Cars 2

"Where no car has gone before."

Cars 2 is a movie from Disney and Pixar Animation Studios that went in theaters in Disney Digital 3-D June 24, 2011. It will be released on Blu-ray and DVD November 1, 2011.

Plot
The film begins with a red British car named Leland Turbo make a warning video for the British spycar named Finn McMissile. Later, Finn sneaking into a suspicious Oil Platform and find that evil scientist Professor Zündapp is in command of the operations there, but he is discovered and is forced to escape without getting enough info about the Professor's schemes. Meanwhile after winning the Piston Cup for the fourth time, racecar Lightning McQueen (now the deuteroganist) returns to Radiator Springs and rejoins his best friend tow truck Mater (now the main protagonist). While watching the announcement of the first World Grand Prix sponsored by former oil tycoon Miles Axlerod to promote his new renewable fuel, the Allinol, Mater gets angry when F1 car Francesco Bernoulli starts boating about how he is far faster than McQueen and he manages to make contact to the TV studio to confront him. McQueen intervenes and accepts Bernoulli's challenge to race against him into the Grand Prix.

By sugestion of McQueen's girlfriend Sally Carrera, Mater travels with him to Tokyo, Japan to the first race of the Grand Prix, but McQueen is worried if Mater could manage to behave properly. His fears are confirmed when Mater creates a series of ruckus in the debut party. While going to the bathroom, Mater comes across two thugs confronting an American secret agent named Rod "Torque" Redline, who slips a device containing classified info into his body without him noticing, and is approached by McMissile's assistent, Holley Shiftwell who mistakes him for the agent and they agree to meet during the race in the following day. Rod Redline is then captured and brought to Professor Z who reveals that cars fueled with Allinol explode when exposed to a high level of radiation. He makes a demonstration on the agent himself after figuring that Mater has the info and orders his men to capture him.

The race in Tokyo begins and Bernoulli soon takes the lead until he is surpassed by McQueen. Zündapp's agents make use of a radiaton beam disguised as a camera to ignite the Allinol in some competitors, leading to some accidents. McMissile and Shiftwell find that the agents are coming after Mater and manage to have him flee to the streets by hacking the transmitter he is using to pass instructions to McQueen, which ends up having McQueen surrendering the lead to Bernoulli by mistake. McMissile manages to save Mater from his persuers, but McQueen blames Mater for losing the race and claims that he does not need his help anymore. Saddened for having his best friend angry on him, Mater leaves to the airport to take a plane home but once again he is persued by the Professor's thugs just to be rescued in time by McMissile. Still mistaking him for a secret agent, McMissile and Shiftwell ask Mater to help them thwart Zündapp's plans.

In Italy where the second leg of the Grand Prix is being held, Mater manages to infiltrate into the criminal's meeting diguised and finds that the mysterious chain of accidents occurring during the races is part of a plan to discredit the Allinol and ensure that all cars keep using conventional fuel to secure the profits of their organization who managed to secure the largest unexplored Oil resources in the world. With most cars out of the race due to the explosions, McQueen and Bernoulli end up in first and second respectively. Miles Axlerod states that with the Allinol under suspicion he decides to suspend use of the fuel for the third and final leg in England, but McQueen states that he trusts Axlerod's fuel and will keep using it. The criminals then decide to have McQueen killed in the next race. Mater reveals himself by accident and rushes to warn his friend, but is captured along McMissile and Shiftwell before being able to do so.

Mater wakes up tied up in London inside Big Ben with McMissile and Shiftwell minutes away from being crushed by its gears. The last race begins and the criminals use the radiaton device on McQueen, but surprisingly, nothing happens (later is revealed that Fillmore replaced the Allinol with his own organic fuel mixture). But Mater learns that a bomb was put into the pit, set to explode when McQueen stops there and he manages to escape to warn his friends. McMissile and Shiftwell succeed to free themselves too but find that the bomb is actually is on Mater. They warn him about the bomb just when he is about to rejoin the others and flees to protect them, with McQueen going after him unaware of the situation.

Professor Z tries to detonate the bomb remotely just to find that the device is out of signal's range. He then orders his thugs to corner Mater with his friends to have them explode together, but the army and the police intervenes and have him arrested. McMissile orders Zündapp to deactivate the bomb onto Mater but he claims that only the one who installed it is able to do so. Mater then figures out that the true mastermind behind the criminals is no other than Miles Axlerod himself whose aim was to have the world relenquish the use of alternative fuels at all in favor of the Oil reserves in his posession. Axlerod ends up confirming Mater's suspicion when he is confronted by him and forced to deactivate the bomb with a voice command to prevent it from killing both. For stopping Axlerod's plans, Mater is honored Knight by the Queen and returns home with his friends where the cars from the Grand Prix take part into their own, unofficial race in Radiator Springs. McMissile and Shiftwell pay a visit to Mater and invite him to join them in another secret mission, but he declines, claiming that he is in the place he should be.

Voice cast
Three voice actors of the original Cars film have also died since the first film had been released. Joe Ranft, who voiced Red and Jerry Recycled Batteries, died in a car accident in 2005 during production of the first film. Although Red appears in Cars 2, he does not vocalize.
 * Larry the Cable Guy: Mater
 * Owen Wilson: Lightning McQueen
 * Michael Caine: Finn McMissile
 * Emily Mortimer: Holley Shiftwell
 * Thomas Kretschmann: Professor Z
 * Joe Mantegna: Grem
 * Peter Jacobson: Acer
 * John Turturro: Francesco Bernoulli
 * Tony Shalhoub: Luigi
 * Guido Quaroni: Guido
 * Paul Dooley: Sarge
 * Lloyd Sherr: Fillmore / Tony Trihull
 * Jason Isaacs: Siddeley / Leland Turbo
 * Bruce Campbell: Rod "Torque" Redline
 * Michel Michelis: Tomber
 * Jeff Gordon: Jeff Gorvette (as himself)
 * Lewis Hamilton: Lewis Hamilton (as himself)
 * Eddie Izzard: Miles Axlerod
 * Darrell Waltrip: Darrell Cartrip (as himself)
 * Brent Musburger: Brent Mustangburger (as himself)
 * David Hobbs: David Hobbscap (as himself)
 * Bonnie Hunt: Sally
 * Michael Wallis: Sheriff
 * Cheech Marin: Ramone
 * Jenifer Lewis: Flo
 * Katherine Helmond: Lizzie
 * John Ratzenberger: Mack
 * Franco Nero: Uncle Topolino
 * Vanessa Redgrave: Mama Topolino/The Queen
 * Sig Hansen: Crabby
 * Richard Kind: Van
 * John Lasseter: John Lassetire (as himself)
 * Patrick Walker: Mel Dorado
 * Stanley Townsend: Victor Hugo/Vladimir Trunkov/Ivan
 * Brad Lewis: Tubbs Pacer
 * John Mainieri: J. Curby Gremlin
 * Velibor Topic: Alexander Hugo
 * Sonoko Konishi: Japanese toilet assistant cartoon
 * Daisuke "Dice" Tsutsumi: Sushi Chef

George Carlin, who voiced Fillmore, died of heart failure in June 2008. Lloyd Sherr will provide the voice of Fillmore in the film.

Paul Newman, who voiced Doc Hudson, died in September 2008 after losing an ongoing cancer battle. Lasseter was at first adamant that Newman would return, even though he had announced his retirement from acting. After Newman's death, Lasseter said that they would see how the story goes with Doc Hudson. According to Shawn Krause, a supervising animator on the film, Doc won't be voiced by another actor in the movie.

Production
Cars 2 was originally scheduled for a 2012 release, but Pixar moved the release up a year.

John Lasseter conceived the sequel's story while traveling around the world promoting the first film. He said, "I kept looking out thinking, 'What would Mater do in this situation,' you know? I could imagine him driving around on the wrong side of the road in the UK, going around in big, giant traveling circles in Paris, on the autobahn in Germany, dealing with the motor scooters in Italy, trying to figure out road signs in Japan."

The spy theme of Cars 2 emerged of a scene developped for Cars, which would have seen Lightning and Sally go to the drive-in movie theater, where they would have seen a spy film. Although the scene didn't make it to the final film, John Lasseter loved so much the idea of spy cars that he kept it in is mind and it became a main element in Cars 2. It was released in Disney Digital 3-D, IMAX 3D, RealD 3D and 2-D.

Marketing
The teaser trailer for Cars 2 appeared on the Blu-ray and DVD editions of Toy Story 3 when it was released on November 2, 2010. The full length trailer for Cars 2 was released on Pixar's official YouTube account on November 15, 2010 and later appeared in front of Tangled.

Life-sized remote-controlled models of Lightning McQueen, Mater and Finn McMissile were created for Cars 2 as part of the “Agents on a Mission” tour, presented by State Farm, to promote the film. The cars were exposed in several North American cities, including Detroit, Toronto, Phoenix, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Washington, DC, and Miami, among others.

Disney has also began a viral marketing campaign with the Twitter account @ChromeLeaks. The first video released, Cars N' Deals of Emeryville Sale-A-Bration!, contains a number of Pixar-related references, plus a hidden message that will bring you to a video with new Cars 2 footage.

Attached short film
Hawaiian Vacation, a short film starring Barbie and Ken from Toy Story 3, was attached to Cars 2.

Lawsuit
Screenwriter Jake Mandeville-Anthony filed a lawsuit against Disney and Pixar, saying Cars and Cars 2 infringe on his copyright material, and have similarities to characters and a story he developed in 1993. Mandeville-Anthony claims he sent his story to a number of studios, including Pixar, and met with Jim Morris, then at Lucasfilm. He is asking for an injunction to stop the release of Cars 2. The next hearing was scheduled for June 6, 2011.

Critical response
Cars 2 has received generally mixed reviews from film critics. As of July 2011, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 38% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 189 reviews, with an average score of 5.5/10. The consensus was: "Cars 2 is as visually appealing as any other Pixar production, but all that dazzle can't disguise the rusty storytelling under the hood." Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 57% based on 38 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". It is the least critically acclaimed Pixar film. Considering the low reviews given to a Pixar production, critic Kyle Smith of the New York Post said, "They said it couldn't be done. But Pixar proved the yaysayers wrong when it made its first bad movie, Cars. Now it has worsted itself with the even more awful Cars 2."

On the positive side, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the movie 3 1/2 stars out of four, and said that "the sequel is a tire-burning burst of action and fun with a beating heart under its hood." He also praised its "fluid script" and called it a "winner". Justin Chang of Variety praised the film, calling it "the rare sequel that improves on its predecessor, this lightning-paced caper-comedy shifts the franchise into high gear with international intrigue, spy-movie spoofery and more automotive puns than [a person] can shake a stickshift at." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars, saying; "At a time when some "grown-up" action films are relentlessly shallow and stupid, here is a movie with such complexity that even the cars sometimes have to pause and explain it to themselves."

Various comments on the New York Times reveiw criticize the film, saying that the G rating is innapropriate due to the violence, torture, attempts to kill, etc., but is good as a James Bond spoof.

Box Office Response
Cars 2 has earned $191,003,042 in the USA and Canada, and $360,400,000 in other territories, as of September 27, 2011, for a worldwide total of $551,403,042. Worldwide on its opening weekend it made $109 million, marking the largest opening weekend for a 2011 animated title. In its second weekend, the July 4th weekend, it earned $31,629,695, off 53% from the previous week ($26,273,387 and off 60% for the three days), which brought its total to $122,560,310.

Cars 2 was released in 4,115 theaters in the USA and Canada on June 24, 2011. This set a record-high for Pixar, surpassing the studios' previous widest release Toy Story 3 (4,028 theaters), and marked the widest release for a G-rated film. It earned $25,717,785 on its debut Friday, marking the second-largest opening day for a Pixar film after Toy Story 3's $41,148,961, but it was still the third least-attended first day for a Pixar film, only ahead of Up and Ratatouille. It also scored the fourth largest opening day for an animated feature, trailing only Toy Story 3, Shrek the Third ($38,426,991) and The Simpsons Movie ($30,758,269). On its opening weekend as a whole, Cars 2 debuted at No.1 with $66,135,507, marking the largest opening weekend for a 2011 animated feature, the fifth largest opening for Pixar, the fourth largest among films released in June and the third largest for a G-rated film. In its second weekend, however, the film dropped 60.3%, the largest second weekend drop ever for a Pixar film, grossing $26,273,387.

Overseas, it grossed $42.9 million during its first weekend, finishing at #1. It performed especially well in Russia where it grossed $9,424,378, marking the best opening weekend for a Disney or Pixar animated feature (surpassing Tangled's $8.9 million and WALL•E's $5.2 million respectively) and the sixth highest-grossing opening weekend for an animated feature. In Mexico, it made $8,242,857 during its first weekend, marking the 10th largest of all time, the fifth largest for an animated film and the second-largest for Pixar, trailing only Toy Story 3 ($15.1 million). In Brazil, it earned $5,187,143 on its opening weekend ($7,083,757 with previews), marking the highest-grossing opening for Pixar and for a Disney animated film. It also premeiered at No.1 with $5,159,522 in Australia, where it debuted simultaneously with Kung Fu Panda 2 and out-grossed it. In New Zealand, it had a Pixar-high of $752,072, which stands as the fourth-largest opening for an animated film. In Ukraine, it earned $931,201 on its opening weekend, marking the largest opening for a Pixar feature, the fifth largest for a Disney film and the fifth largest for an animated film.