Lightning McQueen is yesterday's Thomas the Tank Engine.

lntl@lemmy.ml to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 64 points –

Both introduce the world to youngsters, but with different modes.

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I'm not sure I understand the "yesterday's" part. Thomas the Tank Engine predates Cars by decades.

Did you really read yesterday as August 21, 2023?? That's hilarious.

"Yesterday's" was used to mean "in a time passed"

In this way both the train and the automobile were used as characters in children's programs to associate the mode with a positive experience. (The actual programming or content)

Lightning McQueen is more recent than Thomas The tank, so the correct phrase would be "Lightning McQueen is today's Thomas The Tank..." or "Thomas The Tank is yesterday's Lightning McQueen..."

This is a difficult statement to assess.

Thomas is multi-generational, the main series started in 1984 and ran as recently as 2021.

That’s like saying “yesterdays kids grew up with Raffi”. That dude is still touring (at least in Canada, but he’s been to the US recently) and still putting out new stuff. In fact, he refers to his “older fans”, who now have their own kids that are getting introduced to Raffi, as “beluga grads”.

Meanwhile the original Cars movie came out in 2004 but had movie sequels in 2011 and 2017, but there are also spin-offs in the universe including movies, shows and shorts.

No, I read yesterday (Lightning McQueen) as juxtaposed with today (Thomas the Tank Engine), as if you were implying that Lightning McQueen predated Thomas the Tank Engine and TTTE was a newish show.

That's not what "yesterday's" means in this context, or more specifically, you flipped the two characters if you wanted to use it like that.

Corrected it'd be:

"Thomas the Tank Engine was yesterday's Lightning McQueen"

I think I'm understanding what you mean but it's very clunky. Maybe try again?

You're saying that Thomas the Tank Engine and Lighting McQueen introduced kids of different generations to trains and cars.

To jump on the semantics bandwagon, "yesteryear" would have been more appropriate.

I'm not sure those two IPs were as generational as you're giving them credit for. There's also nothing very interesting about your observation, if I understood correctly.

It made sense to me, but I just realized that you said that McQueen is yesterday's Thomas.

That's backwards. Thomas is yesterday's McQueen.

Although, I'm not convinced that they are that similar at all.

amazing thread, and as everyone is pointing out, you got it backwards.

The Thomas the Tank Engine TV series started in the early 80s. The books have been around for the better part of a century

But Thomas the Tank engine was introduced like 50 years before Lighting Mc Queen.

And neither Cars nor Cars 2 spend a lot of time on edutainment surrounding their setting. The only thing the two have in common is they're vehicles.

Oh no, yeah, you guessed it, I didn't watch beyond 2. I mean, neither sid anyone else after that torture.

After Cars 2 I had very low expectations of Cars 3, unsurprisingly. It's a miracle that I was convinced to watch it. Yet somehow I was, and found it to be bloody good.

Cars 1 and 3 are really good movies and you should watch them if you have not. Cars 3 is my favorite.

And I don't even like cars

Bro why is cars 2 so hated? I don't remember it to be that bad

The story in Cars 2 is all over the place and the car universe only makes the whole thing more abstract.

The story includes car races, terrorism, environmental issues, cold war agents, international stereotypes, hacking, secret world orders formed by victims of production malfunctions, the rejection of old friends and a whole lot of meaningless action and comedy skits.

And then someone decided to add the queen of England to sum this up as if she even had anything to do with the rest of the story.

It's brainstorm of references run wild. Even if you manage to follow along and get all the references, you gotta wonder why anyone wanted you to see this.

And what's bad about all you said? Crazy movies can be quite nice

It's just pointless is all.

Cars 1 had something to say about urbanisation.

Cars 3 had something to say about getting old and dying.

Cars 2 had some 3d models doing slapstick comedy action while clinging to references to everything imaginable, but nothing to say.

It's not awful, but it's still definitely the black sheep. It's tone is completely different and it also just feels like it's just the same characters (but kinda flanderisations of them too) rather than a natural progression of where the story should go next. The throughline between 1 and 3 is much more consistent, even more so if you skip 2.

2 isn't a bad film, but it's not a good sequel in my opinion, 3 however is a great sequel and a good ending point.

Yeah, I know it goes from "haha funny race" to "there's this terrorist here that's killing cars across the world" but guess what? I love that mission impossible shit

I actually agree with you that the hate is overblown. But in comparison to 1 and 3 it's definitely not as good. I wouldn't even say it's a bad movie, it's just kinda meh

I didn't know it's actually called Thomas the Tank Engine. I thought it's a joke, since a train isn't what I imagine these days when hearing it...

A "tank engine" is a steam engine - an old fashioned train.

It's a specific type of steam engine made to not require a tender.