Cars 3

Brian Fee’s 2017 film follows Lightning McQueen as a faster generation leaves him behind. Fee had never directed before; he was a storyboard artist on Cars, Ratatouille and WALL-E, and says Lasseter and Catmull told him he was directing. Paul Newman, who voiced Doc Hudson, died in 2008. Lasseter kept the tape running between takes on the first film, leaving about 28 hours of Newman material. The Newman line in the trailer is not in the finished film. This is the first Cars picture rendered with RenderMan’s RIS path tracer; the earlier two ran on REYES with ray tracing. Lighting DP Jean-Claude Kalache says fine detail at glancing angles used to need hand built rigs; scratches and worn paint now stay legible at a distance. The ending is not the one a child waits for. McQueen pulls out of the Florida 500 partway through, hands number 95 to Cruz, and the two share the win. This is the third Cars feature and so far the last; the story continued in 2022 in the Disney+ series Cars on the Road. A good fit if you want to know how Doc Hudson’s return was assembled and can accept a hero who hands the trophy over. Not for a small viewer waiting for Lightning to win a race himself.