‘The only way to repay a sacrifice so big is by sacrificing your life, too…’
There is a strong argument that there hasn’t been a great Pixar film since Inside Out in 2015. Sure, there have been moments. Coco and Soul were both innovative and imaginative films with big hearts, but they lacked that certain something that made the classic Pixar movies so accomplished. Then there has been forgettable fare like Onward, Luca and Turning Red. Their 2023 effort Elemental sits somewhere in the middle. It’s certainly not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination and it is genuinely aesthetically beautiful but it’s also not a classic either…
Based on the real-life experiences of director Peter Sohn and how his family moved from South Korea to the Bronx, Elemental combines the star-crossed lovers narrative of Romeo and Juliet with an allegory for immigration. In a world that is split into elements (fire, water, earth etc), Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) and her family emigrate to Element City for a new life. Things are going great until Ember’s ferocious temper results in the appearance of Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) – a water person in a family full of fire people.
Pixar has mostly avoided love stories across its run with Brave being a notable exception and this film doesn’t really suggest it’s a route they should explore again. The film follows a pretty traditional Disney princess narrative and it suffers because of it. The immigration allegory also feels forced and obvious rather than authentic and natural and it often seems as though the message comes at a cost to the quality of the overall film. This is Sohn’s second Pixar outing having also directed The Good Dinosaur – perhaps Pixar’s most forgotten film. The relative box office failure of both that film and Elemental suggests that Sohn is unable to connect with a wider audience and it is that kind of universality that made Pixar movies so appealing in the first place.
Elemental is interesting conceptually and visually stunning but it doesn’t have much else going for it – just another disappointing late-period Pixar film.
