Cars, 2006

Cars Like most digital artists, I was a fan of Pixar before they made their first feature film. In fact, by the time I saw their first short film Luxo, jr. many of us already knew their name from the .pxr (pixar) file format. After a string of top notch shorts, most of us were excited to see their first feature film; the first feature film created entirely on a computer. True to form, Toy Story did not disappoint. Even if you took away the ground breaking animation, the fact that it launched a whole new type of animated film – you’d still have a damn good story. Entertaining even if it had been done with stop-motion, cell, or any other type of animation. But Pixar didn’t stop there – for the next decade and a half, they continued to produce top-notch films, both long and short. While few (except maybe Toy Story 2) were as good as Toy Story they were all still outstanding. Which brings us to Cars. Released as Pixar’s 20th anniversary film, Cars follows the story of a race car, Lightning McQueen, on his quest to win the prestigious ‘Piston Cup’. As usual, there is great animation, fun jokes, and neat cameos. But this time, Pixar failed to win the Academy Award for best animated feature – a category that was practically created for the studio following the repeated snubbing of films like A Bug’s Life, and the Toy Story films. This was only the second time since the award was created in the early 2000s that Pixar failed to win. And the loss to Warner Brothers (and previously to Dreamworks) was deserved, as this (and the previous Monsters, Inc.) were neither among Pixar’s best, nor the best in the field. But, the fact that Cars is still an enjoyable, and even superior film judged in the context of all animated features ever made, or all films ever made for that matter, just goes to show how high Pixar has raised the bar for itself and everyone else.

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