Cars 2 Blu- ray & DVD Review. Pixar's 1. 5- year winning streak of acclaimed blockbusters has come to an end and at the hands of a most foreseeable culprit. The AXS Cookie Policy. This website, like most others, uses cookies in order to give you a great online experience. By continuing to use our website you accept to our use of cookies. Alternatively, you can find out more about. The Bonus Boss is one that often exists outside the normal plot of the game, and requires quite a bit of conscious effort to get to. Its difficulty is usually much beyond that of the 'story line' final boss. Cars 2 was the first project the trailblazing animation studio announced that seemed like a real head- scratcher. Sure, you could say certain past ventures didn't instill confidence with concept alone. A rat who cooks in an haute French restaurant? Heck, a world of talking cars? But even viewers not sold by the trailers typically came around to enjoy what Pixar had crafted. Comment: The disc or discs have been buffed as needed. Item is complete and in good shape with some slight wear or damage present. All items packed in bubble mailers and do not include an invoice or receipt in package. The Mass Effect series is designed as a trilogy, which allows the player to import their characters from any completed Mass Effect playthrough to subsequent games. This means that several decisions Commander Shepard makes in. NERv Battlefield 4 Update 2 (c) Electronic Arts UK 11/2013 . PROTECTION.: EADRM - . GAME.TYPE.: Action, FPS Note: Changelog included in the. Discworld is a comic fantasy book series by British author Terry Pratchett set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which are in turn standing on the back of a giant turtle, the Great A'Tuin. They might not have loved it, but they probably liked it a lot. Those who had ever before doubted Pixar had every reason to hope and suspect that the studio would continue to do right. I loved the original Cars more than most adults, who had collectively ranked it with the even less admired A Bug's Life at the bottom of the studio's impossibly strong canon. Nonetheless, Cars 2 was not something I deeply craved. As Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 demonstrated, Pixar made sequels with the same love, care, and imagination they applied to original movies. But then those follow- ups maintained the style and spirit of their predecessor. For whatever reason, Cars 2 bears very little relation to its forebear. Fact: the original Cars generated more retail revenue than almost any other film ever, earning $2 billion a year in merchandise. Fact: Cars had the lowest critical approval rating of any of Pixar's films and was only the studio's second release to lose the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Fact: Cars was the only Pixar movie of this millennium to do more than 5. US; its foreign earnings were a distant last place among post- 2. From those figures, we can gather that Pixar believed there was a market for a sequel and for all the toys and products that go with it, that they weren't risking sacrilege because the franchise was neither as lapsed nor as loved as the Toy Story series, and that they had room to grow in international territories. Prior to release, those facts were merely potentially troubling, cited by cynics who had somehow forgotten that Pixar didn't make bad movies. Now, they seem eerily prescient. You can't be a film critic without being acutely aware that you're covering a business, one, like any other, driven by bottom lines and profit margins. Hardly a month passes without an unnecessary sequel taking the easy path of familiarity and built- in brand recognition. But this is Pixar, universally admired by people of all ages, maker of art that fires on all cylinders, forged in an unending whirlwind of creativity six sanity- restoring hours outside Los Angeles. This once little studio had become the one constantly shining light in a sea of mediocrity, retread, and market- tested homogeny. For them to sell out even just once would deliver a blow to the notion of cinema as an art form. Cars 2 looks nice, but it is noticeably lacking in the aspects where Pixar usually leaves all others in the dust: characters, humor, heart, story, excitement. He learned that lesson not on the track but in the small, sleepy Route 6. Radiator Springs, which provided him with a loyal, good- hearted friend (rusty tow truck Mater), an altruistic girlfriend (blue Porsche Sally), a sage mentor (former champion racer Doc Hudson), and an ensemble of colorful locals. You can forget all that, though, because Cars 2 does. Following a completely incongruous prologue, the movie spends ten of its better minutes in Radiator Springs, where the story is set up. Then it's off and running, supplying high- octane adventure and intrigue in a variety of overseas settings. Places that didn't quite make the first Cars a global sensation! Mater, you know, isn't a smart vehicle, so wouldn't it be really funny if he kept luckily avoiding danger and being mistaken for a master agent? John Lasseter seemed to think so. When Disney bought Pixar and named Lasseter chief creative officer of both his animation studio and theirs as well as principal creative advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering, it seemed like he would be much too busy to be directing movies again. Still, Walt Disney found time to voice Mickey Mouse through the late 1. Lasseter, the closest to a present- day equivalent, has found time to direct Cars 2, supplanting Brad Lewis, who had started the project making his directorial debut alone and ended with a mere . Lewis, Lasseter, and, top- billed of the many scribes on the original movie, Dan Fogelman, are attributed with the original story here. Ben Queen, co- creator of the short- lived Fox crime action drama . The spy story they want to tell is completely at odds with the first Cars. Rather than arrive at some sort of compromise, they just take a few characters from the first movie (mainly, just Mater) and stuff them into a new container that clearly doesn't suit them. That glaring miscalculation displays utter disrespect for the first film. People weren't just buying Cars toys for the heck of it; they bought them because they (or their children) connected with the story, the setting, and characters. How can you toss all that out and think that people either won't notice or care? Not only is that the most flawed logic on which to base a sequel, but it also egregiously misstates people's sentiments to Cars. The movie had Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores in the 7. Even IMDb, whose predominantly teen/twenties male audience is the demographic most likely to dismiss the movie, has given it an average voter rating of 7. Harry Potter movies and a mere 0. Ghostbusters. Prior to this sequel, Pixar's worst compared favorably with the very best from every other CG animation studio. We hear that reviews don't matter and that seems true when poorly- reviewed films do big business anyway. But they seem to matter when you play to a literate audience who is well aware of your stellar critical track record. And yet, the movie even stumbled on that front too. Disney recently took the unusual step of rereleasing the film, expanding it from 2. Labor Day weekend, but it just didn't take, with the 1. With just over $1. Cars 2 will require number- fudging to beat out the original Toy Story's gross from 1. M above it now), which would still place it tenth in the studio canon and a distant last in tickets sold. Foreign markets have accounted for nearly two- thirds of its worldwide earnings, a percentage second only to Eurocentric Ratatouille's and a stark reversal from the first Cars. The rest of the world didn't seem to mind being patronized and thus Cars 2's overall numbers offered healthy growth over its predecessor's (but still paled globally next to its most direct competitor, Kung Fu Panda 2). At some needling from boastful Italian race car Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro), Lightning (Owen Wilson) agrees to delay his off- season to compete in the World Grand Prix, a three- race global event hosted by adventuresome industrialist Sir Miles Axlerod (Eddie Izzard) and run on his new alternative fuel source, Allinol. Mater accompanies his best bud, but after his incomprehensible babble causes Lightning to lose the first race and earns a friendly scolding, he decides to go home. Mater's professional knowledge of all things under the hood aids Finn and Holley, who mistake his buffoonish manner as performance of an intricate cover character he never sets aside. Their research into an organized crime unit of lemon cars eventually crosses paths with Lightning's Grand Prix, in which cars keep running into trouble. Also once again, we don't ever get a clear understanding of what this alternate universe is, beyond a vehicular spoof of our world. Francesco has a mother, so cars apparently can reproduce (though no one in Radiator Springs has). And we're told the Popemobile is Catholic, so these beings are not godless. They're also not immortal; the last character ever played by screen legend Paul Newman is tactlessly killed off with a passing comment and awkward moment of silence. Though it seems ill- advised, these cars drink the equivalent of alcohol (oil cocktails and such). And in case it wasn't already clear to you, boats and planes are alive too, but nothing else. With its twists and turns, the whole spy plot seems likely to float over the heads of young viewers, who have no reason to know the genre to which this strives to pay homage. Cars 2 has earned a G rating, Pixar's tenth in twelve movies. While this seems unobjectionable, it is curious that a film chockfull of gunplay, explosions, and peril doesn't trigger the PG rating and . I know some parents expressed concern about Cars 2's content, but I would guess that young children are more likely to be bored than bothered by it. The same is true of the race track content, which is clunkily set up with commentary from real NASCAR types (Brent . In September 2. 00. The Bear and the Bow. Announcing that change almost three years in advance seems like it should have been ample time to get things in gear, but Pixar movies take time, typically a minimum of four years. If the studio could churn two or three new movies out a year as Dream. Works Animation does, without sacrificing quality, they probably would. I think that shaving a year off the anticipated production period caused corners to be cut and thinktankery to be reduced. Let's hope that the extra year benefits Bear, which in the spirit of Tangled has since been retitled Brave, when it opens in June. Not since Dream. Works' Shark Tale has a poorly- reviewed movie competed for that Oscar and that was back in 2. There are already four eligible animated features clearly better received by critics, with Puss in Boots becoming #5 today and others yet to come. I've lamented at length how Disney/Pixar's push for Blu- ray brought an unnecessary and premature death to their dazzling two- disc DVDs. The original Cars, issued five years ago, shortly after Blu- ray's launch, was the start of that.
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