.

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#ask jae anything #Cars 2 (2011)

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in reply to @jkap's post:

gull *Plus!*@gull3/27/2023, 4:50 PM

the original cars is a movie i think wouldve been better were it about people in cars. i shudder to think of the implications such a change would have to cars 2

noah @noahtheduke3/27/2023, 5:07 PM

My daughter loves the Cars so I've seen them tens of times and now I love them deeply.

Cars 2 is a real confusing one. My first viewing, I thought it was brilliant. Flint McMissle and Holly Shiftwell are fun secret agents, the international race is beautiful, I love Francesco Bernoulli he's so good, and there are many little touches that show the Pixar care. However, on repeated viewings it feels deeply conflicted like there were two factions in Pixar who wanted to make different movies and they got smooshed together.

One movie is a "normal" Cars movie about an international race, with Mater joining Lightning McQueen on the road and interfering with Lightning's races and embarrassing him. The arc of the movie is Mater learning to temper his antics and Lightning learning to accept Mater for who he is, with both of them embracing the "collision of worlds" (as described in the credits song). There would be existing and new plot beats, like the wasabi and toilet moments in Japan, the conversation in Italy with Luigi and Guido's family, maybe something new in London.

The other is a 30 minute Mater's Tall Tales about the time Mater was a secret agent. This is essentially all of the secret agent scenes from Cars 2, with Mater seeing the fight in the alley, flying in the airplane and knowing the lemon's engine from the photo, wearing the disguise at the bad guy meeting, getting captured and locked in Big Ben, etc. And at the end would be Lightning being like, "No way that happened" and then Holly Shiftwell coming down from the sky to be like, "You're wanted for another mission, Mater." and Lighting being gobsmacked as Mater pulls out a rocket to fly away.

Instead, we got a really messy and confusing movie that also raises some questions with fucked up answers about class in the Cars universe (why are some cars lemons? What does it mean to be born a lemon? Why is that poor car always breaking down when trying to leave town and paying for tows?????).

What's your favorite of the trilogy?

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