Snark + Sarcasm = what you’re about to read
I’ve always liked MatPat’s “The Film Theorists” videos, because they’re entertaining, fun, and have a great energy. For that reason, I don’t usually criticize their theories, but that’s all about to change.
One of MatPat’s latest videos involves Cars, and it directly calls out my timeline for Pixar movies, assuming they all share the same universe. This was embarrassing on my end because Mat worked off of old Pixar Theory material without fully researching how it’s changed over the years, so his new theory about Cars is…well…let’s just say it could use some Snarcasm.
Oh, and here’s an important note. If you want to check out the better version of this “cars are alive” theory, check out the video SuperCarlinBros already did for it seven months ago…which MatPat doesn’t reference at all or give credit to in his video. And…well, he should have.
The Cars in the Cars Movie AREN’T CARS!
I don’t know if I’m ready for this.
Are the Cars in Cars really cars?
{Raises hand}
I mean sure, it’s the title of the movie.
[Raises hand more}
and they look and behave like cars
{hand floats away}
I mean they have eyes and tongues
Right. So there’s no way they’re cars with eyes and tongues. Eh, yeah that’s weird, but we’ll get to that.
How does a society of cars come to be in the first place?
Well, the Pixar Theory states that—
What are these creatures? I am 100% confident I figured it out.
Like I was saying. I outlined all of this in my book about how—
what started as a simple, stupid question led me down the rabbit hole of this bizarre car-themed universe, and the answers I found will upend everything you thought you knew about Mater and the gang.
Mat then cuts to an image of my Pixar Theory Timeline. Well, the old one at least. See when this video first came out, a lot of people asked me what I thought, and I felt guilty for not updating the timeline since I did the book, which is a small reason why Mat ends up working off of old information (we’ll get to that).
See, the theory itself was certainly at its most plot-holey when I did the first draft of the timeline in 2013. I haven’t even updated it with the newer movies. To rectify this, there’s a new timeline in place of the old one, but as you can tell, the damage is done.
and the details I find here pose some interesting questions about that infamous Pixar Theory
Infamous?
a theory that you all have wanted me to cover for quite a long time
Spoiler alert: MatPat is working on his own “mega” Pixar Theory. Well…bring it on?
it probably merits taking a second to acquaint you with that Pixar Theory. A theory that started with, as far as I can tell, online movie blogger Jon Negroni.
Hey.
which aims to unite all the Pixar movies to not just the same universe, but also come up with a cohesive timeline of events where one movie leads to the next, leads to the next.
Mat shows an image of the actual blog post for the theory itself, which begins by telling you that the theory has been updated. So why didn’t Mat “start up his search engines” then?
He does go on to talk about how he won’t be getting into the “nitty gritty” of the theory, but offers an example of how Buy n Large plays into multiple movies.
now the reason I wanted to start talking about this today is because I have a few problems with the Pixar Theory timeline.
So Mat then goes on to recite some big elements of the theory that, again, are ancient history. And he gets some basic stuff wrong, like this:
that’s why you don’t see humans or animals in either car movie
Except we do, actually. We see the birds from For the Birds (a Pixar short) in the first Cars.
this whole Pixar Theory is an interesting explanation, but there are a lot of assumptions
So why didn’t you research the updated one? And spoiler alert: his entire theory is nothing but assumptions, starting with Mat’s assertion that they aren’t sentient machines brought to life like the toys from Toy Story.
The cars are actually organic creatures. Living creatures with the car body of the top exoskeleton, but containing some sort of internal organs. A soft and squishy inside like the center of a Tootsie Roll pop.
I get it. So Mat took all of the clever revelations SuperCarlinBros already figured out months ago…then made it worse. Neat.
First, they breathe oxygen.
And they also drink oil. And we see they have engines multiple times in the movie. How does that make them organic?
See, Mat goes on to point out how the cars must be organic because they basically act like humans. They eat “food” and one car wears an underwater “breather” like in spy movies. I contend that they do this because they think they’re the humans who owned them. Multiple Pixar movies point out that human emotion (a la Monsters Inc.) is the source of energy that can bring inanimate objects to life (like in Brave and Toy Story). And in movies like WALL-E, we see that the life of these machines is sustained by interactions with human belongings, like the movie Hello Dolly that WALL-E watches all the time.
I’m sorry I have to keep saying this, but Mat is completely missing this stuff because he didn’t even seem to look for it. And now we have to suffer through what is at best an amusing sideshow full of weird body horror jokes.
Mat then goes on to say that because of a “studio stories” video by Pixar, this is all confirmed in addition to McQueen having the hiccups in a “Tales from Radiator Springs” short. He quickly cuts in and out of a quote that McQueen can’t open his doors because “that’s where his brains are.”
they have a brain! A giant, pink, pulsating brain hidden behind those car windows!
Nope.
This is terribly misleading because Mat leaves out the fact that this same animator was trying to think of ways to make Lightning capable of producing a map to Sally. He mentions that using the doors wouldn’t make sense conceptually because that’s where his “brains” would be. He also proposed that maybe a monkey drove the car and showed the map, and many more examples that are nonsensical.
So none of this comes close to confirming anything about cars having organs. Rather, it’s just an animator discussing the challenges of making the Cars world a believable one that isn’t gross or creepy. That includes avoiding this kind of “brain” implication in the first place.
so it would appear that the cars are actual living creatures and not just some highly advanced driverless cars.
“Appear” is a strong word. If anything, there’s far more evidence that the cars are, in fact highly advanced driverless cars compared to this idea that they’re animals. But Mat ignores all of that inconvenient evidence so he can champion his own theory.
Like I said before. Bring it on.
there’s an actual evolutionary chain present throughout these films.
Go on.
[In Cars 2] we see birds. Except they’re not actually birds. They’re actually mini planes.
Oh boy.
In another of the Tales from Radiator Springs animated shorts, you get VW beetle beetles. Tiny cars with insect wings.
Which is why the theory states that the cars work off of an unreliable narrator. Which means that to them, organic creatures on Earth look like cars to them, but elsewhere we see real birds, and we know from WALL-E and A Bug’s Life that birds and insects are still around in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Have you noticed that for a Pixar theory about Pixar movies, Mat doesn’t seem to include a lot of the other Pixar movies?
Mat goes on to talk about how the alien stuff from “Mater’s Tall Tales” is totally real rather than…a tall tale. And their tires being independent from their bodies must “prove” his theory rather than support the idea that they are, in fact, machines with tires. Good stuff.
these are living creatures with internal organs that are protected by a car-like exoskeleton.
Did they grow this exoskeleton themselves? And where do their engines (which we see) come from?
and with multiple differentiated animal-like species that have evolved over time from literal boats, planes, and cranes to bug-like and bird-like animals
But The Pixar Theory has too many assumptions? And my main problem with this is that Mat goes into zero detail over how and why machines would suddenly turn into bugs and insects. Or why the personified cars don’t. He just drops that evolution part in and moves on. You know, like in the original Pixar Theory!
In short, when you look at all of this evidence, there is only one possible conclusion:
Mat put as little effort as possible into tackling the Pixar Theory? Because this is just sloppy, and a bit uninspired.
the cars in Cars aren’t really cars at all, but are much more likely a highly evolved form of insect.
Remember kids: “this whole Pixar Theory is an interesting explanation, but there are a lot of assumptions.”
Mat’s entire argument here is that because cars have a metal “skin”, that must mean they’re evolved from insects, which (whoa!) also have an exoskeleton. Ignoring literally everything about science that has ever been known about how insects, you know, have evolved and are composed biologically.
Remember when Mat said, “Oh they have brains! Confirmed!” Well, he even shows diagrams of insects that don’t have brains (or eyes or tongues or teeth) like what he describes, yet that doesn’t matter because this is my life now.
I get it. The Pixar Theory is about having fun, not being scientifically accurate. But this is just weird for the sake of it and not at all informative of what the theory’s really about: telling a grander story behind all of the movies and characters.
the cars aren’t cars! They’re insects!
I mean come on, does anyone else think Mat is just spoofing at this point? He literally has to say “The cars aren’t cars.”
that does some really interesting things for the Pixar Theory
At best, it ruins the Pixar Theory and undermines everything we actually know about the Cars movies.
First and foremost, it removes Cars from the era of humans
Thus making it completely implausible. The point of Cars is that the machines are brought to life through memories of humans. Taking that out to make room for some random insect nonsense adds literally nothing to the theory. It only takes away evidence that brings everything about the machines together for what happens in Monsters Inc.
that sort of evolution is going to take a really long time, so get it away from the WALL-Es, Nemos, and Incredibles of the world.
So then what’s the point? And how would human civilization be what it is in the Cars universe if this was so far in the future? Where are the monsters? Why are the cars remembering events from the 20th Century, like the Piston Cup? If they’re so far removed from the Pixar timeline, why even suggest that the timeline is even purposeful?
but surprisingly enough, we do happen to have one film in Pixar’s lineup that does follow super intelligent bugs in their quest for survival
What about the birds? If we’re bringing A Bug’s Life into this, then you also have to point out that the birds are primal and “dumb” compared to the insects.
in a world where there are remnants of human society but you see no humans present
But we do know they’re still around because one insect had his wings clipped by a kid.
what I propose to you is that Cars isn’t so much its own entity, but rather A Bug’s Life 2, 3, and coming up on 4. The natural progression of insects evolving and taking over the planet Earth.
So insects naturally evolve…into cars? That explains the millions of years established by the Pixar timeline (starting with Good Dinosaur) where they, you know, didn’t evolve into cars. But don’t worry, because all of these theory holes will be solved (maybe!) next time.
and with that we have the first puzzle pieces in place as we all start to build our own Film Theorists approved mega Pixar Theory!
Go for it. Seriously. These are your movies too. Just don’t be surprised when the Snarcasm rolls around, because if you’re going to build off of my initial ideas and timeline without fully looking into them for your own purposes, plus rip off another YouTuber’s theories without giving them any credit for it, then this is a Pixar Theory war.