Owen Wilson Reveals His Theory On How The Cars Took Over

Owen Wilson voices Lightning McQueen in all of the Cars films, but even he isn't exactly sure how their world came to be. Wilson weighed in on some popular Cars questions in a recent interview with IGN ahead of the release of Cars 3, discussing his theory about how the vehicles took over the universe.

Wilson says he frequently gets asked questions about what happened to the humans and whether it was a "Planet of the Apes-type thing" that occurred. While Wilson says he hasn't been told the actual answer, he believes that the cars have a lot in common with humanity. "What I like to think is that our souls have moved into these automobiles the way a Bruce Springsteen song happened," he said. "That's what happened and that's why they're so human to us. They are us."

His co-star Armie Hammer, a newcomer to the franchise as Lightning's rival Jackson Storm, also says he hasn't been told all the answers, but he's compiled a long list of questions for franchise creator John Lasseter. "Do they buy car insurance or do they buy life insurance?" he pondered. "Do they sleep in the driveway or do they have houses? I'll tell you what I always think about. What is the anatomy? If you took one of those high powered water jets and cut a car straight down the middle– after he was dead already!– and then you split it open, what does the anatomy look like? Is the brain behind the windshield or is it where the gas tank was? What kind of organs does a car need? Or is it just a giant carburetor? Are they fuel injected?"

While neither Hammer or Wilson has all the answers, both of their ideas are significantly less morbid than that of Cars creative director Jay Ward, who revealed in an interview earlier this year that he believes that the cars had hit a point where they were smarter than humans and decided to kill them, leaving the car with the personality of the last person who drove it. (His other, somehow less morbid theory says humans were wiped out by an asteroid.) 

Cars 3 likely won't bring the answers we seek on how the cars came to be, but the film's mostly positive reviews suggest that it is another fun outing for Wilson's Lightning. The movie is due out today; once you've raced out to theaters to see it, check out some of the Easter eggs you may have missed.