When it came time to find a villain for the sequel to their 2006 hit “Cars”, Pixar decided that Big Oil would fit the bill.
In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, director John Lasseter, who has an off-grid, solar home and electric car, discussed the decision saying:
“I kept thinking about, ‘OK. A spy movie in the world where cars are alive. What would be a really good kind of über bad guy? Who is an über bad guy?’ I kept going to big oil. This is before what happened in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Why isn’t alternative fuel more… Why isn’t everybody jumping on that bandwagon? It makes so much sense: Electricity, solar, whatever. There’s ethanol. There’s all this stuff you could be doing. And so I thought, well, that could be really cool in that you could have big oil versus alternative fuel. That’s when we kind of crafted the bad guy’s story.”
“The greatest bad guys, you understand where they’re coming from. They believe they’re doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s for greed, sometimes it’s for other reasons, but they are what they call the center of good. They always believe they’re doing the right thing.”
Of course, while Big Oil may be the perfect bad guy, it’s still the perfect resource for shipping all of Pixar’s (and parent company Disney’s) “Cars” related merchandise all around the world. In fact, while the original film was among its poorest at the box office, the swag associated with it has raked in a staggering $10 billion. Disney is planning on rolling out some 300 toys and other stuff for “Cars 2″. How much oil you want to bet is used up in the process?
We like you John, but your message is getting twisted by the merchandise team at Disney.
Article courtesy of ecorazzi.com