By David Futrelle
The ridiculous misogynists who hang out on internet garbage site Return of Kings are pig-biting mad at yet another female character in an action movie. Only this time she’s a talking car.
The Return of King-ists were furious about Furiosa in Max Max: Fury Road; they railed against Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as a fake Jedi girl.
Now they’re mad about Cruz Ramirez, the talking racecar in Cars 3 who steps in for aging racer Lightning McQueen and (SPOILER ALERT) wins the big race. Despite being a girl, and kind of a fatty to boot.
Call it the fat and the furious.
In a post on the site today, regular RoK contributor “Kyle Trouble” complains that “Cars 3 is the latest movie to brainwash young boys into being subservient to females.”
In Cars 3, Trouble explains, former hotshot McQueen is an aging racer who enlists the help of personal trainer Ramirez to whip him back into shape. But then, coming in for a pit stop during his big comeback race, McQueen decides to step aside and let Ramirez race instead of him. And she wins.
Trouble is outraged. I mean, this cartoon talking girl car had never even been in a cartoon talking car race before! And even worse, she’s a fat cartoon talking girl car.
I’m not sure how one even determines that a cartoon talking girl car is fat, exactly, but apparently Trouble is more of an expert on car BMI than I am.
Ramirez’ success on the race track “sends the message to young girls of, ‘You’re beautiful no matter what,‘” Trouble laments.
And it says to the young boys, “This is the way that life is. No matter what, you are going to be upstaged by girls because you are inferior.” Unlike the first Cars movie, there was no mentorship … There was no sign of guts and hard work on her part … The girl car just came in the race, took over, and that was that. The irony is made even greater by the fact that it’s the land whale Cruz who is playing the personal trainer.
The film, Trouble complains,
sends a poor message regarding body image to both boys and girls.
Cars 3 says that ultimately your physical looks don’t matter—you’ll still win at life, despite this. Even if you’re fat and out of shape, you can still win races. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Naturally, RoK’s commenters are equally outraged by the fat girl talking car as Trouble is.
“I took my kids,” commenter Seth Falconer laments.
At the end, Cruz Ramirez wins. By trash-talking the insecure male race winner … A woman tears a man down, and then gets glorified for it, recognized by fame, and celebrated by her friends. Then she gets to dismiss her (male) boss after she directly disobeys him, because Lightning (a man) digs her out of her problem.
Her win was literally … a pussy pass.
At least they didn’t make the cars gay.
“The worse women do in real life, the better they have to do in the movies,” complains someone calling himself michaelmobius1. “Art isn’t about representing reality – realism of any kind – any more.”
Roger Berens thinks films like this are corrupting the young women of today.
Feminism is giving women unrealistic expectations. I’m hearing stories about young SJW women screwing up jobs, being reprimanded, and quitting in a huff because their “feelings” were hurt. Guuurrll power is complete bullocks. There are feminist/Marxists who really believe that they shouldn’t have to compete with other people, and that their bosses should be happy with whatever crappy work they are turning out.
Bob Smith imagines a weirdly transphobic sequel:
I can’t wait for Cars 4 – the transmissions in the cars will all be actual, living, breathing trannies who yammer about SJW ideals at the lead characters as they drive; the lead characters will laugh at every word uttered by the trannies, and they will be empowered feminists who ridicule men throughout the film; and all of the lesser characters will be idiotic, subservient white men wearing hipster glasses and skinny jeans.
The appallingly named Iloveduterte proclaims:
My children will NEVER be aloud to watch Disney products. EVER. I will punish them if I ever see them watching Disney products.
One can only hope his children are entirely hypothetical, less because of the Disney thing than the Duterte thing,
PepeTheShort has an even more restrictive notion of what children should be allowed to watch:
The only acceptable movies for children were made in Germany between about 1933 and 1938
Englishbob thinks the real “take away from this movie” is that “[g]irls only win because guys let them.”
Boothe agrees:
Quite right Bob! Who granted women suffrage? Who allowed them to burn their bras? Who let them have unfettered access to breeding age males in coed colleges? Who granted them preferential treatment by lowering the physical standards to be police, fire fighters, military, etc.? Men, of course. I understand why, for pussy. But that denotes a serious lack of strength and self control on the part of our gender to have allowed this to happen and puts the lie to the whole rape culture schtick. It’s past time to take back lost ground…
Or you could just spend your time complaining on the internet about fat girl cars winning races in cartoon talking car movies.
I wonder if the Disney boycott extends to ESPN. How are you going to indoctrinate your sons into the proper amount of macho manliness without lots of sports and talk shows about sports?
Lightning only let her win so he could get some tailpipe.
There, manosphere. Everything’s fine, now. Go back to going your own way.
A message to boys, no. Grown ass men who seem to think they are the center of attention but rest on their laurels and put in C-grade work in everything they do might find this to be the case. Upstaged isn’t the word I use though.
And I thought they were parodies of themselves already….
By coincidence, I just recently saw the new Smurfs movie. I don’t think these guys would like it.
I had the misfortune of seeing Cars 2. Didn’t see Cars 3. or Planes. Won’t see Cars 4. Ditto Tricycles, Ox Carts, Rubber Rafts, Hot Air Balloons, Gliders, Submarines, Sailboats, Pogo Sticks or Unicycles. This whole genre is more unspeakably stupid than I can express. And people watch them for messages? I need to go lie down.
I watch them because my child likes them and because Paw Patrol makes me want to stab myself in the face.
(Though Planes 2 is actually, um, pretty good).
It’s an animated car, ffs.
I mean, okay, she wasn’t Edna Mode, that is a genuine critique. Everyone should be Edna Mode. Edna Mode is the best.
@Steven
It ain’t really a genre, first of all, and, watching movies for messages is half the fun, IMO. I mean, the plot of Cars 2 is about global warming, personal obsolescence, finding one’s place, capitalistic greed, a certain conservative pastorality, and more. It ain’t a good movie (let’s say, gratingly mediocre), but any art has something to say. These people aren’t ridiculous fuckholes, cos they analyzed a movie. They’re ridiculous fuckholes, cos they’re analysis is shit 🙂
@Steampunked
^QFT
a child asked, “Dad, why can’t I watch Disney?”
“Because one time I saw Cars 3 and a FEMALE car won. And she was fat and insulted masculinity – my masculinity,” said the father, obviously upset, while wearing a Fuck Your Feelings t-shirt.
There’s a really good chance that the next Doctor Who is going to be Phoebe Waller-Bridge. So you might want to get the Gallifreyan popcorn ready.
ETA: Would popcorn work on Gallifrey; or would it just keep regenerating back into regular corn?
of all the Pixar output, Cars is probably my least favorite, but it’s still entertaining. My son has sorta aged out of some of these, so I won’t see this one until it streams.
But he’s still down for animated shows, just not really the sequels so much unless it’s Kung Fu Panda, because he really loves the style.
@Alan Robertshaw
The real reason why Daleks waged war against the Timelords, the Timelords kept pranking them by sending popcorn that turns into regular corn when a Dalek wants to eat them.
Gods damnit now I might actually have to watch this movie.
Planes was really good. I liked it a lot more than Cars.
Echoing @Steampunked and @Axe re: Edna Mode.
aoidna[boian’lekan’g WHAT THE EVER LOVING BLUE EYED FUCK MCQUEEN you can’t beat the rookie in a fair race so you CHEAT just like CHICK HICKS DID
God this movie sounds horrible. The first one is only okay, it has a silly premise that works somehow, but it sounds like McQueen doesn’t remember that he was once a hungry rookie.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Oh please oh please oh pleasepleaseplease!
‘Slike regular popcorn, except it wears a silly and uncomfortable fiberglass hat.
@ Falconer
It was ‘Newsnight’ of all places that let the cat out of the bag.
ETA: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/metro.co.uk/2017/07/05/has-the-bbc-accidentally-revealed-that-phoebe-waller-bridge-is-the-next-doctor-6757025/amp/
Aw crap, she’s denying it.
Poop.
@Bina
Hey! as a cultureless person, I very much take offense to the association with RoK (stock joke is stock)
@ Falconer
Well, remember Moffat’s first rule (“We always lie”). They denied all the others too. Also she’s just said she’s not the first female doctor; but remember a little thing Moffat did called Curse of the Fatal Death? 🙂
I’d be willing to risk a fiver.
I’ll believe they’ll have a female doctor when I see her. They were teasing that twelve would be a woman, but then they just picked Capaldi.
Best joke I’ve seen on the internet all day. Why wasn’t this in the title of your post, Futrelle? Huh? What’s wrong with you?
Whaaaa? I just saw this movie! Obviously Trouble did not, or he would realize that the entire middle section of the movie is Cruz helping Lightning train, and she is doing the exact same things as he is, and learning how to race in the guise of helping him! But it gradually becomes clear that Lightning is mentoring her, even though neither of them is aware of it till the final climactic race.
The theme of the movie, to me, is knowing when the time has come to pass the torch. Doc Hudson passed the torch to Lightning and found great joy in training him, and now Lightning is finding this same joy in training Cruz. The new generation of “Cars,” personified by the snotty Jackson Storm, is technologically more advanced, and Lightning is simply not capable of keeping up with them; but Cruz is. Also, Cruz doesn’t “step in” for Lightning; he sends her in during the race, when he finally faces up to his own limitations and realizes he can’t do it. The climax is the last lap of the Piston 500, when Jackson Storm crowds Cruz into the wall and yells at her, “You don’t belong here!” (maybe a subtler form of sexism than previous generations of racers, but sexism nonetheless) and Cruz fights back and says, “YES. I. DO!!” And does a midair flip right over Jackson Storm and charges ahead to win.
On the surface, it’s for kids, as a Pixar movie; but there’s a wealth of themes hiding in plain sight for adults. It’s pretty damn good, actually.
@ Dan Kasteray:
Except the barrel is a shoebox. And the fish is a Great White. And there’s no water in the shoebox.
So no more Star Wars, Marvel, ESPN, Touchstone Pictures or ABC for this guy. Among others. Sad!
http://screenrant.com/disney-owned-brands-properties-trivia/
Although these losers have presented me, a woman, with a painful choice. On principle, I make a point of supporting movies which piss off the Manosphere. I may have to pay money to watch Cars 3 and this gives me a sad.
“and all of the lesser characters will be idiotic, subservient white men wearing hipster glasses and skinny jeans.”
…In this manospherian’s defence, he knew at the START of the paragraph that he was talking about a (hypothetical) movie about cars. It was only by the end of the paragraph that he’d forgotten it altogether. And, really, it’s not fair to expect these people to focus on anything besides being pig-biting mad for a full PARAGRAPH.