It’s no secret that I’ve been obsessed with the world of Pixar’s Cars for quite some time. Whether it’s just anthropomorphic cars or the cars’ eyes being in the wrong place, many elements of the Cars world don’t make sense, or at the very least are unsettling about a disturbing truth: It’s not just that it suggests a truth that suggests destruction. Or at least a profound transformation of humanity itself. I’ve even brought these disturbing ideas to the Pixar folks behind the Cars series itself, but I still don’t feel like this is truly over. Especially when we keep encountering new parts of the Cars mythology that demand scrutiny, like what we want to talk about today.
What I want to discuss today is a little different from other Cars-related discussions. Because it’s a deleted scene and therefore not actually canon. Still, the questions it raises are fascinating, and it’s definitely worth wasting a lot of wisdom considering all the ramifications instead of working or paying attention to your family.
Before we get into this, it’s worth a quick refresher on my overarching Cars world theory.
homunculus theory
The theory I’ve come up with to explain what’s going on in the world of Cars, why Cars uses human language and why there are windows and doors and school buses and mattresses, is… is what they call the homunculus theory, which essentially suggests the existence of humanity. The car has evolved into a kind of hybrid cybernetic life form, merging the car and the human body into an unholy union.
In this theory, a nearly vestigial human body is placed inside a specially designed car, which becomes a permanent shell of the human being and a new body through which he perceives and interacts with the world. There must be some sort of hybrid breeding/gestation/manufacturing facility in the world of Cars that produces hybrid human-car beings.
Now, I bring this up because if this deleted scene had actually been in the movie, it would have disproved my homunculus theory. This theory, once again, suggests that the car’s consciousness/soul/spirit is actually a vestige of some kind. human. This deleted scene deals with the concept of where a car’s consciousness, mind, soul, powers, and everything else is stored, and it has some pretty scary implications. Just take a look:
Now, this is what the animatic looks like when the movie was originally written and planned. You can see another example of the Cars 2 animatic in this official Pixar video.
These rough sketches/animations are often done to define the story and pacing cinematography before everything is actually modeled and rendered, but of course this involves quite a bit of It takes a lot of effort. Since this scene only exists as animation, this probably means it was cut quite early in the filmmaking process.
Now, let’s see what’s going on here. And it assumes some familiarity with the basic plotline of the original 2006 Cars movie. This happens after Lightning McQueen is arrested for accidentally destroying a highway that passes through the town of Radiator Springs. . In the final film, Lightning McQueen is tasked with repairing roads, and accomplishes his mission by towing a crude, tar-sprinkled resurfacing trailer.
However, in a deleted scene, McQueen is unwillingly punished by having his engine transferred to a steamroller. In doing so, all of McQueen’s personality, spirit, and identity appear to be transferred to that steamroller, suggesting that in this vision of the Cars world, the car’s engine is the seat of its soul.
Now, there are so many questions being raised here, not the least of which is how can such a highly invasive medical/mechanical procedure be performed on an unrecognized subject? The question is whether society will tolerate it. Even if McQueen was guilty of road damage, is this punishment really commensurate with the crime? McQueen says that if we were arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and we woke up to find that we’d had our brains transplanted into, say, a hippopotamus, we’d react with the same kind of fear that you and I would. Dew.
Mater then grafts his engine into the body of McQueen’s race car, effectively taking over his identity and life. Obviously, none of this is ethical.
And the deleted scene seems to acknowledge this. Because it’s all set up as a dream sequence.
So, okay, maybe the community isn’t so cruel as to transplant a person’s consciousness into another body without permission, but still, in this concept of the Cars world, the idea that the engine carries a given element is The identity of the car remains unchanged.
Does that mean that there is no such thing as an engine swap in this world? For example, in our world, people put Porsche 356 engines in VW Beetles. Would doing so in this version of Cars be a bit Frankenstein-like, putting brains in corpses?
What happens when you rebuild an engine? For example, if the pistons, crankshaft, and valve train are all replaced, is the soul still the same? Is this something like the Ship of Theseus problem? You have to think about how much you can change parts of an engine before the personality and soul are no longer the same.
Is it just the engine block? Is it the seat of all identity? If you have a sentient car and the engine block cracks, are you out of luck? Can you even get a replacement engine block? If you replace it yourself, will you still be you?
Personally, I’m glad this scene was cut. There are so many creepy possibilities that it would distract from the movie itself, and more importantly, it would conflict with the homunculus theory, which I love. That can’t be true.
