Cars vs Trucks

With two young boys I watch a lot of movies. One particular favorite of theirs is the 2006 Pixar film, ‘Cars’.

I enjoyed the movie the first few times but now when I watch it I do find that my mind tends to wander. I often wonder, for example, what has happened to all the humans. It was probably the 100th viewing that I finally noticed the connection between Cars and the Stephen King short story ‘Trucks’ (which became the movie Maximum Overdrive).

If you haven’t watched Cars the basic premise is that vehicles (cars, trucks, whatnot) rule Earth. There are no humans, just animate vehicles. In Maximum Overdrive there are only animate machines, hunting down humans.

So…

It seems obvious to me that after the vehicles in Maximum Overdrive bested the humans, they would have kept some as slaves, to work behind the scenes. The universe of Cars is set maybe a few dozen years in the future from that of Maximum Override. The vehicles probably have kept some humans around as slaves — after all I really doubt they can do some of the meticulous craftsmanship that is demonstrated in Cars (tires are not quite as useful as fingers and thumbs). The machines might have made the humans build robotic factories for them to enable mass manufacturing and repair and may have done in the human race, but I suspect there are a few of them skulking around in the shadows.

Next time you watch Cars, think of this connection and I guarantee you’ll enjoy the film as much as you did the first time (perhaps even more so).

After writing this I did a quick google search and there are dozens of similar posts about this! Clearly I am not the only one who has made this connection, which must make it true, right?