Note: This article contains some spoilers for Cars 3
Pixar's latest film, Cars 3, at the beginning, seems to tell the story of how racing lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) as a sports legend, to consolidate and strengthen its position. He was desperate to prove that he was different from the confident, younger, more technologically advanced cars. However, at the end of the film, he cedes the throne to Cruz Ramirez, a cool sister voiced by Cristela Alonzo. She was a young racing technician who dreamed of becoming a racing driver like Lightning McQueen, but she never imagined that dream would come true. And Ramirez's process of realizing his dream is the biggest and most amazing surprise that "Cars 3" gives us.
Before the relationship between Lightning McQueen and Cool Sister became the subject of the film in the second half of Cars 3, the Cars series, including its two spin-offs, Airplanes, was dominated by male characters. While a small number of female characters appear in each film, such as Lightning McQueen's longtime girlfriend Sally (voiced by Bonnie Hunt), the core story revolves around men: for example, in the first part, Lightning McQueen and his mentor Dr. Hudson (voiced by Paul Newman); trailer Bonjad (voiced by Ace Operator Larry) and British spy Mike Missile (voiced by Michael Kane), among others. So, at the end of this new movie, when Cool Sister was able to fulfill her wish, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. At the same time, the film ends with a hint that if Lightning McQueen can't help others, then his own future becomes less important.
Before the climax of the racing part of the movie, Lightning McQueen is still unable to compete with the new generation of racing drivers after hard training, and Cool Sister has a very infectious clip at this time, telling why she did not choose to pursue her racing dreams. "Either keep a small dream or don't dream at all" was what her family told her; whenever she approached the track, she saw other competitors and felt she didn't have the capital to compete with them, so she backed off. And the subtext here is that maybe because of her gender, maybe because of her race, Cool Sister understands that even if she only wants to achieve a little success in the racing world, she has to narrow her ambitions.
The climax of the movie is that Cool Sister gets the second chance to participate in a racing race, and she wins in this race. This is a positive step forward for Pixar, even though it came a little late. This summer, the cult Wonder Woman as a female character against male enemies has been heartening to many viewers. "Cars 3" is not satisfied with the cool sister's role point to the end, nor does it spend too much ink to make people impatient, it just right to create a vivid and interesting character, so that the audience hopes that she will always appear on the screen, and even the whole movie is about her.
In recent years, Pixar has only begun to offer more characters and stories beyond whites and men. Pixar's first film to feature non-white voice actors was 2001's Monster Power Company, in which the telephone operator, Celia Mei, was voiced by Jennifer Tilly, who is half Chinese. In 2004's The Incredibles, Samuel L. Jackson was Pixar's first black protagonist, and he voiced Cool Ice Man in the film. In the years that followed, Pixar's transformation was even more gratifying. In 2015, in Pixar's "Brain Agents", there were not only stars such as Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith and Mindy Kaling, but more importantly, the plot of the story took place entirely in the brain of an adolescent girl. That same year, Sanjay Patel's animated short Sanjay's Super Team was released, which tells the story of Hinduism and Indian culture from the perspective of an Indian boy. In November, Pixar Animation Studios will also release a new original film, Coco, with an entirely cast of people of color, in keeping with the Mexican setting of the story. There are also Pixar's next two big works, "The Incredibles 2" and "Toy Story 4", although not much is known at present, but Samuel Jackson has confirmed his return.
Therefore, placing a female character like the cool sister Ramirez in Cars 3 is the right choice. Cool Sister not only represents the diversity of Pixar's characters and stories, but also means that the "Cars" series began to focus on the poignant past of the characters for the first time, not just where they came from. In the first Car Story, the story revolves around the ballad "When She Loved Me," which is also the scene that appears in Toy Story 2, representing nostalgia for hot spring town rather than a review of a character's past. When such a vibrant image of Cool Sister appeared in the movie, with Alonzo's emotional voice acting, the audience hoped that she could become the core character in "Cars 3". The series likes to express nostalgia for the past at the beginning, but now at the end, it begins to embrace a new future. As a viewer, it is very gratifying to see such a Pixar.
(Translator: Chen Wanqi)