On many occasions, rewatching old childhood favourite films will lead you to make unsettling realisations about them.
This is something that film fans just recently experienced when someone made a major realisation about Shrek in a way that changed the entire film.
Now, however, it’s the Pixar classic Cars which is forcing film fans to revisit and make some terrifying realisations.
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This time, it came in the form of a deeply unsettling theory that basically turns the fun Pixar film into a near-phycological thriller.
Cars stars Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen, the hotshot racer who has become one of the best in the world in his rookie season by pure speed and raw talent.
After he becomes trapped in a small forgotten route 66 town on his way to a three-way battle for the ‘Piston Cup’, he learns things that change his outlook on life.
The Pixar-style twist this time is that it’s all in a world of living cars. Sounds like a pretty sweet story that you couldn’t possibly twist into a horrific one, right? Wrong.
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One Reddit user took to the r/FanTheories subreddit to share a theory they had created after making realisations about Cars and it is seriously disturbing.
The long and short of it is this, they believe that ‘Lightning McQueen and all the “cars” are human’ and Cars is a ‘psychological allegory’.
They go on to explain: “Not cars, not people trapped in cars, not ghosts possessing cars or anything like that. Lightning McQueen is just so religiously obsessed with cars that in order to tell a story from his perspective, they have to personify the cars, and replace people with their cars.”
Whilst this sounds utterly bizarre, they make an interesting point about the world of Cars, saying: “I want to point out that it’s obvious the world of cars is a human world, and that the cars are made for humans.
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“There are door handles, sidewalks, buses. I think we can all agree that humans either are or once have walked this world. The most likely answer isn’t that the cars are evil and murdered them all, it’s that Lightning McQueen is honestly just kind of a bigot.”
This references a common theory that Cars lives in a world where cars all gained sentience and killed humans hundreds of years ago - one that always felt a tad far-fetched.
They continued: “He just only perceives other people as their cars. He’s not psychotic or anything, he can see people, but he doesn’t consider them.
“Why do we see no pedestrians? Because pedestrians are inferred to not have a vehicle, and so he doesn’t feel connected to them at all. He doesn’t consider their existence worth noting. So they are erased from the narrative so we can connect better to his point of view.”
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They concluded their post: “He is so religiously, unbreakably, distortedly obsessed with cars that he humanizes the vehicles, objectifies the people as their vehicles when they’re not in them, and dehumanizes those who don’t have vehicles.
“To him, to not have a car means to not have status, to not be anything or anyone at all.”
People were mixed about the theory, with some agreeing while others were unsure.
One comment said: “I like this theory because it makes more sense than the actual movie,” whilst another simply said: “Nah it’s just a fun movie concept.”
We’ll likely never know – but it’s certainly unsettling to think about.
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Cars is available to watch on Disney+.
Michael Slavin