If he wants to sell the Lightning McQueen suitcase, why not make the movie about Lightning McQueen? Shoving the better protagonist to the side and putting the comic relief front and center for a bizarre bond plot was my biggest beef with the movie. Also, if he's making the movie for that little boy... Well, I took my five-year old nephew, who IS that little boy, to see the movie, and I cringed at all the automatic weapon fire (!) in a G rated movie.

Amos, the simple fact that Pixar shifted the genre of Cars 2 from what they did with the original suggests an ambivalence about the project. That happens so rarely and I can't think of a successful movie where they shifted genres for the sequel as it makes little sense because the subsequent movies are intended to draft off the previous ones, and if they are wholly different types of films, it's harder to do that. Personally Cars and Cars 2 are my least favorite Pixar movies. But even there we can see at least some of their story-crafting principles at work... and the absence of other key principles at work, too. I get into that subject in the upcoming SMC course.

Coming to the defense of Lasseter (as if he needs me to...): All things Lightning McQueen and Cars related are like crack-cocaine to my 2 year old son. He wiles away his days pushing around his Cars toys, snuggles his McQueen pillow at night, a howls when his talking 'Mater spews out his cornpone witticisms (kinda' like having George "Goober" Lindsay in the corner of the room...) I took Zach to see Cars 2 just this past weekend at our local second run theater. He's a squirrelly little dude so I wasn't sure if he would sit still for the whole running time. Well, not only did he sit still, his eyes popped out of his head, he muttered "wow," totally rapt for 2 hours. So I guess when Lasseter says he's making these movies for the "little boy who loves the characters so much," well... you can take that to the bank. Lord knows HE is! For my purposes, the Cars movies are a necessary part of the Pixar canon. While they don't come near the transcendent heights of UP or WALL-E (good God, what does?), they serve a purpose and entertain. If anything I ever wrote or created brought as much joy as McQueen and company to their intended demographic, I certainly would have no complaints.

Jeff, one of the first questions any storyteller or filmmaker should ask is this: Who is the audience? It's fundamental to how you go about developing the project and critical to its success. I even had one producer tell me whenever he considers a script, he closes his eyes and tries to conjure up the face of what he perceives to be a representative of that script's target audience. If a face comes clearly to mind, he'll continue to read the script. If not, he sets it aside. Because at the end of the day, movies -- as a commercial enterprise -- about selling tickets, butts in seats. I think the two prime drivers [pun intended] for Cars and Cars 2 are (1) Lasseter's self-professed love of cars and (2) writing a story directly for your two year old son. That's knowing your target audience.

imho, this is the source of all the criticism the Star Wars prequels faced: George L clearly made the originals for 10 year old boys. But when he tried to do the same for the new movies, all the people who saw the originals during their first run thought the new movies should have been for them. Also, because of their ability to leverage merchandising, Pixar movies (especially Cars & Toy Story series) are in a completely separate category that only includes the Star Wars movies. It's a much bigger game, and in some sense, the Cars movies have become a 2 hour long ad for the toys.

@Scott: About the shifting genres thing. I was thinking about that earlier, and the ONLY example that's ever worked that I could even come up with was the switch from ALIEN to ALIENS. That was a pretty complete genre shift, and I know a lot of people who'd say the sequel was better than the original. But that's the ONLY example I could think of. In all of cinema. Perhaps no accident then that the two movies were helmed by absolute living legends. That always increases your chances. RE: Cars 2. I don't think we live in a universe where any higher-up at Pixar or Disney, if they had a gun pointed at them and were politely asked to tell you the truth, would be able to say that the sole reason for that movies existence was Lassiter's love of cars. Whenever you have a movie that generates 8 BILLION DOLLARS worth of anything, there's going to be a sequel. If there isn't, the person in charge of the money is going to fire everyone in charge of making creative decisions and hire new creative people who will. Understandably. In a marketplace where studios are tightening their purse strings left and right, Pixar is one of the few companies that has a relatively unlimited carte blanche. Part of that is due to their stunning economical track record. A movie like Cars spawned an 8 billion dollar line of credit that's going to support every Pixar movie we see for the next ten years. That's how I looked at Cars 2. And I didn't like Cars at all, and I had no interest in going to see Cars 2, but Cars wasn't horrible by any stretch. For most company's standards, that's a good movie. If Pixar's version of the "insurance" film takes the form of a still-pretty-damn-good movie that entertains the life and breath out of its target audience AND guarantees that they'll be able to keep pumping out genre classics for the next decade... How anyone is complaining is beyond me. It's a business. Pixar is that rare company--the only one in existence making blockbuster theatrical releases on this entire planet--that makes incredible movies that make incredible amounts of money. 13 (12? 14?) movies in a row. For the past 17 years. There probably won't ever be a movie-making coalition like Pixar ever again, for all I know. Make Cars 3 and 4! Please! Whatever the one or two movies every SEVENTEEN YEARS that miiiight be focused on securing funding for the next 10 movies...whatever that has to look like, I don't care.

Nate, you make a good point that's a reminder to us all, including myself. I get so caught up with Pixar as storyteller, I forget they are a company. Not that they are necessarily in need of funding, but their expenses must be significant. So perhaps part of their strategic thinking is to make the occasional merchandise 'friendly' movies like Cars and Cars 2 to enable them to take on riskier propositions like Up. People may forget that before Up came out, Wall Street actually downgraded Disney because the Money Experts were convinced the movie would not do well -- you can see two posts I did on that very subject here and here. So wearing your producer's hat, Nate, you remind us Pixar is not just about storytelling, it's a business. And if they choose to make Cars 3 and that enables them to take risks, as with Brave which is a period piece and features a female Protagonist, so be it.

[...] Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling [...]

[...] Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling [...]