Meta Cars

Peter is watching Cars right now. He loves that show. My favorite part is when Lightning McQueen is paving the road and is muttering to himself, "Turn right to go left. Guess what? I tried it! And this crazy thing happened. I went right!" Then the old lady car, watching from her porch, says "If you keep talkin' to yourself, people are going to think you're crazy!" Lightning retorts "Thanks for the tip!" "What?" she replies. "I wasn't talkin' to you!"

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing is because after seeing the end credits of this movie for the gazillionth time, I came to the realization that this movie is a movie within a movie. You see, once the credits finish, it shows the crazy tourist couple from the beginning of the movie still wandering around in the desert, lost. Then a car bug flies by and bumps into the camera, leaving a blue smudge on the screen. Also, my wife discovered that in another scene toward the middle of the movie, a bug lands on the screen and leaves a trail across part of the camera.

Remember that during the credits, you see the car characters from the movie watching other Pixar movies with car characters, including A Bug's Life (A Car's Life?) and Toy Story (Car Story?) I remembered the brilliant fake outtakes from A Bug's Life, where you learned that all the animated insects were meant to be actor insects. If the car version of A Bug's Life were watched until the end, you would eventually see the characters in A Car's Life revealed to be actors (during the outtakes). And if my theory about Cars being a subtle movie within a movie is true, and if you were able to see the outtakes of A Car's Life, what you would actually be witnessing is a movie about cars making a movie about cars who later watch a movie about cars making a movie about cars.