Lightning McQueen is suddenly rendered obsolete when a new generation of high-tech cars starts entering the Piston Cup races. One of these cars, Jackson Storm, hits all-time record-breaking speeds on the racetrack and is specifically designed to be optimal in every aspect. Not wanting to be pushed out of racing forever, Lightning pushes himself to his absolute limits and ends up crashing in a horrific accident. Now, Lightning must get back to his former glory and surpass Jackson Storm if he wants to race ever again. With the help of his trainer, Cruz Ramirez, he just might achieve the impossible.
Rating this movie two stars puts this film as my pick for the worst Disney/Pixar ever. I haven’t rated “A Bug’s Life” yet, but I’ve seen it multiple times before and I know it’s not a two-star movie. I’m completely fine ranking this as the lowest. I feel like, in order to review this properly, I need to spoil a few things, so stop reading here if you don’t want this movie spoiled for whatever reason. Let’s begin with what this movie tried to achieve. I like the idea of Lightning moving up from a racer to a coach. It’s the natural progression of things and it’s a great idea to usher in a new generation of racers in this universe. The problem is, the rookie that he trains has been scientifically engineered to be the most annoying character in all of cinema. Cruz Ramirez is unlikeable from the start. She’s introduced in this cringey ‘I don’t see Lightning McQueen’ bit. Then she’s constantly passive-aggressive about Lightning’s supposed old age, which doesn’t hold any weight because Lightning never gives off the impression that he’s old. Cruz then hinders Lightning’s progression during an extremely crucial time. All of this culminates into a scene of Lightning telling Cruz off and Cruz having the most unsympathetic backstory reveal ever. She constantly tells him to ask her if she wanted to be a coach and doesn’t get to her point until he actually does. They reconcile after one scene, train together for too many scenes, and she finally gets her chance to race and wins. First, this movie has way too many training montages. This whole movie is basically a compilation of training montages. And second, Cruz Ramirez being faster than Jackson Storm out of nowhere makes her a Mary Sue. If you don’t know, a Mary Sue is a female character who unrealistically lacks flaws. Jackson Storm is built to be as aerodynamic as possible. His design takes everything into account; everything from optimal tire pressure to downforce to weight distribution to low center of gravity. He even trains with a multi-million dollar VR racetrack that shows him the most optimal path to go to. The guy should be unbeatable, yet after a couple of days of training, Cruz is able to beat him. Another thing that bothered me was Lightning’s crash at the beginning of the movie. The whole marketing behind this film centered around that crash and in the movie, it’s not even a big deal. They obviously tried to shove in some underdeveloped female empowerment lines in here that don’t make sense. Lightning and Cruz go meet famous racing veterans and one of them just so happens to be a female. This racer talks about how she just took the opportunity to race and proved that she could be just as fast as the male cars. The problem is, the racing scene is still predominantly male in modern times. If anything, there isn’t a single female racer in all of “Cars” and “Cars 2″. The side characters from the first film are still sidelined in this one and Mater’s girlfriend from the last film is nowhere to be seen. It’s like they wanted to brush that last movie under the rug or something because there are no callbacks to Mater’s whole spy mission. I don’t even know if he still has the rockets he got to keep from the last movie. All of this stems from Doc Hudson’s unceremonious death announcement from the last movie. It leaves so many questions because, in the last film, I chalked his death up to old age, but in this movie, his mentor is still alive meaning Doc died prematurely. I could go on and on about why this movie wasn’t good, but I think people already know that. I really hope this is the last movie in this franchise because Disney/Pixar really needs to let this IP go no matter how profitable it is.
