Cars is the first Pixar movie to be released since the studio was acquired by Disney, but it’s a watershed moment for the studio for another, more important reason — it marks their first significant departure from the basic premise of their first six full-length features.
From Toy Story (1995) to The Incredibles (2004), Pixar films have always been set in our world. Each plot unfolds in a contemporary American universe, inhabited by human beings. Each of these films explores a part of this world unseen in everyday life: Toy Story and Toy Story 2 imagine our toys coming to life whenever our backs our turned, A Bug’s Life‘s drama occurs on a scale too small for our eyes to perceive, Monsters Inc. takes place in a universe that parallels and intersects with our own, Finding Nemo takes place under water, and The Incredibles fleshes out the secret lives of super heroes that walk amongst us.
In Cars, for the first time, human beings are absent. Except, of course, they're not. Here is a world in which the rock formations of the American southwest resemble tailfins, in which "cows" are tractors, and in which even the bugs are miniature Volkswagens with wings. But where did these cars come from? What God wrought these creatures in His (or Her) own image?
In one telling scene, Radiator Springs' oldest resident Lizzie (Katherine Helmond) gestures towards a picture of her husband, the town's founder Stanley (like Lizzie, a Model T Ford). This begs a question: what where Stanley's forefathers? Horses? As in last year's Robots, human beings might be absent from this world, but their presence looms over it hauntingly.
The first six Pixar films are effective at fueling young (and young at heart) imaginations because they operate in much the same way. They make sense of the wider, unfamiliar world by imposing a child's understanding of human society on inanimate objects, animals, and nightmares. They take lessons from the World I Understand and apply them to the World I Don't.
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