Brian Fee
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Connections, in both directions
The back-to-your-roots squaring off against modern technology theme carries a distinct “Rocky IV” vibe, and older audiences will picture Sylvester Stallone carrying logs up Siberian mountains while Dolph Lundgren runs on treadmills while hooked up to a dazzling array of computers and monitors.
While still not a Pixar classic by any stretch, Lightning McQueen and his four-wheeled bunch at least get in the right lane finally with the surprisingly deep Cars 3 (**½ out of four; rated G; in theaters nationwide Friday), which amounts to Rocky IV with anthropomorphic automobiles.
He’s basically Ivan Drago from “Rocky IV,” only instead of Russia being the bad guys it’s the kids these days, ready to make the olds unemployed.
So “Cars 3” is basically “Rocky IV” — minus the geopolitics and that glorious James Brown production number — with a little of “The Karate Kid” thrown in, along with pretty much every sports movie cliche ever.
The Rocky movies come to mind immediately when watching Lightning train for the big race against Storm, and if you’re a fan of that series (particularly Rocky IV and Creed), you’ll likely connect with Cars 3 in a similar way.
The Rocky movies come to mind immediately when watching Lightning train for the big race against Storm, and if you’re a fan of that series (particularly Rocky IV and Creed), you’ll likely connect with Cars 3 in a similar way.
Cars 3 sets up the expectation, then, that it is a latter-day Rocky story, a comeback journey for an aging competitor who’s still got life left in him.
It's thematically closest to one of the many mid-life crisis "Rocky" movies in which Stallone's iconic boxer attempts the difficult transition from inside the ring to real life.
Old-school training montages right out of the “Rocky” playbook ensue, as McQueen works on precision (to be “smarter, not faster”) steering through a field of hundreds of mooing tractors instead of maneuvering on car treadmills and racing simulators like the young’uns.
"Cars 3" owes as much of a debt to the "Rocky" sequels as its own previous editions, built as it is around an aging fighter training for one last shot at a championship.
Rather than taking the road traveled by some of the early Rocky sequels (number 3, 4, and 5 in particular) and having the aging protagonist return one last time to compete against a bigger, better opponent, Cars 3 moves more in the Rocky Balboa direction.
Other than filling up toy aisles with cars sporting cute eyes, the Cars movies haven’t been as noteworthy or artistically successful as others on Pixar ’s slate — not as ingeniously heartfelt as the Toy Story trilogy nor as enjoyably rambunctious as, say, Monsters, Inc.
Now, the Toy Story trilogy got pretty grim and philosophical too — but the Toy Story trilogy also included humor (remember humor?) and established a convincing reality for its characters, the rules of which were scrupulously followed.
The first one (released in 2006) is considered the one major black mark in the animation studio’s killer run from 1995’s Toy Story to 2010’s Toy Story 3 , and 2011’s Cars 2 is the only Pixar film with a “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes.
In comparison to other Pixar sequels, “Cars 3” lacks the narrative ambitions and genuine heart of the “Toy Story” follow-ups and, to a slightly lesser extent, “Finding Dory” but it is still an improvement on such sorry sights as “Cars 2” and “Monsters University.”
Still, veteran Pixar animator and storyboard artist Brian Fee (Ratatouille, WALL?E) makes the jump to the director’s chair with confident composure, the decision to refocus things back on Lightning while also reconnecting him with the friendships that originally helped make him a champion a terrific one.
The film was directed by first-timer Brian Fee, a storyboard artist on the first two movies as well as WALL-E and Ratatouille.
In their heyday, the Pixar folks made movies like Monsters, Inc. , The Incredibles and Ratatouille that celebrated greatness and achievement.
That said, proclaiming “Cars 3” to be the best of the “Cars” films says more about the general lousiness of its predecessors than it does about its own accomplishments because even though it is somewhat more ambitious than the previous installments, it still doesn’t come close to reaching the accomplishments of such stone-cold Pixar classics as “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Inside Out” and still feels more like an extended toy commercial than anything else.
Fee honed his chops as a storyboard artist, working on “Ratatouille” and the two previous “Cars” films, and what he’s come up with is an exceedingly sweet and polished fable that unfolds with a kid-friendly, by-the-book emotional directness.
And, without going into details, the film argues that reliable moneymakers like Cars 3 allow would-be risks like Ratatouille, Inside Out and Up to be less risky.
Cars 3 es básicamente Rocky III, con vehículos sustituyendo humanos y las carreras de coches sustituyendo el boxeo.
And it’s hard to ignore the parallels between Cars 3 and Rocky III, of all things (more on that in a bit).
The latest installment in Pixar’s NASCAR-approved franchise, Cars 3 owes almost as much to Rocky III as it does to the previous two entries in this lucrative series.
On the surface, it is a thoughtful and occasionally poignant mid-life crisis film, with an underdog sports hook that recalls Rocky III and especially Rocky Balboa.
With retirement suddenly looming after a bad crash, McQueen endeavors to train his way back to the top, ala “Rocky III.”
As all Rocky III fans know, this is where Lightning must begin his quest to get back the eye of the tiger, and occasionally encounter a subplot that suggests over-merchandising is the sign of a moribund franchise (there’s not even a hint of irony in the delivery).
In the context of this second-tier Pixar threequel, it feels like a cry for help on the part of writers scrambling to explain the movie’s reason for being (three Cars movies, but one Wall E? What’s Up with that?).
The role was passed to contributing screenwriter Bob Peterson, a Pixar veteran best known as the voice of Mr. Ray from the Nemo films and Dug the dog from Up .
That’s not wrong, but it turns out that what Cars 3 is really about—other than (like Up and Toy Story 3) the relentless passage of time—is the role of a great teacher, or mentor.
That said, proclaiming “Cars 3” to be the best of the “Cars” films says more about the general lousiness of its predecessors than it does about its own accomplishments because even though it is somewhat more ambitious than the previous installments, it still doesn’t come close to reaching the accomplishments of such stone-cold Pixar classics as “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Inside Out” and still feels more like an extended toy commercial than anything else.
This second sequel, the directorial debut of Brian Fee (storyboard artist of 2008's " Wall-E "), written by Kiel Murray, Bob Peterson (2009's " Up ") and Mike Rich (2010's " Secretariat "), finds a story fit for telling in a follow-up worthy of succeeding the original film.
If we’re talking Pixar threepeats here, it’s certainly no “Toy Story 3.” Instead, it’s a reasonably diverting, somewhat sluggish attempt to reinstall the “heart” of the first installment, as it focuses on Lightning McQueen (voiced as always by Owen Wilson) as he attempts a comeback after a crushing defeat against state-of-the-art bad boy Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer).
(Can’t you just imagine a broken-down McQueen, tilting toward a fiery landfill apocalypse, like the nearly incinerated playthings of Toy Story 3 ?)
More along the lines of the masterful “Toy Story 3” and “The Good Dinosaur” than the irritatingly spastic “Cars 2,” “Cars 3” is unassumingly one of the most poignant films so far of 2017.
“Cars 3,” much like “ Toy Story 3 ,” is the perfect opportunity for Pixar to walk away from a much-loved franchise with its head held high, but of course they won’t, because money (“Toy Story 4” is scheduled to arrive two years from now, which is nine years after the previous film and 24 years after the first installment).
Since Toy Story 3, Pixar has released seven films in seven years, of which exactly one — Inside Out — was the kind of milestone Pixar used to set almost every time around the track.
The first one (released in 2006) is considered the one major black mark in the animation studio’s killer run from 1995’s Toy Story to 2010’s Toy Story 3 , and 2011’s Cars 2 is the only Pixar film with a “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Pressured on multiple sides to retire, he instead hooks up with a smarmy new sponsor (Nathan Fillion), whose high-tech training facility emphasizes Moneyball -style metrics—measured on a race simulator—over actual wheels-on-dirt driving.
Storm’s performance is explained to death by sports statistical analyst Natalie Certain, a more telegenic number-crunching counterpart to Jonah Hill’s character in Moneyball .
Adults will instantly notice that Cars 3 begs, borrows, and steals bits and pieces from everything from Moneyball to virtually the entire Rocky Balboa series to tell this iteration’s tale of aging hero race car Lightning McQueen (Wilson) coming to grips with the fact that he’s not the badass speed racer he used to be.
After a visit to Radiator Springs, he gets encouraging words from old pal tow truck Mater (Larry The Cable Guy), his girlfriend (Bonnie Hunt) and even in a flashback his mentor the legendary Doc Hudson ( Paul Newman ).
Pixar storyboard artist Brian Fee makes his directing debut with a script by Kiel Murray (“Cars”), Bob Peterson (“Finding Nemo,” “Up”) and Mike Rich (“Secretariat”).
In fact, Monsters University, A Bug’s Life, Brave, and A Good Dinosaur are all decent films but are nowhere near as great as the Toy Story Trilogy, Finding Nemo, or the other Pixar releases.
Typically, either the magical world exists along side our own, ala Monsters Inc. or inanimate objects, non-speaking animals, or intangible emotions have adventures unseen to the human eye, like in Toy Story, Finding Nemo, or Inside/Out.
The movie struck many reviewers as being less heady and artful, more insistently conventional, than the “Toy Story” films or “Finding Nemo.”
Y por supuesto, manejando autos de Nascar, como en Días de trueno (Days of Thunder, 1990), donde también encuentra un sabio maestro (Robert Duvall).
Y es que muchas de ellas hacen referencia de forma muy ingeniosa a filmes perfectamente identificables, como Encuentros cercanos del tercer tipo, Chinatown, Rápidos y furiosos o Apollo 13.
On the surface, it is a thoughtful and occasionally poignant mid-life crisis film, with an underdog sports hook that recalls Rocky III and especially Rocky Balboa.
Swap out the talking cars for boxers or baseball pitchers and the film would sit comfortably next to such films as Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa and Robert Lorenz’s Trouble with the Curve , twilit dramas about a fading athlete struggling with age-old conundrums: how to know when to retire and how to do it with dignity.
Rather than taking the road traveled by some of the early Rocky sequels (number 3, 4, and 5 in particular) and having the aging protagonist return one last time to compete against a bigger, better opponent, Cars 3 moves more in the Rocky Balboa direction.
More along the lines of the masterful “Toy Story 3” and “The Good Dinosaur” than the irritatingly spastic “Cars 2,” “Cars 3” is unassumingly one of the most poignant films so far of 2017.
The Cars franchise has been the black sheep of the Pixar family in many ways, with mixed reviews for the original Cars giving way to outright hostility over Cars 2. That latter film may indeed still be the nadir of the studio’s entire output despite dubious other legacies like The Good Dinosaur.
Pixar used this tendency to let its stories swerve all over the place to great effect in 2012’s Brave and 2013’s Monsters University, but Cars 3 has maybe a few too many head fakes.
That’s a low bar, certainly — but, like the underachieving Monsters University , Cars 3 is more than willing to lower the bar.
In comparison to other Pixar sequels, “Cars 3” lacks the narrative ambitions and genuine heart of the “Toy Story” follow-ups and, to a slightly lesser extent, “Finding Dory” but it is still an improvement on such sorry sights as “Cars 2” and “Monsters University.”
I might go so far as to call it Pixar's most aggressively mediocre feature - the aggression in this case being that all the other contenders for that title (2013's Monsters University , 2016's Finding Dory , 2017's Cars 3 ) were sequels or prequels, while Onward is an original story.
Whatever the origins of this thread, it seems to be of a piece with the anxieties of Cars 3 and Monsters University, in which Lightning McQueen worried about being a has-been, or worse, a sellout, and Mike Wazowski came to terms with leaving greatness to others and being okay just being okay.
Viewers who did enjoy Cars and Cars 2’s goofier elements might not care for this film’s direction; McQueen’s bumbling sidekick Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) is mostly relegated to the background, and gone entirely for long stretches.
In the wake of the noisy misfire that was 2011’s Cars 2, the Pixar pit crew ran the diagnostics and were able to pinpoint the winning formula of humor, heart and action (along with an added dose of Route 66-informed nostalgia) that made the 2006 original such a sweet ride.
The film, which honestly mostly ignores “Cars 2,” begins with Lightning (voiced by Owen Wilson, of “Zoolander 2” ) in the middle of another successful racing season.
Pretending (as far as I can tell without re-watching Cars 2) that Cars 2 did not happen, Cars 3, has champion racer Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) still (or possibly again?
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Directed by Adam McKay
influenced Cars 3 (2017)
Themes
The Big Race resolution is effective, but it has a generic and un-Pixarlike feel to it, drawing on standard sports-movies redemption themes (the kind satirized in Talladega Nights).
(Cars 3’s credited writers include Mike Rich, whose previous works include The Rookie and Secretariat.)
“Cars 3” is all about returning to the fundamentals that made Lightning such a strong racer in the first place and “Cars 3,” as a movie does just that – it does away with the unnecessary ornamentation of the sequel and focuses on what really matters (much credit should be given to director Brian Fee, who was a story artist on the first two films and makes his feature debut here, and co-writer Mike Rich, who has a strong grip on sports narrative conventions thanks to his work on “The Rookie,” “Miracle” and “Secretariat“).
Pixar used this tendency to let its stories swerve all over the place to great effect in 2012’s Brave and 2013’s Monsters University, but Cars 3 has maybe a few too many head fakes.
( Brave originated with Brenda Chapman, but she was removed from the project and Mark Andrews finished it.