Planes

[LotsoA113]

So has anyone else seen that abomination of a trailer that was just put up for the movie? Seriously, awful stuff, Can't believe how far the Cars franchise has fallen (and I'm one of the few people that loves the first Cars movie!)

Any hopes for this being halfway decent are gone, to say the least. Is it sad that I'm starting to now miss the days of Cars 2? At least that one featured Michael Caine...

[Josh]

I think we should at least give Planes a chance. Yeah, I know Cars 2 was disappointing. But Planes is from a different production team. Director Klay Hall did solid work on King of the Hill, in addition to helming arguably the best Tinker Bell movie, Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure. Plus, Planes has reportedly been testing even better than Wreck-It Ralph.

I'm not suggesting Planes will be a masterpiece. But I do think a lot of early negativity has been unwarranted thus far.

[Macaluso]

Plus, Planes has reportedly been testing even better than Wreck-It Ralph.

I find this hard to believe

[Josh]

I agree. But that's the buzz going around. Of course, there are certain factors to consider. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if lowered expectations for Planes accounted for some of the test audiences' satisfaction. Nonetheless, the film is also testing higher than both Cars films, another somewhat positive sign.

[Randall]

There's no reason to believe this isn't going to be a fun film for families. It was never meant to be an Oscar-winner, but can still be very satisfying in a Madagascar kind of way.

And Cars 2 was actually pretty fun, too. I liked it more than Brave, and that won an Oscar.

[James]

Neither of the Cars movies were really bad. They just suffer in comparison with the rest of the Pixar catalog. If Cars had been from another studio or had been Pixar's first film it would be celebrated.

Cars is like the ugliest girl at the Miss Universe pageant!

[Randall]

Exactly.

[Macaluso]

Cars 2's biggest problem is that it should have just not had Mater or McQueen in it at all. Because all the spy bites were awesome, but the movie was really held back by Mater and Lightning.

[Randall]

Yes, there was no real need for it to be a "Cars" film.

[EricJ]

I find this hard to believe

Based. On. WHAT??
"Disney's still making DTV's?" "Cars 2 sucked!"? "Look, Pixar's making more sequels! (sic)"?
Uh, little bit of profiling innocent perps, there, are we?

Everyone seems to hate the IDEA of it being made; me, I'd rather look at the darn thing.
It's not Pixar, but they didn't say it was. It's not Cars 3 (for good or bad), but they didn't say it was that, either. (I know it came from abandoned storyboards for Cars 2, and one man's "greedy dumping of garbage on us!" is another man's useful excuse for a barely-related side story.)
Even Lotso seemed to be light on specifics about the "abominable" trailer, and seemed to be more upset that it existed at all. Shall we get the rope ready for the lynch mob, or just peacefully run it out of town on a rail the day it arrives on shelves? That'll teach it for showing us nasty trailers and pretending to be a real movie!

Cars 2's biggest problem is that it should have just not had Mater or McQueen in it at all. Because all the spy bites were awesome, but the movie was really held back by Mater and Lightning.

Well, that's a problem, THE biggest problem was that it was two different movies that never seemed to meet--Plot 1, Lightning's first race as a Good Guy (and will he lose his friends again for fame, even if they embarrass him?), and Plot 2, Mater's Tall Tales. ("Remember when I was a spy? Shoot, you was there!")
Think Plot 1 was the original "World Rally" movie idea that attracted Lasseter, and Plot 2 actually was a MTT that got too far out of storyboards to be done as a short, and was added in to pad out Plot 1, like all those diverse added elements of Brave that didn't really have anything to do with their plot either.
The two plots never seemed to meet except occasionally--"Hi, Lightning, how's the race going!" "Fine, Mater, who're those guys chasing you?"--and we kept feeling like we'd rather be watching the other one, if we had a choice of one.

[LotsoA113]

Oddly enough, Disney seems to have replaced the new trailer with the one that has been on every Disney DVD or Blu-Ray since Cars 2 was released on those formats, so I'll just tell you what was in the original trailer: lots of surprisingly lowbrow gags (Planes and Illumination are the only ones still doing the whole "animated characters sing 70's tunes" gag), some moments of poor animation and a feeling of this being not much more than just one last cash grab for the Cars franchise.

I will say this though: The trailer was edited extremely poorly, so maybe that's the problem here and not the film itself. The trailer got some poisonous buzz, so maybe that's why the trailer got replaced. Hope the flick itself turns out better.

[Josh]

Right now, Planes is at 23% on the Tomatometer.

I wasn't expecting Toy Story 3, but I refuse to believe the movie is that bad.

[Randall]

Ouch. Only 14 reviews so far, but... ouch.

[Valaquenta]

And now 24% - 4.6/10 with 53 reviews. Sorry 70 reviews

[Ben]

Heading for a $30m opening weekend, tho...proves that audiences prefer mediocrity over anything else these days...