There will be spoilers...
Oh boy, where to begin.
I'll start with the elephant in the review section: The accusations of "sexism" and "political correctness". Yes, it's true, there is a female car in the film who happens to be a talented race car. The horror!! Look, I get it. I hate having a blatant agenda shoved down my throat. Ghostbusters, I'm looking at you. This wasn't that. Not even a little bit. If you think it was, well, what can I say. Maybe you should just go home to your bunker and watch Breitbart.
The bigger, and I think slightly more understandable, issue is that of the overall message of the film: our heroes getting older, and the end of McQueen's career as a race car. Hey folks, time marches on. People change, even our role models. If your kid can't handle McQueen passing the torch on to a younger, more adequate player, then maybe you should plop your brat in front of the TV with Cars 1 on a loop. News Flash: this is real life! It happens in all sports. Baseball, Football, Basketball, REAL RACING! Whether we like it or not, our heroes at some point become too old to do what they do. Progress happens. We improve. As a baseball fan, I see it every single year. Players we love go away, and new blood comes in. The message in this movie is exactly that. Kids need to learn from a young age that you can't have the same guy up there doing the same thing every day. Heck, if Cars 1 took place in the 1950s and was about the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, people would be complaining about a new car called Lightning McQueen. What an incredibly boring world it would be if Lightning McQueen always won every single race and no other cars came along to improve on the sport. He isn't becoming less of a hero, he's not being emasculated. His accomplishments aren't being diminished in any way. He's helping the next generation to become a hero too! And so what if that new hero is female? By taking this apparently contentious route, Pixar has opened up the Cars franchise to years and years of new material. New heroes will emerge and some will go away. I for one am delighted by this new direction. I was concerned with the let down that was Cars 2 that the third installment would be useless. It wasn't, not even remotely. Cars 3 is fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My 3 year old son, who is obsessed with McQueen, loved it too.
Oh boy, where to begin.
I'll start with the elephant in the review section: The accusations of "sexism" and "political correctness". Yes, it's true, there is a female car in the film who happens to be a talented race car. The horror!! Look, I get it. I hate having a blatant agenda shoved down my throat. Ghostbusters, I'm looking at you. This wasn't that. Not even a little bit. If you think it was, well, what can I say. Maybe you should just go home to your bunker and watch Breitbart.
The bigger, and I think slightly more understandable, issue is that of the overall message of the film: our heroes getting older, and the end of McQueen's career as a race car. Hey folks, time marches on. People change, even our role models. If your kid can't handle McQueen passing the torch on to a younger, more adequate player, then maybe you should plop your brat in front of the TV with Cars 1 on a loop. News Flash: this is real life! It happens in all sports. Baseball, Football, Basketball, REAL RACING! Whether we like it or not, our heroes at some point become too old to do what they do. Progress happens. We improve. As a baseball fan, I see it every single year. Players we love go away, and new blood comes in. The message in this movie is exactly that. Kids need to learn from a young age that you can't have the same guy up there doing the same thing every day. Heck, if Cars 1 took place in the 1950s and was about the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, people would be complaining about a new car called Lightning McQueen. What an incredibly boring world it would be if Lightning McQueen always won every single race and no other cars came along to improve on the sport. He isn't becoming less of a hero, he's not being emasculated. His accomplishments aren't being diminished in any way. He's helping the next generation to become a hero too! And so what if that new hero is female? By taking this apparently contentious route, Pixar has opened up the Cars franchise to years and years of new material. New heroes will emerge and some will go away. I for one am delighted by this new direction. I was concerned with the let down that was Cars 2 that the third installment would be useless. It wasn't, not even remotely. Cars 3 is fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My 3 year old son, who is obsessed with McQueen, loved it too.