When thefirst teaser trailerforCars 3arrived back in November, everyone was pretty taken aback by how bleak and dark the tone was. It previewed a devastating crash involving franchise star Lightning McQueen, and felt more like aChristopher Nolanmovie than a Pixar film. But thisisa Pixar film after all, and while the movie’s inciting incident may be rather dramatic, new plot details tease some lighter thematic and character dynamics ahead.
John Lasseterhelmed the firstCarsback in 2006 and took over directing duties on Pixar low-pointCars 2when that sequel ran into production troubles, but forCars 3the directing reigns go to first-time directorBrian Fee. Fee worked as a storyboard artist on the first twoCarsmovies so he has some experience with this franchise, and in a new piece over atEW, he and Lasseter revealed new plot details for this threequel as well as further casting.
In essence,Cars 3is a movie about millennials—which is fitting given that the kids who were first struck byCarsback in 2006 are right in that age range a decade later. As Fee explains,Cars 3findsOwen Wilson’s Lightning McQueen discovering he’s now part of the “old guard” going up against a swath of tech-savvy newcomers:
“McQueen is not the young hotshot anymore, the kid he was back then inCars 1. He’s in the middle of his life, and as an athlete, that’s getting up there. You have your whole life ahead of you, yet your career is starting to show its age. He’s looking in the mirror and realizing, ‘I’m 40 years old,’ and dealing with the fact that the thing that you love more than anything else, you might not be able to do forever.”
In the film’s villainous role of Jackson Storm isThe Social NetworkandNocturnal AnimalsstarArmie Hammer, and he’ll be pulling from hisSocial Networkcharacters to bring to life a smarmy driver with his eyes focused squarely on the road ahead:
“Jackson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Everything comes easy to him, and everything about him says he’s faster, so much so that we’ve designed him so that even when he’s standing next to McQueen, McQueen looks old… He thinks the world is his. He’s taking over. He’s owed it. In a very broad term, I think of old football players with those little leather skull caps, and you think of football players now with all their armor, hitting so hard. It’s not the same game. What they did was not anything like what we do now. And that’s Jackson: He thinks the future of racing and the high-tech ways they train and what they can do means they’re taking the sport to a new level, and the older guys had their day, and it’s done, and they have no place in the future of racing.”
But notallof theCarsmillennials are shoving McQueen aside. He finds a friendly face in new trainer Cruz Ramirez, who will be voiced byCristela Alonzo, creator and star of the TV seriesCristela. She’s described as sunny and optimistic, and comes to McQueen’s aid to help him rehabilitate and get back on the track to show Jackson Storm what’s what.
So it sounds likeCars 3is something of a mirror ofCars 1, in that the character who was once the hotshot with no time or attention paid to the old guard is now part of the old guard himself. TheCarsfranchise is undoubtedly lucrative, especially from a licensing standpoint, and indeed Fee declines to confirm whetherCars 3marks the end of the story or not, adding that by the end of the movie it’s “only the beginning” for Lightning McQueen. So we’re probably not in for the same finality that permeatedToy Story 3.
But yeah, Pixar has made a movie about millennials, and it’s aCarssequel. That’s certainly more interesting than whatever they were doing withCars 2, and whileInside Outwas phenomenal, the studio has become far more hit and miss in recent years. Here’s hopingCars 3is a pleasant surprise when it hits theaters on June 16th.
Check out a few more images from the film below, via EW.
