With Cars 2 coming out this weekend, I am reminded of a unique piece of artwork created by Jake Parker a few years ago – a cross-section of Lightning McQueen.
If you’ve never seen this illustration before, I’m happy to bring it to your attention. Because Jake’s illustration addresses something that fundamentally unsettles me about the Cars universe – how does a talking car… y’know… work?
Jake’s drawing is a mesh of organic and mechanical that actually makes a fair bit of sense. Although, when you go back and watch the movie and notice that all of the characters side and back windows are tinted, it makes things kind of creepy to think that their brains are behind that glass.
I know it’s a kids movie and I know you’re not supposed to ask these questions. But the level of detail that Pixar infused into these characters begs the question.
Incidentally, I’d also like to know how these characters built the buildings they inhabit with no opposable thumbs, but maybe that’s an issue for another day.
The question of how stuff gets built is one I just can’t let gp… How do they make electronic devices? How did they fix the neon lights in radiator springs at the end of the first movie? I hope there’s at least a knowing nod to the absurdity of it all in cars 2 anyway.
Why not go all out…how are the cars themselves made. Assembly line? “Manned” by other cars? Fully automated? Some sort of more biological reproduction? That brings up the whole issue of “growing” up….
There was an old Tex Avery cartoon where two anthropomorphic planes were delivered a baby son by the stork.
Good enough for me!
I theorized that they were created by a forerunner race that pushed technology to be able to be used with tires and such mechanical appendages as lift forks. Reproduction could be thought of like a stork type model where there is an inaccessible manufacturing place and they are built there and sent to suited parents. Though, we do see children in Cars one, so perhaps it’s more like Robots where you purchase a base model for a child? Perhaps they insert the biologically reproduced material into it? this would require an ability to upgrade as the biological material outgrew the Mechanical parts.