Cars 3

The sum­mer of 2017 offered the chance to wit­ness the strange but telling coex­is­tence of two dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppos­ing trends in children’s filmed enter­tain­ment. Two major movies on release take rad­i­cal­ly con­trast­ing posi­tions on the beast that has come to dom­i­nate block­busters at large, name­ly technology.

In a rad­i­cal depar­ture from char­ac­ter lore expand­ed upon across five fea­tures, Spi­der-Man: Home­com­ing finds Peter Parker’s moti­va­tion for being a super­hero is now not the sense of duty that comes with great pow­er, but rather an aching desire to appear ​‘cool’, using a new souped-up gad­get suit and lots of hi-tech gad­gets. Obvi­ous­ly, the film’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is to sell sim­i­lar hi-tech toys to the audience.

Set in a world sole­ly pop­u­lat­ed by cute, ani­mat­ed motor vehi­cles, and aimed at a younger audi­ences, the Cars fran­chise too can shift mer­chan­dise. With­in that con­text, the the­mat­ic argu­ment against tech­nol­o­gy at the core of this new Cars film is all the more fas­ci­nat­ing and refreshing.

In terms of a threat, race cham­pi­on Light­ning McQueen (voiced again by Owen Wil­son) this time faces not a lack of self-con­fi­dence nor a gang of inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nals, but rather old age. His newest rival is rook­ie Jack­son Storm (suave­ly voiced by Armie Ham­mer) a rac­er who trains on hi-tech sim­u­la­tors to break new records for speed.

Some of the film’s most amus­ing sequences show McQueen try­ing out sim­i­lar train­ing schemes him­self, with the help of Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alon­zo), a train­er who once dreamed of being a rac­er her­self. Con­stant­ly opti­mistic and high-ener­gy, using per­son­alised moti­va­tion­al exer­cis­es, Cruz is more of a per­son­al coach than a men­tor like Doc Hud­son was in the orig­i­nal movie. Although now deceased, the Paul New­man-voiced char­ac­ter is the real cen­tre of the film, a guid­ing light for McQueen when he is con­fused and lost, appear­ing in nifti­ly edit­ed flash­back scenes.

In the first film, McQueen was an arro­gant rook­ie ulti­mate­ly hum­bled by a sense of his­to­ry, learn­ing from old rac­er Hud­son. In the third film, it doesn’t take long for McQueen to return to these roots, this time more than will­ing to be giv­en advice. Ditch­ing the hi-tech sim­u­la­tor for real roads, he seeks the help of oth­er rac­ing leg­ends and friends of Doc Hud­son – while the new Spi­der-Man film eras­es his­to­ry, McQueen instead looks for his to bet­ter pre­pare his future. Yet rather than sim­ply use the elders’ wis­dom to his own advan­tage, our hero even­tu­al­ly faces a total­ly unex­pect­ed and beau­ti­ful real­i­sa­tion, a clas­sic Pixar moment of bit­ter­sweet poignancy.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this love­ly tale of the impor­tance of his­to­ry and com­mu­ni­ty is coat­ed in a ​‘kids movie’ tone that feels all the more arti­fi­cial and unnec­es­sary after the bru­tal sin­cer­i­ty of Inside Out proved so pop­u­lar with chil­dren. The jokes of McQueen’s best friend Mater often feel forced and tired com­pared to a real spon­tane­ity in the first film. The ani­ma­tion here is also fuzzi­er and less contrasted.

Cars 3 relies on the strength of its race sequences, which remain as excit­ing and gor­geous as ever. McQueen’s near fatal acci­dent at the begin­ning is quite a mar­vel of edit­ing and ani­ma­tion and even fea­tures a rous­ing score that recalls the theme from Rocky. Although some moments fall flat, sequences such as this one vibrate with a sense of inven­tive­ness that char­ac­teris­es the best of Pixar.

Themes of self-delu­sion, suc­cess and friend­ship that might have seemed banal and expect­ed eleven years ago now feel fresh again, in a cli­mate where most kids’ films have no real or realised themes at all. Although it is far from per­fect, this is a rare instance of clas­sic Hol­ly­wood sto­ry­telling done well and remains a good time at the cin­e­ma almost on the basis of that alone. Final­ly, a hi-tech movie aimed at young peo­ple that is actu­al­ly about something.