There was never any doubt in most people’s minds that there would be a “Cars 3.” The epic original “Cars” movie and even the somewhat more convoluted “Cars 2” together made $1 billion in box office and $10 billion in sales of all those Lightning McQueen race cars, throw pillows and beer cozies. It would make no sense at all to miss out on the money-making machine that “Cars 3” will almost certainly be once it comes out next summer.

But making movies, especially sequels, can be tricky, as Pixar found out with “Cars 2.” You want to recapture the magic that made the original such a success without simply repeating the same story. So “Cars 3” will represent a new take on the Lightning McQueen mythology.

“It’s a story about an athlete who was so fantastic when he was young, he could do anything and winning came easy,” said Pixar’s John Lasseter. “Now he’s becoming more of a veteran in the sport, and there’s all these young rookies like he was coming in and they’re much faster than him.”

As you probably saw when you watched the ”Cars 3” trailer, this one is less about happy, bumpity fun than the original. There is a big crash that sets the precedent for the movie.

“It’s Lightning McQueen flipping upside down,” said Lasseter. “There’s a gritty quality to it.”

McQueen, seconds before flight, in Cars 3

McQueen’s lead adversary in “Cars 3” is a race car named Jackson Storm. Storm is a new, higher-tech and faster kind of race car, and McQueen has to adapt.

“(He thinks) ‘How do I compete with this? I’m not ready to give up on my career. But the world is telling me to. This is what happened to my mentor, Doc Hudson the Hudson Hornet.”

So, just as McQueen had to step outside of his egomaniacal self in order to find redemption in the original "Cars," again he has to look at life in new and different terms in "Cars 3." He gets help from an eager young race technician named Cruz Ramirez, a female character.

A concept drawing from

“It’s the really emotional kind of connection and story about mentorship, about teaching,” Lasseter said. “We’ve got a great, great new female character, and it's one of those things that we wanted to bring to this movie ‘Cars 3’ is the women and the young girls and the female audience. They’ve always loved our ‘Cars’ movies; they’ve been very, very popular. Everybody assumed they were for guys or boys. But in this one we have a very, very strong female character, Cruz Ramirez. She’s funny and clever and smart and fast. It’s exciting to surprise people with this. So I’m hoping that 'Cars 3' inspires a new generation to cars, to racing and to traveling and taking car trips and seeing things.”

And it’ll all be shown in a detail that Lasseter promises will be unprecedented.

“One of the exciting things about 'Cars 3' is that the rendering system has advanced so much since we made the first movie in 2006,” Lasseter said, referring to the computer system that takes animation from the computer to the screen. “You cannot believe how good-looking the cars are. We’ve really leaned into what the renders can do. It is staggering. Our new renderer seems like it was meant to make this movie and, oh my goodness, it looks so good.”

So there you go. We’re hoping to get a sneak peek just before it opens on June 16, 2017.

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