Cars 2, what went wrong?

So I just got round to watching the Pixar film Cars 2. Let me start of by saying that I, like many other animators, am a massive fan of Pixar and John Lasseter. I appreciate all of what they do and the hard work time and effort that goes into there films and most of the time they shock me into how well they carry out the production on their films and how much their films stand out with great quality.

But the first film, "Cars" never truly gave me that amount of pleasure to watch, i just couldn't connect with the film. One theory as to why might be that its much more American based and perhaps pixar thought that allot of their American appeal with Nascar, road 46, and other American appetisers would appeal to the rest of the world. Sadly it appears not as its not only me who feel disappointed with both cars and cars 2 although looking back, i do sort of feel the first cars had a little more to it, but only by a hair line.

Cars 2 however takes place around the world, this might mean that they came to the same conclusion and tried to take on last stab at it by making it a little more multi cultural. Again sadly i think this failed, cars too has done well, but in relativity to the rest of pixar films its nothing great.

My theory to why Cars never did so well is based on what the film is based on, CARS. The characters feel too "hot wheels" kids play toys, type. The film doesn't lack any imagination by far, and at first i didn't think they would be able to convey the facial animation properly, which i still think could be a properly but they still seem to have done well by exaggerating the facial a lot.

But there is just not enough for the audience to relate to (we are not cars) but then you might say, well we are not fish either but look at Finding Nemo, we are not toys either but look at Toy Story etc. Well these films always showed an implication from humans to fish/toys, there was always a human in them, and it didn't look like the world was being run by fish or toys. once we watched toy story we would imagine how our toys felt, once we saw finding nemo we wouldn't ever buy a single fish again we would have to buy 2 so they could stay together (OK maybe a little to far). But the principle is there, once you take away all relation to humans you take away the connection to the audience. The cars are completely self sufficient, how ever in the very famous child's show Brum, the car was alive but in the same world as us, and we humans had a direct effect on it, giving us something to think about when we next see a car.

Maybe next time pixar, still a nice piece of animation and was fine light entertainment, but I'm hoping and expecting a lot more from Brave.