[C2 SPOILERS!] Let's Talk About Mater and Holley...

Lightning and Sally have a discussion thread: [url]Lightning and Sally Chat thread.... - Cars - Pixar Planet Forums

So I thought we could have one for Mater and Holley as well?

Talking to my friends who have seen it, I’m starting to think I’m in the minority, but I found these two to be totally adorable.

Well, I haven’t seen the movie, and I’m already loving Holley, so I think I’ll love them together.

When I first heard Holley was supposed to be Mater’s girlfriend, I’ll admit, I thought it would be cheesy and stupid, but once I saw the movie, it was actually really sweet.

Yay!! Now I’m really excited!!

I think it’s absolutely perfect, in terms of pairing! With the whole thing about “opposite attracts”, where Mater completely contrasts Holley, it’s gotta be one of my more favourite Pixar pairings. Bring on the fanart & fan fiction! xD

Oooooooh, I cant wait even more now Especially since Mater is my favorite and Holley is Virginia’s <3

At first, I wasn’t sure if I liked the idea of these two as a pairing. But it’s already grown on me quite a bit.

The pairing was really cute, and I thought it was sweet that Holly liked Mater even after finding out who he really was, just an ordinary tow truck.

Even though I love the canon pairing, I find the Finn/Holley ship neat too.

If a quick plug is alright, there’s one on my fic thread that I link to in my signature.

lol Finn/Holley is quite popular too. I’m starting to wonder if we need a whole topic just for the debate on that! XD

Already started a Finn/Holley topic.

I mean like, a topic with a poll for which one people prefer, for the lulz. :B

I really like this pairing, mainly because Mater and Holly are so different from each other.

Haha, true! I like Holley a lot before seeing the movie because of her coloration, the fact that she actually has lips unlike Sally, and she’s British. British people always win in the end. In my mind, I mean.

[size=85]Except in the Revolutionary War. :3[/size]

But anyways, I haven’t really mentioned why I like this couple, have I?

I’ll admit, part of the charm for me is Mater: Mater is a sweetie n’ deserves a girlfriend. Seriously.

But that can’t be all, of course. Holley’s character and how it collaborates with Mater’s is important too, and despite how different they are, I felt like there were some key points that really clicked for me, both in those differences and in underlying similarities.

[spoiler]Pixar uses the term “innocent caught in the intrigue” to describe Mater a few times in the Art Of, but I feel that term could also apply to Holley. Yes, she is a spy, but she’s in the technical department and ends up getting “caught up” in her first field assignment in the movie. She thus has a naivety and a youthfulness that Finn doesn’t, and I noticed some key points where she suddenly, if briefly, connected to Mater because of that. When Mater comments that his dents are valuable, her reply isn’t to judge him as a spy or… well… as most people who would find that strange. Rather she simply smiles and says “Really?” in an amused tone, and when he confirms it she still doesn’t find it weird and offers to work around it even when Finn begins to protest. This also marks one of the few times, if not the only time that, Holley actively says “no” to Finn about anything. She’s obviously adamant about Mater’s love of his friends.

Differences! Well, obviously, Holley is high tech and very intelligent while Mater is a rust bucket and, aside from his knowledge of towing and salvage, not the sharpest blade on the assembly line. So there’s Holley bringing some IQ to the table. Mater, meanwhile, brings… well… being Mater.

Specifically, his level of honesty (Holley is a bit on the secretive side because… duh, she’s a secret agent.) and more notably, his bravery. Holley at times is timid about field work and doesn’t agree with Finn on the “never as alive as when you think you’re going to die” theory. She is quick to attack before critically thinking about a situation, as shown when she attack’s Finn’s informative even though he’s already down. Meanwhile, Mater doesn’t even fully understand what he has gotten himself into and is more willing to drive gungho into it, and even tried to reason with his enemies when he was about to blow up.

She is a sleek and intelligent, but slightly naive about life. He is rusted and not very book, but full of heart and kindness for others… Do I need to blatantly reference WALL-E or is that apparent? :B

(Not that nostalgia for 2008 only reason I like this new rusted guy/sleek girl couple. It’s just something I happened to notice.)[/spoiler]

So yeah, that’s some of my thoughts on why I like the pairing… and wow that became a short essay rather quick. X_x

While I enjoyed both characters’ performance in the film, I really can’t see why [spoil]Holly declares herself to be Mater’s girlfriend. There was no real apparent mutual interest or connection between Holly and Mater that was present throughout the film, so the end just kind of felt like an “oh yeah, by the way this happens” moment. All of the times Mater and Holly interacted previous to that, she was put off by his general personality. You could argue that after they were released from Big Bently, Holly was moved by Mater’s dedication to his friends, but that was not evident on screen.[/spoil]

I really liked them in the movie. Especially Holley!! She’s awesome.

Naturally, I disagree. [spoil]While Mater and Holley’s relationship doesn’t get nearly the screentime that, say, Lightning and Sally did, there’s a clear relationship arc all the same.

I actually talked to a friend who didn’t see an arc either, so I have a sort of mini-essay about the arc already on my computer! [/spoil]

[spoiler]Anyways, this is only from 3 viewings worth of memory, but Holley DOES end up slowly warming up to him. From what I saw, she’s first impressed by his unexpected knowledge of all things lemon, but later on she starts to warm up to what actually makes Mater Mater.

She starts out pretty much ashamed of being associated with him, cringing when he introduces her to Finn as his date and covering his face with the hologram when he’s basically hitting on her.

After Mater shows some technical know-how, Mater mentions that he always wanted to be a spy. Holley smiles and says she does too. It’s the first time she connects with him without bossing him around or hiding from him, and it’s not even something she needed to respond to.

Between then and France, Mater shows that he’s not a complete idiot, especially when it comes to car-related knowledge, and en route from there to Italy, she is checking the red traffic light cameras she bugged, and Mater once again compliments her on her looks and adds her smarts. He says it much more comfortably, and he seems to feel he’s become friends with Holley at the least. Holley responds with the very telling reply of “Thank you… I think.” Shortly after, she gets the idea to disguise Mater, which shows that she is now accepting him as part of the spy team. Already we’re a far cry from cringing every time he talks and bossing him around.

And then there’s the dent thing.

Mater points out the value of his dents when Holley tries to remove them. Holley replies with “…Really?” but instead of looking like T_T she’s smiling and actually seems interested in what he has to say. When Finn starts to rant at him for it, she quickly offers to work around the dents; this is, notably, the first time she has objected to an order from Finn and stuck with her objection, and it was for Mater’s sake. I feel that this point was when their relationship hit its main turning point.

In Italy, Mater starts talking about what he can see in his spy-eyes while disguised as the other tow truck. Finn is impressed by how great Mater is at playing the “idiot tow truck” but Holley… not so much. It seems like here she’s starting to catch onto that Mater really is just a tow truck faster than Finn. Why? Because she’s taken more time to get to know him and try to understand where he’s coming from with friends and dents and conversations over the intercom. It’s also worth noting that, while she’s a bit nicer about it now, she’s still alright with bossing Mater around to keep him out of trouble.

And then they all end up inside Big Bentley in England, and Mater escapes. Holley tells him to go get himself more dents and that part was really cute. <3333 Finn and Holley escape and figure out about the bomb. After Professor Z runs for it, Finn instructs Holley to swap jobs with him: He goes after Zundapp, she tries to help Mater. After Z is captured and toys with them about the bomb, Holley gets annoyed enough that she shocks the professor despite being chastised for it earlier. I’d be annoyed too if somebody I was just starting to like had a bomb planted on them.

And we get to the point where Mater is trying to explain why he thinks Axelrod was behind everything. Finn is telling him to stand down. The royal security is in a frenzy. Even Lightning seems more than a little concerned as to whether his friend is right or not. But when Mater asks Holley to bring up the engine image (which is supposed to be secret and, if they had been wrong, could have jeopardized the mission to bring out into the open) she does so immediately. It’s nice to know that, like Holley is able to keep tabs on Mater, Mater isn’t so smitten like he was at the start of the movie that he can’t work with Holley as a team. And of course, there’s her screaming when Mater is seconds from blowing up.

And we go from that to the ending, which all has been said for.

It’s subtle, but these kinda things are how I saw a relationship arc in the film.[/spoiler]

Personally, I didn’t read into it at all on my first viewing, and I still thought it was pretty obvious Mater and Holley are together.

To the credit of everybody who missed it, it was EXTREMELY subtle in comparison to the romantic arc of the first Cars and other recent Pixar films, soooooo yeah. I mean, the last 3 years were TS3, Up, and WALL-E. TS3 was the LEAST apparent and it’s still clear 5 minutes into the film that Buzz is the most romantically inept character in Pixar history. :B

[size=50]11 years? Really Buzz?![/size]

IDK, I am constantly wearing my het goggles so I can tell a pairing is going to be apparent from glances in a promotional image. I can’t tell if it’s a gift or the dorkiest thing on the planet. Or both.

Sorry to DP, but I just noticed a cute little detail.

Holley’s design is extremely reminiscent of a certain models of luxury Jaguar cars, right?

Well, Mater mentioned in the first movie that part of the reason he had a crush on Dorene was because she “looked just like a Jaguar!”

Mater has a thing for Jaguars. And aside from that, it hints at Pixar taking Holley’s role into consideration when designing her in more ways than just being a sleek spy car.