Cars 3 made its first splash with an unexpectedly dark teaser trailer. The franchise’s hero, Lightning McQueen, suffers a seemingly fatal crash, toppling end over end across the race track, battered and broken.
It’s a surprisingly grim way to reveal the next entry in a franchise beloved by a younger audiences and intended for families around the world. But that’s the impression the filmmakers of the third Cars film not only anticipated — it’s the one they were hoping audiences would be left with after the trailer.
"We had one thing we wanted to say," director Brian Fee said during a recent press event for Cars 3, which hits theaters on June 16. "We wanted to basically come right out of the gate and say this is probably not the Cars movie you're expecting, because the Cars movie we're making is probably not the Cars movie you're expecting.
"And there's the other side of it, [which[ is that those shots were done," Fee joked.
"'...The Cars movie we're making is probably not the Cars movie you're expecting,' director Brian Fee said
The filmmakers certainly felt the impact of that decision — producer Kevin Reher said "an 8 year old wrote us and said 'Are you really killing Lightning McQueen? Because if you are I want to buy the toy that kills him so that I can kill [that toy]'" — but that more mature opening salvo of a trailer is in line with the 40 or so minutes of Cars 3 I had the chance to preview in addition to meeting with the film’s creative teams.
At the top of his game, Lightning McQueen needs a challenge, and he finds one in the new suped-up, high-tech opponent Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer).
"John [Lasseter] loves the way Lightning McQueen looks, but he wanted to make sure that when Jackson Storm pulled up next to Lightning McQueen, McQueen looked old," Fee said.
"What he represents is actually the same thing McQueen represented when he was younger," screenwriter Mike Rich (Secretariat) said of McQueen and Storm’s relationship. "Which is the very real possibility that Storm and this next generation of young racers could represent the end of the sport that McQueen truly loves."
Faced with that new generation of racers, McQueen suffers a crash that could be career ending, taking him out of the racing game for quite awhile. What follows, in the footage I saw, is a tale of personal rediscovery, as McQueen confronts his place in the racing world, not just as a competitor but as an icon to an entire generation of racers.
In the footage screened, Cars 3’s filmmakers are clearly aiming to dig deep into this personal McQueen story in a number of ways. One of the primary means of doing that is putting McQueen into situations far outside his comfort zone.
At one point after he begins training with the fantastic new character Cruz (more on her in a bit), McQueen decides to get in some real practice outside of the brand new training facility. Undercover as a non-famous car, McQueen enters a race with Cruz (voiced by Cristela Alonzo), only to discover it’s no normal circuit. The two are caught in the middle of a demolition derby, circling an 8-shaped track while trying to outrun and outlast much larger and oil-thirsty vehicles.
The sequence is a beautiful one — set at night, the colors of the cars and the destruction they’re involved in pops with every frame. One of the most notable elements of the sequence isn’t necessarily the action itself though, it’s what the action takes place on.
“Mud was probably the hardest thing for us to figure out on the film,” Cars 3 Effects Supervisor Jon Reisch said about the sequence. Developing the right texture for the mud, what director Brian Fee described to the effects team as “chunky oatmeal and soup,” required plenty of iteration and experimentation for the team.
But they were so dedicated to giving the mud a realistic heft because it not only plays a visually role in the sequence but also a narrative one.
'Mud was probably the hardest thing for us to figure out on the film.'
“The audience needs to understand that if you’re not moving through this puddle really fast, you’re going to get stuck, and there’s consequences to that,” Reisch said. And that sentiment absolutely rings true for the scene, which sees McQueen and Cruz avoiding the intimidating Miss Fritter (Lea DeLaria), a scenario in which literally getting stuck in the mud can have live-or-die consequences.
But mud isn’t the only terrain McQueen and Cruz venture out onto, and in the footage screened, I found myself most engrossed by a quieter sequence out on the sands. McQueen, frustrated with training indoors on sterile equipment, decides to test his mettle out on the sands of a nearby beach.
The scene is not only a beautiful one but a fantastic showcase for establishing Cruz and McQueen’s relationship. Cruz is actually a fan of the car she’s training, and watching him initially not absorb that fact, often shooting down Cruz’s enthusiasm or ideas in this scene offers an intriguing start to their relationship. McQueen at this point in the film is still very focused singularly on himself and ensuring he doesn’t fade away as just a memory to the sport of racing.
McQueen’s selfish worldview is also reflected back at him in a later scene when Cruz, sick of his attitude, decides to stop putting up with his behavior. She confronts him about how he’s treated her, and how she used to idolize him. Cruz offers McQueen a viewpoint he’s never had — at one point, he tells her he never had to think about whether he could race, he just did. Things didn’t come so easily to Cruz in her life, though, and she’s had to fight for what she’s earned every step of the way.
Though I didn’t get to see the fallout of this conversation, it’s indicative of the surprisingly personal focus the third Cars film is tackling.
“McQueen was stuck thinking he had to be young and train like a young man and she was stuck thinking her racing days were past her,” co-writer Bob Peterson said of the writers’ attempt to figure out the two characters’ relationship.
Cruz feels like a natural addition to the Cars universe.
Cruz, in the time I spent watching her, feels like a natural addition to the universe, her energy endearing but her experience emotionally honest, brought to life with so much charm by Cristela Alonzo.
“As we were building Cruz and trying to figure out who she was, [Alonzo’s] own backstory was really inspirational,” co-writer Kiel Murray said of Alonzo’s personal experience in the comedy world.
The use of Alonzo’s real life informing her character feels true to the spirit of what Cars 3 is setting out to accomplish. After going global with Cars 2, the third film in Lightning McQueen’s story aims to be a much more personal one, full of heart, introspection, and surprising tinges of drama. It largely worked in the footage I saw, and while that doesn’t tell the full story of the arc these characters will experience, it certainly wasn’t the Cars movie I was expecting.
Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.
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