The Scariest Disney Villain of All Time

The scariest Disney villain of all time is from Cars.  You remember when Lightning McQueen and Mater go tractor tipping?  They wake up Frank, the huge industrial combine who chases them off with his whirling blades.

It’s a cute and funny scene, and you never really feel that the characters are in too much trouble (Mater is laughing the whole time, so he knows they can get away.)  But the threat of being shredded in the spinning barrel of blades is not the scary part.

The scary part is his existence.

This is Cars, remember?  The world is made up of anthropomorphized machines.  Even the bugs are tiny Volkswagens.  The reason there aren’t any convertibles in the world is because then they’d have to show the inside of the passenger compartment.  There are no humans, no animals, not even any insects (although plenty of plants, apparently.)

Instead of animals, they have tractors that are like cows, and Frank, the aforementioned combine, who acts just like a bull.  It’s cute and all, but it opens up a very scary question.

Why the hell are there combines?

A combine is designed to harvest grain from fields, gathering up the wheat and collecting it to be processed and milled.  Into flour.  For bread.

Why are they growing crops?

You see them when McQueen is travelling across country, long before he ever gets near Radiator Springs.  During the driving montage, he passes row upon row of crops, mostly corn.  Tractors are a common sight (McQueen isn’t confused to see one,) so these are not the only crops they are growing in the country.

Now I know some of you think you’re clever, and are thinking, “maybe they’re growing crops to make ethanol or biodiesel?”

Shut your dirty mouth and don’t you ever let me hear that commie talk again.  Here are some reasons why you are wrong (as well us un-American.)

First off, those options just aren’t practical replacements for petroleum products, which take millions of years to make (it’s why the company is called Dinoco, remember.)  Standard internal combustion engines just can’t run well on these ‘organic’ fuels, especially not race cars.  So the idea that the whole society is running largely on those fuels doesn't really hold water.

Speaking of ‘organic fuel,’ Fillmore makes a big deal about the oil companies and their conspiracies, which makes it pretty clear to me that Tex, the owner of Dinoco Oil, ain’t putting corn and switchgrass into cars’ tanks.

Finally, if the major oil companies were creating their product from plants, what are Frank and the tractors doing in Radiator Springs, which is in the middle of nowhere?  Are they growing their own oil?  It makes sense if that’s where Fillmore is getting the supplies for his own organic fuel, but that only makes sense for small time operators, the majority of the world must run on oil.

So what are the crops for?  I have a perfectly logical explanation that fits all the details and answers many questions.  They are growing corn and wheat to process into flour, for making bread.

To feed their human slaves.

There will always be things that the cars won’t be able to do for themselves, even the smaller, nimble little pittys that run around and do nearly everything.  Precision work will require human hands, and those come attached to human bodies.

What if there are entire factories of humans, manufacturing new cars, held in thrall to the machines they built?  What if they are considered unclean by the cars, like untouchables, and hidden away, never to be mentioned in polite society.

There’s your plot to Cars 3.

Lightning McQueen and Mater find an escaped human, perhaps an adorable child, who makes them aware of the abuse and suffering that the human slaves face inside the manufacturing plants, where they make the parts all cars need to keep running.

They decide to use Lightning’s fame to expose the truth to the world, but the shadowy group who runs the operation (perhaps a sinister triad of large trucks known as the Big Three,) try to eliminate them in a wild chase across the country while the heroes try to get to Washington to see the president in the White Garage.

In the end, the humans are granted their freedom, and both people and cars learn to work and live together.  We get an uplifting ending, and a perfect end to the trilogy.

Are you listening Disney?  I’m still waiting for that call, and now that you own Star Wars, you really need me.

I’ll be waiting.

Join us next time on “Why Your Childhood is Built on Lies” for our discussion of animal fighting rings, slavery, and Uncle Toms when we look at the race traitor Pikachu from Pokemon.