Cars 2 Green

The Pixar animated movie, Cars 2 debuted with a number one spot at the box office this past weekend. The original Cars movie was a tribute to the heyday of American road trips on the iconic Route 66. While the original Cars took a look back in time, the sequel takes a look forward, by introducing a new character, former gas guzzler Miles Axlerod now converted to an electric car.

The movie has come under some criticism from conservative groups, but in an interview with Adam Chitwood of Collider, director John Lasseter insists that Cars 2 was not intended to be a message movie, but rather to simply reflect current events and headlines. From the interview:

... who would be a good bad guy in this world? And I kept thinking, in the world of Cars I think Big Oil could be an awesome bad guy. It was interesting, because while we were working so hard on the story the oil platform disaster in the gulf happened and it was so interesting to see how that all played out—we had nothing to do with that by the way (laughs).

We had already set on opening on an oil platform and I kept looking around like “I can’t believe this.” But it’s that notion of, me being here in California where everybody is—you know I have solar panels, I’ve taken my house off the grid, I’m in line for one of these new electric cars, and all this kind of stuff you know we’re just so focused on alternative fuels and “Why can’t we have alternative fuels now?!”

And I started thinking, it’d be awesome to have Big Oil so scared of alternative fuels that they try to undermine it and give it a bad reputation on a world stage, and I thought this could be something that could be a really interesting subject of the conspiracy and the bad guy. Because it’s sort of a little bit set in what’s going on right now. And part of that is, it’s not a message film, it’s just making it believable for today’s audiences.

Have you seen Cars 2? While Our Daily Green appreciates the showcase for electric/alternative fuels, the mass merchandising of plastic toys made overseas to compliment the movie probably offsets any encouraging environmental messages. Nonetheless, we're likely to see the movie. The original Cars charmed our family and we're looking forward to more of Lightning and Mater's antics.

What do you think? Should movies have a message or just stick to entertainment? 

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