USA. 2023.
Crew
Director – Peter Sohn, Screenplay – John Hoberg, Brenda Hsueh & Kat Likkel, Story – John Hoberg, Brenda Hsueh, Kat Likkel & Peter Sohn, Producer – Denise Ream, Photography – David Juan Bianchi & Jean-Claude Kalache, Music – Thomas Newman, Animation Supervisors – Michael Venturini & Kureha Yokoo, Visual Effects Supervisor – Sanjay Bakshi, Production Design – Don Shank. Production Company – Pixar Animation Studios.
Voices
Leah Lewis (Ember Lumen), Mamoudou Athie (Wade Ripple), Ronnie Del Carmen (Bernie Lumen), Shila Ommi (Cinder Lumen), Wendi McLendon-Covey (Gale Cumulus), Catherine O’Hara (Brook Ripple), Joe Pera (Fern Grouchwood), Mason Wertheimer (Clod)
Plot
Husband and wife Bernie and Cinder Lumen are fire elements who arrive in Element City from Fireland. Bernie takes over an abandoned building in Fire Town and sets up a shop that he calls The Fireplace. Their daughter Ember grows up where it is expected that she will one day take over running the store. However, she is prone to fits of temper where she explodes in a fireball. During one of these explosions, she causes the pipes in the basement to burst. Wade Ripple, a water element who is a city inspector, is dragged through the pipes. Wade decides that he is going to have to shut the shop down for ordinance violations. Ember races after Wade to try and stop this, knowing it will destroy her father’s dream. After consulting with his superior Gail, they learn that if they can find and plug the source of the flooding by Friday, then she will tear up the tickets. During the course of their investigation, Ember and Wade start to be attracted. However, this presents considerably difficulties with she being fire and he water and that one could extinguish the other if they ever touched. Not to mention, Ember having to explain to her parents that she is seeing a water element.
Elemental was the 27th animated film from Pixar. Pixar emerged in the 1990s with a huge of string of hits that included the likes of Toy Story (1995), A Bug’s Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), Wall-E (2008) and Up (2009). For a time through the 2000s, Pixar seemed to show that it could put no foot wrong. The 2010s was a much more uneven prospect where original Pixar films were interspersed with lesser sequels to their earlier hits.
Since the pandemic however, Pixar has been looking fairly weakened. The theatrical closures led to a string of their films that were principally or solely released to streaming with the likes of Onward (2020), Soul (2020), Luca (2021), Lightyear (2022) and Turning Red (2022). None of these are particularly bad films, although most of these are middle-run efforts that are amiable but nothing standout. Elemental did see a full theatrical release but the film received a negative critical slamming.
Elemental comes from Peter Sohn, who previously directed The Good Dinosaur (2015), Pixar’s lowest grossing theatrical releases before 2020, as well as performed scripting duties and voice work in assorted films – he even turns up as Miles Morales’s dorm roommate in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023). Sohn is the son of South Korean immigrants and speaks of how the story reflects much of his upbringing, not to mention the discord in expectations that came when he married a non-Korean American woman. The end credits of the film contain pictures of Sohn’s late parents and a dedication to them and the sacrifices they made.
Elemental received some of the worst critical reviews of any Pixar film, The film gained a reputation as Pixar’s first major a box-office flop due to a very low opening weekend where it emerged only in second place. Although what isn’t pointed out that it did eventually go on to earn $151 million in the US and $450 million worldwide. This is not bad box-office for any film, although there is debate whether this means the film is actually earning any profit against its $200 million budget. I waited until the film was available on streaming before watching.
The main problem I had with Elemental at the outset was it has a lame premise – a Fantasy Otherworld where elements like fire, water, air and earth are separate races. (It should be clarified we are talking about elements in the classic Greek philosophy as opposed to periodic table sense). There is some effort to extrude this out into showing how such a world would work – aquatic based transport systems, even inflatable air-based dirigibles, or amusing ideas like Wade’s childhood terror of being trapped in a sponge. But when it comes to cloud characters playing basketball games or the Ripple family engaged in The Crying Game, it feels as though the film is strained trying to find something to do with its premise. The obvious comparison is to Disney’s Zootopia (2016), which did a far better job in creating a multifarious city based on showing different creatures and their unique ways of living in a world that somewhat resembles our own.
There is the point where the whole concept starts to fall apart. The film makes a big thing out of how fire and water cannot touch but then has Ember and Wade do so … and nothing much happen, which surely seems to be contradicting its own rules or avoiding dealing with the logical consequence of its set up. One of the discussions that came up as we watched is speculation about what kind of kids Ember and Wade would end up having.
Storywise, Elemental runs to some fairly predictable arcs. There’s the child of immigrants story and the child carrying the weight of parental expectation – which we saw not dissimilar variations on in Pixar’s recent Turning Red. And there is the opposites attract despite themselves love story at the centre of the film. To be fair, I didn’t hate the playing out of these in the way that a number of other critics did and thought the film did so in reasonable ways in most respects. There are some of the cute “aww” bits of magic that you find in a good many of Pixar’s films – Wade using his stomach to refract Ember’s flame and light the candle; his appearance at the retirement party; and his climactic sacrifice and return by being brought to tears. In this regard, the film eventually hits its emotional beats in the right places.
Trailer here