Attention to Detail Makes Pixar’s Cars the Optimal Study in Worldbuilding
Lessons for your own art and filmmaking
Cars (2006) is Pixar’s seventh animated feature. The film tends to be ranked fairly low in lists of Pixar’s accomplishments, and it carries a much lower critic score than any of the company’s previous films at only 74% fresh. From where I stand, those ratings seem harsh — Cars exhibits a level of heart that I felt was missing from Finding Nemo (2003), tells a fully cohesive story that is accessible to audiences of all ages, and contains world building the likes of which we haven’t seen from Pixar since A Bug’s Life (1998). Filmmakers have also done something new with Cars: they use characters in place of humans and human society. In the past, all characters existed alongside of humans, whereas in Cars, humans do not exist. The characters in the film live in a fully alternative world and act as stand ins for the human equivalents in our world. It’s a simplified and direct metaphor.
It would be easy to look at Cars and attempt to argue that the filmmakers didn’t have to do a lot of world building; it was already there for them. Not so! The considerations of Pixar’s creative team while making the film were intensive, varied, and thoughtful. The work they put in on their movie is why it is worlds better than the sequel, and why it deserves another watch and…
