From Animation to Horror: The Surprising Connection Between Pixar's Cars and Stephen King's Dark Universe

Cars, one of the most popular animated movies of the 2000s, is about a race car named Lightning McQueen. On his way to a competition, Lightning suddenly gets lost and finds himself in the small backwater town of Radiator Springs. The story spawned two more films, released in 2011 and 2017, which both enjoyed success with young audiences.

Recently, Redditor CLZ3LL linked the charming tale of friendship to one of the earliest horror stories by Stephen King, which can frighten even the most hardcore fans of the genre.

Many of us have read or watched the author's stories brought to life in numerous Hollywood adaptations. The terrifying clown Pennywise from It, the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, and the kindly giant from The Green Mile who was falsely accused of murder — all these creations by Stephen King have long become an important part of pop culture.

Now, a 1973 short story by the famous American author has once again sparked the public's interest.

The story tells of a global catastrophe in which machines come to life and start hunting humans. The protagonist, who has taken refuge in a gas station building, hiding from a pack of rabid trucks, prepares to give the rebellious technology its last fight.

So according to the Redditor's theory, Stephen King's story, which was the basis for the movie Maximum Overdrive, takes place in the same universe as Pixar's Cars.

The fan speculates that, in the aftermath of a comet crashing into Earth and causing a catastrophe, the world was taken over by animated machines — those we see in Cars.

In the book and movie Maximum Overdrive, each vehicle has a sense of individuality and wants to destroy humans in its own way. Because they are so human-like and hateful of people, the machines decided to retain their technological form that wouldn't resemble the human body, the Redditor claims.

The fan thinks that after the world was destroyed, the vehicles transformed and created a world inhabited by intelligent cars, which means the events of Maximum Overdrive continued in Cars.

Of course, it's hard to imagine a nice buddy cartoon being the heir to a gruesome parable about the power of technology, but many Redditors find this theory logical and compelling.

Source: Reddit