What’s the best Cars Movie?
February 27, 2018
In 2006, Pixar released its 7th movie, Cars. The beloved Pixar series has since released two movies, its latest being in June of 2017, Cars 3.
Cars took the world by storm…well, at least I think it did. Although I was only four years old, I loved Cars. After the movie, I began collecting piles of the Lightning McQueens, Doc Hudsons, and Tow Maters. I eventually got to the point where we went to the store and couldn’t find any new ones. My life revolved around Cars.
Surprisingly enough, by the time Cars 2 was released, I was still a Cars fan. I didn’t race with my cars anymore, but I was still incredibly excited to watch Lightning McQueen race in the World Grand Prix against Francesco Bernoulli.
However, in 2015, Pixar announced that it would be working on a third Cars movie. At 13 years old, I was more excited for a movie than I had ever been. Cars was my childhood, and I couldn’t wait to watch how my favorite childhood series would end.
Well, it has been 9 months since Cars 3 was released, and I’m fully anticipating it being the final movie of the unrivaled Disney Pixar series. Since its release in June, I’ve watched it around 5 times and the movie has gotten better every time.
I would argue anybody that Cars 3 is one of a kind. Transitioning Lightning McQueen into a Doc Hudson type role was incredible storytelling. I also loved that Pixar revolved the movie around The Hudson Hornet, one of the story’s most prominent characters.
I may be still on a Cars 3 high, but I don’t hesitate to call Cars 3 the best movie in the series. The first Cars was great, and it’s hard to say that it didn’t outperform the second sequel, but Lightning McQueen’s transition into Cruz’s manager is executed a such an incredible level.
In my opinion, Cars 3 is the best, followed by Cars and Cars 2, respectively.
Although I ranked Cars 2 last, it was still an incredibly good movie. I loved Francesco Bernoulli’s cocky attitude and Finn McMissile’s confident swagger, but I think Cars 2 went too far out of the box for Mater. In fact, I don’t think Mater needed his own movie. I think Mater’s Tall Tales was enough, and the World Grand Prix storyline would have established McQueen’s worldwide dominance, winning the biggest race cup series in the world.
I speak much more highly of the Cars series than a majority of my classmates, but I believe that this series is one of the best series ever created, a close second to Star Wars. Cars 3 was a perfect ending to a perfect series. I can only hope that Pixar doesn’t touch it again and that Cars 3 was its final project.
Jacob Cameron • Oct 8, 2021 at 9:17 AM
Am a big Pixar fan, feature films and short films. As far as feature films go, the ‘Toy Story’ franchise, ‘Inside Out’, ‘Up’ and ‘Wall-E’ were particularly fantastic, while ‘Presto’, ‘One Man Band’, ‘Geri’s Game’ and ‘Piper’ were particularly great short films.
The ‘Cars’ films are often considered lesser Pixar efforts, for reasons that are understandable. To me they are towards the bottom as well, though the first ‘Cars’ film was still very enjoyable if not perfect and while the second film had a lot of problems to me it wasn’t that awful. Seeing ‘Cars 3’ during my four day hiatus from IMDb (but had not yet gotten round to reviewing), from personal opinion it was underwhelming and the short film that came with it, ‘Lou’, came over much better.
Some will disagree, others will agree, but ‘Cars 3’ (expecting pitchforks and stones to be thrown, because some will consider this a blasphemous statement to make) for me was the worst of the three and replaces ‘The Good Dinosaur’ (which still wasn’t too bad a film) as Pixar’s weakest.
‘Cars 3’ does have its strengths. The animation is fantastic, it’s rich in colour, gorgeously designed and the attention to detail is incredible. The racing scenes are mini-masterpieces of editing as to be expected.
There is also an energetic and nostalgic music score, a few of the jokes are funny and the voice acting is uniformly great, Cristela Alonzo taking top honours. A few neat little touches, like the dashboard as well.
For all those good things, a lot didn’t work. Too many of the jokes backfire, due to too much of a recycled feel and very tired timing. The more emotional parts to me lacked heart and soul (though there are a couple of parts that did), so it never came over as poignant (coming from someone who cried like a baby during the emotional moments of ‘Toy Story 3’, ‘Inside Out’, ‘Up’ and ‘Wall-E’).
While there is a story and it is not as cluttered or as confused as the second, it does plod along too much, with a very sedate middle act before coming to life at the end (the climax is good and has some excitement), and seemed too thin for the running time, which it tried to hide with padding, some of which added little.
Didn’t get emotionally invested in the characters, and, even with the intentionally flawed ones, never learnt enough about them and found some difficult to like. Cruz had real potential but felt underdeveloped to me, although she did bring a little heart to a film that lacked it elsewhere. Meanwhile Lightning never really grew as a character and Mater, while with less screen time than before, is a bit annoying.
Overall, disappointing film that never really kicked into gear and a sign of the franchise running out of gas.
Maggie Storts • Oct 7, 2021 at 11:01 AM
I see the author of this article was blinded by the shiny newness of the Cars 3 movie. With the wisdom of time, I can accurately and proudly state that Cars 2 is in fact the best Cars movie. Cars 1 is iconic, I can agree. Icons are hard to outshine, but to peel back the layers of nostalgia and comfort to see the true plot and production in its most organic form is something only a professional film analyst can fathom, which explains why you cannot do so. At a cursory glance, anyone would decide that Cars 1 is better than Cars 2. But when you expose the raw plot, the raw pieces that make the movie, you will see that Cars 2 is superior. Cars 2 is full of action, excitement, diversity, foreign countries, romance, tragedy, and espionage. Cars 3 only scraped into theaters on the coattails of the popularity of Cars 2 and simply cannot compete with such a work of literary and artistic merit.
Okin • Oct 14, 2022 at 4:11 PM
Yes, Cars 2 is the best. Lots of action and enjoyment as you can become a detective.
Lucas Navarro • Oct 8, 2020 at 9:54 AM
Actually thought you were a real reporter and totally agree
Evan Keiffer • Apr 12, 2018 at 2:00 PM
Ur opinion is correct, as always