Pixar's Elemental Lacks The 'Soul' To Be 'Brave' From The 'Inside Out'

THE burden of genius is that it can only be measured against itself. Such is the predicament of Disney’s Pixar Studios, who’ve revolutionised the concept of mainstream animated storytelling over the last three decades. They’ve raised the bar so high that if any of their movies are simply ‘good’ now, they’re disappointing by virtue of not being great. Pixar is its own biggest competition today, with all-time classics like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Ratatouille, Up, Brave, Inside Out and Soul on their roster. It’s why their slighter films (like The Good Dinosaur or Coco) tend to feel a tad underwhelming, despite channelling that uncanny blend of specific and universal. Elemental joins this ho-hum list. It’s sweet and predictable — and has an easy message about how chemistry, quite literally, is the cornerstone of compatibility. But there’s something about Elemental that’s almost too elemental, the sort that makes you wonder why Pixar isn’t mining the depths of elementary-my-dear-Watson-styled social commentary.

For starters, the world-building is not earth-shatteringly creative (there we go, comparing Pixar with Pixar again). It seems to be composed almost entirely of linguistic puns. It is set in a world of anthropomorphic elements of nature, a place called, well, Element City. The city is primarily built for water, air, earth but not quite fire. Fire people have to be careful of water people, and when parts of them get extinguished, they chomp on wood to grow back their flames. The protagonist is a fire element named Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), who is slated to take over the family store in Fire Town called ‘The Fireplace’ from her immigrant parents, Bernie and Cinder Lumen. She has a fiery temper, and literally explodes when she can’t control herself with annoying customers.

She soon falls for a water person (“Dad, not all water people look alike!”) named Wade Ripple (voiced by Mamoudou Athie), a city inspector who goes with the flow, sheds plenty of tears, and takes Ember on a first date to the ‘Alkali theater’ to watch ‘Tide and Pre-juice’. Is that enough yet? At another point, he starts a — of course — Mexican Wave in a sports stadium. They meet by chance, when Wade gets sucked into her store’s pipe while investigating a nearby leak and pops out during one of her rage episodes. Their nature-crossed love story is combined with Ember’s struggle to break free from her working-class identity. She is artistic, and has a knack for glassmaking that impresses Wade’s (super-emotional) family at dinner. There’s also the tragedy of Ember and Wade not being able to touch each other — because science lies in the eyes of societal beholders.

Some of the stylistic touches are nice. Like the soundtrack in Firetown — a fun hybrid of Middle-eastern, South Asian, African and Oriental music, reflecting a little of all the cultures known to migrate in search of a better life. Wade’s family is a hoot — a rare instance of majoritarian privilege not being the villain but the empathetic enabler of a journey. The idea is to entertain kids but also playfully teach them that love can melt both man-made and scientific divides, as well as the fact that ‘human nature’ is more than just a term.

But maybe the problem with Elemental is that its fantasy is too formal to be allegory for reality. There’s a sense of dry functionality about the way Ember’s story must close with a save-the-city adventure that doubles up as a vessel for cross-cultural acceptance. It’s good-looking in parts, as are the romantic portions between Ember and Wade (and his ‘transparent’ feelings for her). But ultimately, the film doesn’t quite transcend its basic fire-meets-water pitch. It doesn’t make any deeper observations about our times, and more or less recycles what we already know in cutesy terms. There are fleeting moments of heart, but also cloying levity, in the way Ember and Wade navigate a climax centered on the Parasite-like flooding of Firetown. It might be timely to deliver a message about opposites attracting and differences evaporating — what with the growing conflict between not just man and nature, but man and mankind itself — yet not a lot of Elemental scratches beyond its witty surface. The crisis feels convoluted, like a last-ditch insert to keep the film catered to young ones.

Pixar’s best ecologically-inclined love story is WALL-E by a country mile. But in the context of Elemental, the lovely short attached to Inside Out, called Lava, makes far more of an impact. The 2014 film is about a lonely volcano who sings to be loved, only to realise that he is being heard by an underwater volcano — his potential soulmate — for millions of years. It’s a story that features molten fire meeting (and fearing) water too. But its habitat is natural. Elemental is not particularly clever or profound because the physical identity of these characters is incidental to the tropey human story. ‘She is fire and he is water’ is not enough, simply because both of them are surrogates for human life and conflicts. They talk and discriminate like us, which I suppose is the purpose. Though it’s hard to get past the notion that the film is just one giant figure of speech. In 2023, in an era where AI can easily produce a Pixar trope generator template, there has to be more. Sure, it’s enjoyable for what it is, even if there isn’t enough intellectual energy. But this is no Mental-ity Monster — certainly not something with the Soul to be Brave from the Inside Out. Pixar’s doing, after all, is also its undoing.