Who is talking about Pixar's "Elemental"?

When the trailer for Pixar's newest film dropped, I immediately thought it seemed a bit gimmicky. Okay, so we have a city of sentient beings of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. They all live in a multicultural city, Zootopia-style. The trailer showed only one Fire person as someone who was hiding herself, as if Fire people were being ostracized from society. And to top it all off, the Fire person has a meet-cute with a Water person.

From the get-go, I already seemed to know what the story would be. It was a mixed-matched love story with themes about overcoming prejudice. I wasn't super interested. In fact, I was starting to lose my love for Pixar as a studio after the release of Incredibles 2. 

Here's a completely skippable flash-review of the last few years of Pixar films in case anyone's interested...

Incredibles 2: Good but not as good as the first one, criminally missed opportunity to have the characters grow up
Toy Story 4: Didn't watch it due to reboot fatigue
Onward: Watched it at home and actually really enjoyed it
Soul: Watched it at home and was very perplexed
Luca: Haven't seen it
Turning Red: Watched it twice, liked it a lot
Lightyear: Haven't seen it, keep forgetting it exists

In short, Pixar films haven't inspired or interested me like they used to, probably because I've grown up and become somewhat cynical. I was completely prepared to ignore Elemental, until I realized that nobody was talking about it. Onward got screwed over because of the Pandemic release, I heard good words about Soul and Luca, and Turning Red became a source of memes and stupid controversy (some people just hate media aimed for young girls and get pissy when they're not the target audience...).

But I hadn't heard anything about Elemental. I did some digging around the Internet and found some quotes of critical consensus. Here's the highlights:

"[Elemental] received praise from critics for its animation, though its screenplay was considered underwhelming" - Wikipedia as of August 13th 2023.

"[Elemental] may not satisfy as fully as the greatest Pixar pictures, but it remains a solid story told with dazzling visual flair" - Rotten Tomatoes as of August 13th 2023.

And honestly, after seeing it...I completely agree with the above statements. 

But here are some more detailed thoughts as to why I think Elemental was only "good but not great."

1. It's a love story. 

Nothing against love stories, I love a good romance when it's done right. The problem with Elemental is that for me, it couldn't strike a balance between the conflict of the forbidden love of Water + Fire and the conflict of the protagonist, Ember, deciding that she wants to live her own dream. 

In short, the "Pixar formula" is that each character ends up wanting the exact opposite of what they wanted at the start of the film. For example, Marlin wants to keep his son Nemo safe at all costs, but ends up learning to let him grow up and have freedom. Sully wants to be the top scarer, but after learning that what they're doing is actually hurting human kids, he learns another way that they can create energy. The list goes on, but for just about every Pixar film, the "twists" in the protagonists' goals are there.

In Elemental, Ember is set up to want to inherit her father's store as a way of repaying his sacrifice of leaving his homeland for a better life in Element City. Throughout the narrative, Ember discovers her talent for making glass sculptures and realizes she has potential as a creator and artist, instead of a shop keeper. The "Pixar ending" is that Ember tells her father the truth about what she wants and leaves for a glassmaking internship in another city.

But the other main plot of the story is really Ember's romance with Wade, a public facilities inspector who comes out from a burst pipe in the family's shop. What starts as them trying to stop the store from being shut down blooms into a romance of them exploring the city together, getting to know each other better, and realizing they care for each other. The romantic buildup was fine and had some really realistic moments that we don't see in a lot of love stories, like the fact that they both know their feelings are mutual for a long time before they properly act upon them (as opposed to a "oMG I'm so confused do I like him or not? I SWEAR I DON'T LIKE HIM" moment).

Honestly I thought they were a cute couple. Who doesn't love an
"opposites attract" story?

For me, having Ember's priorities be both her dreams and the love interest did not gel well. While the characters had great chemistry, I didn't end up caring about them ending up together towards the end as much as the movie was telling me to. I was much more invested in seeing Ember grow as a character outside of her relationships to the male characters in the story.

(Side note: The romance between Bob and Helen Parr from The Incredibles is absolutely amazing to me because it's an established couple going through changes in their lives together, and it's not the main source of tension in the story. I just want every romance in a narrative be like how it is in The Incredibles.)

Ah, the battle couple. My lifelong favorite.

2. The world doesn't feel "lived in."

While I loved the designs, the imagination, and the animation of Elemental, the worldbuilding itself felt surprisingly weak. 

There's already been a lot of discussion about how Zootopia failed to tell an earnest narrative about predjudice. But what Zootopia did well, in my opinion, was making the titular city feel real. Zootopia had an established history, as well as side-narratives and explanations to how the city itself worked.

Element City felt a bit weak on a conceptual level, because you have to suspend your disbelief that creatures made of elements would need things like food, infrastructure, and clothing. 

Not only that, but it becomes a hindrance to the plot when you see how little the city itself actually plays into the story. 

Wade meets Ember because some pipes burst in her home. It's implied that there's bad flooding going on in Fire Town, because the city wasn't built to accommodate Fire people, which is honestly a real piece of commentary on how cyclical social injustice works.

Despite that, the flooding issue becomes a problem that is temporarily addressed and doesn't really return until the film's climax. Element City was more of a backdrop and an underused gimmick than an actual "character" like you see in other films.

It doesn't help that the side characters in the story aren't that interesting. There's an Earth kid who hangs out with Ember at her store, Wade's Air person boss who shows up to be helpful now and then, and the other Fire people who frequent the store. Other than that, the background characters feel lifeless, like NPCs in a video game. 

I only remember these characters' names because they are puns.

That could be a microcosm of the concept - after all, it's hard to create dynamic character design that adds life to background characters when they are all embodiments of physical elements. From a design perspective, it's hard to build personality that way.

Let's wrap it up...

I don't hate this film. In fact, I really enjoyed it. I just think that it has a few weaknesses on a conceptual level that held it back. 

Another thing to consider is that Elemental probably wasn't going to be the next Finding Nemo, or Ratatouille. I don't want to be a naysayer who says "Pixar is just bad now," but consider this:

What all the Pixar films of the 90s and the 2000s had was the advantage of timing. It's hard to imagine it, but there was a time when Pixar was one of only a few studios putting out CG films. It was really good at making movies that had innovative visuals and impeccable storytelling.

The problem isn't that "Pixar is getting worse." The problem is that "the competition is getting better." Just watch animated movies like Nimona and Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse and you'll see what I mean.