in the teaser for the upcoming pixar movie cars 3, we see lightning mcqueen get flipped the air on the racetrack. exsplosions pewpew sparks fly, smoke billows from the car, its not looking good for ol' lighting... but there is some good news
he just saved 15% or more on his car insurance by switching to geico. *honk honk* *intro* hello, internet welcome to film theory the show where crazy ideas supported by detailed research always gets the checkered flag! now as many of you loyal theorists know i love me some pixar. even if i do have a strange way of showing it...
and by strange way of showing it i mean ruining your childhood memories of beloved characters. look, i'm not the one who decided that everybody in wall-e is a cannibal, i just pointed it out, okay? don't kill the messenger...and then liquefy their body and drink them as creepy future food. but never fear those of you who wish to keep your childhood remain intact because today's pixar theory isn't gonna have some deep dark twist....or is it? no it isn't...probably *suspense* instead today we're simply going to consider the world of cars, a world that looks just like our own except that there's no people and all the machines run themselves.
to catch you up, the first cars movie gave us the story of a young hotshot racecar named lightning mcqueen who gets a shot at the championship, but then gives it up because he realizes how important the other people in his uh...other cars? in his life really are the sequel was the next obvious place that you take that concept. a complicated spy thriller about cars espionage an alternative fuel source conspiracy theory because..... why not?!?!?!? in cars 3, looks like it lining up to be a comeback story
we've got a trailer, which shows lightning in a catastrophic crash and if this series keeps following the trajectory of the rocky series the third installment would be about our heroes fight back up to the top and hey, if we were really lucky we will get fourth one, where mcqueen races againts a russian muscle car and solves communism sure, you laugh at that cause sounds ridiculous but i bet you didn't expect the spy thriller plot either long story short, the cars universe has always been a weird one filled with a lot of questions about the logistics of the world
filled only with sentient auto mobiles but one question none of us have ever really stopped to answer is this... are the cars in cars... really cars i mean, sure it's the title of the movie and they look and behave like cars, but who knows that just may be more of mainstream media's fake news i mean they have eyes and tongues and there are no drivers then let's be honest how does a society of living cars even come to be in the first place?
they are clearly on earth... but there are no humans so what happened? what... are... these... creatures? i am a 100% confident, i figured it out and spoiler alert (dam pun) they are not cars what started as a simple stupid question let me down the rabbit hole of this bizzare car-themed universe and the answer i found will upend everything you thought you knew
about mater and the gang and the details i find here pose some really interesting revelations about that infamous pixar theory a theory that you all have wanted me to cover for quite along time so theorists start your search engine because it's time to take this cars omni theory from 0 to 60 in about 15 minutes flat now to begin, it's probably merit taking a second to acquaint you with that pixar theory a theory that started with as far as i can tell, online movie blogger jon negroni
which aims to unite all the pixar movie to not just the same universe but also come up with cohesive timeline of events where one movie leads to the next, leads to the next suck on that marvel, here's everyone thinking you started the whole huge connected, cinematic universe thing, but pixar has been doing it back since 1995 in theoritical sense so no wonder you don't have an oscar award yet and yet academy award winning, suicide squad does
uhhh....... now, i'm not gonna dive into nitty-gritty of that theory today it's one that will probably be piecing together on our own, across multiple future pixar episodes but to get a taste of this thing and start you thinking about it take the example of buy n large most casual pixar viewers knows it as the corporation that runs everything in wall-e "world leadership" we have no one but them to thank for the cannibalistic cupcake in a cup
but, for really astute viewers you can actually see the companies rise to power throughout multiple other pixar films in toy story 3, you can see their logo on buzz's batteries by the time we get to up, buy n large now involved in construction business with their logo on the equipment in front of carl's house and it's not just the equipment, bnl is also buying all the houses in carl's neighbourhood guy: my boss would be happy if he takes this places off your hand and uhh... but double his last offer what do you say to that?
*leaf blower engine* and get this:it's even spreading to the cars franchise now if you examine the cars 3 extended trailer frame by frame you see the logo appear in the stadium. making it the first time buy-n-large has appeared anywhere in the cars movie series. *whoop* did you spot it? here, let me slow it down for you. still no? here, let's go frame by frame. welcome to my life [in quoting voice] i live my life a quarter frame at a time.
now the reason i wanted to start talking about this today is because i have a few problems with the pixar theory timeline and the first major batch revolves around cars. the theory goes that a super intelligent ai, first created by syndrome in his quest to kill all the superheroes back in the incredibles, forms bnl to take control of the planet. along the way intelligent animals like the ones that we saw in finding nemo and ratatouille rise up against humans, a war ensues, animals are killed off, and the ai acting through buy n large send humans into space,
thus kicking off wall-e and leaving the planet alone to the ai. the ai begin a life of freedom on their newly conquered planet by assuming the form of sentient cars, planes, boats and cranes, 'cause seriously, think about the coolest way to get around. that's why you don't see humans or animals in either car movie and yet see the remnants of human society like the eiffeltower, route 66 and things like that. oh maan, you got all that? being apart and piecing together this whole theory in detail
is gonna be like this channel's equivalent of fnaf. welp, no time like the present, carpe that diem, let's start today. so, this whole pixar theory s an interesting explanation, but there are a lot of assumptions. assumptions that, when you actually stop to look at the deeper evidence, just don't work out. and the first set of assumptions that i want to tackle today has to do with the nature of the cars.
you see, based on the theory as it exists, the cars would be basically smart, driverless cars taken over by syndrome's super advanced ai. they would be cars, machines with computers in them, controlled by an ai, except they're not. the cars are actually organic creatures, living creatures with a car body as a tough exoskeleton, but containing some sort of internal organs, a soft and squishy inside like the center of a tootsie roll pop.
*squeak* you could almost equate them to the terrible monster truck movie that no one bothered to see. by the way, it's worth mentioning that thing cost 125 million dollars to make and only earned back 60 million. makes you almost feel bad for them. almost. anyway, back to the good car movies,
we know that the cars are living from a bunch of different evidence sprinkled throughout the various car features. first, they breath oxygen. in the opening of cars 2, we see super spy finn mcmissile put on an underwater respirator in order to swim outside of sight of the criminal syndicate. later in that same movie, we see plenty of scenes of cars eating and drinking. on the plane to japan we see snackfoods littered around the floor, things like chips and sushi,
and again at the party more sushi at the bar. and of course, the infamous pistachio icecream bit. "how 'bout that pistachio icecream?" a scene that tells us mater knows what pastachios are, what icecream is, and has tasted it and enjoyed it. and sure, we see them drinking varieties of oil and gas, presumably to power their engines, but why would they actually need to ingest food products,
if they weren't organic in some way? even some of the offshoot cartoons support the idea of the cars being organic creatures. in the first tales from radiator springs short we see lightning mcqueen getting a case of a hiccups. hiccups are caused by irritating the diaphragm, a dome-shaped muscle at the bottom of the chest. when you do things like eat and drink to quickly, it upsets the diaphragm and causes it to pull down in a jerky way. you suck air into your throat suddenly, your vocal cords close abruptly,
and you're left with a hiccup. all of this evidence, from the first underwater breathing to the food to the hiccups implies that under the hood of the car, both literally and figuratively, they posses internal organs like lungs, stomachs, and diaphragms in addition to their car engines. but perhaps the biggest confirmation comes from the animators themselves. in most interviews, the pixar crew tends to be dismissive about biological questions as they relate to the cars.
"i'm sorry, we have to turn off the video here." but one featurette released on the official disney pixar channel entitled pixar studio stories gave us all of the confirmation that we needed. "he can't open his doors because that's where his brains are." they have a brain. a giant, pink, pulsating brain, hidden behind those car windows. it's just... disturbing!
try getting that outta your head the next time you see a cars movie! bring up the brain bleach please! so it would appear that the cars are actual living creatures, and not just some highly advanced driverless cars. and before you complain about how stupid that all sounds, there's an actual evolutionary chain present throughout these films. at about 50 minutes and 10 seconds into cars 2 - as if watching nearly an hour of a kids movie
featuring cars in japan, busting a fake eco-friendly fuel ring in a massive james bond-riff wasn't bizarre enough - we see birds. except they're not birds. they're actually mini-planes. think that was just because the pixar team was off their meds for what seems like the entirety of this movie? well, think again, because in another of the tales from radiator springs animated shorts
you actually get vw beetle ... beetles! tiny cars with insect wings that make up this disturbing universe's bug population. thus proving that the pixar team is off their meds literally all the time. or on something else. now, this is an important detail, because it shows us that in this universe these car-like creatures don't just become planes when they fly like the birds, but rather they can develop organic wings like those of a dragonfly. and all of this is without even mentioning the fact
that there exist alien car-like species, as we see in maters tall tales, ufo edition. which we know is true since mater shows that he can fly in the end of the episode. as one final detail, it's interesting to note that the rubber tires aren't part of these car creatures. in multiple parts of the series, but most notably cartoon's train scene, we see the characters moving around with their tires removed. they're the equivalent of shoes for the cars,
going on the feet, or in this case rims. suffice it to say, alien or no, these are living creatures with internal organs that are protected by a car-like exoskeleton, and with multiple differentiated animal-like species that have evolved over time from literal boats, planes, and cranes to bug-like, and bird-like animals. in short, when you look at all of this evidence, there is only one possible conclusion.
that the cars in cars aren't cars at all, but are much more likely a highly evolved form of insect. sounds ridiculous, but think about it. just like an insect has a hard exoskeleton made of chitin, the creatures in the car-verse have evolved a stronger exoskeleton made of various metals. neither cars nor insects seem to possess an internal skeleton and so in both creatures muscles appear to be directly attached to the exoskeleton itself.
an insect's exoskeleton isn't a single surface, but rather consists of multiple jointed plates, so that when an insect moves a muscle, it causes the connected exoskeleton plate pieces to move as well. it's the same style of movement that we see in the cars. multiple hard plates or shells moving when an internal musculatur moves as well. but most importantly of all in the piece of evidence that solidifies this is as we saw at the vw beetle example
some species of the cars are able to grow wings that aren't made of metal. insteadd, based on the appearance and behaviour of those wings, they're made of chitin, just like the wings of a dragonfly. the same substance that makes up an insect's exoskeleton. those chitin-based wings are a remnant from the car's evolutionary ancestors. the cars in cars aren't cars. they're insects! and that does some really interesting things for the pixar theory.
first and foremost, it removes cars from being attached to the era of humans, that sort of evolution is gonna take a really long time, so get it away from the wall-es, nemos and incredibles of the world and put it out toward the future. but surprisingly enough, we do happen to have a film in pixar's line up that does follow super intelligent bugs and their quest for survival, bugs that already have figured out ways to master machines. bugs that live in a world, where there are remnants of human society, but you see no humans present.
yes, what i propose to you, is that cars isn't so much it's own entity, but rather a bugs life 2, 3, and coming up on 4. the natural progression of insects evolving and taking over the planet earth. and with that we have the first puzzle pieces in place as we all start to build our own film theorist-approved mega pixar theory. but for now, remember, it's just a theory, a film theory!
aaaand cut! are you as excited as i am? this is my first toe dipped into the pixar theory pool and already we're coming up with some huge revelations. so, if you want to unravel the mysteries of the pixar universe with me, make sure you subscribe to the channel by slapping the film theory logo, smack, dab, in the middle of the screen. and hey, after you've done that, check out my past theory on wall-e cannibalism
or, for something lighter, just let it go and watch this one on frozen. now, if y'all excuse me, i gotta go work on a logan theory, because if everything goes according to plan, that one's happening next week!