Cars 2 took Pixar’s smallest town and sent it on the largest errand in the studio’s history. Directed by John Lasseter and written by Ben Queen, the 2011 sequel pulls Lightning McQueen and Mater out of Radiator Springs and drops them into the World Grand Prix, a three-race international event built to promote a new alternative fuel called Allinol. The spy plot arrives with it.
Trailer, via Pixar.
The Oil Rig in the Pacific
The film opens away from the franchise’s home. British spy Finn McMissile, voiced by Michael Caine, infiltrates an oil rig in the Pacific Ocean owned by criminal lemon cars to rescue fellow spy Leland Turbo. He watches the lemons, seemingly led by Professor Zündapp, load an emitter disguised as a television camera onto a shipping crate. He learns Turbo is dead, is exposed, and escapes by faking his own death early in the film.
That cold open is the clearest statement of what Cars 2 wants to be. It is a spy picture first. The racing is the cover story.
A Fourth Piston Cup
Lightning McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, wins his fourth Piston Cup in a race honoring his late mentor Doc Hudson. He returns to Radiator Springs for the off-season. Italian formula race car Francesco Bernoulli, voiced by John Turturro, then challenges him to the World Grand Prix.
The event was created by former oil tycoon Sir Miles Axlerod, voiced by Suzy Eddie Izzard, to promote Allinol. Lightning and Mater, along with Luigi, Guido, Fillmore and Sarge, leave for Tokyo, where the first race is held.
Mater is voiced by Larry the Cable Guy. The film’s whole gamble is that this character can carry a feature.
Wasabi on the Promotional Stage
At a promotional event in Tokyo, Mater eats wasabi and makes a scene, seemingly leaking oil on stage and embarrassing Lightning. Sent to find a bathroom, he interrupts a fight between American spy Rod “Torque” Redline and the lemons Grem and Acer, voiced by Joe Mantegna and Peter Jacobson.
Redline plants a device on Mater. Finn and his associate Holley Shiftwell, voiced by Emily Mortimer, conclude Mater is their contact. Redline is captured and killed by Zündapp, who reveals that Allinol ignites when hit with an electromagnetic pulse. Zündapp tells his superior, an unknown mastermind, that Redline passed on his information.
Holley recruits Mater to stop the plot, still believing he is an undercover agent. Three racers are ignited by the camera during the race. Lightning places second after a miscommunication with Mater, who was evading Zündapp’s henchmen.
The Numbers on the File
- Release: 2011
- Director: John Lasseter
- Writer: Ben Queen
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Budget: estimated $200 million
- Audience score: 6.2 out of 10, from 8,685 votes at TMDB
- Studio: Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Bourne Identity
Lasseter has said Cars 2 was an extremely personal film. “I set out to make a film that was really fun from beginning to end and really different from Cars in action and setting and characters,” he said. “And yet it still had the emotion, which is the hallmark of a Pixar film.”
The spy machinery came from television and film. Lasseter took inspiration from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–68) and from The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). He cited Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and North by Northwest (1959) for the main storyline, both of which feature an innocent character caught up in a conspiracy.
The story itself came from the road. Lasseter conceived it while traveling the world promoting the first film. On a research trip that included a Formula One race, the team attended a party at the Milan Museum of Modern Art in Italy. Lasseter recalled feeling out of place in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt among models and high-profile guests, and said he felt like Mater. That feeling went into the film.
Five Races Cut to Three
The World Grand Prix was originally going to feature five races. A 24-hour Le Mans-style endurance race in Paris, France, and a rally race in Black Forest, Germany, were planned alongside the races in Tokyo, the fictional city of Porto Corsa, Italy, and London, England that made the final cut.
Lasseter said the race had gotten too big and the film too long, so the event was trimmed to three races. Black Forest and Paris were dropped completely. The Paris scene was restructured so Mater, Finn and Holley stop there to consult with an informant.
Giacchino, Weezer and Marionette
Cars 2 returns Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Tony Shalhoub, Guido Quaroni, Bonnie Hunt, Paul Dooley, Cheech Marin, Jenifer Lewis, Michael Wallis, Katherine Helmond and John Ratzenberger from the first film. Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, John Turturro and Eddie Izzard join the voice cast. Brent Musburger voices Brent Mustangburger. Thomas Kretschmann voices Professor Z. Darrell Waltrip voices Darrell Cartrip.
The film’s score was composed by Michael Giacchino, with tracks contributed by Weezer, Robbie Williams, Brad Paisley and Bénabar. It was the final Pixar film animated using the studio’s old software system, Marionette, before being officially replaced with Presto in 2012.
| Element | Cars (2006) | Cars 2 (2011) |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | Radiator Springs | World Grand Prix: Tokyo, Porto Corsa, London |
| Lead dynamic | Lightning and Mater at home | Mater as unwitting spy |
| Genre frame | Racing | Spy comedy |
| New cast | — | Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, John Turturro, Eddie Izzard |
| Antagonist force | Chick Hicks | Professor Z and the lemons |
Where the Money Went
The estimated budget was $200 million. In this paper’s reading, that figure is the most telling number attached to the film.
Cars 2 is not a small movie that got ambitious. It reads, to this critic, as an expensive movie split in two. The World Grand Prix gives the film three cities and a global stage. The espionage plot gives it a villain, a conspiracy and a weapon. Neither half is starved. Neither half is served.
The film’s best idea is the one it states plainly: Mater, who has no idea what is happening, is mistaken for a trained agent. That is a real comic engine, and it is the same innocent-in-a-conspiracy structure Lasseter took from Hitchcock. The problem is that the engine has to run alongside a racing tournament that also has to matter. Lightning’s fourth Piston Cup is dispatched in the opening act. His second-place finish in the first race is decided by a miscommunication. The star of the first film is, on this viewing, the supporting player in his own sequel.
That is a choice, not an accident. The film wants Mater to carry it. Larry the Cable Guy gets the screen time, the mistaken identity, the chase scenes and the emotional turn. Wilson’s Lightning gets the frustration and the apology. For a franchise built on a friendship, the split is honest. It is also the reason the film feels like two movies sharing a runtime.
A 6.2 out of 10 from 8,685 votes is not a rejection. It is a shrug with a raised eyebrow. Audiences showed up for the Cars name and found a spy comedy wearing it.
The sequel was announced in April 2008 with a tentative summer 2012 release date, later moved up to summer 2011. Lasseter returned as director. Lewis was designated co-director in June 2010. In November 2010, the espionage racing synopsis was announced with a first-look image and official poster, and the core voice cast was confirmed. Through May 2011, Disney rolled out the rest of the cast, including Jenifer Lewis, Katherine Helmond, Michael Wallis, Darrell Waltrip, Franco Nero, Vanessa Redgrave, Bruce Campbell, Sig Hansen, Michel Michelis, Jeff Gordon, Lewis Hamilton, Brent Musburger, David Hobbs, John Turturro and Eddie Izzard.
That is a long runway for a film that lands at 6.2. The casting is not the problem. The premise is not the problem. The problem is that Cars 2 spends its first act establishing a world it then abandons, and its last act resolving a plot its main character stumbled into by accident.
The parts worth keeping are concrete. Caine’s Finn is the film’s most confident creation, a spy who fakes his own death early in the film and never loses his composure again. The lemons are a genuinely strange villain for a family film, a criminal underclass defined by being defective. The Allinol twist — a clean fuel that ignites under an electromagnetic pulse — is a conspiracy with a real-world shape.
What does not hold is the middle. The Tokyo wasabi scene is the film’s biggest laugh and its most embarrassing moment, and it is the same moment. Mater is humiliated, then recruited, then vindicated, and the film never quite decides whether the audience should be laughing at him or with him. The World Grand Prix, cut from five races to three, plays to this critic more like a tour than a competition.
Cars 2 is the strangest film Pixar made in its first fifteen years, and it is strange on purpose. It is a spy comedy with a $200 million budget and a tow truck for a lead. That it works at all is a credit to Caine, to the design of the lemons, and to Giacchino’s score. That it works only partly is a credit to no one.
6.2 of 10.
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