I have a controversial Pixar opinion: Cars 3 is their best movie. Now, HEAR ME OUT. In the film, as the next generation of racing cars prove to be faster than the last, Lightning McQueen finds himself grappling with the realities of being too old to compete. Trained by a young and eager technician, Cruz Ramirez, Lightning McQueen looks to his old mentor and discovers that sometimes admitting defeat is less about quitting and more about using what you have learned to inspire the next great racer.
I am very aware that Cars 3 is always ranked last or second to last on all of the “Pixar Films Ranked” articles out there. And this fact, I’m sure, has led many of you to avoid the film completely. The themes in this film are great, but maybe it was not the best money maker, as proven by the film’s status as one of the top-five lowest grossing Pixar films. When released, Cars 3 was defined more by how it served as the final chapter in the Cars trilogy and less by how it stood as a film on its own. A lot of this had to do with the fact it was the final installment of a beloved film, but I think the film was also disregarded because it is viewed primarily as a children’s film, not a sports film. That’s unfortunate because Cars 3 should be the blueprint for how women athletes are portrayed in sports films.
The categorization of the Cars trilogy’s genre is tricky at first. Is it a comedy? Is it a children’s film? Can it be a sports film if the athletes are the cars? Is auto racing even a sport? As most films do, this film actually falls into a few different genre categories. It has comedy, it has romance, it has drama, but the question is, does it have sports? If we suspend our beliefs temporarily, in the Cars cinematic universe, Lightning, Doc Hudson, and Cruz are presented as modern-day, mainstream celebrity athletes. They have brand deals, sponsors, trainers; the racing is based on their ability, and their fans interact with them as if they were athletes like Simone Biles or Tom Brady. Even if we take ourselves out of the context of the film, there is a lot of evidence that supports auto racing as a legitimate sport. People have been racing for sport since 1867. In the 1900 Summer Olympics, auto racing was actually done as a competitive event.
What is the difference between a sports film and a film with sports in it? According to the book Sports and Film, for a film to be a sports film, it has to have: an athlete, a sport, and the film must depend on the sport for plot resolution. In Cars 3, we have two athletes: Lightning and Cruz. We have a sport: auto racing. We have a plot that is driven by the sport: Lightning McQueen’s desire to overcome his physical limitations and prove he is still the best racer in his division and coming to realize when the right time to pass the baton to the next generation of racers is. Unlike other sports films, however, Lightning McQueen passes his knowledge onto a capable female athlete in whom he sees potential. She does not beg for his guidance. He does not question her ability; he simply accepts the nature of his situation and imparts his knowledge, experience, and glory onto her. The traditional sports mentor/mentee relationship has reinforced gender roles and served capitalism. Through Pixar’s Cars 3, the mentor/mentee relationship has been reshaped and redefined to reflect a modern understanding of sports tropes and sports relationships.
Cars 3 came out in 2017, a year when the only two major female sports events were Serena Williams defeating her sister Venus, and winning her 23rd Grand Slam single’s title, and the women’s Olympic gymnastics team doctor being sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for sexually abusing over 150 girls and women athletes. Although part of a very well-known film series, Cars 3 comes out during a year where it couldn’t be any clearer that sexism and abuse in sports is an issue within the sports industry that needs to be addressed. Pixar takes this final sports film as an opportunity to address these issues in a way that takes the proactive approach of influencing the next generation of athletes and sports viewers.
While other sports movies of 2017, like Battle of the Sexes and I, Tonya, addressed very specific incidents of blatant sexism in the sports industry, Cars 3 uses its popularity with children to address sexism in sports in general, the way it affects the athletes, and teaches how we can grow and change as individuals to make space for all kinds of athletes.
Since 2017, there has been a bigger effort to put transparency into sports, in terms of sexual abuse, as in the documentary Athlete A (2020), and in terms of mental health, as we saw in the documentary The Weight of Gold (2020). These documentaries, along with Cars 3, destigmatize the superiority of athletes, take the power away from the idyllic male body, and recenter the focus of athletics on talent and passion for the sport. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the influence of these documentaries and Cars 3 can be seen in sports television shows as recent as 2021. For example, Ted Lasso combines all of these influences to present a show about sports that focuses on mental health and the symbiotic nature of mentor/mentee relationships — the coach needs the players as much as the players need him. This healthy representation of sports in Ted Lasso still doesn’t feature female athletes, but it does feature a female team owner who values and listens to her players.
Traditionally, when there is a movie about athletics, the focus is customarily on training a man: Karate Kid, Rudy, Creed, Cinderella Man, etc. Women often play the supporting role in sports films because of gender stereotypes that reinforce the idea that women can’t perform as well as men athletically. Sports films achieve this by focusing solely on male athletes almost exclusively. This feeds into nationalistic and capitalistic ideas of male bodies being superior, fit bodies being the ideal bodies, the inferiority of women, and the inability of a woman to carry a sports film, or any film for that matter. Because men are the focus of the sports world, we then see a decrease in the exploration of challenges women face in sports. Sexism in sports films about women is presented as a fact of the sports industry rather than a criticism. In Cars 3, Cruz speaks openly about her struggles as a female athlete, telling Lightning she never even tried to race because none of the other cars looked like her — they were all bigger, stronger, and more confident. Instead of telling her she is wrong, minimizing her struggles, or talking over her, Lightning just listens. Through his listening, he actually learns to step back and think of things from a perspective other than his own. He was so wrapped up in the difficulties he was having because of his age, he didn’t even think of the ways in which his gender gave him an advantage. Cruz asks Lightning what it felt like to know he could be the best racer. He replies, “I just never thought I couldn’t.” With a sigh, Cruz says, “I wish I knew what that felt like.” Cars 3 criticizes the inherent sexism of the sports industry by showing how, for women, knowing you will be the best is never an option. Women are conditioned to feel less than because of their bodies, their temperament, and their profitability.
All of this being said, there is the reality that Cruz isn’t really a woman. At the end of the day, she is just a racing car. In 2006, the first Cars movie came out, giving audiences the first Pixar movie with sentient objects that have no tangible human features. There are male and female cars, but really there are no discernible differences between the two. I think this fact worked to create a manageable setting for a discussion on women in sports. When the physical differences between men and women are taken away, we are left with female athletes on an equal playing field with male athletes. In Cars 3, visually there is no difference between the male and female cars. In other sports movies, women are required to take on male attributes to be successful. Women are often rewarded for being more stereotypically masculine — physically strong, aggressive, and confident — in sports films. In the films Girlfight and Love and Basketball, women athletes find purpose, dignity, and self-respect only when they become more like men. Becoming more masculine is a trope Cars 3 avoids by having all the characters be cars that operate the same. Cruz doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone, which is important because the film’s audience is children. Kids watching Cars 3 see athletes as just capable athletes, not male and female bodies that have been stereotyped and judged before they have even been given a chance.
When I watch sports movies about women, I am almost always disappointed. The role of a woman in a sports movie is either to support a man and help him achieve his goals, or in the rare instance that she is the athlete, she must rely on the men around her to be successful. The mentor figure for a woman is very different from the mentor figure for a man. In the film Rocky, Rocky and his trainer come together because his trainer believes in Rocky’s potential. In a similarly set up film, Million Dollar Baby, Maggie pursues her trainer in a way that insinuates she needs a male trainer to be successful. In Million Dollar Baby, the plot is the same as Rocky — an athlete is the underdog seeking expert guidance for a boxing match they will ultimately lose. But, when Rocky loses his match, he is still the hero. In Million Dollar Baby, Maggie loses and dies. Men are rewarded even in failure, whereas women’s failures are their demise. In Cars 3, a man’s failure (Lightning McQueen) is a success because he allows it to be an opportunity to give someone else the chance to succeed. In the final race, Lightning realizes there is no way he is going to be able to pull off a win on his own. He needs Cruz to pull off a win. He realizes his role is no longer to be the hero; it is time to step aside and let Cruz be the hero.
The first two Cars movies still focus on male athletes and male sports relationships exclusively. But in their third and final film, Pixar gave us a glimpse into the future, exemplifying the transition of the roles of women in sports films. The first and second Cars films focus on a man being trained by a man to do a sport that is only for men. This is very typical, as has been shown in countless films like Rocky, Karate Kid, etc. But the third Cars film focuses on a woman breaking into a male-dominated field. The film does it in a way that shows how hard that is. Unlike Million Dollar Baby, Cruz was allowed to win. And, Cruz’s mentor and trainer needs her just as much as she needs him. The relationship between Cruz and Lightning McQueen redefines what the relationship between mentor and mentee should be, by showing the audience a genuinely equal relationship between two characters who love a sport. Through that equal relationship, we see them both grow. In a film that is for children, they set the precedent early on that women are athletes and women can win.
Beneath the surface of a goofy film trilogy about talking cars is a beautifully raw story about a male athlete realizing the privileges he has through his gender and his journey to grow from that realization. Cars 3 operates as a model for the future of sports films. No longer about just glorifying the strength of men, sports films can address real problems and inspire. Like Lightning McQueen, we should all listen, take a step back, and take a perspective other than our own, making space for a broader range of sports stories.
Just as capitalism fueled women being excluded from sports films, it has also assisted in the recent increase in female athletes on the small and large screen. In the 2021 Summer Olympics, women broke performance records and set new records for the countries they were from. While watching the games, it seemed like every commercial focused on the influence powerful female athletes have. Brands from Nike to Dick’s Sporting Goods and Tide to Toyota focused on female athletes who were trailblazing. Some commercials even had little girls watching and being directly inspired by female athletes competing at the Olympics. In 2017, even Cars 3 centered around a male and female athlete together, working within the frameworks of the film trilogy and within the confines of the idea that a woman can’t carry a sports film by herself. But the abundance of female sports commercials from the 2021 Summer Olympics show that there is money in female athletes — there is an audience to profit from. The future of sports films will look a lot more like Cars 3 than Rocky.
