Video of the Week: Cars 3 Official US Teaser Trailer (by Disney•Pixar)

It’s dark. It’s gritty. It’s unexpected. Disney Pixar’s teaser trailer of Cars 3 shows Lightning McQueen in the lead during a race, with an unknown electric hyper car quickly closing in the gap. At first, I thought that it was going to be a simple story of Lightning McQueen having some serious competition and he has to prove that combustion engines are still the best there is… but then he crashes. A short, slow motion scene just before the words “from this moment everything will change”.

The Cars franchise hasn’t been Pixar’s best series. The first film, whilst gained a lot of praise from critics, it actually wasn’t their biggest hit, with a 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. A film that would achieve that score would be classed as a massive success, but for Pixar, that was a surprise. Their lowest score before this film was A Bug’s Life, with 92%. Even though Cars wasn’t as well received as all the other films before it, the animation was still amazing. Once again, they had pushed the boundaries and made something that the entire family could enjoy.

Unfortunately, Cars 2 scored only 39%. I didn’t know that it was possible for Pixar to dip below 50% - with all their films standing above, it was as if that side of the ratings didn’t exist to them. They were venturing into unknown territory, and it took us all by surprise. They have finally made a film that we don’t all like. The animation was once again amazing, but the story lets it down massively. Pixar has built up its reputation by creating some truly heart-wrenching stories that make you feel all kinds of emotions all at once. It had some funny moments, but I was a little disappointed, to be honest. Just before the release of Cars 2, they had broken down in puddles of tears with Toy Story 3, the ending of which will remain as my pick for the most satisfying ending to a trilogy.

Although we were only given a few seconds of footage, there’s something altogether different about this and the previous two, and that it’s considerably darker. In just a few seconds, it gives us an atmosphere that we just weren’t expecting at all. After the low reviews and ratings Cars 2 got, I was wondering whether it was absolutely necessary to make another. The first official full trailer we see will determine everything else about the film, but for now, it seems that Pixar is going to give us something on par to their other films.

Pixar has made 17 films to date. Each and every single one of them apart from 2 have been instant hits and classics the moment they hit the cinemas, and so it’s still a massive achievement that they only have 2 miss-hits. If Cars 3 is also a miss-hit, they’re not going to lose any reputation, because the sequel to The Incredibles is in production and will be out in 2018, with Toy Story 4 coming out in 2019. We have 2 years to wait for one, and 3 to wait for the other, and so we can’t say they’re going to be bad before we see anything. We know Pixar can make fantastic films, so we can’t walk away just yet. We have to trust them that they will give us what they have allowed us to expect. In a way, this does go for Cars 3 as well. Sure, the first 2 films weren’t as good as we had hoped, but that doesn’t mean that they will make a terrible film this time round. They could have truly made something that will blow us away, tug at our heart strings, and become an instant classic.

There is that possibility of the finished product not being as great as we hoped, but if it is, we probably will be distracted by the terrific CGI. The thing that you can guarantee will always improve as the years go on, is Pixar’s ability to blow us away with their animation, and this looks the best yet. It was so good, I had to take a double take to process that it was really actually just computer images, not real. The backgrounds for The Good Dinosaur were staggering; it’s hard to imagine just how much better everything will be in their up-and-coming films, Coco, The Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4, and does bring me to ask the question: How good can computer animation get before it can’t get any better? I think that’s another article for another day.

I will be going to go see Cars 3 when it comes out, because I want to trust them. Pixar is one of the very few film companies that hasn’t been caught up in the trap of “we’re now popular, so let’s just make rubbish because people will watch it”, they do put a massive amount of time and effort into doing everything that they do. So, even though Cars and Cars 2 weren’t that well received as all the rest of the films, you can clearly see the amount of passion that they have put into making it, and that’s something you can’t really deny. Pixar loves what they are doing, and it shows with every film they do. If Cars 3’s storyline isn’t the best, at least you can marvel at all the other elements.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)