Does ELEMENTAL Have Pixar’s Classic Storytelling Elements?
Don’t believe the bad hype: ELEMENTAL is a delightful movie, full of heart and invention, beautiful to look at, and with a great Thomas Newman score to boot. Still, it seems to be enjoying a lukewarm reception among critics and at the box office. Part of this could be attributed to Pixar’s lofty past high watermarks, and audiences’ preference for films based on IP they already know and recognize (like competing animated movies THE SUPER MARIOS BROS. MOVIE and SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE), over an original, standalone film.
Market considerations aside, ELEMENTAL feels like the kind of film Pixar built their brand on: original, clever, unique, visionary. So I thought it'd be interesting to hold it up against some of Pixar’s core storytelling elements, to see both what it gets right, and where it perhaps stumbles a little.
Spoilers ahead…
Worldbuilding
From the monster metropolis in MONSTERS INC., to the inside of our very own minds in INSIDE OUT, Pixar is known for creating immense, original fantastical worlds, with their own logic, physics, social norms and rules. Similarly, ELEMENTAL envisions its own universe: a big city full of humanoid creatures each made of one of the four elements: water, earth, air and fire (only Milla Jovovich is missing. If you were born after 2000, ask your parents).
Pixar’s stories excel when they exist just outside the reach of human experience: toys coming to life just when we leave the room; the realms our souls come from and go to. ELEMENTAL’s vision of the world doesn’t have such an anchor: it exists in its own completely fantastical dimension, which already puts it at an uphill climb.
Relatedly, Pixar’s fantastical worlds usually end up revolving around one or two core elements, or “what if”s. TOY STORY asks ‘what if toys were alive?’, and gives their world the core tenet of toys wanting desperately to have an owner, and be played with. MONSTERS INC. asks what if there really was a monster hiding in your closet, and provides the tenet of a city that relies on children’s screams for electricity.
ELEMENTAL doesn’t have such a clear core principle. “What if elements were humanoids living together in a city?” is an enticing, exciting idea; its originality and expanse provide for much of the film’s imagination and humor. But it’s also not an intuitively clear concept—it raises a lot of questions. What is this world built around? What unique aspect of this world provides the basis and tension for a compelling plot? What is its core organizing principle? INSIDE OUT gave us a meticulously crafted, artfully succinct, prologue to explain the inner workings of Riley’s mind’s headquarters. Apart from explaining that it is a city of immigrants, the last of which are the fire people, Elemental City doesn’t get the same treatment, leaving us feeling a little unmoored.
ELEMENTAL upholds Pixar’s tradition of introducing us to a beautiful, original, unique world we will cherish forever, but it doesn’t present a clear, simple tenet or two to build this world around, and help ground us in it.
A BONDING PLOT
In my book I break down Pixar’s multilayered storytelling: almost each of their films has one big, high stakes, life-or-death adventure plot; one bonding story between two characters who start as antagonists, and end up bonding; one internal story of inner change and transformation; and usually, one side plot. ELEMENTAL devotes the most narrative real estate to its Bonding Plot—which makes sense, because in terms of genre, it probably hews closest to a romcom.
So what makes a classic Pixar Bonding Plot? A Bonding Plot is a story about two characters with vastly different worldviews who are forced to work together towards a goal they temporarily share. Think about the anxious, play-it-safe Marlin, and the carefree, impulsive Dory, traveling together to find Nemo; or the reclusive, cynical Carl stuck with the naive, responsible, boy scout Russel, who is trying to convince the grieving old man to save an endangered bird. In both of these examples, our protagonists are faced with characters who challenge their worldviews, characters who attack some of our heroes' most deeply held beliefs. ELEMENTAL has some of that: Wade Ripple’s free-flowing emotions are in direct contrast to Ember’s repressed emotions, which only really come out in singing temper outbursts. However, the best Pixar films often find a way to push these conflicts even further.
In TOY STORY, it’s not that Woody and Buzz disagree about how they see the world, it’s that how they see the world completely negates the other’s identity. Woody insists Buzz is a toy, while Buzz is convinced he’s a space ranger; on the flip side, Buzz’s mere existence in Andy’ bedroom takes away Woody’s core way of defining himself: as Andy’s favorite toy. In FINDING NEMO Marlin eventually benefits from Dory’s impulsiveness and courage. But when he thinks Nemo is dead we realize these two actually want mutually exclusive things: Dory wants to remember, while Marlin wants to forget (his past tragedies). In INSIDE OUT Sadness’s attempt to simply do her job goes against Joy’s core belief that Riley should always be happy.
ELEMENTAL doesn’t push the disparity between its characters to such mutually exclusive lengths. Wade and Ember’s different emotional compositions are challenging, and cause difficulties in their lives and connections, but they aren’t what is keeping them apart. The challenge they need to overcome is how they internalized society’s bigotry and Ember’s family expectations. Furthermore, while Pixar’s other Bonding Stories are resolved only thanks to their characters fundamentally changing who they are, in ELEMENTAL the characters realize that they could have always touched and embraced, that the danger was only in their heads. It’s a somewhat easy resolution to one of the film’s core dramatic questions.
THEME
Pixar has a unique gift for perfectly expressing their themes, especially in their climaxes. UP is a story about grief, which gets resolved when Carl parts with the house he and Ellie built; INSIDE OUT encourages us to accept our unpleasant emotions, perfectly embodied by Joy’s climactic decision to create a new core memory together, hand over hand, with Sadness. Does ELEMENTAL have such a concise image or choice in its climax?
The main theme ELEMENTAL sets to explore is the immigrant’s experience, but how does its climax represent that? Yes, Ember’s subplot about pursuing her own dreams over taking over her dad’s shop is a conflict many second-generation children deal with, but it is also perhaps the most familiar trope ELEMENTAL uses (though definitely universal and relatable). Ember eventually expresses her true desires, and goes off to pursue her own dreams, while her dad retires and hires other fire people to run the shop (in another somewhat easy resolution)—but the world around them remains mostly the same.
Pixar’s fantasy worlds often change in a way that embodies the story’s theme and message: in INSIDE OUT the new multi-tinted memories are visual proof of Riley’s ability to experience more complex emotions; at the end of MONSTERS INC. instead of the monsters drawing out their claws and teeth preparing, to scare, they embody classic comedy gags, ready to make children laugh. The journeys of Pixar’s heroes introduce a new idea to the world they inhabit, which is synthesized in a way that changes that world fundamentally. ELEMENTAL doesn’t have such a visual moment that shows how the world has changed. It is the story of one young woman defining herself against family expectations, without much ripple effects, which makes it feel a little smaller than previous Pixar films.
The film’s other, perhaps more dire, climactic moment is when Ember and Wade are stuck together in a small room, and have to make a choice: either Ember lets herself be put out by the water rushing in, or she burns bright… vaporizing Wade. Wade sacrifices himself, full of earnest emotion and love... But how does this pay off the film's core themes? Ember’s core flaw was repressing her emotions, but this moment isn’t even about her. It’s Wade’s sacrifice, and while it’s a truly touching one, Wade seemed like the kind of guy who would do something like this from very early on. He has been set up as loving, generous, emotional, and perhaps more sentimental than practical.
ELEMENTAL is a journey into an original new world, made by an immense group of artists working together, united by an ambitious vision, full of humanity, humor (the scene with Wade’s parents had me in tears), and heart. But despite the great dialogue, breathtaking visuals, and primal, relatable storylines, the reason ELEMENTAL may not be soaring as high, may be that its world and theme aren’t crystallized with the level of precision we’ve come to expect from Pixar.
After you’ve seen it, I'd love to hear from you: what do you think ELEMENTAL is fundamentally about? What message did you take out of it? What touched you about it, or alternatively, what about it left you cold?