(Cover) - EN Movies - John Lasseter has revealed his new animated movie Cars 2 was inspired by The Godfather: Part II.

The producer-and-director explained that the second film in the Godfather series and Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back are the two movie follow-ons that have set the standard for his own projects.

John likes the way the two cult films aren't just copies of their respective original movies, but that they excite the audiences and make them want to go back to the first film.

"When we started doing Toy Story 2 years ago we started looking at other sequels and we thought, There's two sequels out there in the world that we emulate, that we love, and it's The Godfather: Part II and The Empire Strikes Back'," John told American website Hollywood.com. "Those two to me are just the things we always look up to, thinking, If we can be anything like that' Because of what they did to their original movies. After that, when you have to go back to the original movie and you're going, Aaaah' that's what we're trying to do with our sequels."

The Pixar executive also explained why he likes the idea of everyday objects coming to life in his movies and revealed why he chose cars to be the stars of the successful animations.

"I've always loved the inanimate object coming to life. All through Disney films if you remember, in The Sword in the Stone, which is my favourite Disney film, there was a little sugar bowl that would like spoon and waggle with its thing and it was so much fun.," he said. "My dad was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership in California where I grew up and I just love cars because of that, and I thought in our medium, where we can really render things to look you know, have reflections, and shine we can get the details on the cars to look like real cars, we can bring them to life, this is going to be unlike anything people have ever seen!" (C) Cover Media