Elemental (new Pixar fire/water movie)

[dissolute ocelot]

He's made of fire, she's made of water, can they overcome their differences and find true love?

So it's the latest Pixar movie, set in a city where people made of fire, water, air, and earth all live alongside each other, even though contact between fire and water will kill one or both. This doesn't make a lot of sense, but is an attempt at a culture-clash romcom from the animation maestros. But reviews and numbers haven't been too great, and it seems to be seen as another sign of Pixar's decline. It was in cinemas a few months ago and is now on Disney Plus.

Personally, I thought it had some beautiful-looking sequences and there was a lot of cleverness in the incidental details. But the central plot didn't work. How exactly are they supposed to have sex, for one thing. How old are they meant to be? Maybe if they were made from fire and water but in a more metaphorical way and didn't kill each other on contact it would be more comprehensible. The portrayal of immigrants is very cliched. And more fundamentally the characters are very one-dimensional - she's hot-headed, he's drippy - compared to something like Up or Inside Out.

So, anyone else seen this? Have you read any x-rated slash fiction about the characters that explains what they do in the bedroom? And do you agree with the perception that Pixar is in decline? Onward was a bit of an experiment aimed at a teen male audience; Soul was certainly interesting even if not a match for their best; Luca was charming; and Turning Red more of a return to their classic era (although how many times can you tell the same plot about immigrant parents refusing to let their children assimilate)? Although even in their heyday they made some second-rate films and were accused of repeating the same formula.

(I don't think there's been a thread on this, apologies if I'm wrong.)

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I have heard some decent things about it and I'm sure I'll get around to watching it at some point, but it does look awfully generic - almost like a mockbuster version of a Pixar film.

I don't know if it's fair to say the studio is in decline, but each new film definitely feels like less of an event these days. Perhaps it's fitting for the studio that killed traditional animation to be overtaken by more visually distinctive stuff like Spiderverse. It certainly doesn't help that Soul and Turning Red, two of their more interesting films of recent years went straight to Disney+.

Side note: was it just a coincidence that Coco, Onward and Soul were all about death and were released in fairly quick succession?

Also, am I the only one that likes the first Cars film? I've never understood why it seems to be viewed as the studio's first dud, other than Nascar and Larry the Cable Guy being too redneck for haughty film critics.

[madhair60]

didn't bother watching this because i'm a adult. i don't watch films unless they show a woman's breasts, bare, or bottom cheeks at a push. a man's cock is also acceptable because i'm no sexist.

[Magnum Valentino]

Also, am I the only one that likes the first Cars film? I've never understood why it seems to be viewed as the studio's first dud, other than Nascar and Larry the Cable Guy being too redneck for haughty film critics.

If Cars was on at Christmas I wouldn't turn it over, yeah. I think quite frequently about the over the top schmaltz of Mater telling he made the right choice when he picked McQueen as his best friend. It's also really beautiful, captures the dust and the heat really nicely. Doesn't help though that it was followed by probably the best run of Pixar films since its creation. There's just that element of anthropomorphised cars that doesn't connect, I think. Feels more nakedly designed to sell toys that the others (yes I'm including Toy Story in that).

[idunnosomename]

Not seen it yet, probably will at some point because I found the setup so massively unappealing. Oh another magical world like Cars you have to spend forever thinking BUT HOW DO THEY FUCK and WAS THERE A HITLER OR A JESUS

It had a poor opening to the point people saw it as a catastrophic flop but has since made up more than double its budget internationally (at $480+M currently)

You've missed out Lightyear which was a terrible idea imo and basically a flop (220M off 200M budget).

Although the pandemic films having such tiny box office makes me wonder how much it matters in the "content" era. Luca and Turning Red are very good films indeed but I don't think they're any less seen or known because of not getting wide theatrical releases?

[BlodwynPig]

These are kids films? Why would you be concerned about how fantasy characters have sex?

Bonkers

[Mister Six]

How exactly are they supposed to have sex, for one thing.

It's a kids' film, I don't think that's really a concern. Like, how do the fire people have sex? Do the Earth people pollinate one another? Can they get someone pregnant by rubbing past them on the subway? Can water people merge together, like The Shunt?

Did Neptune jizz all over some eggs to father The Little Mermaid? How big is Aladdin's cock? Did the Frozen sisters ever, you know... experiment when they were locked up in that castle?

A bigger question is how fire girl and water lad can have kids, and if they can't is there a weird reverse implication that human races are somehow different species?

Anyway, I thought it was fine, although - yes, a bit simplistic and probably hurting a bit from being the latest in a string of films about Asian-Americans struggling with identity, culture, familial obligation and social integration (not just Pixar's own Turning Red, but also EEAAO, The Farewell, Minari... just about everything except Crazy Rich Asians). And obviously it feels a bit like it was cut from the same cloth as Inside Out, with the wacky anthropomorphised concepts having high-concept allegorical adventures.

But it's not bad. It looks really beautiful, it's funny and there are a bunch of fun and creative uses of the elemental concept. And it does that Pixar thing I really like of setting up and paying off characters and situations so that it all ties together nicely at the end. I always find that very impressive.

Another comparison: Zootopia, which also used a fantastical version of New York as a metaphor for American society and race relations. But whereas Zootopia deliberately complicated its depictions so that it's hard to pin the characters down to any particular race/religion/culture/ethnicity, allowing it to work for broad audiences, here it's pretty clear: water people are white Americans, fire people are Asians and the others... don't really matter. (There are no Native Americans, or possibly the water people totally exterminated them, I dunno.)

They may have slightly tried to fight this by casting a black guy as Wade, but then they had him sound exactly like Kenneth from 30 Rock, so that didn't work out at all.

This leads to some slightly awkward storytelling, as the Asian girl's happy ending involves her hooking up with a rich Upper West Side white dude whose mother gets her an internship at a glassmaking factory and whose wealth allows him to just quit his job and go off over there with her. Which somewhat robs the story of its universality a bit.

But maybe I'm overthinking it. It's a decent flick. It's fiiinne.

Although the pandemic films having such tiny box office makes me wonder how much it matters in the "content" era. Luca and Turning Red are very good films indeed but I don't think they're any less seen or known because of not getting wide theatrical releases?

I think they might be, but mostly because they were relatively early Disney+ entries before the subscriber base really took off, and came out at a time when everyone was swimming in streaming content because the world hadn't really opened up properly yet.

Luca especially seems to have been forgotten, but maybe America wasn't ready for a film about gay fish.

[madhair60]

disney can suck my chuddies

[idunnosomename]

MOTHERFUCKIN GAY FISH

I think a lot of the bunging Pixar films onto Disney+ in the pandemic was to boost the brand, and I think it really worked too, and cemented it as a brand alongside Netflix, perhaps even surpassing it. So they probably have happily written off the production costs of Onward (end of run)-Soul-Luca-Turning Red.

I quite liked Zootopia tbh but the racism themes in that are really weird, I'd be interested if Elemental pulls them off better. Also Judy Hopps is a really bad cop who is happy to work with crimelords as a means to an end. But! What's good is they do show you a lot of the weirdness about animals who are very different sizes living together, rather than you just asking questions about the weird world of Cars. I really liked that. And of course the jokes, character animation (mainly from the very different sizes), and plot. Although I did dislike the surprise villain, although she wasn't as bad as Frozen, which I felt was ruined by the Prince Hans reveal.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I've not seen this or Lightyear, but I was frustrated by Onward, Soul and Turning Red, there was a lot to like about all of them but the messages seemed hammered home and the ending's didn't quite land. Maybe I'm mis-remembering the earlier Pixar films, or I was once more easily pleased, but it feels like they've lost their light touch, their subtlety, and so I can't be bothered with them now, or at least until the reviews are really positive again.

Although I did dislike the surprise villain, although she wasn't as bad as Frozen, which I felt was ruined by the Prince Hans reveal.

I didn't mind that, but I was frustrated that it felt like it forgot it was a musical in the final third. Weirdly despite that I saw the stage version this summer which includes a whole bunch of new songs, but then it felt like too many, or at least not enough great songs, so it appears I just cannot be fucking pleased.

[Captain Z]

How exactly are they supposed to have sex, for one thing.

I hear it's very steamy

[Mister Six]

Damn, that's a good joke @Captain Z!

I've not seen this or Lightyear, but I was frustrated by Onward, Soul and Turning Red, there was a lot to like about all of them but the messages seemed hammered home and the ending's didn't quite land. Maybe I'm mis-remembering the earlier Pixar films, or I was once more easily pleased, but it feels like they've lost their light touch, their subtlety, and so I can't be bothered with them now, or at least until the reviews are really positive again.

I think the difference is probably that the more recent films have started off with a theme or message - the difficulties of being an Asian-American teenage girl, coming to terms with a parent's death, wasting your life on something you don't really enjoy - and worked around that, whereas "classic" Pixar started off with a premise (usually "What if X could talk?") and then found a theme to latch onto as they worked through the story beats. So yeah, Toy Story is about learning to share your friends, but the climax of the film is Woody and Buzz reuniting with Andy's other toys, while in modern Pixar the climax of the film is indivisible from the point they're trying to make is expressed through a slow, soppy, sentimental bit where everyone learns a lesson and hugs.

Thinking about Pixar's films seeming a bit less special now, I think it doesn't help that they have much sturdier competition these days: Disney does its own CGI films, and the likes of Zootopia, Raya and Encanto could quite easily be modern Pixar flicks; DreamWorks is still doing slightly ironic B-tier flicks but both The Bad Guys and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish both show a dramatic increase in their visual ambitions; Sony's output is obviously a bit "cooler" and more edgy than Pixar's but the Lord/Miller-produced films are of universally high quality and push the visual boundaries; and while Illumination's stuff is the weakest and least essential of the major CGI studios it is out there filling up the theatres.

Plus you've got stuff from other, smaller studios - even Ghibli is doing CGI now.

A lot of people seem to rate 2009's Up as the last peak Pixar movie (after that you'd got Toy Story 3 in 2010, Cars 2 in 2011, Brave in 2012, Monsters University in 2013...). That predates the first Illumination movie (Despicable Me) by one year; Sony had only put out the forgettable Surf's Up and Open Season (Lord and Miller's excellent Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs also came out in 2009); and DreamWorks was... well, DreamWorks (aside from the Aardman stuff, the highlights up to that point were Madagascar, Bee Movie and Kung Fu Panda, which are all great in their own ways but are hardly Pixar-tier material).

Disney's CGI output up to that point consisted of two poorly received films nobody remembers (Chicken Little and Meet The Robinsons) and the okayish Bolt. They didn't knock it out of the park until Tangled in 2010, which also marked the end of the big slump it went through after 2002's Lilo & Stitch.

So yeah, Pixar isn't special any more, although all of this said, I don't know if that indicates any real drop-off in quality. As much as the reliance on The Message might put people off, I think their films are probably more thematically and emotionally ambitious now than they ever have been, without compromising the kind of hijinks and spectacle that the kids enjoy. And if you look at the output from the other studios, it's obvious that Pixar is the only one that's consistently pushing the conceptual envelope (yes, I said Disney has its Encantos and Zootopias, but they also have Wreck-It Ralph and the 3D princess movies - including, fuck me, the upcoming third Frozen flick).

[madhair60]

FWIW I consider Monsters University a classic. Beautiful message in that film.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Monsters U is redeemed by its ending and its message. It's the anti-Pinocchio. You won't magically get rewarded with what you want regardless of the purity of your heart. Reality steps in, and it's by taking into account that you have limitations that you can find what you're good or great at and actually achieve more.

[Mister Six]

Hey, I like MU! And Brave. And Toy Story 3, actually. But this run of sequels and Brave being poorly received was the point at which a lot of people started saying the wheels had come off Pixar. And in the years that followed, Disney and DreamWorks upped their game and Illumination really took off. So it all adds up to the end of Pixar's golden age, even if the recent run of non-sequel films is probably as good as the classic era in terms of ambition and quality.

[dissolute ocelot]

These are kids films? Why would you be concerned about how fantasy characters have sex?

I couldn't really tell what age they were aimed at. Presumably being a rom com it's aimed at a slightly older audience than something like Finding Nemo. Pixar do seem to be aiming for slightly older kids in recent years, as well as having a big crossover audience of adults who loved Up and Wall-E. Likewise, Turning Red has a lot of stuff for teenagers even though I'm sure younger kids could enjoy some of it.

The sex is really just a reflection of how nothing makes sense. How many people die on public transport or in public buildings every year as a result of accidentally bumping into someone else? Madness.

EDIT: Also, what happens when it rains? Do all the fire people die? Even if they have houses now, did they evolve from primitive fire animals who would die? The fantasy world seems to have an earth-like hydrological system, so presumably there is precipitation.

[JaDanketies]

We put it on and nobody paid any attention to it so it got turned off again. I just didn't find the premise interesting enough to actually watch it. Kid only wants to watch Booba or Toy Story anyway.

I took him to the pictures to watch it, actually, but the screen was full, so we watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead, which was way better, and he actually sat through it

[JaDanketies]

double post delete

[idunnosomename]

The air people are clouds which are just water vapour

[Mister Six]

The air people are clouds which are just water vapour

I did think that was where they were going right at the end, which would have been a weird reveal, but then they didn't.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Damn, that's a good joke @Captain Z!

I think the difference is probably that the more recent films have started off with a theme or message - the difficulties of being an Asian-American teenage girl, coming to terms with a parent's death, wasting your life on something you don't really enjoy - and worked around that, whereas "classic" Pixar started off with a premise (usually "What if X could talk?") and then found a theme to latch onto as they worked through the story beats. So yeah, Toy Story is about learning to share your friends, but the climax of the film is Woody and Buzz reuniting with Andy's other toys, while in modern Pixar the climax of the film is indivisible from the point they're trying to make is expressed through a slow, soppy, sentimental bit where everyone learns a lesson and hugs.

Thinking about Pixar's films seeming a bit less special now, I think it doesn't help that they have much sturdier competition these days: Disney does its own CGI films, and the likes of Zootopia, Raya and Encanto could quite easily be modern Pixar flicks; DreamWorks is still doing slightly ironic B-tier flicks but both The Bad Guys and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish both show a dramatic increase in their visual ambitions; Sony's output is obviously a bit "cooler" and more edgy than Pixar's but the Lord/Miller-produced films are of universally high quality and push the visual boundaries; and while Illumination's stuff is the weakest and least essential of the major CGI studios it is out there filling up the theatres.

Plus you've got stuff from other, smaller studios - even Ghibli is doing CGI now.

A lot of people seem to rate 2009's Up as the last peak Pixar movie (after that you'd got Toy Story 3 in 2010, Cars 2 in 2011, Brave in 2012, Monsters University in 2013...). That predates the first Illumination movie (Despicable Me) by one year; Sony had only put out the forgettable Surf's Up and Open Season (Lord and Miller's excellent Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs also came out in 2009); and DreamWorks was... well, DreamWorks (aside from the Aardman stuff, the highlights up to that point were Madagascar, Bee Movie and Kung Fu Panda, which are all great in their own ways but are hardly Pixar-tier material).

Disney's CGI output up to that point consisted of two poorly received films nobody remembers (Chicken Little and Meet The Robinsons) and the okayish Bolt. They didn't knock it out of the park until Tangled in 2010, which also marked the end of the big slump it went through after 2002's Lilo & Stitch.

So yeah, Pixar isn't special any more, although all of this said, I don't know if that indicates any real drop-off in quality. As much as the reliance on The Message might put people off, I think their films are probably more thematically and emotionally ambitious now than they ever have been, without compromising the kind of hijinks and spectacle that the kids enjoy. And if you look at the output from the other studios, it's obvious that Pixar is the only one that's consistently pushing the conceptual envelope (yes, I said Disney has its Encantos and Zootopias, but they also have Wreck-It Ralph and the 3D princess movies - including, fuck me, the upcoming third Frozen flick).

I agree with pretty much everything you've written there, apart from the end bit as I think there has been a slight drop off in quality, not a huge amount, but it's definitely there. I went to see Toy Story 3 with my closest friend and my two godchildren and he and I both cried at one point (while both children remained utterly confused as to our reaction!) but I found Toy Story 4 fairly annoying. For my money Turning Red is the closest to being a modern classic, but I still feel the message didn't need to be thrust in to the audiences face quite as overtly as it was.

I think the the other problem I have is that I'm just tired of the character design look, I know there are variations but I was genuinely thrilled by both Spider-Verse movies, and loved how ugly beautiful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was, but while Soul and Turning Red had stunning sequences I wish they'd play around with how the human characters look a lot more than they do.

[A Hat Like That]

On Cars

Not seen it yet, probably will at some point because I found the setup so massively unappealing. Oh another magical world like Cars you have to spend forever thinking BUT HOW DO THEY FUCK and WAS THERE A HITLER OR A JESUS

One of the characters is explicitly a WW2 veteran.
So what happened to all the Ladas?

Paul Newman is good in it and the vibe about not having to race everywhere is a  good one.

[idunnosomename]

I've only seen the first Cars. it's okay, but it's all sex-pest Lasseter's baby, arguably even more than Toy Story was. Luck from Skydance Studios was pushed very hard as a Lasseter executive producer vehicle (lol) but it died on its arse because it was basically shit.

anyway in Cars 2 there is a Car Pope inside a larger Popemobile which implies a car Jesus as well the Jeep implies a car Hitler.

[Mister Six]

I read that as the Popemobile impales Car Jesus, which made me want to watch Cars 2 for the first time in my life.

[idunnosomename]

A Nuremberg rally but it's a load of Volkswagen Beetles with eyes on their windscreens going round in a circle

[PlanktonSideburns]

That news anchor that shot himself in the head but a car one of that

Cars throwing themselves out of the twin towers

A car version of Mr hands

A car rolf harris

Kittens falling off a bike gif but its a car

[Mister Six]

Cars throwing themselves out of the twin towers

Crossover time.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Bit tastless mate, many people died

[Terry Torpid]

with eyes on their windscreens

That's the fundamental problem with Cars. Any kid who looks at a real car perceives the headlights as the eyes. And it's not just kids; it's a sort of chicken or the egg situation, because manufacturers design cars to have a face that will appeal to the adult target buyers. Big blokey muscle cars have a tough frowny face, little girly city hatchbacks have cutesy round eyes, Landrovers have a stoic expression etc.

Supposedly the Pixar boffins changed it to the windscreen because the bigger surface area makes the eyes bigger and more expressive and easier to animate (and possibly to set the film apart from previous anthropomorphic car cartoons, and a kind of paper street trap to make it obvious when someone rips off the idea) but that kind of overthinking just undermines the child-like logic of the whole idea, and immediately puts me off. In Cars, the headlights come across as the nostrils, which is just daft.

[idunnosomename]

It seems the windscreen as eyes was there right from the start.



Here's Jorgen Klubien's very pretty pitch for The Yellow Car dated May 1997 on the title page that uses essentially the same character design principles as the 2006 film. It was going to be the follow-up to A Bug's Life until it was replaced by Toy Story 2 and retooled as Cars.

https://jorgenklubien.com/portfolio/story%20development.html

Charming but rather simplistic and tropey plot. The fable about fossil fuels vs electricity flounders a bit because you can't really have a solar-powered car. Do like the background humans though, stops me questioning everything.

He has it in a carousel, there are exactly 100 pages fyi. found it easier just to change the URL number

Spoiler alert

at the end a pink version of the protagonist with big eye lashes materialises which is possibly the weakest ending imaginable

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