Pope Car in Cars 2

This leads to some questions about the world of Cars. [Link]

Cars 2 forces the audience to make some nutty assumptions and — weirdly enough — I didn't have a problem with most of these. For example, I could swallow the embellishment that these anthropomorphic cars have organized themselves into nation-states that parallel our own. There's Car Italy, Car Japan, and presumably Car Burkina Faso.

I could also understand that these gas-guzzling golems have carnal urges. I blame Battlestar Galactica and the Vision and Scarlet Witch's doomed nuptials for my casual acceptance of sultry, 4-wheel-drive-on-2-wheel-drive rear-ending.

Additionally, "You Might Think" by The Cars plays at one point. This implies that a Station Wagon Ric Ocasek exists and — by extension — there's a Coupe Phoebe Cates who once exposed her headlights to an autoerotically-inclined Hatchback Judge Reinhold. (NSFW if I have to spell this shit out).

I could even tolerate the cars' disturbingly realistic human pupils which follow you around the multiplex, as if some astigmatic albino cave yetis were hiding behind the movie screen and watching their own movie: The Shadowy Room Full Of Happy Children And Their Pet Somnolescent Adults.

No, what blew my brains out was that Cars 2had brief scenes with a Car Pope. With his own Popemobile.

Did Pixar toss in a glimpse of the auto-papacy as a throwaway joke? Absolutely not. In a $200-million film about Gremlins and Yugos who run mafioso dynasties and a deranged Tonka-Truck-Tokyo filled with Geisha Sedansand squat bidets built for pooping automobiles, nothing is off-the-cuff.

No, Pixar bigwig John Lasseter and company are making some very pointed statements about the theology of Cars. Let's unpack the significance of the Pope Car.