'Stranger Things', 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels', 'The Usual Suspects', 'Pulp Fiction'... all immediately come to mind as man-in-hole stories.
Reductive/deconstructive literary criticism helps highlight novel elements of the subject story. I can't fathom being upset about it, but then again, I didn't watch 'Cars'. Maybe it is a particularly bad movie?