'Cars 3" trailer maps out 'shocking' detour for animated series

When Disney released "Moana" last November, the animated musical was sent to movie theaters with a shocking first teaser trailer attached for Pixar Animation Studios' next film, "Cars 3."

"Shocking" because after two features and more than a dozen shorts in Pixar's energetic, child-favorite "Cars" universe (as well as a couple of "Planes" spin-offs that were not, repeat, not, made by Pixar), the first look at "Cars 3" contained only one scene, featuring the hero Lightning McQueen crashing on a race track, spinning in the air, shards of metal and sparks flying.

Then, instead of showing the big-eyed race car recovering well (or having Mater the tow truck burst the tension with a friendly, "Git-r-done!"), the trailer abruptly ends, with an ominous title card that reads, "From this moment, everything will change."

And with that, what millions of children assumed would be a pleasant, nontraumatic screening of "Moana" became the worst day of their lives — maybe the first time some of them tasted the senseless emptiness of true grief.

"An 8-year-old wrote us and said, 'Are you really killing Lightning McQueen? Because if you are, I want to buy the toy that kills him so that I can kill him,' " producer Kevin Reher said at a recent press event. "And then his mother wrote also and she said, 'I just got him calmed down after Trump, and now you're killing Lightning McQueen!' "

Director Brian Fee takes over "Cars" directorial duties from John Lasseter, who directed the first two entries, and said that the teaser conveyed exactly what the team wanted to say to introduce this new film to audiences.

"I love that trailer," Fee said. "We had one thing we wanted to say. We wanted to basically come right out of the gate and say, 'This is probably not the "Cars" movie you're expecting, because the "Cars" movie we're making is probably not the "Cars" movie you're expecting.' So that's why we did that trailer."

And then there's the other reason why they went with that scene.

"There's the other side of it, which is, that sequence, those shots were done," Fee said. "When you do a trailer, you also have schedules, and you have a certain amount of crew, and only certain parts of the movie are already shot and animated, so it was a happy accident that we were able to rely on animation that had already been done, but it was actually the right message we wanted to get out there. We wanted to kind of wake people up."

"Cars 3" comes to theaters this summer, and by now, the filmmakers have opened up a bit more about what audiences should expect.

A return to Route 66 roots

In "Cars," Lightning McQueen stumbled onto a sleepy forgotten town on Route 66, where he joined a new community and learned the value of slowing down. "Cars 2" was a bit more frenzied, largely focusing on Mater as he stumbled through a world tour through many different countries. ("Cars 2" was also a "James Bond"-esque spy thriller with some serious vehicular violence, including a pretty messed up torture sequence. But it was still rated G.)

In the approximately 40 minutes of footage from "Cars 3" shown at the press event, the tone appears to be much closer to the first film in the series. It's more grounded geographically — and emotionally, with the comic relief Mater character barely in the portion of the movie shown to critics.

"This was a return to McQueen's story," Fee said. "So it felt like the right thing to do was definitely to continue telling McQueen's story, to go back to something similar to the tone of 'Cars 1,' so that was very intentional."

One of the main characters in the first "Cars" movie was Doc Hudson, an older, wiser car voiced by Paul Newman, who died in 2008, two years after the film was released (and three years before "Cars 2"). Doc Hudson was not recast for the sequel, but instead the character was given a death of his own, which was memorialized in a brief scene in "Cars 2."

But in "Cars 3," Doc Hudson — and Paul Newman — are back. Pixar writers went into the archives for the recording sessions with the actor from the first "Cars" film, and they wrote flashbacks into the new movie that could be built from the found vocal track.

"There was so much great Paul Newman stuff," said writer Kiel Murray. "And also, I remember because I was on that film, they kept it rolling all the time, even when he was just telling stories and wasn't (performing). So it was really just a matter of listening to it all. … Honestly, any time you hear his voice, it's just good. It just cuts through."

Bringing Doc Hudson back speaks to the thematic aims of "Cars 3," which makes Lightning confront his own mortality and age. And the writers looked to other sources of inspiration for that idea as well.

"We talked a lot about aging athletes — Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jordan — what do they do when their legs aren't as springy and when you've got young guys coming in?" said writer Bob Peterson. "Do they crumble, or do they learn to play as an older, wiser (player)? And so we talked a lot about that, and how that might extend into a universal truth outside of athletics, outside of cars or toys or whatever, the idea of persevering when you feel obsolete. … And when you find those universal truths, you think, 'Well, maybe that is a story that needs to be told.' "

Listen to audio versions of my interviews used for this story on The Pixar Podcast at thepixarpodcast.com.^[1]

Derrick Clements is a features reporter at the Daily Herald. Contact him at (801) 344-2544, dclements@heraldextra.com ^[2] and on Twitter: @derrific