Mikey's Musings: Why Cars 2 will be brilliant

Cars is Pixar's weakest film. It's not as funny or as touching as the likes of Toy Story and the characters never quite resonate in the same way as the Parr family did in The Incredibles.

It's still far superior to 90% of animated features released these days.

When it's sequel was announced in 2008 (the first Pixar film to get a sequel since Toy Story) it was met with bemusement. Why were we getting a sequel to Cars when Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo were so much better?

It's because Pixar aren't in the business of churning out sequel after sequel of their most popular works. They care about their stories and characters, aggressively defending and protecting them from corporate tampering. If Pixar were in it for the money we would currently be looking forward to "The Incredible Incredibles" and "Finding Nemo 3: Where'd he go now?"

If you'd like an idea of how Pixar studios work I encourage you to watch The Pixar Story. It charts the rise of the company from John Lasseter's early days at Disney all the way to the release of Ratatouille. Watching it, it couldn't be clearer how hard this studio works to create truly special films. When Toy Story became such a success Pixar was put under pressure to quickly produce and release a sequel, a demand which would clearly impare the quality of the film. Rather than see a sub par Toy Story 2 come out, Lasseter, hot off the back of producing Toy Story AND A Bug's Life without a break, took control of the production and steered it back on course. To this day it is considered among the greatest sequels ever made.

So Pixar have earned the benefit of doubt. Of the many works they have in the library, Cars is the film Lasseter wants to revisit. In my book that means there is a good story to tell and more of the world to explore. It means that the studio perhaps realises that Cars has more potential than the first film realised and that it can be done correctly and is excited to do it.

That's a good thing. A production company like that is very hard to come by and should be supported. I mean who really wants to see Monsters Inc. 2: Monster Babies?