‘Cars Three’ starlets expose upgrades for Pixar vehicle with strong Latina voice and aging Lightning
One of Pixar Animation’s most kid-friendly franchises faces aging out in “Cars Trio.”
And, along with some long-missing womanish perspective, that actually revitalizes and, um, humanizes the cartoon world of sentient vehicles. For once, a “Cars” movie seems more about characters and story than promoting branded merchandize.
Credit much of that to Brian Fee, who helped write the fresh sequel’s story and took on its directing duties from the previous two’s Pixar eminence, John Lasseter. Fee led the brain trust that determined series “starlet,” the Owen Wilson-voiced stock car Lightning McQueen, should find his championship track record threatened by a junior, quicker group of computer-enhanced racers.
“From a plot level, we looked at where would Lightning McQueen be in his career eleven years after the very first ‘Cars’ film,” explains Fee, who got his commence at Pixar doing art for the two thousand six “Cars” movie, and now makes his feature directing debut. “To be fair, [NASCAR veteran] Jeff Gordon inspired a lot about Lightning McQueen in the original film, and at the time we began looking into this film, Jeff was on the cusp of retirement. He admitted to us how afraid he was of retirement, how like any athlete, your career kind of has an expiration date on it that’s different from the rest of the world.”
This pic released by Disney shows Lightning McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, In “Cars Trio,” foreground, in a scene from “Cars Three.” (Disney-Pixar via AP)
McQueen sees his contemporaries retire, starts losing races to the likes of Armie Hammer’s slick Jackson Storm and crashes into almost irreparable chunks. His long road back embarks at his sponsor, Rust-eze’s, fresh state-of-the-art electronic racing center in Florida, where his old school instincts clash with the skill of his simulator-happy youthful trainer Cruz Ramirez, voiced by comedian Cristela Alonzo.
And however he’s an anthropomorphic, digitally animated automobile, McQueen’s aging issues resonated with the voice behind the picture.
“When John Lasseter and I very first met, that might have been right after ‘Shanghai Noon’ or something,” notes Wilson. “So the Lightning McQueen in the very first ‘Cars’ is a rookie hotshot and, now, you would think, Oh, it’s just animated and they wouldn’t have to age Lightning McQueen, but that’s what they’re doing. He’s got these sort of youthful guns nipping at his high-heeled slippers. It seems like this story certainly has more emotion to it than the other ones had.”
Emotion the actor and sometimes writer (Fee says Wilson contributed a lot of his own ideas to McQueen’s dialogue) could relate to. Pushing fifty and the father of two boys now, Owen lost his dad Robert – the Dallas PBS executive who brought “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” to U.S. TV back in the day – last month.
“I know!” Wilson marvels at how “Cars Three,” however obliquely, reflects his own life passages. “I would’ve thought that, OK, you’re going to confront these issues, maybe, in the live-action part of your career. But who would have thought it would be in the animated portion of my career? You never know what’s going to happen. So, this is an example of art imitating life.
“Yeah, things switch,” the actor adds. “I don’t know if that permitted me to bring more to the role or anything like that, but I certainly could relate to some of the stuff that Lightning McQueen feels. But I think anybody can. If you like watching sports, you kind of know that your dearest player, say Brett Favre, is all of a unexpected getting squeezed out, and you don’t want to see him go.”
The aging theme was even more private for Fee.
“My mother had passed away and my father is getting older,” the director exposes. “I kind of had reached that midpoint-in-life thing when I realized I was losing that safety net. I mean, I’m a grown man and I’ve got a job and stuff like that, but when you realize everyone’s not always going to be there for you, you feel this psychological thing like you’re truly on your own.”
Fee quickly points out that he knows that’s not indeed the case. He has two daughters, for starters, and “Cars Three’s” other overriding theme is aimed their way.
“I desired there to be a character for damsels to get behind, somebody who’d inspire them,” the filmmaker says. “I don’t want it to be a franchise that’s thought of as just for boys. It was unbalanced, I think.”
Inject Cruz, which was originally conceived as a masculine character but didn’t click until the gender switch – and truly got rolling after Alonzo was cast, and the Pixar folks studied some of her stand-up tapes.
“Pretty soon, the Cruz character was actually modeled after my life,” says the comedienne, who was raised by a poor, single, Spanish-speaking mother in a Texas border town. “You get what she’s gone through, but we don’t overdramatize it. That big speech that Cruz gives, ‘Fantasy petite, they told me,’ that’s actually a line that I tell about my family. Mom always told me to wish puny because then my heart wouldn’t be violated. She said it will hurt less if it doesn’t happen, if you go after smaller things.
“In a weird way, I think Cruz humanizes ‘Cars’ and gives the car a heart,” Alonzo reckons. “It’s so weird to say that.”
Instead of following her big wish of being a racer, Cruz became a trainer. And a savvy, cutting-edge one, which primarily puts her at odds with instinctual McQueen. But another – well, there’s no other word – humanizing aspect of “Cars Trio” is the way the two of them cross their generation gap to support each other.
“In Hollywood, it’s hard to find a mentor when you’re a woman of color,” Alonzo points out. “But I think a very significant lesson from this movie we can all benefit from is that both the older and fresh generations can learn from each other.”
Of course, the “Cars” franchise has been about elders passing down wisdom to newer models since the very first film’s Fabulous Hudson Hornet determined to take then-cocky McQueen under his wing. The vintage racer’s voice was provided by the late Paul Newman, who passed away in 2008, in the very first film. And in the fresh one, too.
How, you may well ask?
“There’s no tomfoolery happening,” Fee explains. “There’s no sound-alike and we’re not doing any magic there. One of the scenes with Paul Newman’s voice is a flashback from the very first film; it’s a memory that we totally re-animated. The other times you hear his voice is found audio from the very first film. John recorded Paul in inbetween takes, so we have Paul telling stories and all sorts of stuff. Somebody told me we have twenty eight hours of him on gauze.”
Sounds like a lot, but nothing compared to the piles of merchandise “Cars” licenses. That’s kind of referenced in the sequel too, when McQueen detects that his fresh boss is actually more interested in putting his name on products than helping him win more races.
Just the way entertainment, whether the motorized or Hollywood kind, works nowadays, right?
“I don’t love how that has sort of crept into the way we talk about things in the culture now,” Wilson laments. “There’s something sort of off-putting about that, especially when it leads to thinking about people as brands. So it wasn’t hard to act that indignation that Lightning McQueen felt.
“But in real life, it is just sort of bizarre that there’s now ‘Cars’ land at Disney,” the actor proceeds. “Way beyond that, there are fucktoys, lunchboxes, bunkbeds . . . It’s all over the place. I could not have predicted that when I very first met John Lasseter, that it would become this juggernaut aside from the movie.”
Like many fresh things, however, there can be some upside in it for an old pony.
“I recall when I worked on ‘Armageddon,’ there was talk that there would be little act figures for all of us,” Wilson recalls. “I was excited about that, but I don’t think mine ever came out; maybe I got killed too early in the film. So I’m blessed to eventually have a fucktoy that, tho’ it isn’t my likeness, at least has the name of my character. And, now they do put my voice in some of these fucktoys!”
Cars three starlets expose upgrades for Pixar vehicle with strong Latina voice and aging Lightning
‘Cars Trio’ starlets expose upgrades for Pixar vehicle with strong Latina voice and aging Lightning
One of Pixar Animation’s most kid-friendly franchises faces aging out in “Cars Trio.”
And, along with some long-missing womanish perspective, that actually revitalizes and, um, humanizes the cartoon world of sentient vehicles. For once, a “Cars” movie seems more about characters and story than promoting branded merchandize.
Credit much of that to Brian Fee, who helped write the fresh sequel’s story and took on its directing duties from the previous two’s Pixar eminence, John Lasseter. Fee led the brain trust that determined series “starlet,” the Owen Wilson-voiced stock car Lightning McQueen, should find his championship track record threatened by a junior, quicker group of computer-enhanced racers.
“From a plot level, we looked at where would Lightning McQueen be in his career eleven years after the very first ‘Cars’ film,” explains Fee, who got his commence at Pixar doing art for the two thousand six “Cars” movie, and now makes his feature directing debut. “To be fair, [NASCAR veteran] Jeff Gordon inspired a lot about Lightning McQueen in the original film, and at the time we began looking into this film, Jeff was on the cusp of retirement. He admitted to us how afraid he was of retirement, how like any athlete, your career kind of has an expiration date on it that’s different from the rest of the world.”
This pic released by Disney shows Lightning McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, In “Cars Three,” foreground, in a scene from “Cars Trio.” (Disney-Pixar via AP)
McQueen sees his contemporaries retire, starts losing races to the likes of Armie Hammer’s slick Jackson Storm and crashes into almost irreparable chunks. His long road back commences at his sponsor, Rust-eze’s, fresh state-of-the-art electronic racing center in Florida, where his old school instincts clash with the skill of his simulator-happy youthfull trainer Cruz Ramirez, voiced by comedian Cristela Alonzo.
And tho’ he’s an anthropomorphic, digitally animated automobile, McQueen’s aging issues resonated with the voice behind the picture.
“When John Lasseter and I very first met, that might have been right after ‘Shanghai Noon’ or something,” notes Wilson. “So the Lightning McQueen in the very first ‘Cars’ is a rookie hotshot and, now, you would think, Oh, it’s just animated and they wouldn’t have to age Lightning McQueen, but that’s what they’re doing. He’s got these sort of youthfull guns nipping at his high-heeled shoes. It seems like this story certainly has more emotion to it than the other ones had.”
Emotion the actor and sometimes writer (Fee says Wilson contributed a lot of his own ideas to McQueen’s dialogue) could relate to. Pushing fifty and the father of two boys now, Owen lost his dad Robert – the Dallas PBS executive who brought “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” to U.S. TV back in the day – last month.
“I know!” Wilson marvels at how “Cars Three,” however obliquely, reflects his own life passages. “I would’ve thought that, OK, you’re going to confront these issues, maybe, in the live-action part of your career. But who would have thought it would be in the animated portion of my career? You never know what’s going to happen. So, this is an example of art imitating life.
“Yeah, things switch,” the actor adds. “I don’t know if that permitted me to bring more to the role or anything like that, but I certainly could relate to some of the stuff that Lightning McQueen feels. But I think anybody can. If you like watching sports, you kind of know that your dearest player, say Brett Favre, is all of a unexpected getting squeezed out, and you don’t want to see him go.”
The aging theme was even more individual for Fee.
“My mother had passed away and my father is getting older,” the director exposes. “I kind of had reached that midpoint-in-life thing when I realized I was losing that safety net. I mean, I’m a grown man and I’ve got a job and stuff like that, but when you realize everyone’s not always going to be there for you, you feel this psychological thing like you’re truly on your own.”
Fee quickly points out that he knows that’s not indeed the case. He has two daughters, for starters, and “Cars Three’s” other overriding theme is aimed their way.
“I desired there to be a character for chicks to get behind, somebody who’d inspire them,” the filmmaker says. “I don’t want it to be a franchise that’s thought of as just for boys. It was unbalanced, I think.”
Come in Cruz, which was originally conceived as a masculine character but didn’t click until the gender switch – and indeed got rolling after Alonzo was cast, and the Pixar folks studied some of her stand-up tapes.
“Pretty soon, the Cruz character was actually modeled after my life,” says the comedienne, who was raised by a poor, single, Spanish-speaking mother in a Texas border town. “You get what she’s gone through, but we don’t overdramatize it. That big speech that Cruz gives, ‘Wish puny, they told me,’ that’s actually a line that I tell about my family. Mom always told me to desire petite because then my heart wouldn’t be violated. She said it will hurt less if it doesn’t happen, if you go after smaller things.
“In a weird way, I think Cruz humanizes ‘Cars’ and gives the car a heart,” Alonzo reckons. “It’s so weird to say that.”
Instead of following her big fantasy of being a racer, Cruz became a trainer. And a savvy, cutting-edge one, which originally puts her at odds with instinctual McQueen. But another – well, there’s no other word – humanizing aspect of “Cars Trio” is the way the two of them cross their generation gap to support each other.
“In Hollywood, it’s hard to find a mentor when you’re a woman of color,” Alonzo points out. “But I think a very significant lesson from this movie we can all benefit from is that both the older and fresh generations can learn from each other.”
Of course, the “Cars” franchise has been about elders passing down wisdom to newer models since the very first film’s Fabulous Hudson Hornet determined to take then-cocky McQueen under his wing. The vintage racer’s voice was provided by the late Paul Newman, who passed away in 2008, in the very first film. And in the fresh one, too.
How, you may well ask?
“There’s no tomfoolery happening,” Fee explains. “There’s no sound-alike and we’re not doing any magic there. One of the scenes with Paul Newman’s voice is a flashback from the very first film; it’s a memory that we downright re-animated. The other times you hear his voice is found audio from the very first film. John recorded Paul in inbetween takes, so we have Paul telling stories and all sorts of stuff. Somebody told me we have twenty eight hours of him on gauze.”
Sounds like a lot, but nothing compared to the piles of merchandise “Cars” licenses. That’s kind of referenced in the sequel too, when McQueen detects that his fresh boss is actually more interested in putting his name on products than helping him win more races.
Just the way entertainment, whether the motorized or Hollywood kind, works nowadays, right?
“I don’t love how that has sort of crept into the way we talk about things in the culture now,” Wilson laments. “There’s something sort of off-putting about that, especially when it leads to thinking about people as brands. So it wasn’t hard to act that indignation that Lightning McQueen felt.
“But in real life, it is just sort of bizarre that there’s now ‘Cars’ land at Disney,” the actor resumes. “Way beyond that, there are fucktoys, lunchboxes, bunkbeds . . . It’s all over the place. I could not have predicted that when I very first met John Lasseter, that it would become this juggernaut aside from the movie.”
Like many fresh things, however, there can be some upside in it for an old pony.
“I recall when I worked on ‘Armageddon,’ there was talk that there would be little act figures for all of us,” Wilson recalls. “I was excited about that, but I don’t think mine ever came out; maybe I got killed too early in the film. So I’m glad to eventually have a fucktoy that, however it isn’t my likeness, at least has the name of my character. And, now they do put my voice in some of these fucktoys!”