#vavoom! the soul is healed

[nickydraws]

you... soft and only

you... lost and lonely

you... just like heaven

[cars2-renaissance]

Omg more discourse YESSSSS!!!! All these long responses are healing my soul. I’m so happy!!!!

@rycusfunnies thank you for your lemon expertise. My hyperfixation has always been on the spies so having a broader perspective is fascinating!!

And those stills are so good! Omg! I’ve never seen a clear shot of the second photo. (And the third makes me laugh too; he looks so angry XD XD )

Okay yes, it’s interesting they’re using ships to transport stuff (especially full on war ships! Like wouldn’t that raise some questions??) and they do definitely have a helicopter pad on the rig but don’t seem to be using it atm. But we do see a helicopter later with the magnet when they capture Finn so it does exist. You’re probably right about the cargo being too big for a little helicopter. They’re likely moving large amounts of supplies so need that extra hull space.

The oil rigs would certainly make an aesthetically pleasing base of operations but once you take into account the conditions of being out on a deep sea oil rig with storms and severe weather to isolation and difficult access, plus these structures already have a very large purpose. They’re there to pump out all that oil. They’re not the place you want to be manufacturing stuff or have a lab. The one thing they’ve got going for them is secrecy. The oil rigs are completely off the grid which is probably why Zundapp is hiding out there. But they would not be manufacturing anything on the rigs themselves which is why the camera is being delivered.

If the camera we see being delivered is just a prototype then the oil rig sequence must’ve taken place earlier than I would’ve thought. The cars 2 timeline is not very clear but it all sort of plays together as though not much time has passed but that may not have been the case.

But if the camera being delivered is the one they use later on, then they may be loading up to sail to Japan right after that to intercept the first race. We just don’t know.

As for that odd angle of the camera case being brought into frame, I think that’s just from it being unpacked off screen then brought around from the other side. I do think it was being delivered on Tony Trihull and that’s probably how Leland heard about this whole thing. He was probably spying on their off site manufacturing facilities then followed the delivery. It would make sense anyway.

Also the crane is unloading the heavy crates. The forklift that has the camera may have exited the ship along with the other cars that we see on the platform already.

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Ohhh your cropped screen shot of Acer and Grem finally made that frame make sense to me. It’s not the ceiling! I see their silhouettes now! Daaaang I always missed that before! It is super blown out so it’s hard to tell what’s going on and it’s only a split second frame in the movie. I wish they showed a bit more but oh well.

As for the coordinates, they point to spot in the North Pacific. The Alaskan port is just where the crabbing vessels dock but since Finn chose to go out there on a crabbing ship, they must’ve been the nearest source of transportation. That port in Dutch Harbor also makes sense to be the port the lemons would have used to dock before going to the rigs. It’s about the closest spot to the rigs and not much is going on that far north so an argument can be made that that’s where their manufacturing facilities are.

They’re manufacturing facilities could have been in Japan but then why ship the camera to the rigs only to then ship it back to Japan? Doesn’t make sense. I say the camera was manufactured in Alaska. That’s where Finn and Leland were investing it. Leland went on the ship to see where they were taking it while Finn stayed on shore to keep an eye on the production wear houses then Leland called him in for backup. He took the closest thing he could find which was the crabbing ship in Dutch Harbor. And vavoom!

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I do think Leland was crushed on the ship. A ship that size is going to have quite a few accommodations onboard one of which likely being a garbage compactor. It would make sense to have onboard and would make cleanup easier. Unfortunately it would also prove wickedly efficient at disposing of your enemies. Still, what a golly awful way to go.

My moneys on Zundapp being in on it. He wasn’t there but gave Acer and Grem the go ahead to execute Leland. And yeah, that would’ve been a sickening conversation. Zundapp clearly had a history with Leland and Finn as well, being he knew them both by name, so the execution was likely very personal.

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Thanks again for your lovely “big ‘ol post”, I’m always down to pick this opening scene to absolute death! XD

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And @platypus-custard thank you for chiming in as well! Haha!!! More discussion yisssss

Oh boy there’s a novel? Imma have to pick me up one of those…

I wonder if it’s supposed to be slightly off from the movie? Cause Leland calls Finn by name in the transmission, so even if he’s messaging the Agency, the transmission is still meant for Finn.

Now he’s sending a whole video transmission which is slightly odd since he’s running for his life in a confined space but hey whatever works for him.

When Finn responds, his just comming him normally which makes me think that their standard comm was probably short range whereas the video transmission Leland sent was a long range transmission which may have had to be relayed through the agency to Finn? Idk, radio transmissions are not my forte.

I think Torque did know them, or at least Finn because of the whole “okay, McMissile, I’m here. Time for the drop.” How else would he know his name? But Finn definitely did not know Torque was the American agent because he spent the next week thinking it was Mater. Clearly a lot was getting lost in translation through all of this but that’s what happens when you’ve got multiple secret agencies all trying to work together while not telling each other anything.

Lol next time I watch Cars 2 I’m keeping a scoreboard of the body count Finn racks up XD XD

So a while back, @little-red-irish-jaguar reblogged one of my posts with this devastating theory. The theory was that Leland sent Finn the transmission from Tony Trihull instead of the oil rigs. My first thought was to reject this theory because it went against my preconceptions that were so firmly rooted that my brain immediately sought to preserve them. However after rewatching the movie and studying the evidence, I can safely say that I was wrong. This theory tracks. And I will now write another essay to assess the evidence.

Firstly, the transmission itself: now it’s EXTREMELY hard to see shit in this video. The quality is god-awful and Leland never won any awards for videography. However this glorious angel on deviantart cleaned up some frames. (I’m not going to repost their art though since they don’t seem to be active in the fandom anymore and I don’t want to repost without permission. :/ ) but definitely go check it out!

So I’ll post the same shitty screenshots from the movie. Shoutout to veggieboy ultimate for uploading the opening scene on YouTube.

So there’s crates and metal reinforcements on the walls behind him. It does look like it could be on the oil rig.

Then he angles the camera to show this (port window?) like babygirl we can’t tell what that is… anyway it looks like a window of some sort and there fire. Now. That looks an awful lot like a round ship’s window.

Finally we get this weirdass shot of the ceiling? Again it’s very hard to tell what this is but it’s some sort of mechanical bay door that is closing.

Like it could be that? Tony does have cargo bay doors and that could be what we’re seeing.

Now the icing on top are these pieces of concept art from the Pixar website. That window porthole is drawn without all the overexposure and it looks just like the flair stacks from the oil rigs. And that’s why Leland is trying to get it in frame to show Finn. He’s seen the oil rigs from the ship. But that’s the last we see of him.

Next, we see Finn hightailing it out there to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Here’s the kicker, the coordinates Leland gives Finn do not take him to the oil rigs.

(And for my even shittier stills) Crabby takes him to the coordinates and is like lol okay here we are! There’s lot of water!!

Now this always confused me as a kid. Was Crabby off with the coordinates? Did he stop too soon? But then if Leland sent the coordinates from Tony Trihull, it makes sense why those coordinates would lead to open water and not the oil rigs. The oil rigs may not be at those coordinates…

but he sure is: the ship Leland sent the coordinates from.

Next we see Finn by the loading dock and he comms Leland to let him know he’s there. Now this threw me off. Finn tells him he’s at the rally point but he’s not at the coordinates Leland sent him. I guess he figured this is where Leland ended up? (I mean he wasn’t wrong, unfortunately.)

Then we see the professor. He’s there because of the camera which they’re loading onto the ship because they’re about to sail to Japan because of the race. But they’re also unloading crates from the ship and it’s one of those crates that Leland’s body is in. He’s being unloaded from the ship which is where he was likely murdered.

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As for my finishing thoughts. There’s a lot to unpack here. Leland never made it to the oil rigs alive which is a tragedy of its own that he died before he got to see what he’d discovered up close.

He had a lot of faith in Finn to be able to find him from coordinates he sent from a boat. And that faith was well founded. Finn did in fact find him albeit too late.

Since he wasn’t on the ship at the time, Professor Z was not the one who killed Leland (though he may have ordered him killed) it was likely Acer and Grem who killed him—which makes sense since they seem to be the more sadistic of the lemons in later scenes—but I still hate Zundapp just because he was involved in it!

And Finn did in fact get his revenge at the end of the movie in London when he blew Tony Trihull to smithereens. (I’d add the screenshot but I’m at my 10 image limit already XD)