When I initially watched Cars back in 2006, I liked the movie because there were cool animated cars doing fun things. I recently rewatched Cars and saw that the technique that Pixar is known for of making movies interesting and relevant for all age levels holds true in this film. Viewing the movie now, I see much more meaning in it than I did when I was four, and enjoyed it just as much. One of the themes of Cars is that life should be enjoyed and that some of the things our society values don’t ultimately lead to happiness. We view speed, efficiency, profit, and victory as signs of success in our society. Cars upends these ideas and shows that there is more to success and happiness in life than “winning.”
One of the key scenes in Cars is seventeen minutes when Lightning McQueen is traveling in a trailer pulled by Mac the Truck. McQueen is traveling across the country to California on an interstate highway. Throughout this scene, the Rascal Flatts version of “Life Is a Highway” is playing in the background. This scene seems like a happy time for McQueen because he has just tied for first in his most recent race and is now travelling to a tiebreaker race which he thinks he will win. Upon further analysis though, this scene is foreshadowing of the conflict to come.
The interstate highway that McQueen is traveling on is completely flat and straight. It is never shown changing direction or elevation at all. The highway is flat through the land regardless of its natural terrain. Hills have been cut through and bridges have been built. Two especially evocative parts of this travel montage are the scenes where they go over a winding river and later through a hill in the desert. The river is shown from a bird’s eye view, so we see the winding natural shape of it. Then as the frame moves, we see the straight highway cutting right through it. Towards the end of the travel montage, in the desert, we see the highway go straight through a desert hill which has been broken in half to accommodate the road. Instead of integrating the road with the natural landscape, the road is built for maximum efficiency, not enjoyment. This interstate doesn’t prompt people to stop along it or appreciate the unique terrain of the region; it simply allows them to get from point A to point B quickly. As the song suggests, McQueen’s life in the start of the movie is much like this highway. It is designed for and focused on only one thing: winning.
Later, McQueen is talking to his agent who asks which friends McQueen wants to give his twenty free tickets to. McQueen doesn’t know how to respond to this because he doesn’t have any close friends. Instead of making friends, McQueen has been focused on just winning. It is therefore fitting that when McQueen becomes friends with Sally, a blue Porsche, she takes him on a winding country road with no hurry to get anywhere, and McQueen has a lot of fun. Sally later tells him that she came to Radiator Springs to get out of the “fast lane” that she had been stuck in as a lawyer in the big city. Although the fast lane is being used as an expression for the workload and hectic schedule of being a lawyer in the big city, it ties in well with the concept of life being related to the road that they were driving on. This is because when she was a lawyer, Sally was only focused on success, which is like being on the fast lane of a highway, shooting through life without stopping to observe and enjoy it, like McQueen at the start of the movie.
After the scene in which Sally and McQueen drive together on a winding road, we get a glimpse into the past and see the road in its heyday with cars driving relatively slowly and saying hi to each other. This scene is a juxtaposition of the early scene in which McQueen is being driven down the highway quickly. He is isolated from his surroundings and the people around him on the highway because of the goal to get to a destination quickly, just as he is in life.
At the end of Cars, we can see that McQueen has learned from his time off of the highway. In his final race, McQueen has his friends from Radiator Springs there to help him and cheer him on. But the most shocking moment that shows McQueen’s change in perspective comes when Strip Weathers, the blue Dinoco-sponsored race car, is pushed off the track by Chick Hicks, the green race car who is determined to win, and crashes. McQueen, who is about to win the Piston Cup, which has been his goal for the whole movie, stops right before the finish line and goes back to push Weathers across the finish line, allowing Hicks to win. This action shows that McQueen now realizes that there is more to life than just winning. He then turns down an offer to be sponsored by Dinoco, and instead chooses to stay with his original sponsor Rust-eze. For the whole movie, he has dreamed of being sponsored by Dinoco, which has more money and resources to provide for him than Rust-eze. This is another surprising move by McQueen that shows that he now sees there is more to life than just money and fame. These ideas are further supported when no one celebrates Hicks’ victory.
In the travel scene of McQueen being brought to California by Mac, he is being pulled by Mac on the highway. In the same way that he is being physically pulled to his goal, he is also being pulled along in life. His life is set up by people like his agent, sponsors, and truck so that he has the quickest and most efficient route to his goal destination of winning the Piston Cup. But when McQueen falls out of the trailer that Mac is pulling, he is confused on the highway, pushed off, and then gets lost without a sense of direction on off-roads near the highway.
In life, some people are pulled along a highway by their parents: a fast, direct route to a desired destination, such as a certain job or college. Parents pull kids along by paying for constant tutoring for everything, paying for special camps or activities, setting them up with contacts, making them take classes on things that they may not want to do, and even paying to assure college admission, like in the recent celebrity college admission scandals. Just as in Cars, when the person being pulled along the highway isn’t being pulled by others anymore, they can get confused, lost, and ultimately fall off the highway.
It is important that we don’t view life as a highway. When people think that their lives should be like a highway, the straightest, fastest route to their goal destination, it can be problematic. If we view life as the winding road that McQueen and Sally go on together, when life throws a turn or an up or down at us, we know that that is what life is made up of and that is okay. It is also important to recognize that sometimes we may not have a clear destination in life, and that is okay too. It is part of life to wander the scenic winding roads. We then also realize that life is more about the journey than the destination.
In high school, life can be especially stressful. It can become easy to obsess over things like getting into a certain college, getting certain grades, getting a specific standardized test score, and performing well in sports. One thing that Cars teaches us that we can apply to everyday life is to remember that the highway is not always the best option. It may get you where you want to go the fastest, but it may not be as enjoyable as a winding road with hills and curves with rivers. The things that we look at as measures of success only paint part of the picture. In high school, it is important that you don’t forget to look around you, make friends, and enjoy the ride.