Elemental: ANOTHER Box Office DISASTER for Pixar... 

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The Elemental premise just feels like it was originally conceived as a short film. Could have been a great short.

For the romance part, I think Wall-E is absolutely a love story that happens around an environmental/consumerist/space adventure environment. Wall-E and Eva's relationship (along with that shoe) push the plot forward.

I don't think Disney is sabotaging Pixar but I think Disney's trying to make Pixar more like Disney

On Zootopia: One element of the 'worldbuilding' that amazed me with the thought put into it was that the 'Arctic' zone was next to the 'Desert' zone: The heat pumped out of the Arctic zone was sent to the Desert zone to dry and heat it up 😀

should've made a story about a fire boy and a water girl solving various puzzles, missed opportunity

I found it weird how an important plot point was that Ember was afraid to touch Wade, even though Ember can touch paper with no ill effects.

I think you summed it up pretty well at the end. We're living in a world where Spiderverse and Puss in Boots exist to prove animation can be new and bold, and Pixar (and Disney, really) is stuck in the past and not innovating. I really hope they try something new. It'd be a damn shame to keep getting mid movies from Pixar.

It's also sad how no matter how stunning the visuals of a film are, it doesn't matter if your story falls flat or is perceived as generic

Allegories for racism and discrimination always kind of fail when whatever they are using (elements, predators/prey) have tangible reasons to not work together or mix with each other

I've only seen a few trailers for Elemental, but personally I'm uninterested because it really does just seem like baby's first story plot. The four elements are quite literally the most basic building blocks you could go with, and on top of that it's the Romeo and Juliet "x can never interact with y" story that's also been told a million times. There's nothing about it that feels like I'm missing out if I don't see it. Maybe that's on the advertisers for not doing more to make it feel enticing, because it really isn't gripping from the outset at all.

I feel there's something to be said about how two different marketing strategies for two different movies ultimately killed them both. Teenage Kraken showed off too much of its plot and the climax in the trailers, while Elemental shows too little of its actual story and focused on the cheap gags and love story b plot. Marketing can really make or break a movie man it's nuts

For me, it was that the plot seemed generic. It seemed more like the kind of meta joke that another animated show would make to parody Pixar movies. Something like "Salt and pepper are best friends who live in the cupboard but their families don't approve of their friendship. Look what happens this Summer when things get spicy in... The Spice of life. Please give us an Oscar for this obvious metaphor about racial segregation, we even rendered realistic salt physics."

I loved how small and self contained Lucca was. I adore that movie. Wish Pixar could go small instead of big with their concepts.

I watched Spirited Away with my best friend over the weekend. She doesn't really watch anime or anything like that, so I wasn't sure what she would think. She loved it. When she tried to explain why, she said, "I think it's because I had no idea what was going to happen. Movies these days you can predict exactly what's going to happen after the first five minutes."

My issue with Elemental is that the concept wasn't communicated properly. Up until release I just couldn't figure out what it was about. I got 'it's a romcom', but also 'it's about generational trauma', 'it's about racism', 'it's like Zootopia', a bunch of other things where it just seemed like the marketing was really undirected and it was trying to do too many things thematically.

Funnily enough, I thought that the city design made MORE sense given the story - it's perfectly safe for water, earth, and air elements. The fire elements haven't been around for more than a generation, and while the city wasn't designed for them, their section of town is still being adapted for them. The water is supposed to be shut off, and there's a lot of stone and metal work that can safely handle the heat. That said, public infrastructure hasn't fully adapted - it's hard to move a highway/train that's used by everyone else. Those sadly haven't always been built or maintained fairly to people of all ethnic groups either in real life, though. A lot of homes and businesses were demolished to make way for today's highways.

I think a big part of Pixar's early success was their premises. _"What if our toys had a secret life and loved us as much as we loved them?"_ is a fantastic premise for a movie. _"What if there are actual monsters in our closets, but they're actually really nice people just trying to make a living working a blue collar job?"_ is equally captivating (if not moreso because of its absolute absurdity) Elemental's premise of _"What if fire and water became friends"_ is a terrible premise - the sort of thing I'd expect from an Illumination picture at best, or a self-published children's book at worst. I'm sure the movie is executed more than competently, but there's nothing to hook me into actually wanting to see it. And somebody should've pointed that out before they spent 200 million dollars on it.

The problem with movies like Elemental and Onward, is that they want to tell a very personal and somewhat relatable story, but put it in a world they don't bother to develop beyond surface level. The worldbuilding is one of the things that disappoint me the most about both movies: it's basically our world, but with creatures it's not adapted to. I absolutely hated the fence scene in the Elemental trailer, especially when Wade lampshades it: pointing out that fences are useless in this world doesn't change the fact that there are fences in this world for no reason.

Yeah, my issue with the concept is the subtext: namely, that there are perfectly good reasons for THESE people to live segregated. It kind of undermines trying to apply the "we all can get along together" message intended for humans when the challenge isn't just "someone looks different or lives differently" and instead it's "coming into physical contact is death".

You might want to make an update video regarding Elemental's box office numbers, it's turning out to be the sleepiest of sleeper hits! It's already past the break even point and I think positive word of mouth really helped turn things around.

The decline in pixar is probably executive manager meddling. One of the fascinating things i found about pixars early movies was how they were always willing to scrap an idea and start again from scratch to make something better. They would sometimes get pretty far before they decide "its just not that great." And start again. Some guys would even use "pixar method" as a shorthand for coming up with stories saying "you come up with three different ideas, Scrap them, then do a fourth one. Everyone has already thought of the first three ideas, so make something creative and unique you do the fourth one and try it out. I have a very hard time believing this movie was the fourth run-through of a draft. Probably some higher up told pixar to push it through with this because they didn't want to waste money scrapping and starting over.

On a side note: Zootopia seems to be more of an allegory for _prejudice,_ i.e. of judging something before knowing its true character. Prejudice can lead to discrimination, which is what the movie portrayed. I think this is why it frequently gets interchanged for specific issues like racism, sexism, etc., because all those have prejudice in common as the root of the problem. With Elementals, I think they were trying too hard to fit in specific allegories that aren't 100% compatible with the fantasy world they'd built. A mismatch like this can overshadow a movie's main characters, imo.

In my opinion, the better version of the Fire girl in love with a guy who can’t touch her is Finn & Fire Princess from Adventure Time. It was deep, emotional, complex, adult, and actually reached a realistic conclusion which was bittersweet. It was one of my favorite parts of AT. If I want to watch this type of story, I’ll just rewatch that.

( In response to timestamp 13:00 ) In my opinion, the whole reason that Ember family left fireland actually makes a lot of sense. There are lots of reasons families immigrate but some of the most common reasons is because their home isn't safe or poverty. In cases of natural disasters, you get both, so it's really common to see people immigrating to other places because of natural disasters, especially if they live in natural disaster prone areas, which I'm not sure fireland was but it is possible. Also the fire town on the edge of element city seemed very reminiscent of Chinatown, lots of people who were forced to immigrate due to whatever reason settling in the only place they could afford and eventually the town gets filled with immigrants and is molded around their culture, it makes sense to me that firetown was created, its not because fire people couldn't live in element city, it's because they were never given a chance to try so they had to settle elsehere hence why firetown is essentially fireproof, they made it to fit them but i dont think its cause tye city wasn't safe for them.Also the only time we see fire being destructive is when ember loses her temper and even then we only ever see her being destructive, so the whole reason why they were rejected on their way to see the flower, probably really was just discrimination, I mean we even see ember in the museum later and she's completely fine.

I was just shocked when you were talking about how Pixar has never done a love story, despite showing Wall-E on screen. At least for me, Wall-E and Eve's love story is a really obvious and important part of the film, seeing the lengths they are willing to go for each other. The ending especially is just beautiful in regards to their relationship. I will not stand for Wall-E and Eve love story erasure.

I think the biggest problem is that they've got stories appropriate for short films that they're stretching out to feature film length. I think Elemental would be much better as a significantly shorter movie with a more condensed plot.

I think a major issue is all the movie releases happening all at once. Like Spiderverse 2, Elemental, Flash, Little Mermaid, and Transformers have all been released in the past few weeks, so people are being picky about which movie to go see because of prices being so high. It also doesn't help that Disney/Pixar are releasing their movies so close to one another, effectively self sabotaging themselves

This aged badly 💀

I feel like there are 3 main reasons why Elemental is failing. 1: The timing. I remember Pixar saying that this was going to be their big comeback. I also remember thinking: "Ok, so you're releasing another film after a slew of films that were just OK. You were expecting this film to be the big moneymaker juggernaut? The same month of Spider-Verse, Rise of the Beast, and the same day as The Flash?!" 2. Disney+. Ever since Onward, ALL of Pixar's releases were Disney+ exclusive, at least for a little bit. I feel like families have gotten used to the idea of "Oh, a Pixar film is in theaters. I'll just wait for it to be on Disney+." It's a lot trickier to predict where Spider-Verse will be on streaming services and, to a lesser extent, The Super Mario Bros Movie, whereas, with Elemental, it's obvious where it will be. 3. The lack of marketing. Oh, I almost forgot, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, is literally coming out a little over a week at the time of this, so i think that Disney is focusing on that film more than Elemental. Which makes them look even more pathetic: the fact that they're literally overlooking Pixar as just another asset and nothing else.

I honestly pity the director behind this movie because he seem like a nice guy and his parents passed away during development of Elemental so this film really means a lot to him. Too bad everything went wrong from the marketing to the reviews and now he has both “the good dinosaur” flop and “elemental” flop on his belt making me feel like he will be fire soon.

I think the biggest issue is that this story has been told a million times, in more compelling ways. The passionate female character and the softer, less sure, male character. Some sort of natural born difference forcing them to stay apart. but eventually, it's going to be overcome in some way. If I know exactly what's going to happen in this story, then why watch it? I also think that Pixar was kind of banking on people being impressed with their visuals here. The character design is interesting and the physics of the water, fire, etc. are nice, but audiences in this day and age see cutting-edge visuals on a daily basis, it's not enough to carry it.

I have come from the future and I am here to say that somehow Elemental had one to the biggest box office come backs that I have seen as it is considered a sleeper hit and grew legs in the box office and will end up having over 400 million dollars in the box office which would mean to some reporting breaking even.

It's kind of sad actually because this movie broke new ground in computer animation. When this idea was first conceived they weren't sure it was possible to make the images and effects required! Sadly, despite the huge win for animation it was dragged down with a movie that may not even be bad but that no one, including myself, cares about.

Pixar was known for making realistic and immersive 3d animation and for a while that was the status quo but things like the Lego Movie, Spider Verse, and Mitchells vs the Machines have started this trend with animation being more stylized and unique, take a look at puss in boots 2, and TMNT mutant mayhem. what I mean to say is that back then, everyone was catching up to Pixar, but nowadays, Pixar needs to catch up to everyone else

I think a significant part of why Elemental failed is due to it lacking a captivating premise and feeling a bit overplayed and cliche. Family issues? Racism allegory? Big city based on an abstract concept? All done elsewhere, recently, and much better in other Disney/Pixar movies like Turning Red and Zootopia. It's fine to reuse similar plot elements, Pixar does this well all the time, but for Elemental it hurts worse imo, since there's so much you can do with the idea of anthropomorphic elements, especially for worldbuilding, but they just don't try that hard beyond the beautiful animation, and I think many people could see this.

Am I the only one that absolutely LOVED Brave?? It seems so many people hate on it 😭

I think these metaphors are always weird when the things being compared are really very different/dangerous like elements, predator/prey, androids.. When in real life, like saber said, it's all just humans. Being discriminated based on assumptions

One thing someone said about this thag I really agree on is that the backgrounds are WAY too complex for the models. Like the models are blobs with faces but the backgrounds are so incredibly beautiful and detailed, but it can just make it hard to differentiate at times

The race allegory really doesn't work in this because fundamentally these elements are different on a molecular level. In Elemental, a fire person could literally be extinguished if they so much as *hugged* a water elemental. There is no possible coexistence due to how volatile the elements react with each other. The world building feels very surface level. And it creates these really weird situations when it comes to stigma between elements. Cause I swear I remember terms like "fireball" and "cloudpuff" being thrown around and like...are those supposed to be *racial slurs?* And the racism isn't even really consistent cause like for example the dad's biases against water people just get thrown out out of nowhere. Like, poof, his racism is now gone cause reasons. If the movie was more focused on like, the privilege the water people have in comparison to the other elements, maybe it could work a little better. As water is an incredibly prevalent element, it could be said that they built the city and their transit around them with little care about how they affect the other elements biomes. They're "shallow" so to speak. Then people like fire elementals would have completely recognizable grievances as they are living in a world that is systemically built not to accommodate them and could actively bring them harm. And the other elements both are benefited and harmed by their structuring as well. And it's not like there aren't plenty of ways to show conflict between the regions of elemental beings. Like earth people not wanting fire people near their dry grass plains or forests cause of fire damage. Or Air people not wanting fire or earth to mess with their air purity with smoke and pollen. You get the idea. Then while the racism still wouldn't be perfect, it would make more sense to why everyone is tense when others get into their zones, and why everyone is so divided. Idk those are my thoughts on it at least.

When you consider how long it takes to make an animated movie, Pixar's downfall can probably be directly attributed to the Disney acquisition. WALL-E and Up may have been released after the acquisition, but they were conceptualized before.

I'm realizing that part of what made Puss in Boots so good is that it explores emotion in a much more mature way. Characters, world, and plot are all just the delivery mechanisms for emotion. Elemental seems to explore love, which is a bit overplayed at this point. From what the trailers show, it's basically just a retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

Going back to the criticism of “People have a genuine fear of fire people”, Zootopia arguably had that issue too with the POC adjacent people being the predators

Studio Ghibli is easily the match for Pixar's streak of quality in the 2000s

I honestly really enjoyed Elemental. It was a very fun sweet movie that's a nice break from everything. I get that people want something new and visually cool, but if I'm honest, I like the idea of just making nice simple movies that are slow paced and fun to watch. We don't need a Puss in Boots the last wish every other week. I'd prefer that to be more of a once a year thing. That's why I love Pixar so much. They make such good simple movies.

Maybe if fire could become inactive or non-burning when outside their community, but it hurts them or is uncomfortable, there could be some kind of code switching or assimilation commentary where Ember is forced to change into an uncomfortable non-burning state in the city and can only burn and be herself at home. Then people not liking fire would be rooted in prejudice because despite her not burning all the time she’s still feared.

Honestly, for me it’s something about the character models. Specifically the mouths. It just sends my mind directly to the uncanny valley.

Zootopia's allegory was flawed because of the inherent physical differences between something like a mouse and a lion, but i think they did an okay job hand-waving it as the animals not actually having natural instincts, at no point does Judy seem like she'd be unsafe talking to Nick because Nick very clearly doesn't have any instinct or urge to hunt. But i guess someone saw that criticism and said "hold my beer" because you can't even hand-wave this set-up

I think this is a case where Pixar had a good story but they didn't have the world thought out enough to complement the story

If fire and water don't mix, then how did water boy and lava girl work together and survive all these years?

I think it's important not to overlook that this is a social drama with a heavy focus on romance which probably doesn't have a lot of instant appeal to a younger audience, but has a setting that's a little too carefree and whimsical for an older audience. I kept trying to figure out who they were trying to market to when I would watch the trailer and I just couldn't pinpoint a time in my life when I would have been excited over this movie.

Filmmakers today, especially Pixar, need to start understanding that even if you aren't trying to make a franchise, worldbuilding may still be a key aspect of your work. With proper worldbuilding, people will care more about your unique setting and, in turn, the stories of its inhabitants.

Well, a month later it will pass 400 million. Not the strongest numbers for Pixar, but when compared to the years box office, it did fairly well.

I think Elemental flopped for primarily for 2 reasons: 1. The underlying themes and plot of social/racial divisions being worked through and bridged via a romantic relationship is well tread ground in and of itself it just isn't novel. Its not repellent by any means it just doesn't make one go "Ooo interesting" so much as "Oh they're doing that again, okay." 2. The gimmick of these Elemental beings and the world they inhabit just isn't intuitive in a way that immediately makes you start imagining the possibilities and how they can play with them instead kind of leaves with a directionless blank slate beyond fire people can burn plant people, water people can put out fire people. Between those to things I think people kind of shrugged the film off.

The plot should have been just a court case where the fire people want better accommodations, but the water people don’t know what to provide and the two protagonists find ways that water and fire can mix and they find some way for water and fire to still interact without hurting each other.

It's really sad, because Elemental was pursuing a unique animation style (and from what I heard, it was extremely expensive to animate the characters)

I'm so glad it wasn't just me who liked Monsters University. It resonated with me a lot as a disabled person who struggled significantly through my undergraduate college years for many reasons, and watching Mike's character arc and struggles made me and my journey feel very seen. I haven't seen Elemental but I think on premise it's pretty good? But as you pointed out, the worldbuilding and weird stuff like "fire touching water can literally kill fire people" kinda holds me back. Zootopia wasn't perfect, but its worldbuilding was very solid and believable in comparison, and that premise of believability is important for viewers who want to think deeper about a movie.

I think maybe if the creators made the characters people with elemental themed abilities instead of them actually being elements would allow for most of the ethics problems could be easily resolved. Society would still be split based on elements, but people would be able to walk through the city without having to worry about dying every second. (But this is just a thought) EDIT: ok I get that this sounds a lot like atla it only clicked in my head aft ppl pointed it out💀

Like what other people said, I think this movie could've worked better as a short film. I think it'd be quite interesting if Pixar/Disney made shorter, more well thought off stories and all included it in one hour long compilation; kinda like Fantasia but without the music.

Well this certainly aged like milk lmao

I honestly cant imagine how they managed to render these characters and animate them.

the problem is that Elemental is that it's an idea we would have all liked back in 2012/2014, but ended up being made a decade too late

I honestly think this COULD have worked as a deeper film by recognizing that ALL of the elements are potentially very dangerous, but that in a lot of ways fire is only the most superficially destructive while being the most physically vulnerable. Like yes, Fire can burn things, it can do property damage. Earth, Water, and Air can all snuff fire out. But Earth, Water, and Air don't consider their own strength, and the danger they pose, because Fire people are newcomers, different, and regarded with suspicion because of how visually striking the damage they do can be.

Well this didn’t age well…..

A couple of RU-vidrs have brought this up and I agree with them. I think Elemental would have done better as a short than a full-length movie. That's just my opinion though.

At this point, Pixar should have a Short era or mini-movies, really test the waters and receive feedback from their audience. Sure it'd be without much risk, but it may be worth it. They save money and their reputation, and the audiences get to hype a movie

I think the “*blank* but with emotions” sentiment works more here because the elements are just people. In Nemo the fish have emotions but they’re still fish. In A Bugs Life the bugs have emotions but they’re still bugs. In Elemental the elements are just people with some extra qualities that keep them from mixing.

Elemental have a 93% audience score and 458.3 millions $ box office for a 151.4 millions $ budget. Why is it a Disaster ?

I think that what makes a lot of Pixar's earlier works so compelling isn't just that they're about non-human characters with human emotions, but that they're about non-human characters with human emotions AND non-human problems, but told in very human ways. A lot of earlier Pixar movies ask, "What's a problem that [x thing] would have? How do we tell a story about that but still have it emotionally resonate with audiences?", whereas a movie like Elemental asks, "What if immigrant experience but with fire and water?" The latter is a lot less interesting.

A problem for me is that the movie’s metaphor feels too in your face which is something I think the older films were really good at being subtle with. For example ratatouille was a film I enjoyed a lot when I was little and now that I’m older I appreciate it even more because of the small details that I’ve begun to notice along with jokes that I missed. This is what made Pixar’s older films so good because every age could enjoy it for different reasons.

A point that wasn’t brought up regarding Pixar’s recent box office performance is these movies’ target audience is children and movie tickets and refreshments are _expensive._ A lot of families would rather wait a few months and get the dvd for $15 than spend $80+ for a family of five.

You might have to do an update with this video

For the point about the city not being safe for fire people, I think the idea of the city not being made for fire people is intentional. Ember says it herself, that the city isn't made with fire people in mind. And we can see when her parents move into the city, there are no other fire people. Like, at all. Maybe the city wasn't able or willing to re-build their entire layout to suit fire people that weren't there before? That's what I got from it, anyways. The idea I think was to show that Ember and her family were out of place and having trouble fitting in.

I NEVER would've guessed Sony and DreamWorks would be on the top of the food chain when it comes to animation with Disney/Pixar struggling as much as they are now. Like the dynamics just flipped on its head and its insane

From what I’ve noticed, Pixar is following a similar fate as Disney’s own animated films in the 2000s. Because like Disney before them, Pixar is having hits and misses that plagued them in one decade. History is now repeating itself in the 2020s for both film studios. Disney struggled in the 70s and 2000s, so I guess Pixar is now having struggles in the 2020s. Surely, they can bounce back.

I think the movie tries to explain the "fire is literally destructive" aspect by pointing out that fire people can touch others without hurting them (save for burning people's clothes/hair/belongings, which is still an issue), and that the city could easily make more accommodations for fire people (like not having the train splash water on the ground below, or not making flammable buildings that automatically exclude them), but the city doesn't feel like doing it.

I really feel like elemental would have been way more effective as an examination of toxic relationships and how you can love someone but if you keep hurting eachother you need to let eachother go.

For me when I first saw the trailer. My thought was "why do I want to watch Zootopia again but with elements?" Everything from what I have seen from this has a very human feel. And that was the same with Zootopia as well. Even if its somewhat different, it did feel largely the same that we have been seeing.

The race allegory doesn’t work when they are on the molecular level, incompatible. Stories about racism work because fundamentally, all the races are the same and coexist every day with no problems. It worked with zootopia because it was a world where they already exist together despite their differences they face and it was outside forces from hateful people and unaddressed biases that made the tensions work. When the fire person could be completely extinguished by a water person just hugging them or an earth person just fell on them, that doesn’t work. Eilo looks pretty cool though and it’s plot is so neat, I really hope it can be a great standalone movie like soul or Luca was.

ELEMENTAL BOX OFFICE 1st wknd: 44M 2nd wknd: 121M (+77M) 3rd wknd: 186M (+65M) 4th wknd: 251M (+65M) 5th wknd: 311M (+60M) 6th wknd: 356M (+45M) 7th wknd: 395M (+39M) 8th wknd: 423M (+28M) 9th wknd: 443M (+20M) 10th wknd: 458M (+15M) 11th wknd: 468M (+11M) 12th wknd: 475M+ WORLDWIDE FINISH: 480M-510M

I went to go see it today with my sister, we were the only ones in the theater. Which me and her were fine with, we were able to be loud and obnoxious and crack jokes while watching the movie without bothering anyone. Probably the best movie experience I've ever had because of the fact that we were alone. Granted, the town I live in isn't very big, the theater isn't big either, but that doesn't mean it doesn't fill up. During the Mario movie, that theater was packed. It was very surprising to not have at least one other person go and see it with us.

Another thing that irks me with exploring bigotry in films like these is.... we as humans, there is literally nothing different to an extent biologically that would give us a good reason to hate one another, just like you said, we are assholes. but fire, we can pull up a bunch of excuses to put fire in their own corner.

Maybe this is a nitpick for some people but it really bothered me that fire girl looks like a 2D paper model while the rest of the world is clearly modern 3D. It just didn’t look like it belonged in the same universe. And what’s more confusing is I’m pretty sure I’ve seen fire in 3D films before so idk why she looks like that. To be clear, if the rest of the elements were in the same sort of animation style as fire girl, I don’t think I would’ve cared so much. Maybe they were trying something new, but at least do a proof of concept with a short or something before investing $200M in a feature length film.

Kind of surprised to hear that Fire Land is supposed to be Korea, I thought it seemed like Morocco. Anyway, I personally loved the film, might be my new favorite. The visuals were really creative, they really worked in a lot of sight gags and worldbuilding with the elements and the fact they made a film with this premise at all is an impressive feat given how notoriously difficult water and fire are to animate. It was rather emotionally intelligent, the main plot that is Ember was unhappy with the direction her life was taking in ways she couldn't admit to herself and needed Wade's alternate approach to life to help her realize and have the courage to do anything about it, and realizing it was realistically not at all a linear progression. The main conflict of the movie broke formula in an interesting way- it was never actually resolved, the worst case scenario happened and everyone just kind of... moved on with their lives in spite of it because that isn't what the movie was really about, it was just a catalyst to get the plot moving. The film was actually grounded in its message despite the fantastical setting. The romantic chemistry and progression are very competently done, better than I've seen in most movies that are more explicitly supposed to be romances. Also, Wade's actions towards the end of the film raise an interesting and bold sociological question. The nature of respecting boundaries is a major recurring sociological talking point, and the modern era's ability to enforce those boundaries through blocking contacts and such is a major double-edged sword in a way modern society doesn't give enough credit to. Is there such thing as boundaries that _shouldn't_ be respected, that are justified if not _right_ to cross? That's a bold question to even ask in the modern era, and this film has the balls to address it. Also, the movie had a clever trope break where the interruption of the big event by the love interest _wasn't_ a declaration of love, it was encouragement for Ember to veer off from the direction she didn't want to go, not for his sake but for her own and not in a "better with me" kind of way like a lesser film would be.

It feels like this movie is a good example of how keeping to a metaphor got in the way of the message. LIke, irl if you see someone moving away from a person of different heritage who sat down on the bus, you'd be like "Wtf is wrong with you? Moving away from them in fear because they dont look like you" but in this world you see it and go "Well yeah, if theres a bump on the trip they could accidentally DIE, like it only makes sense for a Fire elemental not to sit next to a Water, or a Wood next to a Fire.

15:00 - So Ember doesn't want to follow in her father's footsteps and run the store? Isn't that also a cliched plot? How about a story where the child is actually looking forward to taking over so she can maybe expand into a chain of stores or something? You could have tension with the parents over how the business should be run.

It is genuinely that Pixar is the studio that makes 'emotional' movies. You know you're going to feel something when you watch them. But in the latter years, the emotion has been the only sticking point with nothing much else to drive the stories. Toy Story had an external problem, Monsters Inc had an external problem. Recent Pixar releases have been wrapped up in the emotions with no mechanic to facilitate them further. Kids can struggle with emotional understanding, and adults can only see so much of the same heart-strings stories before knowing the plotline instinctually. Pixar really needs to reach back to older roots and find a hero story, an apocalyptic story, anything that isn't just the interpersonal struggles these anthropomorphic creatures are going through.

Bruh this film box office went from zero to hero

From trailers and clips, I had assumed Wade and Ember were already in a relationship prior to the movie starting, and it’s about them meeting the others family and tension rising between them from that, which is a concept you don’t see often in animation, which made me really excited! But now to learn it’s closer to a generic love story, I’m much less interested :/

"The Decline of PIXAR: What Happened?" - The Company Man

I think it has the identity crisis of it's trying to tell a deep, emotional, personal story, but it's also trying to be a high concept idea with world building. The fact that the logistics of the world took you out of the movie is a major problem. It's unfortunate because it sounds like the characters and their story is really nice, but it's getting in its own way with the world. I agree with what you said, Pixar needs to be bold and go for it rather than rely on their signature dish.

I think it would be more interesting if the ELEMENTS are from the periodic tables instead of the water, fire, air snd earth And there is alot to tell when it comes because instead of "elements don't mix" but "element do mix but there is consequences" So it would be like fusion from Steven universe or dragon ball but with periodic table and the main antagonist either be uranium or plutonium

I really feel the water train running through the fire neighborhood because I know I’ve lived in neighborhoods that were cut up by either a highway or plane flight paths or a factory that pollutes going through the poor and often minority neighborhoods and the government and other neighborhoods not caring as long as it doesn’t affect their neighborhoods, so that’s a real thing that most people don’t have to experience or think about

Bob Chapek has done irreparable damage to Disney’s Animation division, more so than Micheal Eisner in his later years. My heart bleeds for Domnee Shi, Angus McLane, and Peter Sohn for how their passion projects have been screwed over.

There have been love stories before in Pixar, but not like elemental. I love that in elemental BOTH characters are open to dating each other in the intro-conflict section of the story arc, not as a "reward" at the end of the movie. They were knowingly pursuing a romantic relationship more or less throughout the whole film, it wasn't the usual subjective "is it platonic or romantic" trope that's been in way too many animated films for the past decade. This is one of the best couples in any Disney film. *spoilers below* And I like that when they have their temporary "breakup or falling out", it's not from some misunderstanding, its from a more genuine type of emotional anxiety, and ember dealing with an internal crisis of not knowing who she is.

I think the fire analogy works better if you see it as feeling like you destroy everything just by being there and everyone treating you as though you'll burn it all down, while at the same time other people around you and the systems in place (water train) feel extremely dangerous to you.

my biggest quip has to be the models. something about the fire girls fire looks OFF non-stop. when i saw the teaser, i thought "well, its in early stages, so whatever". and then the ACTUAL trailer came out and she was the same. water & fire the most are kindve iffy, but fire itself feels so intensely unfinished for some reason. i think its something to do with the red edge around them, i dont know!!

It’s so sad because I actually enjoyed the message and animation of this movie vs the past numerous titles Pixar put out.

It certainly would've been better if the characters were humans with elemental spirits that they summon or something. Then the world building would've been easy and they still could've had their fire vs water stuff.

I think a LOT of this could have been improved if they'd used species or people that embodied the elements, but weren't literally entirely made of them. Maybe somehow in the middle of this and benders in Avatar? Using the ways actual elements mix (or don't) as some parallel to discrimination falls reeeaaally flat in a lot of cases.