Negative Reviews Latest Black Mark for Cars Franchise

The Cars 2 reviews continue to get worse on Rotten Tomatoes. With only a 45 percent positive score as of Thursday morning, Cars 2 can officially be called the worst Pixar movie ever made. But perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that is the first Pixar film to be declared mediocre: It is a sequel to the previous worst Pixar movie of all time.

Of course, the original Cars still had a lot of fans and was mostly only at the bottom of the Pixar barrel because of the studio's other masterpieces. Yet compared to Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Up and others, the studio's animated cars looked more stuck in traction than they actually were.

But with the increasingly disappointing review buzz, it seems there will be no redemption for Lightning McQueen, Mater and the other vehicles. As such, it seems more and more odd that they have failed twice while every other Pixar creation has soared.

It is especially puzzling since the story and concept is so personal to director John Lasseter. The original Pixar mastermind told TIME that a family road trip on Route 66 inspired the original and its tribute to the slower but simpler car eras of old. That kind of heartfelt commitment helped salvage the first movie, but it was still discarded as inferior to Lasseter's other classics.

The sequel is a decidedly different movie, as the series has been reinvented in the spy-thriller genre. While The Hangover Part 2 was derided as being exactly like its predecessor in every way possible, Cars 2 is going out of its way to reinvent itself. This would seem to show Pixar's commitment to excellence and not telling the same story over and over again.

However, by making the film more like a regular old action epic, critics seems to think that the heart of the first movie is gone. In addition, with more of a reliance on Larry the Cable Guy's Mater as comic relief, the comedy sections have gotten mixed results as well. And for Pixar, mixed results in comedy, action and storytelling just don't happen -- at least outside of this series.

With the track record of Lasseter and his team and his deep attachment to this franchise, there's little reason why it shouldn't have worked as well as Pixar's other films. But for some reason the execution has been judged as just a little off, either because of the studio's insanely high standards or because Lasseter overestimated the cars' appeal.

That was somewhat easy to forgive with the first movie, although not everyone agreed. But as the reception sinks lower and lower, the franchise's hopes of not being the official black sheep of Pixar are sinking.

Sources

Rotten Tomatoes- "Cars 2"

TIME- "A Q&A With Cars 2 Director John Lasseter"