"Cars 2"

[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's going where no car has gone before. We are the spy fi guys, and this is Cars Two. Hello and welcome back to the Spy fi guys, where we cover spy fact, spy fiction and everything in between. I'm Zach. [00:00:20] Speaker B: And I'm Christian. [00:00:21] Speaker A: And we are back with our latest spy fiction movie, cars Two from 2011. Christian, would you like to explain why this was chosen? [00:00:33] Speaker B: Because I wanted to. Is there more of a reason than that? [00:00:40] Speaker A: I know I suppose that's fair. So people may be surprised to know that Cars Two isn't exactly a spy movie, but like Hudson Hawk, it has spies in it. [00:00:49] Speaker B: I will argue that it is a spy movie, but we'll get into it. So, Zach, before all of this, what was your experience with the cars franchise with Disney's cars? [00:01:01] Speaker A: Basically none. I used to work in a preschool for kids with autism, and the kids there were into cars. They had cars backpacks and cars pajamas. And although I like pixar movies as much as the next guy, the cars movies struck me as especially Kitty, if that makes sense. [00:01:20] Speaker B: All right. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Well, because kids love cars, it comes off as pandering. Yeah. [00:01:24] Speaker B: Okay. Now, I made you watch cars One before you watched cars Two. Do you agree that it is pandering and Kitty? [00:01:33] Speaker A: No. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Okay. [00:01:35] Speaker A: I would not say that, having watched it, maybe at a couple of points. But it is a pixar movie. [00:01:39] Speaker B: It is a pixar movie. And it's got a surprise. Like, you go in thinking you're watching a racing movie, and it's one basically that movie. What's? Doc hollywood. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Doc Hollywood? Yes, that I told you about. For those of you who aren't familiar with it. It's a movie called J fox movie about a doctor who gets stranded in a small town and has to work off a community service. [00:02:00] Speaker B: But it's also this tale about how the rise of the interstate highways basically decimated these small towns. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that was my favorite part, was the James Taylor song because I like James Taylor. [00:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was not expecting that in that movie when I watched it the first time. As for me, so I watched cars two without having seen cars one and having only an idea of who mater and I guess kind of Lightning McQueen were. And I watched it because it was marketing stuff as, like, a spy movie. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So I seem to remember I had this mental image of Lightning McQueen in a tuxedo. [00:02:39] Speaker B: No. [00:02:39] Speaker A: But maybe that was a fever dream or something, because it was not in this movie. [00:02:43] Speaker B: No. [00:02:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So Cars one was enjoyable, and then I had heard that Cars two wasn't that good, but I was like, well, it is pixar. Like, how bad could it really be? [00:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So why don't we get into this, Zach? Let's hear our haikus poems and synopsis. [00:03:01] Speaker A: Yes. So, as always, we do our poetry synopsis. Here is the haiku worldwide tournament. It's revenge of the beaters, friendship and. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Right. All right. [00:03:14] Speaker A: I feel like that covers the movie pretty well. And then here is our lumric. There once was a Mater named Toe who screwed up a race for his Bro. Two cars who are spies with a hollow disguise. By the end, he's found a new bow. [00:03:27] Speaker B: Isn't Bo usually referring to a boyfriend rather than a girlfriend? [00:03:31] Speaker A: We live in a progressive age. A bow could be either. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Okay. All right. Just put it out there. [00:03:36] Speaker A: I think so. And then here's the real IMDb plot summary. Star race car Lightning McQueen and his pal Mater head overseas to compete in the World Grand Prix race. But the road to the championship becomes rocky as Mater gets caught with an intriguing adventure of his own international espionage. [00:03:52] Speaker B: So we start with a cold open. There's a video message from a spy whose name escapes me at this point. A spy car, obviously, because there are no humans in this world, but there. [00:04:03] Speaker A: Are things other than cars as well, which is something we learned as well. [00:04:09] Speaker B: So it's an agent sending a message to his colleague, Finn McMissile, directing him to come to these coordinates. So we see Finn Mcmissal going to the oil rig. He's looking for his colleague. Part of this reminded me of the Tuxedo because he's using, like, sticky pads and rolling up the side of it. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Right. I also like that he gets dropped off by a Navy boat, a living boat, a boat with eyes, which I thought was pretty sweet, actually. We got car gadgets. [00:04:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Surveilling the scene, and he identifies this car named Professor Zundap, and he sees his colleague has been crushed by one of those car compactors. [00:04:53] Speaker A: Yes. What a way to go. It's a little hardcore for a kids movie, too. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Right. Is this the first appearance of guns in a Pixar movie? [00:05:01] Speaker A: There were guns in the incredibles oh, that's yes. [00:05:03] Speaker B: Yes, there were. [00:05:04] Speaker A: Which is my favorite Pixar movie, which. [00:05:06] Speaker B: Is why I have a pretty good chase. A car chase. Well, any chase by default in this movie is a car chase. [00:05:13] Speaker A: That's true. Yeah. [00:05:15] Speaker B: But there's a chase on the platform. Oil platform, which becomes a boat chase, because, of course, he can transform into a boat. [00:05:22] Speaker A: Of course he can. Just like in thunderball. Though I do think it's funny. Not Thunderball. Which one's? The one with the underwater fight or the underwater car? [00:05:30] Speaker B: Underwater car was the spy who loved me. But this is not an underwater car yet. It's just on the water. [00:05:36] Speaker A: Oh, that's later. Of course. [00:05:37] Speaker B: Then it becomes a submarine chase. [00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Though I do think it was funny, the part where he's backed up to the edge and then he just goes off the side of an oil rig. I was like, if you're a car, that's not as impressive, because a car is not going to splatter on the water like a human would. [00:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah. But it was like a reference to every like where Bond makes these big giant swan dives and goes into the water. But yes. He also pulls an Obi Wan Kenobi from Attack of the Clones here, where Know jettisons his spare parts to make it look like he exploded as he's going underwater. [00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Plus oil, which I guess is supposed to be like blood. [00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Oil has a lot of different metaphors in here. It could be blood, it could be urine. Urine? It's not an exact metaphor, presumably. [00:06:28] Speaker A: It could be menstrual blood. [00:06:29] Speaker B: Wow, okay. I never thought of that. I mean that begs the question of how do cars reproduce? We don't really know. There are so many questions about. [00:06:38] Speaker A: I was going to ask about that later. [00:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're introduced or reintroduced here in Tomato, or as he's known as Tomater. Basically his name's a tomato joke. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Yes. But also because he tows yeah. [00:06:52] Speaker B: Find out that Lightning McQueen is not yet back from his fourth Piston Cup win. [00:06:59] Speaker A: The first one is like he gives up his win. It's kind of a long story. But point is, he's becoming a winner now. [00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Well not just he is. He's four times a world champion now. Yeah the world yet because we'll see that here. So Mater's making all these big plans for his return. And he sees know Lightning McQueen has just gotten back. And we also get a reveal that Lightning McQueen has managed to change the name of the Piston Cup to the Hudson Hornet Piston Cup. To honor his mentor, the Hudson Hornet, aka Doc Hudson who was voiced by. [00:07:36] Speaker A: Paul Newman in his final film appearance. Yeah, I guess Doc Hudson's gone and they don't explain what happened to him. [00:07:44] Speaker B: Well, as we see in this movie, cars can die because they explode and all these other things. So something happened to him, but we don't know. [00:07:51] Speaker A: Yeah. They can die of old age as well. [00:07:53] Speaker B: So we get a montage of them doing all the things that Mater had planned for them. [00:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I have a note here. Playing on train tracks is fun. [00:08:03] Speaker B: They also do some tractor tipping, like cow tipping, except with tractors. [00:08:08] Speaker A: Except a giant one, which was pretty bulldozer. [00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:12] Speaker A: And then there's a part where when they're done, they come back to town and you can see where the road is repaved from the first little detail. [00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah. This is also where we get the idea that Mater likes his dents. He doesn't want know get them fixed. Because each dent is like a memory for him. Usually something that he did with it's. [00:08:36] Speaker A: A is that a thing in action movies where they're like every scar is a memory? Or maybe it's like a yolo thing. [00:08:44] Speaker B: Maybe, I don't know. Or I feel like it's a Batman thing. [00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that too. [00:08:49] Speaker B: Lightning McQueen is trying to give Mater the hint that he wants to have dinner with his girlfriend Sally. Mater is not getting the hint, but finally McQueen has know spell it out for him, and so he goes away. Sad. [00:09:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is some third wheel drama. Did you see ralph breaks the Internet? [00:09:08] Speaker B: I did, yes. [00:09:09] Speaker A: Okay, so there's a YouTuber I watch, not relative Media, who thinks that Ralph breaks the Internet is like the worst animated movie in the history of humanity. [00:09:18] Speaker B: Mean, the emoji movie. [00:09:20] Speaker A: I'm not going to go into it now, but I did like here how I thought there would be more of this conflict of Mater wanting to get too close and being too like there was some of it, but I thought it was going to be more of a plot point across the movie. [00:09:34] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:34] Speaker A: Which would have been interesting and very emotional. But it turns out not so much. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Hard to work that in with a spy movie as well. [00:09:41] Speaker A: They kind of do a lot in this movie. [00:09:43] Speaker B: They do, yeah. So they have their date night, and Mater figures out the only way he can join them is by pretending to be their waiter. And as he's getting their drinks, we see a news report about this car named Sir Miles Axelrod, who is this billionaire environmentalist he converted into an electric car. And he's got this new biofuel called all in all, and there's going to be a new worldwide race to show it off called the World Grand Prix. And he's even roped in this fancy Formula One car, Francesco Bernoulli. [00:10:18] Speaker A: I was like, oh my gosh, there's so much exposition from this one news report. [00:10:23] Speaker B: Sir Miles is asked, why is there no Lightning? Because he's one of the best racers ever. And apparently he's told that Lightning McQueen has just come back from a grueling season and so know having a break. And Mater decides he's going to call in and inadvertently gets McQueen to join the World Grand Prix race. And I'm going to say this now. You're going to hear the words inadvertently and accidentally a lot from me when I'm describing what Mater does. [00:10:53] Speaker A: It's kind of a plot powered by coincidence. [00:10:57] Speaker B: Well, not even coincidence. Yeah. Just accident. Yeah. [00:11:02] Speaker A: So I like this smug European rival. Do you remember in The Man from uncle where they had that Italian race car? [00:11:08] Speaker B: Yeah. It was the husband of the other guy. Of the woman, rather. [00:11:14] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. There's also a part here where Lightning says cachow for the first time. And he says cachow just often enough that it's funny, but not too much that it becomes annoying, which I appreciate it. [00:11:26] Speaker B: Now, Sally convinces Lightning to bring Mater with him on the you know, he's never actually been to one of his races before. [00:11:33] Speaker A: Again, this is like Doc Hollywood where someone's out of their element. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So first stop, Tokyo. We see what a car plane ride looks like, which is basically them inside of a plane, which is a living thing. [00:11:48] Speaker A: Yes. [00:11:51] Speaker B: They're watching a Japanese game show that looks like one of those it looks. [00:11:55] Speaker A: Like the Takishi's Castle. [00:11:57] Speaker B: Well, I was just thinking, like, do you remember that show most extreme elimination challenge? That was on Spike TV or something like that. [00:12:05] Speaker A: Sure. Well, that's what it is. But in Japan, it's called Takishi's Castle. [00:12:08] Speaker B: Right. I was going to say it was whatever the Japanese actual show for that is. Yeah, something like that. [00:12:14] Speaker A: So this plane must be enormous because there's four cars per aisle, and each car has its own seat, so it's got to be, like, 50ft across. [00:12:26] Speaker B: Yes. We see them driving through the Shinjuku district. We see vending machines for tires and things. They go to theater. They do watch a sumo wrestling, all the Montage y things if you're going to Japan. [00:12:44] Speaker A: So I like how Lightning McQueen has an entourage. It isn't just Vader with him. It's like, five other cars. [00:12:50] Speaker B: Well, it's a Sit crew, because he's got to have remember the name of the hippie car, and also Sarge, who deal with his fuel, or I guess Sarge is probably security. And then you have what Guido is his name actually? [00:13:03] Speaker A: Guida. I don't know if we need to go through the whole crew. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Well, the two Italian cars, his pit crew. Yeah, they all have their jobs, but yes. It's not just Mater. So they go to the World Grand Prix Gala reception, and McQueen tells Mater to be on his best behavior. But of course, Mater does stuff to embarrass McQueen. [00:13:25] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:26] Speaker B: So he tells him that he has to act different because this isn't Radiator Springs. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Yeah, they're home. So I also have a note here. Apparently, money exists in this. Like, I guess how could it not? [00:13:37] Speaker B: Well, yeah. Mater wants to get a drink, and he finds out the drinks are free, and so he goes and runs over. So, yes, money exists here. Get that's not a weird I don't know. Is that a weird thing, that money exists in the car world, where everything's cars? [00:13:51] Speaker A: No, it's not. But I just wondered. [00:13:54] Speaker B: I mean, they have jobs. [00:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I thought it was like Communism, where they just did their jobs because they like it. Because that's what they're meant to do. Because in the first movie, they have no customers. So I'm like, how do they survive? [00:14:07] Speaker B: I assume they all just help each other out, kind of. Yeah. [00:14:10] Speaker A: Well, it's a poor, struggling town. [00:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Yeah. If it's a poor, struggling town, how would that work if there's no money? Because it just wouldn't matter. [00:14:18] Speaker A: Yeah, good point. [00:14:20] Speaker B: McQueen meets Francesco in person. They have a nice little back and forth rivalry. [00:14:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:14:27] Speaker B: And then we go over to Sir Axelrod making a speech. Finn Mcmissell arriving at the gala. He scans the room. He locates his contact, Holly Shiftwell, who's voiced by Emily. Not emily blunt. The other one. [00:14:40] Speaker A: I didn't recognize her name when I looked her up. On IMDb. But Finnie missile is voiced by Michael Caine. [00:14:46] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. He is voiced by Michael Caine, of. [00:14:48] Speaker A: Course, who recently retired from acting. [00:14:50] Speaker B: I did see that. Well, I mean, he's had quite the career, so good on him. [00:14:57] Speaker A: He has 90 as well. [00:14:59] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. So I do enjoy that they have the usual code phrase back and forth. But this one's related to cars, of course. [00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like the downshifter is coming in reverse or something like that. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Well, it's about something about some car has no air filter. [00:15:17] Speaker A: Some car has no air filter. Oh, yeah. Because that comes back later or something to that. [00:15:21] Speaker B: I don't remember exactly what it was, but yes. So it's revealed here that the oil rig was actually on top of a huge unknown oil reserve and that there was an American deep cover agent on the rig who got a photo of the car, who's behind it all. This American agent is at the gala, but Finn notices that the cars who were on the platform, some of the goons are here at the gala as well, and they recognize Finn. So Holly will have to do the meat instead of Finn. [00:15:51] Speaker A: I'm not going to lie to you, Christian. I do not understand the plot of a lot of this movie. Like, who worked with who and who is connected to what. [00:16:00] Speaker B: It's not that complicated. [00:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe I just turned my brain off or something. [00:16:05] Speaker B: Probably. So here's where we get the wasabi joke where Mater goes up to the bar and sees what he thinks is pistachio ice cream. But of course, it's Wasabi asks for some, and the chef is only giving him, like, small portions and all right, fine. Take this whole big thing. And I like, this is in my favorite quotes. The sushi chef says, My condolences. [00:16:32] Speaker A: It was one of my favorite ones, too. So it's usually a sure destruction. We both lost it, but it was great. I think I probably got the biggest laugh of the movie in that part. And I tried to work Wasabi into the limerick somehow it didn't work. [00:16:46] Speaker B: Sirxelrod is interested all the cars who are the racers, and Lightning is getting introduced. But of course, Mater interrupts him because he's drinking the water from this giant sort of water curtain. Know he embarrasses lightning. And also it looks like he's leaking oil. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Right. So is it supposed to be like he, like, wet his pants or something? [00:17:07] Speaker B: I guess so, yeah. [00:17:08] Speaker A: And I did like that. This comes back later. I completely forgot about it. But the writers did not. [00:17:13] Speaker B: It's not just know, pee their pants joke. [00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:17:17] Speaker B: So Mater goes, actually, this is also quite important. Because of this, he goes to the bathroom. There's some fancy Japanese toilets in there, which I was very amused by. [00:17:27] Speaker A: It's an old joke. There's a lot of Japan stereotype jokes in this movie, but we roll with that. No pun intended because. [00:17:36] Speaker B: I've been to Japan. Well, the toilets, if they're not fancy, they're also just squatting toilets, but let's not go into that. [00:17:44] Speaker A: Oh, boy. [00:17:44] Speaker B: They do have fancy toilets there, I will say that. [00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Alana, who recently joined us for Spy Kids, rented Japan recently as well. But it did not occur to me to ask about the toilets. [00:17:54] Speaker B: We see the American Agent Torque, who is voiced by Bruce Campbell. Do you enjoy that? [00:17:58] Speaker A: I did, but it took me way too long to recognize his voice. By the time I did, he was about to die, basically. [00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So Torque is having an encounter with some of the goons from the platform. So instead, know leaving the intel with himself, he plants it on Mater along with a tracking signal. He has a fight. It's a bathroom fight. With cars. [00:18:21] Speaker A: With cars, of course. But this is before bathroom fights were like a stereotype, right? I take it. [00:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Casino Royale had one, which is a really good one. [00:18:33] Speaker A: When did that come out? [00:18:34] Speaker B: Was it 2006? This is 2011, I think. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. It's after it's not in a cliche, but let's just say it's before the. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Big Mission Impossible fallout one. But not before the one in I think it's the same year as no, it's also before the one in Med. [00:18:52] Speaker A: From uncle and the one from the first episode of Burn Notice that we. [00:18:56] Speaker B: Talked after that, I think. [00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what meant. [00:18:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Anyways, yes. He gets captured. Holly goes to meet with who she thinks is the American agent, but is, of course, Mater. She gives the same spy talk code phrase. But because Mater is actually good at his job as a tow truck, he knows the response because it's just common knowledge to him. [00:19:21] Speaker A: For the first time, but not the last, I realized what this movie reminded me of, which is Armageddon. [00:19:26] Speaker B: What? [00:19:27] Speaker A: Yeah. When they're like, we need these blue collar guys. They know more than the top secret government agency how to do this. Which is exactly what happens later. More so later. But definitely in this part, too. [00:19:40] Speaker B: That is fascinating. I would never have connected that. [00:19:44] Speaker A: Yeah. It's more like what is it? The Man Who Knew Too much. Or yeah. Where an ordinary person gets or north by Northwest, where an ordinary person gets pulled into a spy world. [00:19:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Shifwell or Polly Schifwell wants to set up a meet with him, a rendezvous with him later because it's too public for them to talk here. Mater thinks that she's asking him out on a date, so they arrange for tomorrow at the race. [00:20:07] Speaker A: This also occurred to me. I was like, Wait a minute. So is Mater the main character of this movie? Became clear, and I got to say I would have preferred more Lightning McQueen. [00:20:18] Speaker B: To be no, no, that's it's. It's quite the shift. No pun intended. From the first movie. [00:20:27] Speaker A: Yes. Just because, like, shtick of yelling a lot and running around and breaking things can get a little bit tiresome. No pun intended. Oh, man. We got to keep going with these. [00:20:40] Speaker B: Oh, man. Oh, boy. And we're not even trying. [00:20:44] Speaker A: You got to get your dad joke game like, up and running, man. [00:20:48] Speaker B: All right, so we go to Torque being interrogated by the goon cars and they give him some all in all and they have him on this sort of treadmill thing to get his RPMs high and hit his motor with an EMP, which apparently will explode his engine block. [00:21:07] Speaker A: It seems like there's an easier way to kill a car. [00:21:09] Speaker B: Well, they've got to show off their method for screwing up the entire race. [00:21:15] Speaker A: They're testing their carbon freeze on Captain Solo. [00:21:18] Speaker B: Right. So they're doing this to try to get him to reveal which car he gave the intel to. And they're showing photos of all these different cars that he interacted with during the Gala. And when the Mater's photo shows up, he doesn't say anything, but his eyes go back and forth, forth, and so they realize it's him. And then they turn this dial up to eleven and his engine block explodes. We don't see it. What we're focused on is the photo of Mater, but you see the reflection of, like, an explosion in the screen. What do you think? I like that. It was scarily effective. [00:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it made me sad because it was a gruesome way to go and it meant no more Bruce Campbell. [00:22:03] Speaker B: So we go to the first race, which, like we said, is set in Tokyo. The course is mixed to give everyone a fair shot because the cars are not you have Lightning McQueen, who's more of a NASCAR style. And you have, say, Francesco, who is an F One style. So they've all got their parts of the track, which they are the best at, but it's also supposed to be equalizer. [00:22:27] Speaker A: So did you ever play Cruising World? The arcade? [00:22:30] Speaker B: I was going to say I was going to bring that up later. That each of these courses feels like a Cruising World track. [00:22:35] Speaker A: That's right. It reminds me of I have the note, Tokyo rules, because that's something they say. I don't know if there are cars is there a cars racing game? [00:22:45] Speaker B: There are multiple. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:48] Speaker B: I played the first one. There's one based on the first movie, the one based on the second movie, and then a couple of spinoff ones. The one based on the first movie is more like a straight up, like, NASCAR racer. The second one is more of almost Mario Kart style with gadgets and weapons. [00:23:09] Speaker A: That makes sense. [00:23:10] Speaker B: You would not like them because they're on the GameCube. [00:23:12] Speaker A: Racing games for the GameCube is better than shooters. I had a game called NASCAR Thunder that we played. The best part was the crashes. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Mater is in the pit with the rest of Team Radiator Springs and Holly sees him there. Finn is complimenting his cover as like he's talking to Holly, saying he's got a really good cover as this idiot, basically. [00:23:36] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. This is where things get a little bit frustrating because Mater just keeps talking and talking and talking, even though McLean tells him not to, which is kind of tiresome for the audience. And if I were a kid heavily invested in what's going on in the movie, it would make me even more so. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So Mater, at this point, is advising Lightning over the radio of which way he should turn and all that sort of stuff because he has a better view of everything as opposed to Lightning, who you just see right in front of him. So here the bad guys blow a different racer's engine with the camera EMP, and they notice Mater in the pits. So they start sending these goons to the pit. Holly notices this and warns Mater over the radio, which she hacked into. Mater leaves the course and Finn is taking out all the goons. But like you said, Mater still has his headset on and inadvertently causes McQueen to lose the race. [00:24:35] Speaker A: Yes. Which was interesting. Emotional conflict. I also like that somebody is trying to figure out who the goons are. And there's a part where they say the Vin number matches. They reference the Vin number a couple of times. So, having recently bought a new car and become more familiar with it, I imagine the car DMV in this world is like a huge bureaucracy, like a. [00:24:58] Speaker B: Giant building, sort of by scale. Any building that they have has to be a giant building because yes, that's right. Cars. [00:25:07] Speaker A: Just to fit a bunch of cars in there. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Yes. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Just imagine everything's like four times bigger than it should be. [00:25:12] Speaker B: Probably. Yeah, but yeah, here's the thing about that, though. You said it was frustrating. Imagine how it would be if there was someone who just was constantly talking over a radio. [00:25:24] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I'm saying it's frustrating as an audience member because you're like Mater. Just listen to him. He's your best friend. Just stop talking, for the love of God. [00:25:33] Speaker B: I know. I'm just saying. I've been in work things where I've had to have a radio on, and there are people who just don't know that they shouldn't just be broadcasting everything over the radio. And it's just like, really? Come on, people. [00:25:47] Speaker A: Very true to life. [00:25:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So after the race, Lightning confronts Mater about screwing him up. Mater feels guilty and decides he's going to go home. [00:25:57] Speaker A: This is a classic Disney plot. I don't want to say contrivance, but plot development, plot point. Yeah, sure. [00:26:03] Speaker B: We also find out that not just one car, but multiple cars flamed out during the race. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Okay, wait, sorry. So flamed out. Did you get the impression that they died? No, but then they don't come back later, do they? I think by the end of the movie, there's noticeably fewer people I didn't. [00:26:24] Speaker B: Actually could count on, but so then. [00:26:27] Speaker A: At the end, they're going to use their EMP weapon on McQueen. And they keep saying, kill McQueen, kill, kill, kill. So I guess the weapon kills the could. [00:26:37] Speaker B: Yes and no. Because when we have Torque being tortured. [00:26:42] Speaker A: He gets killed by it. [00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah, he gets put. But he says they're saying that they can blow out their engine. It will blow out their engine block. And he says, yeah, well, I can always just replace my engine so it can be done. But if you turn it up to the maximum, they don't make them entirely explode. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Oh, I see. That's good, because if it did kill them, so we would have like a ridiculous very dark right. A body count. Get it? [00:27:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:09] Speaker A: They're coming. [00:27:10] Speaker B: They're coming. So Mater is at the airport going home. He's followed by the Goons, and Finn Mcmissell is there in a disguise and grabs him before the Goons can get him. They have a chase through the airport, and they do the I enjoy it. Driving onto a plane. It's fun. [00:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah, like Fast and furious. I also use a part where Finn Mcmissell uses a counter missile. Like someone shoots a missile at him and he flips and shoots one back. That's pretty sweet. [00:27:39] Speaker B: We have McQueen reading the letter from Mater. [00:27:43] Speaker A: Yes. This prompted a question for me. How did he write a letter if he doesn't have fingers? [00:27:49] Speaker B: I have no good answer for that. [00:27:52] Speaker A: Right. Because usually when they need to do things while he hands, they like, move their tires. But not for something like writing a letter. [00:27:59] Speaker B: Maybe they just put a pen. How would they get the pen in there? I don't know. [00:28:05] Speaker A: Maybe he got one of those little loaders to do it. [00:28:11] Speaker B: Anyway, so on the plane, Holly Shiftwell is also on the plane. And Holly and Finn get the intel. From the device that's been planted on Mater. Mater is able to recognize the photo of the engine of the car that's behind all of it. [00:28:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is also like Armageddon, where he knows better than these guys with all of their resources because he's a blue collar working man, working truck. [00:28:34] Speaker B: He also inadvertently clues them into the fact that there are rare parts in the photo. Because they're rare parts, they can track those down easily. So they go off to Paris to visit the rare parts market. [00:28:48] Speaker A: Right. [00:28:49] Speaker B: So here we get a Paris Montage. We get the Arcte Triomphe. We get Notre Dame. [00:28:54] Speaker A: There's pigeon little little planes that are pigeons. [00:28:59] Speaker B: We get the Pond bridge sacrekur the Louvre. That's where you see the Pigeon birds or pigeon planes. Gasteau's Restaurant, which is a pun on gasteau's restaurant from Ratatouille. [00:29:11] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I haven't seen haven't seen I haven't seen a lot of classic movies. That's why we do this podcast. [00:29:20] Speaker B: Well, I don't think we can work Ratatouille into this. Podcast. [00:29:23] Speaker A: Unfortunately, I can try part where they meet this girl, and she jumps at the camera. It's like a jump scare, and then they get scared. And I was like, Why are they scared? I don't understand. Can you please explain? [00:29:34] Speaker B: Yes. And so that's in the flea market, it's one of the largest flea markets. It's called the Marchet al Pusses, or actually, in this world, it's called Marche al Pieces. [00:29:46] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:48] Speaker B: The thing there is that most of these cars, their eyes are in the windshield. [00:29:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:54] Speaker B: This car, its eyes were in its headlamp. [00:29:58] Speaker A: I did notice that. Yeah. That's what I thought. [00:30:01] Speaker B: That's why it's supposed to weird. Yeah. [00:30:02] Speaker A: So it'd be the equivalent of a person with their eyes on their chest or something. Yeah. I'd be scared, too. [00:30:07] Speaker B: So they go to see the person who deals in rare parts there, and who notices Finn through a bunch of rear view mirrors there on a wall. They have a Chase and Holly Tasers, the market owner, and Mater tows him out of the public area. We find out that the market owner is actually an informant for Finn. [00:30:29] Speaker A: This is where it gets a little bit convoluted, I'd say. [00:30:32] Speaker B: Is it? Why? [00:30:34] Speaker A: I thought so. Well, just because. Who's working for what, and where does the professor weigh in? And what's the deal with the industrialist? [00:30:40] Speaker B: Well, the industrialist, he's doing his thing, and the professor and his goons are basically trying to ruin his thing. [00:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm going to be in real trouble when we do our next john Lacare. [00:30:51] Speaker B: Said that he sold all these parts to this guy over the phone, so he has no idea who it is, but it reveals that it's his best customer. And then Mater realizes or inadvertently clues them into the fact that all of the goon cars are lemon cars. [00:31:05] Speaker A: Right. [00:31:06] Speaker B: And then the informant tells him, oh, yeah, well, all the lemon cars are having a big meeting in Portacorsa, Italy, which happens to be where the next race is. [00:31:15] Speaker A: Sure. Another contrivance. [00:31:18] Speaker B: Is it a contrivance? There's a reason for it. [00:31:21] Speaker A: No, I know. I'm joking. Do you think there's a political message here that this is like the revolt of the underclass kind? [00:31:29] Speaker B: Maybe. Well, maybe not in so many words. And we'll get more of this in the next scene. But the lemons are almost framed, like well, not the art frame. They are standards for the Mafia here in this movie. [00:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah, but they have a grievance. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:46] Speaker A: We were born this way. It's not their fault. [00:31:48] Speaker B: Born or built? [00:31:50] Speaker A: Born again. We'll get to that. [00:31:53] Speaker B: So they take a train to Italy. Again, the train is a living being that they're riding inside. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Is it, though? [00:32:01] Speaker B: Yes, it is. There's a face on the front of the train. [00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah, but the face doesn't move. [00:32:06] Speaker B: I remember, but there's a face. [00:32:08] Speaker A: I looked carefully. I just wasn't sure. Okay, so it is alive. Yeah. Someone told us there was a rumor they were going to make a trains movie. [00:32:15] Speaker B: They were going to make a trains movie. I think they would make a subway. They were going to do all sorts of this is all John Lasseter. This was his baby. The Cars franchise was his baby, as well as planes when he was still at Pixar. And we will not get into why he's no longer at Pixar. Right. [00:32:32] Speaker A: Is he's making movies, like plans? [00:32:34] Speaker B: No, we won't get into it. Anyway, so, yes, they're on the train to Italy. Holly has surveillance photos of the Lemons and notices that one of the heads of the Lemon families is being towed by a tow truck that looks similar to Mater. So they get an now. Oh, I do have the names of the two Italian cars on Team Lightning McQueen. It's Luigi and Guido. Basically, some of the most stereotypical Italian names. So they happen to be from near Port, of coursea. So they take the whole team to meet their family before the next race. We see that Lightning is sad about Mater not being there. [00:33:18] Speaker A: It's just not the same without his best friend. [00:33:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:21] Speaker A: Who he met. One movie don't mean I don't mean to be cynical yeah. [00:33:24] Speaker B: But it's been at least, what, four years? [00:33:26] Speaker A: If the Piston Cup is once a year. [00:33:29] Speaker B: Once a year, yeah. Maybe five years, I don't know. Holly and Finn give Mater a holographic disguise to look like the car that's towing the head of the Lemon family, and they're going to switch places with the car or with the tow truck. Now, while she's doing the final calibration of the disguise, holly tries to fix his dents, and you get the Reiteration know how each one is a memory to him. [00:33:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:55] Speaker B: Also, Mater keeps trying to tell them that he's not a spy, but they think he's know. Playing up his cover. [00:34:02] Speaker A: Yeah. They come off as a little bit dumb that they don't believe that or that they can't figure it out on their own. [00:34:09] Speaker B: They also install some weapons on him, but we don't see what he gets. But it's like the guns, lots of guns seen in The Matrix. It just opens up this whole section. And it's a ton of different guns. [00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Again, perfect for a video game. But I would be nervous trusting Vader around a firearm. I'm just going to say it. I don't care if the redneck. [00:34:29] Speaker B: That's entirely fair. So we have the second race in Porto Corsa, basically a combination of Monaco and the Amalfi Coast in Italy. [00:34:38] Speaker A: The landscapes look great in this movie. [00:34:40] Speaker B: Here'S where we see the Pope mobile in his own Pope mobile. [00:34:44] Speaker A: I remember talking about this. You were like there's space Catholicism. I mean, not space car Catholicism. [00:34:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So the existence of a Pope mobile, who is the Pope of and they even make a joke saying, is a Pope mobile Catholic? That implies the Catholic Church exists in the car universe, which implies that Jesus, as a car, exists who's probably named something like Jesus Chrysler. [00:35:07] Speaker A: Oh, you should read Cars for but how could he exist before cars exist? Would he be a cart? Get it? [00:35:15] Speaker B: Oh, God, I had not even thought about that. [00:35:21] Speaker A: Well, there were no animals, so how would he get around? Too many questions. [00:35:26] Speaker B: Many questions. [00:35:27] Speaker A: I also wish you come up with more car names for religious figures, like B, Moses, W that's bad. [00:35:40] Speaker B: No, that's bad. [00:35:42] Speaker A: I can't think of anything. Let's move on. But it's also a good joke about a three point turn around here. [00:35:48] Speaker B: So Sir Axelrod is also giving another press conference, talking about how he had all in all analyzed and it's completely safe despite the multiple flame outs on the track last time. [00:36:00] Speaker A: And then around here is another question about the car universe, because the smug European rival Guy wheels oh, no. [00:36:10] Speaker B: Francesco. Francesco. Is this about the open? [00:36:14] Speaker A: No, no, it's not about he's like and here is my mother. I love you, mother. And I was like, how can a car have a mother? Did she give birth to him? [00:36:25] Speaker B: I don't know. Or they're manufactured and then sent to is it literally like we used to tell kids where the stork brings them. They literally are shipped off to parents. [00:36:37] Speaker A: And then she raised him. She just happens to look exactly like him. [00:36:41] Speaker B: I mean, I assume that well, presumably you'd send cars who look similar to I don't know. I don't know how this works. [00:36:48] Speaker A: No, I actually like that explanation. It makes sense. [00:36:51] Speaker B: Lightning is still sad about Mater, and we've told Francesco has a home court advantage because he grew up in Portacorsa, so he raced these hills. We see the lemon bosses arrive and go to this casino, and Mater has to tow one of the bosses around. Holly and Finn have installed a HUD on Mater so that he can actually see and identify all the lemons of their names and vin numbers, et cetera. [00:37:20] Speaker A: Right, yeah, I quite like the joke where he's reading the guy's rap sheet. [00:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty good. So they're waiting for the big boss who's behind it all, and it's revealed he's just going to appear on a screen. He's, like, unseen, like, blofeld. Except instead of only seeing a hand and a cat, you just see the engine block. [00:37:41] Speaker A: Yeah, which is just not the same. [00:37:44] Speaker B: I mean, what would be a cat in this universe? [00:37:47] Speaker A: I know. Good question. We saw one kind of car animal, but I don't know. [00:37:52] Speaker B: So he does a big villain monologue as another car is flaming out on the course. And also another Holly detects the EMP signature and it's coming from a camera. So Finn goes out to find where the camera is, and the villains monologuing still about how, after the failure of all in all, everyone will race back to gasoline. And with the lemons owning the largest untapped reserve. It'll make them all powerful. [00:38:21] Speaker A: Right. That's why I was wondering, why do they keep blowing up the cars? And it's to discredit all in all Yep. But then the industrialist is behind it all, and he put all this money into all in all, so why does he want it to fail? [00:38:34] Speaker B: We'll get there. [00:38:35] Speaker A: Okay. I'm like the Mater of this podcast. I need everything explained to me. [00:38:41] Speaker B: So, yeah. So Finn goes, does this, like, parkour car core? Oh, that was bad. [00:38:50] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that was great. Keep it up. [00:38:53] Speaker B: I like it to get to the camera. Almost gets to them, but he gets captured by a giant magnet hanging from a helicopter. You Only Live Twice. [00:39:03] Speaker A: That was pretty sweet, too. [00:39:04] Speaker B: So the lemons flame out yet another car on the track who causes a multi car pile up. Holly sees Finn being taken away. McQueen and Francesco finish the race. The only two who weren't caught up in the pile up, basically, cars definitely. [00:39:19] Speaker A: Died in that pile up. I'm sure. [00:39:21] Speaker B: Or at least one. [00:39:22] Speaker A: I was like, if they can die, then they die afterwards. [00:39:26] Speaker B: Sir Axelrod says he'll no longer require the racers to use all in all in the next race. Now, Mater is still hanging out in the casino with the lemons, and he's told by Holly to abort. He sees Lightning get on TV, who says that he will still use all in all in the next race or the final race. [00:39:45] Speaker A: Yeah, he believes in it. He's like, I stick by my friends. [00:39:48] Speaker B: Yeah, because his friend, who's the hippie, like VW Van, whose name I don't remember, has said that it's good. [00:39:56] Speaker A: He doesn't explicitly say it, but I think it probably shows that he feels bad about it's. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Definitely. About that whole thing. Once they see that the lemons get the orders to kill Lightning McQueen at the next race, mater accidentally reveals himself and inadvertently fires off his Gatling guns and accidentally fires a parachute. This is where it gets ridiculous in the things that he accidentally does to make it all work out. [00:40:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:21] Speaker B: So he escapes, tries to find Lightning. Lightning hears him in the crowd, but can't find him, and instead finds the lemon tow truck. [00:40:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:33] Speaker B: And Mater gets captured by the lemons. So here we have this dream sequence that Mater has where he realizes how embarrassed he's been acting with Lightning. [00:40:43] Speaker A: We didn't talk about it, but someone mentions and it's like Galaxy Quest, where he overhears somebody talking about him, and they're like, Everyone thinks he's an idiot. That's why it's a perfect cover. And he's you know, he's not perfect either. He realizes he needs to change. [00:40:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Siechi has some self awareness here. [00:41:00] Speaker A: Right. [00:41:01] Speaker B: Which is the saving grace of this movie, because if he just continued as he was and just kept stumbling into things, I could not continue with the movie. [00:41:12] Speaker A: Yeah. He'd be much less of a sympathetic protagonist. [00:41:14] Speaker B: That's true. So he wakes up in big Bentley. Did you catch that? [00:41:20] Speaker A: Okay, I have a confession for you. Actually. I was like, is Big Bentley like the proper British name for Big Ben? [00:41:27] Speaker B: Bentley is a type of car. [00:41:28] Speaker A: I know, I got that eventually. Eventually. It took a while, but know, Michael Caine is so British and he sounds so authoritative. I thought that he knew more than I did. [00:41:40] Speaker B: Well, Bentley is actually James Bond's original car in the novels. So that's why I knew of it as a brand. [00:41:49] Speaker A: At well, yeah, I mean, certainly I've heard of it as a brand, but I was tired when I watched this. [00:41:56] Speaker B: He wakes up, he's tied up, and Holly and Finn are there too. They're like trapped between the gears of the giant clock. And they finally realize that Mater is not a spy. [00:42:09] Speaker A: Finally, at the end of all things. [00:42:11] Speaker B: The lemons arrive with one of the cameras set up inside Big Ben with a little like window so that Mater has a front row seat to Lightning McQueen's death. [00:42:22] Speaker A: Say it really dramatically too. It's like for the death of Lightning McQueen. [00:42:27] Speaker B: So the rest of the Radiator Springs crew who was know at home, so Sally and the fire truck and all the others that I can't remember show up in London once they realize that Mater didn't come home because Lightning called Radiator Springs to talk to Mater, but he wasn't there. [00:42:43] Speaker A: Right. [00:42:44] Speaker B: As they're talking, sir, Axelrod comes up. And thanks Lightning for sticking with all. It all right. So the race is ready to start. The queen is there. [00:42:54] Speaker A: The queen car. Yeah. [00:42:57] Speaker B: She's the one who actually starts the race by waving her flag or her antenna. [00:43:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:05] Speaker B: The race goes past Buckingham Palace. Through their admiraltry arch, you can see a couple of different landmarks. Like, I think you see the London Eye at one point, the lemons target McQueen and actually put it all the way to maximum. But it doesn't work. Not sure why. [00:43:20] Speaker A: Very intriguing. I like that. [00:43:22] Speaker B: So they go to the backup plan and Mayor's like, what's the backup plan? And they tell know that they put a bomb in his pit. And the next time he goes to pit, he will explode. [00:43:33] Speaker A: This is so dark. Like a suicide bomber type thing. [00:43:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So Mater still has his gatling guns. But they said, what you thought we left some bullets left. You're not that stupid. But he manages to use the Gatling guns to break through the rope, but just by the rotation of like miniguns. [00:43:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess it's both sure about. [00:43:58] Speaker B: To go and free them. He says, no, you have to go and save everyone. [00:44:02] Speaker A: It's up to you, Mater. It's up to you. We can't do it. [00:44:05] Speaker B: But Holly and Fader still trapped. And there was just a ruse to get him to leave because they don't actually know how to get out. But Holly realizes that she reverses the Polarity. [00:44:17] Speaker A: You'd like, of course. Of course. Yeah, because they're British. [00:44:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And get the clock moving backwards, they can actually get out. So they do that. We find out that Holly has, like, a flying rig. So she can fly. [00:44:32] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:33] Speaker B: But they also realize that Mater's escape was too easy and that, for once, villains monologuing about what their evil plan is has a point. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:44:44] Speaker B: Because Mater actually has the bomb in him. It's not in the pit. So, by telling him what their fake plan is, he will execute the real plan. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Yes. These villains are pretty clever. [00:44:58] Speaker B: So, Mater is driving to the pit. He tells them all to get out. Then he hears over the radio that he has the bomb in his air filter. And as soon as he realizes that Lightning McQueen finds him mate was trying to get away from him and drives away backwards. Reference to the first movie. [00:45:15] Speaker A: Yeah, this is more frustration, too, where it's like, just stop and listen to me. No, I won't stop and listen to you. It's like a sitcom. [00:45:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So, he actually gets on the track as he's driving backwards. Lightning is trying to apologize. Mater inadvertently activates some rocket boosters he has because he's going so fast, he gets out of the range. For the professor to activate the bomb. [00:45:39] Speaker A: Was all it all kind of made sense. I appreciate that. [00:45:42] Speaker B: So, Lightning and Mater end up driving off the course. We see that Finn is going after the professor and almost gets him, but gets caught by the magnet again. And to escape, he launches some grenades at the magnet. We see this giant explosion from, like, a distance. It zooms out, and you just see this giant explosion in the distance. And so I was like, did he straight up kill the professor? [00:46:11] Speaker A: Sure. Comes off that way. [00:46:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So, Holly is chasing after Lightning and Mater. We see the professor has been captured. He's not dead, but maybe they just killed the boat. [00:46:22] Speaker A: Right? Oh, that boat. The Navy boat. [00:46:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So, the professor reveals that the bomb needs to be deactivated by voice because they made a reference earlier that everything's voice activated these days. So, he tells the bomb to deactivate, but he's not the one who actually activated in the first place. So, that starts a countdown timer for five minutes. And so someone else tries it, it brings it down to three minutes. [00:46:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Again, these villains are clever. They're always one step ahead of the heroes. It helps when the heroes are dumb. I mean, he's not dumb. He just lacks some common sense. [00:46:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that lacks common sense, but he's at least gained self awareness of his shortcomings now. So, a bunch of lemon goons surround our gathered heroes, but it's Radiator Springs to the rescue. So, all of the other people cars from Radiator Springs rescue our heroes, and all the lemons retreat. [00:47:22] Speaker A: Yay. [00:47:24] Speaker B: Either Luigi or Guido. I don't know which of the two Italian one of them Italian cars is the mechanic is trying to get the bomb off of Mater's air filter, but none of his wrenches work. So Mater realizes he knows what he has to do, but he's afraid to do it. But Lightning McQueen gives him a pep talk, saying, you can do it. You're the bomb. Oh, no, you're literally the bomb. Go. So they go off with the rockets and the parachute. They head straight to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen's security tries to keep Mater back. But Mater reveals that the car behind all of this is Sir Axelrod, because he used the same kind of bolts to secure the bomb onto Mater as the engine in the photo, and it was revealed that it was him leaking oil in Japan, not Mater. [00:48:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Mater would never do that. I also like how the Queen's security is Land Rovers. [00:48:17] Speaker B: Also here we see, presumably, Prince William, because there's a grandmother. Let's get you out of here. And I don't think it was Harry. [00:48:29] Speaker A: Nope. Of course not. Harry's a spare. [00:48:31] Speaker B: Or Mater comes up with the idea that Rod faked his conversion to electric. And as this is happening, Mater is. [00:48:39] Speaker A: Getting this is like the parlor scene from a Hercule Perot Mystery, where he explains everything. [00:48:44] Speaker B: Except there's also a bomb ticking. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Yes. [00:48:47] Speaker B: But at 30 seconds left on the timer, everyone evacuates. Mater is continuing his theorizing and saying that Axelrod created, all in all, just to make alternative fuels look bad. [00:49:00] Speaker A: Very complicated plot, you might say. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So everyone else evacuates, and at the very last second, Saraxelrod De excavate the bomb. [00:49:08] Speaker A: It's to save his own life, basically. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Mater saves the day, and as a reward, he gets knighted. [00:49:16] Speaker A: They don't have some kind of car pun for being no, no. [00:49:19] Speaker B: But he goes back to Radiator Springs, where now the sign says, Home of Lightning McQueen and Sir Mater. [00:49:27] Speaker A: Yep. [00:49:28] Speaker B: And Mater is telling the story of his adventures. And these two cars, who are from the first film, who are the tourists who got lost, and then they're so excited to see them at Radiator Springs, and they hightail it out of there because they're too eager. [00:49:42] Speaker A: Yeah. My note is also as Holly DTR is with Mater, which means defines their relationship with Mater, which is funny. Unfortunately, this is kind of feel like a throwback to the 80s, where our male hero goes on an adventure, and then he just kind of gets the girl as a reward at the end. [00:49:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:57] Speaker A: It didn't exactly develop in a traditional way, but the movie is a little. [00:50:03] Speaker B: There'S only so much romance you could do. [00:50:06] Speaker A: This movie has a lot. It has a lot, a lot. Yeah. [00:50:09] Speaker B: We also find out that apparently, all in all, was literally just gasoline. [00:50:16] Speaker A: Yes. So that's a little disappointing. [00:50:18] Speaker B: Well, yeah. So it wasn't a real alternative fuel. It was actually an alternative fuel or it was gasoline that was enhanced so that it would do the thing that it did when it was hit by an EMP. And also, the reason that Lightning McQueen didn't explode is because Sarge switched his fuel. [00:50:35] Speaker A: Right. [00:50:36] Speaker B: Not the hippie. Without telling name, I forget. [00:50:39] Speaker A: Yes. [00:50:40] Speaker B: Because everyone assumed it was the hippie car. But of course it was. Actually, have you see it a little bit in this movie, but it's definitely like their left wing, right wing. But they're both friends kind of thing. [00:50:52] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:50:53] Speaker B: And so we have the Radiator Springs Grand Prix, where they finally settle. Who's faster, Lightning McQueen or Francesco Bernoulli? And as the race starts, Finn and Holly have to leave for another mission. But they just came by to pick something up or someone up because apparently the Queen has asked for Mater personally for this mission. But Mater turns them down and they said, okay, well, if you ever need anything there is one thing. So they let him keep the rockets and he uses the rockets to pick up the lemon car from the very beginning, tow him and to get to the very front of the race. [00:51:31] Speaker A: This is a throwback to the first movie as well. I don't know how well you remember it, but it ends pretty much the same way. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Oh, there is 1. [00:51:40] Speaker A: Meter flying through the yep. So I appreciate. [00:51:45] Speaker B: Yep. And then we get an end song, which I quite enjoy. It's almost a cross between a Bond song and a country song. [00:51:52] Speaker A: Robbie Williams cars one also ended with a country. [00:51:57] Speaker B: Robbie. So it's a country singer and then like a British singer. I know the British singer is Robbie Williams, who's done some sort of bomb takeoffs, but he did the theme song for Johnny English, if you remember that. [00:52:11] Speaker A: Actually, that does sound familiar. [00:52:12] Speaker B: Now you mention it, the country singer is Brad Paisley. That's the other voice on that. [00:52:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:19] Speaker B: All right. And that is our movie. [00:52:21] Speaker A: All right. So now it is time for our spy fact versus fiction. I can go first because they only have a couple of things. Sure. [00:52:27] Speaker B: I'm very curious what you've got. [00:52:28] Speaker A: So, just about locations. I was curious if they had made any of the locations up. Not really. So the Rainbow Bridge is a suspension bridge crossing northern Tokyo between Shibara Pier and a waterfront development in Minato, Tokyo. This is all from Wikipedia, by the way. The towers supporting the bridge are white in color, designed to harmonize with the skyline of central Tokyo. And there are lamps placed on the wire supporting the bridge which are illuminated into three different colors red, white and green every night using solar energy obtained during the day. So it is a real place. Also want to be a Mario Kart. I wonder if that's where they got the idea from. [00:53:05] Speaker B: Potentially. [00:53:06] Speaker A: So then Big Ben. Its name is Big Ben, not Big Bentley. It's the nickname for the great Bell of the great Clock of Westminster at the north end of the palace of Westminster. The official name of the tower was originally the clock Tower, very creative on their part, but it was renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to mark the diamond jubilee of Elizabeth II. Rip, the main bell is officially known as the Great Bell, better known as Big Ben. And that name came from an MP during a parliamentary debate who suggested that no, funny story. Somebody came up with the idea. Okay, yeah, I was a little disappointed too. [00:53:44] Speaker B: The one that is kind of made up is Portacorsa, which is like a combination of a couple of different places in Italy, but yeah, obviously Tokyo is a real place and London is a real place. Yeah, which I've been to, if you're counting the Amalfi Coast as the stand in for I've been to all the locations from the movie, coincidentally very nice. And also know Radiator Springs, which was in the Disney California Adventure, which is really well done, actually. [00:54:15] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [00:54:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:17] Speaker A: Was everything four times bigger than need to be because it's for? No, probably not. Did you do the honey, I shrunk the kids playground at Disney World once upon a time. [00:54:31] Speaker B: I have, although now it is like the well, it used to be the bugs life. It got changed to bugs life, and I think most of that got paved over, at least in Disneyland for the car's land. [00:54:43] Speaker A: We went to Disney World as a kid. When I was a kid, that was like my favorite part was that playground and parents were like, OK, you need to leave now. Leave the whole rest of the park to see. [00:54:52] Speaker B: All right, so I've got a few things. So, Finn Mcmissal, this is all about sort of what real life cars the characters are based on. So he's based in part on a 1958 Peerless, but of course he is also based on the Aston Martin DB five. It is very recognizable in his design that he's supposed to partly a DB Five. Holly shiftwell is a combination between a Jaguar XJR 15 and a 2008 Ron Motor Scorpion. And then of course, our heroes or our main characters. Lightning McQueen is based on a C Six Chevrolet Corvette and a Dodge Viper. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Not exactly NASCAR cars, of course. [00:55:34] Speaker B: And Mater is based on a 1957 Chevrolet task force totra all right. And that is actually from the cars Wikipedia. I don't remember what it cars, so I've got a bit about lemons. So in American English, it's from Wikipedia. A lemon is a vehicle that turns out to have several manufacturing issues affecting its safety, value or utility. Any vehicle with such severe issues may be termed a lemon, and by extension, so may any product with flaws too great or too severe to serve its purpose. Concept of describing a highly flawed item as a lemon predates its use in describing cars and can be tracked to the beginning of the 20th century as a British and American slang term. The British use is derived from the US use and is less precise or specific to be sold a lemon is a little different from sold a pup. [00:56:29] Speaker A: I don't know what that means. [00:56:31] Speaker B: Okay, yeah. Its first attribution to mean a problematic car was in a Volkswagen ad. But yeah, and also this results in lemon laws, which is that you have a certain period of time where if there's any flaws or defects, you can return it. [00:56:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good because with cars being so expensive, that's like a nightmare, though. I remember when we would get a new computer when I was like a kid to teenager, anytime they had any kind of problem like setting it up or trying to figure it out, my dad would always be like, it's eleven, it's eleven. Bring it back and get a new one. Hang on. Let's just try to stick it out here. [00:57:09] Speaker B: All right. Lastly, in the very beginning, when you see the crabbing ship, who's bringing Finn Mcmissell to those coordinates? The GPS coordinates are 40 degrees and 6.8 north, 172 degrees, 23.84 west, which translates to about to 40.1133 degrees and negative 172.39 degrees. This location is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a few hundred miles directly south of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. [00:57:47] Speaker A: Very nice. [00:57:48] Speaker B: All right. And that's what I got for spy fact versus spy fiction. [00:57:51] Speaker A: So, yeah, a little bit about the locations as well. We've been there with our spy gadgets, too. All right, so now it's time for our favorite quotes. Unfortunately, a lot of mine are kind of context dependent, right. And I don't really want to explain them all, so I'm not really going to go through them all. I'd like the part where meter is like undercover, and he's like talking, talking. He's on the radio and he says, what do you mean don't talk to you? [00:58:17] Speaker B: Okay. [00:58:18] Speaker A: There's also a part where the industrialist guy is like, with all in all, gasoline is going to go the way of the dinosaurs. And Mater is like, what happened to the dinosaurs now? Which was great, though it doesn't play the existence of car dinosaurs. [00:58:36] Speaker B: So have you heard about this unifying Pixar theory in that the Pixar movies are connected? [00:58:43] Speaker A: It's like a machine apocalypse, right? Like terminator two, basically. [00:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that would imply that at some point there were dinosaurs, because there's the movie The Good Dinosaur. I think it was Pixar, wasn't it? I don't remember. [00:58:56] Speaker A: Yes, it was. So regular dinosaurs exist. At some point, the machines rose up and killed all. [00:59:05] Speaker B: Mean dinosaurs also existed because you have their main what's their fuel called? Like one of the fuel companies is like something dynaco. [00:59:15] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:59:17] Speaker B: Which is one of those things that passes between the different Pixar movies. [00:59:22] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. There you go. Done in Pizza Planet. [00:59:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I. [00:59:26] Speaker A: Don't remember the context for this, but there's a photo where Mater says, that ain't what I meant, which I thought was funny. And then finally, on his HUD display, I think for Mater, it says Average. [00:59:37] Speaker B: That's when the Finn introduces himself and he says, finn Mcmixel, British Intelligence. And he says, Mater average intelligence. [00:59:44] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So I like that. [00:59:47] Speaker B: All right. [00:59:48] Speaker A: That's what I got. [00:59:49] Speaker B: So my two quotes are both from Finn Mcmissal. He says, now, that's how I like to start my day. You never feel more alive than when you're almost dead. [00:59:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:58] Speaker B: And then being killed by a clock gives a whole new meaning to, Your time has come. [01:00:03] Speaker A: Wow. And I thought arpans were bad. [01:00:07] Speaker B: All right, shall we get into our review? [01:00:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So, as always, we do a rating on a scale of one to ten martinis, one being Avengers 1998, and ten being even better than or just as good or even better than Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. So how would we rate cars two? I can go first. [01:00:26] Speaker B: All right. [01:00:26] Speaker A: I actually didn't think it was that bad. Okay, sure, it's no Cars One, but yeah, whatever. It wasn't especially boring. The characters were likable enough. Yeah, it didn't really blow my mind. The animation looked really good. Also, it wasn't, like, great either, so it was average. I will give it a five and a half out of ten. [01:00:49] Speaker B: All right. Yeah. So I've seen this movie at least four times, I think. [01:00:56] Speaker A: What? How is that possible? [01:00:58] Speaker B: Well, I saw it in theaters, and then I saw it again once, like, I think on DVD or Disney Plus 102. And then I was doing this whole rewatch of different racing movies, and I watched Cars One and Cars Three. I was like, Might as well go watch Cars Two as well. And then I watched it again for this. It's been at least four times. I enjoy this movie. Is it a great movie? No. But it is an entertainingly entertaining enough movie. [01:01:26] Speaker A: Sure. [01:01:27] Speaker B: Although I will say yeah. The total shift between one to two and then from two back to three, two is such an outlier there because also the events of it are never referenced again in the Cars franchise. [01:01:46] Speaker A: Three is more serious then, I take it. [01:01:48] Speaker B: Three is a combination between, like, Days of Thunder and Top Gun Maverick in that. Now, Lightning McQueen is the elder statesman, and he's training a new car, and he's also dealing with his becoming old and that sort of stuff. [01:02:05] Speaker A: Wow. [01:02:06] Speaker B: It's actually really good. If you liked cars one, I'd say watch cars three. [01:02:10] Speaker A: Might as well. [01:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:11] Speaker A: It certainly sounds like an interesting thing. [01:02:14] Speaker B: To base a movie around, but yeah. I have fun with this movie, I think. Yes. Do I wish Lightning McQueen was actually the star in his own movie? Sure. [01:02:28] Speaker A: I actually kind of appreciate that it's something different, because that's the thing with a sequel. Right? Sequels are hard because you want more, but you also don't want it to be the same thing again. And this movie definitely is not. [01:02:38] Speaker B: It's definitely not. But does it go too far in being different from the first? [01:02:43] Speaker A: It's like completely different. [01:02:44] Speaker B: It is. It is. I mean, you have characters like Sally, who was the main part of the first movie, who got three lines, maybe, in this film, right? [01:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah. That is also something that happens. I mean, again, the movie has so much in it, plus a new romance. [01:03:02] Speaker B: Car, bunch of new characters. It actually does a serviceable spy plot. All right. I like this idea of you see this all the time in the Bond films. They'll take the relevant thing in society, be it alternative fuels, and then work a plot around that. At this time of what, 2011? Even now, still, alternative fuels are still a thing in the public consciousness, especially with oil and everything else. So taking that in terms, okay, you have a billionaire industrialist who you think is pushing an alternative fuel, but he's actually there to make it look bad and world domination because of an untapped fuel resource. I think it's a good plot. It's no worse than any of the Pierce Brosnan era or even like, Roger Moore era bond plots. [01:03:56] Speaker A: The plot, the scheme, I think, was a good very there were a lot of moving parts. I don't know if that counts as a car upon. [01:04:05] Speaker B: Yes. I will say yes. Okay, sure. All this being said, I'm going to give it slightly higher than average, a little bit more than you a six and a half out of ten martinis. [01:04:16] Speaker A: Okay. [01:04:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're kind of around the same area of where I just get liked it a little bit more than you. [01:04:23] Speaker A: That's fine. Thank you for joining us. You can find us on social media at the Spy Fi Guys on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and our merch [email protected]. Until next time. I'm Zach. [01:04:34] Speaker B: And I'm Christian. [01:04:35] Speaker A: And we are the spy fi guys signing off. [01:04:41] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the spy fi, guys. If you enjoyed our podcast, please be sure to give us a five star rating on itunes. The theme song from this podcast is Mistake the Getaway by Kevin McLeod from Incompetent.com. Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution. 30 films, books and television shows reviewed by our podcast are the intellectual property of their respective copyright holders and no infringement is intended. [01:05:07] Speaker A: This is a personal podcast. Any views, statements or opinions expressed in this podcast are personal and belong solely to the participants. They do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the participants may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity unless explicit stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic, group, club, organization, company or individual. [01:05:32] Speaker B: You can find our podcast on social media at the spy fi guys on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.