Pixar's latest flick opened in the US on June 16th, 2023, after debuting as the closing film at the Cannes Film Festival. Racking in only 29.5 million over opening weekend in contrast to the 200 million budget, Elemental is the second lowest box office performance for the studio. I'll admit, when I first saw the trailer, I was skeptical. It didn't draw me in, seeming to lack the central adventure found in so many of Pixar's beloved older hits.
But, I'm glad I didn't judge a film by its trailer because this movie was a delight to watch—a visual feast and audible lo-fi lover's dream—despite a weaker script than Pixar's average. Still, with relatable characters, a rom-com cadence, and classic coming-of-age story, I can see Elemental becoming a sleeper hit, a cult classic among Disney/Pixar lovers. What's more, Elemental boasts some of the most impressive and stylized animation seen in the Disney/Pixar sphere since the days of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet.
The action of this tale is primarily contained within Element City, where Air, Water, and Earth beings dwell in harmony. In contrast, Fire beings are relegated to a cramped-but-cozy neighborhood on the outskirts. We follow Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis), a first-gen Fire being who grows up working alongside her parents, Bernie and Cindy (Ronnie Del Carmen and Shila Ommi), in their family store called The Fireplace. (Buckle in for a lot of name puns). Ember works tirelessly as she grows at containing her *fiery* temper in the face of irritating customers, in hopes of one day taking over the store just like her dad always dreamed. In one particularly tough bout of rage, she accidentally opens the pipes in the shop basement sucking in a small flood and one Water-being city inspector, Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie).
Wade tearfully writes up several city code violations and submits them to his boss, regretting it after hearing Ember's family's story as the citations will certainly get the store closed down by the city. Thus, the two set off to save her family's shop. Their first stop is to a professional game of something similar to Harry Potter's Quidditch, where they convince Wade's boss (an Air-being named Gale voiced by Wendi McLendon-Covey) not to shut down the store. She agrees so long as they locate the source of several recent floods and stop the water.
Sparks begin to fly between Ember and Wade as they investigate the leaks, although Ember is careful to keep the nature of their relationship a secret from her parents as Bernie especially has a chip on his shoulder against Water-beings. Ember educates Wade on the discrimination she and other Fire-beings face in Element City.
They manage to track down the issue and use tempered glass to keep the water at bay. (Tempered glass, if you aren't aware, is stronger than regular glass due to its being cooled down rapidly after being heated and shaped. In this case, the cooling agent is water. Water and fire must work together to create the strongest glass and provide the solution to the movie's inciting problem. Subtle, right?). Ember goes to dinner at Wade's and meets his whole emotional, over-the-top family and impresses everyone with her ability to sculpt glass. Wade's mother Brook (Catherine O'Hara) offers to get her connected with a prestigious internship in another city and Ember clearly wants to go. Meanwhile, Cindy, having smelled love on Ember, follows her and learns of her attachment to Wade.
After a fight over her future, Ember leaves Wade claiming that she could never embark on the internship because that would be giving up on her father's dream of her one day taking over the shop. Back home, Bernie reveals that he will be retiring imminently and produces a new sign that reads "Ember's Fireplace." Ember also hears a new story from her parents' immigration where her father offered the bow of greatest respect to his father as he and Cindy embarked, but his father did not return it. Ember is resolved to be everything Bernie wants her to be. They hold a ceremony that brings in lots of neighborhood characters and is ultimately interrupted by Wade who spills the beans on his relationship with Ember and Ember's desire for something other than the store. Bernie goes ballistic, declaring Ember still isn't ready to take over, and Ember rejects Wade.
As she rides away on her motorbike, Ember catches a glimpse of the tempered glass cracking and breaking, causing a flash flood headed straight into the heart of the Fire neighborhood. She races back and is able to mostly alert everyone to safety, but jumps in danger's way in hopes of retrieving the sacred blue flame her parents have tended diligently ever since leaving the Fire homeland. Wade appears having also seen the water, and saves the blue flame from the deluge before the two are trapped in a hearth with no way out. Panic sets in as Ember realizes that Wade is evaporating due to her heat, but he insists this is what he wants. Her family and friends find her once the water recedes still clutching the blue flame. She is distraught and her father is clearly moved by her feelings and Wade's sacrifice. But then, a water droplet falls from the ceiling and then another. Ember, hopefully frantic, begins to collect the condensation in a bucket and lo and behold, Wade reassembles (!) having been evaporated and trapped in the brick without ever actually drying out.
We jump forward. Two regulars have taken over the Fireplace, allowing Bernie and Cindy to enjoy retirement together. Wade and Ember are about to leave for another city so Ember can take the internship. Before boarding the ship, Ember turns back and gives the ultimate bow of respect to her father, who returns it. The credits roll with a few snapshots of life after the end of the film.
Director and Pixar veteran Peter Sohn has made it clear that this project was deeply personal to him, drawn from both the experiences of his parents who immigrated from Korea, and his own experiences in an interracial relationship. While the storyline is predictable and pretty basic, I think his care for this story and its subject matter shows in the details afforded to the world and the loving depiction of each of the key players. This is a story where the only villain is circumstance, where strife between the key players is understood to come from a deep love that is expressed differently between characters.
One of the cooler details is the custom language developed for the Fire beings called Firish. Recruiting David J. Peterson, a veteran at creative fake languages whose credits include Dothraki and High Valerian for Game of Thrones, Elemental's creative team set out to craft a language based on the sounds fire makes. In an interview with Gizmodo, Peter Sohn detailed that they were "mimicking various forms that a crackle of a fire might sound like." Again, I'm not exactly one to advocate for sequels but I would love to see more of this world, especially with this level of immersive detail.
Dare I say this is the horniest Pixar film...? I do. I do, indeed. The main characters share a chaste kiss or two, but there's a surprising reference to "hanky panky" and a bizarre scene where Wade and Ember stumble across an open window where two Earth beings are exchanging apples. The pair in the window nervously exclaims, "We're just doing a bit of pruning!" And, Pixar is most certainly not escaping the thick-thigh allegations with this one. Ember's design includes a small waist and very curvy thighs the likes of which the world hasn't seen since Helen Parr in Incredibles 2. Will most of this skim right over the kids who see this movie's heads? Yeah. Did it surprise me in the theater? Also yeah.
I saw this movie on Tuesday, June 20th, 2023, and at that point in time one scene came across as shockingly, painfully topical. After recounting a time Bernie and Ember were turned away from seeing a rare tree (the only tree to thrive in all four elemental homelands) because "no Fire-beings allowed," Wade orchestrates a way for Ember to see the tree now submerged in water inside a defunct train station. Gale blows an air bubble big enough for Ember to dive into the heart of the station for 20 minutes. Ember is able to glimpse the tree before her oxygen begins running out and Wade must rush her to an exit as the bubble around her gets smaller and smaller. At this point, the biggest news story was the search for OceanGate's Titan submersible that had gone missing on Sunday while on a trip to the bottom of the ocean to see the wreckage of the Titanic. While we now know the submersible imploded on its descent, when I watched the movie, it was still a possible theory that the group of five was stuck inside their craft with a limited supply of oxygen. What are the odds that this movie with this scene would come out during the weekend this submersible went missing and the internet exploded with stories and discussions about the horror of running out of air while underwater? This has nothing really to do with any critique of the film, but more so just an observation that if you saw the movie during opening week, it ended up being a lot more topical than anyone ever expected.
The voice acting was very good across the board and I have no complaints. Overall, the storyline was nothing groundbreaking, but it was done very well which makes it easier to forgive and forget that we've seen this tale in one hundred different ways. It was surprising, given that Pixar carved out a reputation for crafting unique and unexpected plots and concepts. Instead, a lot of creativity has clearly been put into the aesthetics, linguistics, and puns of this film. Beyond being a Pretty Background Movie, Elemental also just has an interesting background, a lot of which is left unexplored. I don't subscribe to the idea that every Disney/Pixar movie needs a sequel, but I definitely think this world holds the potential for more stories that focus on the obscure or unexpected. I'd also personally love to see this world go into one of the theme parks.
Overall
3.5 stars out of 5.
End Credits: 4.5/5
The story continued on through the end credits showing snapshot illustrations of what happened after Ember and Wade left. One of Pixar's finest strengths is the ability to tell an entire narrative in just a few images, which is why I think their end credits have the potential to be so powerful. This one didn't disappoint.
Soundtrack: 4.5/5
Scored by Thomas Newman, composer for other Pixar projects "Finding Nemo," "Finding Dory," and "Wall-E," this soundtrack excels at deepening the world-building seen on screen. Blending modern beats with more-traditional sounding instruments and accents of Asian influence, we are immersed in a familiar-but-foreign soundscape. I can hear licks peppered throughout that sound plucked directly from the Finding Nemo soundtrack, so it wasn't a shock to see they were written by the same person. Vocals are used sparsely but packed a heavy world-building punch, sung in the original Fire language.
The original soundtrack song, "Steal the Show," is performed by Lauv and is one of the best OG soundtrack songs I've heard in a while. It sounds a lot like "I Like Me Better, " which I found out while writing this is also by Lauv. I guess I have no choice but to applaud both men behind this soundtrack for really sticking to their brand.
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