What went wrong with Elemental—and where does Pixar go from here?
Pixar just had its worst opening ever. We have some ideas about why that happened
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Even those who had low expectations for the box office prospects of Elemental’s release were surprised by its disappointing tally of just $29.6 million in ticket sales in the film’s opening weekend. That puts Pixar’s latest offering dead last among all of the studio’s debuts, even Onward, which earned $39 million when it opened just as the pandemic arrived in March 2020. Elemental’s poor performance has us asking the same question that’s likely being pondered right now in executive suites at Pixar and Disney: What went wrong? There’s more than one answer, and those answers may lead to even bigger questions.
It might be tempting to attribute Elemental’s failure to lingering pandemic worries about returning to theaters. After all, the weekend’s top film, The Flash, also had a lackluster performance with just $55.7 million in ticket sales (though that title carried an entirely different set of baggage). While it’s true that the specter of Covid still stubbornly lingers over our public spaces, it didn’t seem to have any effect on other animated releases this year, like The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($146.3 million) and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse ($120.6 million). The success of those films also disproves the theory that audiences have lost interest in animated films or family films. They’re clearly still willing to turn out for certain titles.
Pixar’s identity crisis
At the macro level, we can’t ignore that Pixar’s once sterling brand identity has taken a hit, with its last few releases (like last year’s Lightyear) stumbling critically, commercially, or both. The same can be said for Disney, whose last animated feature, Strange World, earned just $12 million in its opening weekend, ultimately ending its theatrical run with just $37 million in domestic ticket sales. It doesn’t help that the company hasn’t made much of an effort to differentiate the films coming from its two main animation units. It’s no longer so clear what distinguishes a Pixar film from a Disney movie; they all just kind of blend together.
The image problems don’t end there, though. Disney has learned the hard way that you can’t please all the people all the time, especially in a highly polarized political climate. Yet the company still wants to have it both ways. Marketing for Elemental focused on the fantastical setting and simplistic Romeo and Juliet love story, without ever letting on that it’s also an allegory for the immigrant experience and the ways in which outlier communities can be systemically excluded from urban planning and development. Admittedly, that might not fit neatly on a poster. But in hiding the film’s central conceit—possibly to avoid accusations of “wokeness” on the part of professional trolls seeking to stir up controversy, which happened anyway—Pixar ended up with a generic marketing campaign that tried to appeal to everyone, yet didn’t really speak to anyone.
An elemental problem
Drilling down further, what about the film itself? Was there something specific about Elemental that kept moviegoers away? As we mentioned above, the film Disney has been selling doesn’t quite line up with the film it released. Those who caught the trailer or a TV ad (and there were plenty who didn’t) weren’t given much to go on, beyond the impression that it was a formulaic romance between opposites with visuals that resembled other, better, Pixar offerings of the past like Inside Out. While a world populated by the personified elements of fire, water, land, and air might sound interesting, it becomes less so when it feels like it’s just going to be the basis for unfunny sight gags and low-hanging jokes about breaking wind.
Elemental also faced the disadvantage of being an original story that wasn’t based on existing IP. As much as we complain about the prevalence of sequels and spin-offs these days, name recognition counts for a lot at the box office. Pixar’s four highest-grossing films are all sequels, with Incredibles 2 leading the way with an impressive box office total of $608 million domestic and $1.2 billion worldwide. There’s no getting around the fact that a film without any bankable IP is simply a harder sell.
This year’s most successful animated films—The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse–both had known IP going for them. They also had their own visual styles that set them apart from every other film at the multiplex. Super Mario Bros. expanded on pre-existing game imagery and nostalgia for the characters, while Spider-Verse is an artistic tour de force of mixed media and controlled chaos. Both raised the bar for what’s expected from an animated film in 2023, and audiences might not have believed they were going to get anything so special from Elemental.
Financial considerations
There’s one more factor to take into consideration—the price of seeing a movie in a theater. Ticket prices are subject to inflation like everything else in the economy, and when you’re bringing the whole family along, that adds up quickly. Throw in the cost of popcorn and drinks, maybe parking too, and it becomes a luxury that not everyone can afford on a weekly basis. That makes the average moviegoer more discerning about which new releases to see and which to skip.
The decision to skip is made easier by the knowledge that most of these titles will land on streaming within the next few months. During the pandemic, audiences got used to watching films on their home screens, and while the theatrical release schedule has normalized and it’s safer to venture out now, it can still be a hassle. All the same drawbacks from the pre-pandemic era—crowds, rude patrons, cell phones, screaming kids, cramped seats, expensive snacks—are still a factor. Plus you may also have to wear a mask. It’s no wonder that some are saving the experience for only a select few, top-tier releases.
Pixar’s path ahead
Whatever happens with Elemental, whether it picks up steam in the coming weeks with good word of mouth or continues to slide into oblivion, we’re not ready to write off Pixar just yet. It’s not easy for a company as large as Pixar to change course, and it may take a few films to get back on track, but the studio can do it—if it learns from the Elemental campaign and applies those lessons to future projects.
The studio’s next film, Elio, is set for release in March 2024. It’s a sci-fi adventure about a boy who gets abducted by aliens and convinces them he’s the ambassador for Earth. Or at least that’s what we got from the trailer. It might be another uphill battle to convince audiences that this one is worth their time and money, but if the studio focuses on what makes this different from other Pixar films, instead of what makes it the same, it might break through.
Following that is the long-awaited sequel Inside Out 2. There’s also reportedly another Toy Story film on the way. Depending on whether Elio continues the studio’s downward streak, we may be in for many more sequels. Which is fine, as long as they’re loaded with original ideas, compelling characters, and smart stories. Even Disney had a creative slump before it entered its new renaissance with The Little Mermaid in 1989. Perhaps Pixar can follow in the Mouse’s footsteps and recapture some of that old Pixar magic too.
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Marketing for Elemental focused on the fantastical setting and simplistic Romeo and Juliet love story, without ever letting on that it’s also an allegory for the immigrant experience and the ways in which outlier communities can be systemically excluded from urban planning and development.Doesn’t matter what politics a film has, ain’t no blockbuster is ever going to front-load its messaging into the marketing; that simply never happens (outside of Oscar bait). The author should know Hollywood trailers and promotions always skew towards the lowest common denominator – going double for films with broad demographic appeal.
The argument for “identity politics” or the wokeness factor of entertainment mostly ignores that this is at heart a kid’s movie. It’s fine to have a message about kindness or acceptance, but it can’t be the central reason for something succeeding or failing. Sometimes the movie just isn’t interesting enough for people to spend $100 to take a family of four and get a few snacks. People dismiss the Disney+ effect, but $15 a month and waiting a few weeks/months to see a movie really has impacted non-blockbuster releases. (Avatar 2 looked just fine on my 75 inch tv with a nice sound system!)
Was thinking the same thing. Pixar has long thrown deeper themes into its films without highpointing those elements in its marketing. It’s one of the things that created the reputation of their films being great for kids and parents – something for everyone.
On one hand, I agree with you, on the other, I thought through immigration thing was as clear as day, even in the trailers.
i know a lot of people think the main reason is ‘everyone was trained to watch pixar movies on disney+’ but i don’t think it’s that. i think it’s the even simpler ‘the movies they’ve released theatrically since then have complicated, unrelatable premises and don’t look interesting’there’s a long walk between ‘what if toys were alive?’ and ‘what if the abstract concept of the elements lived together in a city and two of them fell in young love?’even 5 years ago ‘pixar star wars movie’ would have been an easy slam dunk but even something like that doesn’t feel like it’ll right the ship. i don’t think the solution is ‘toy story 5′ and ‘inside out 2′ either. they need a real unique hook and idea and to rethink what a ‘pixar movie’ is.
Seriously, look at the original run. These are all whizbang adventures that are just plain fun to watch over and over:Toy StoryBug’s LifeTS 2Monsters IncNemoIncrediblesCarsThe list goes on to include slightly quieter plots (Wall-E, Up) but still had scope.
also very easy to ‘get’ concepts. it’s like they start with the metaphor and work backwards now.
I’m not really seeing that as a truism. I feel like Elemental is as easy to explain as Zootopia, probably easier to explain than Monsters Inc (“it’s a romantic comedy and it’s set in a town where elements live and sometimes the elements don’t get along especially the kinds that the two leads are” vs. “monsters live in their own dimension and need screams from human kids to power their city, a human accidentally comes to the monster dimension, and two monsters keep her safe and try to get her home”). It’s just that it looks like a sorta boring romantic comedy.If anything I felt like Elemental needed another big twist in there to really give it the Pixar spin I like.
i’m just gonna flat-out disagree with you. animals and monsters are much easier concepts to grasp than elements with personalities. at the very least there is some baked-in interest from the public for stories with animals and monsters. if you go ‘it’s a movie about monsters’ and ‘it’s a movie about the elements’, which one is clearer?
What would functionally be the difference? Why not call Ember and Wade fire and water monsters that live in a predominately water monster city? Monster is after all a fairly nebulous concept. And these aren’t really the first living flames and puddles that kids have been asked to accept over the years. Certainly don’t recall ever hearing anyone say “I got everything about Howl’s Moving Castle except what was up with his stove’s fire having a face and eating eggshells and stuff. That went right over my head fires can’t be a guy!”Basically the point here is barely even about that. Like I don’t especially think it’s worth the time to establish which one kids have an easier time grasping between monsters, toys, robots, cars, bugs, elementals, embodiments of moods, dark elves, dinosaurs rendered soft and cartoonish by millennia of evolution, or moms that are currently but not permanently bears. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and while we sit here discussing whether or not kids understand Italian sea monsters, they’re just watching the show inherently understanding it. Rather, one of these movies is a romantic comedy with an immigrants making it in the big city twist, the other is a rescue story that deals in dimensional travel, office rivalries, and social upheaval (I have not seen Elemental, it may also deal in that one). When you write out the plot beats, Monsters Inc will have more and take more explaining, and that was my original point.
again, you’re getting in the weeds with plot beats. i’m not talking about the plot i’m talking about the concept. simple as.kids aren’t dumb, i agree, and it’s not about whether or not they understand the concept. i don’t think they fail to understand it, it’s just that the concept is over-complicated and not relatable, which was what i originally said and what i do believe is turning the general public off of this.what happens in the movie and the basic concept are two very different things. i think this is too heady to entice the average person, kid or not.you can say the same thing about lightyear – ‘what if toys were real’ and ‘what if the space-toy from the movie about what if toys are real was actually in a real movie that the kid from the movie saw and we’re watching that movie’ are very different things, as concepts.
Particularly when it’s not about actual elements (Water is a molecule, fire is a chemical process, earth and air both are complex mixtures of molecules). Do kids really understand the history of pre-science and know that the Ancient Greeks thought those four things were elements?
I feel like kids can instinctually accept “fire, water, earth, air!” as elements, without being confused because they’re more familiar with the periodic table.I don’t think one needs to be familiar with the Ancient Greeks to understand that fire and water are sort of opposites, and there are other basic things like that. Whether it’s an innate human sensibility, or cultural (from music, Captain Planet, Avatar the last Air-Bender, etc.) it’s not that esoteric of an idea.
haha, well i’m not sure they need to get as granular as that, but again the fact that we can’t even talk about the movie on any level without immediately getting into the weeds speaks to the problem at a base-level.
I think the notion of the four elements is pretty deeply embedded in our culture, and most kids will have been exposed to it in some form. (I guess kids today are too young to remember Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I’m sure it features in more recent media as well. For example, I bet any kid who plays video games has come across it in a magic system of some kind.)I also don’t think the concept of a world where elements are tribes of people is any harder to grasp than the concepts of Cars or Inside Out. Once you start to think about how it would actually work in practice it gets fuzzy and requires some explanation, but that’s true of those movies as well (can the cars, like, build houses? how?).Although the trailers I saw did seem like they felt obliged to get into the weeds of those questions, I guess in order to establish the conflict?
Idk, I think the Monsters Inc pitch to kids is pretty simple:“Whoa, the monsters in your closet are actually real! But they’re not mean and scary – here’s a story about what they’re really like”Elemental’s Shakespeare-meets-Empedocles tale seems like a harder get.
It’s like they’re getting their programmers to write the movies now.
And do you know what those movies all have in common?John Lasseter
Yep, but he’s problematic, so it can’t *possibly* be that.
Just what are you implying? That getting rid of assholes who harass female employees is only worth it if they’re untalented? Cool, cool.
Not at all, just commenting on the fact that an article talking about Pixar losing its way fails to mention his absence. I don’t think he should have kept his job, but his removal has consequences.
“Maybe he can be kept in a special room? And there’s Plexiglass between him and any female staffers?” – something a Disney exec has probably said in the last three days.
As Pixar’s creative director, John Lasseter was involved in EVERY movie Pixar has EVER released. Yes, all the great ones, but also crap like The Good Dinosaur, Monsters University, and Cars 2 (which he directed!)Lasseter was fired at the end of 2018, but these movies take such a long time to make that it will be a while before we get a Pixar film he wasn’t involved in. Elemental was in development for two years before Lasseter left the company.
Hugs all around!
And it’s not like those early greats didn’t have real-life themes:Toy Story – the fear of being replaced as someone’s sole object of affection (anyone ever had a younger sibling?)Bug’s Life – bullying and being a misfitNemo – parenting and the fear of losing your parentsBut those were themes that mattered to all ages AND were also fun capers about talking toys, bugs, fish that took place in a version of our real world. As marketed, Elemental was a paint-by-numbers romantic comedy. Featuring a difficult-to-grasp fictional world. What kid is clamoring to see that? What parent is clamoring to watch that with their kids?
Yeah when your fictional world has more holes than the Cars universe, you’ve got issues. At least the animation in Cars was gorgeous.
I don’t disagree with this, but I also don’t think we have enough data to know if Pixar is in trouble or not. We would have to ignore that Soul was high-concept Pixar that was very well received, did excellent on streaming when theaters were closed, and picked up 2 Oscars.Elemental was bad – So was The Good Dinosaur. Onward, honestly, can’t really be used as proof of anything because its Cinemascore was good and lockdown is what killed it. Luca and Turning Red were well-received and popular (and both are pretty fun adventures). Lightyear was a miss, but still did decent numbers on streaming.
I doubt it’s in “trouble” trouble from a financial perspective, but clearly returns are diminishing and popular reaction has generally been “it was pretty good” for a while now. I’m not hearing Onward championed as some overlooked masterpiece that people couldn’t see because of COVID lockdowns. A Pixar release used to be an event that audiences looked forward to, because you knew it was going to be something good. Not so much anymore.
I do think there’s something to be said that Lightyear hit #1 on streaming when it was released on SVOD. Families not returning to theaters as quickly as 18 – 34 year olds and a not great movie are also relevant (this isn’t a masterpiece being ignored), but the streaming of it all is relevant and I would love to compare a theatrical release to a PVOD release happening now (and not during Covid).Onward had a $40 million opening one week before lockdown when the box office was already starting to fall, but got an A- cinemascore. Luca, Soul and Turning Red were very well received on streaming.I’m not ready to say Pixar is over. Really, they had two duds (Lightyear and this). If Elio turns it around, they’ll be forgiven.
i honestly don’t think it is worth mentioning that lightyear hit #1 on streaming at all haha. i’m sure there was a lot of morbid curiosity and i’d love to see what it was up against before i give it any praise for that low bar. i’d also love to see how much of that audience was retained after the first 10 minutes.i think luca, soul and turning red were all great and would have connected theatrically if they were given the chance, but they weren’t. i don’t think pixar is DOA or anything, nor was that my point, but they clearly need to do something more than just trotting out sequels and based on the historical reaction i’ve seen from cgi kids space movies in the last decade i don’t think elio is gonna steady that ship. it’s maybe technically been 2 duds in a row, but disney dumped 3 movies on streaming, and that’s probably 200 million apiece with no revenue. and they’ve lost hundreds more on lightyear and this. i wouldn’t be surprised if the pixar bill is close to a billion right now, especially considering disney is realizing that ‘disney+ hit’ doesn’t make them any more money.
This wasn’t on streaming meaning Disney+, it was on actual rentals so minimally people paid for it whether they watched it or not.It’s relevant in so much is there are valid questions about the role of SVOD and PVOD. If families are not returning to theaters, but they’ll pay $20 for a 2 day rental, there may be a business there while saving theatrical release for other movies.
Pixar is becoming a little predictable. And while they continue to mine interesting topics (death, after life, emotions, immigrants) these aren’t topics that get kids saying ‘I want to see that’. There’s also the fact that everyone knows they’ll be on Disney + within months – and if you’ve already paid for that, why pay for movie tickets
That was my thought exactly – feels like these stories are getting smaller and smaller. Incredibles 2 (and the original) had fantastic action sequences, the Toy Story movies are all full of chaotic movement, even the Cars movies (well, the first one anyway) had a ton to look at and was visually clever. Throw in that this does look like an Inside Out knockoff and I’m not sure what the attraction is supposed to be. Wouldn’t those two sitting next to each other just make steam?
The funny thing about the first Cars movie is it’s basically Doc Hollywood, but with animated cars.
And no Julie Warner popping out of the cold water =(
They missed out on not having Cars 2 be a version of “Bright Lights, Big City” if they were were cribbing from non-fantasy Michael J. Fox movies. Lightning McQueen becomes addicted to fuel additives, which in the beginning help him to focus, but end up taking over his life and cause him to almost lose everything.
Yes, while being obessed with model ex.
“You are not the kind of car who would be in a race like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the track is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a pit stop talking to a convertible with a t-top. The track is either Daytona or Kansas. All might come clear if you could just slip into the garage and do a little more Bolivian Motor Oil. Then again, it might not.”
I think we’re at the point where they’re not making it for kids any more – but Disney Moms™. It’s not children’s movies any more, it’s “Young Adult”, which now means “Adults who wish they were Young”. Wouldn’t those two sitting next to each other just make steam?They’re saving that for the X-rated director’s cut.
It’s disingenuous to lump in Soul here. That didn’t make money because it couldn’t make money; it didn’t get a wide theatrical release. I didn’t realize it’d gotten ANY theatrical release until it was nominated for an Oscar instead of an Emmy.
Fair point. But not sure it would have made much as wasn’t really for kids. Really enjoyed it but don’t remember it being full of laughs
There’s also the fact that everyone knows they’ll be on Disney + within months – and if you’ve already paid for that, why pay for movie ticketsI love the online-bubble idea that the general public just doesn’t understand streaming services enough to wait for films unless they’re Disney.That’s bullshit. All my friends who aren’t active on sites like this or Reddit are also waiting for films to hit streaming. Not just Disney films, but all films. Because there’s just too many films coming out to have FOMO for any of them.And now, with animators who worked on Spider-Verse saying the third movie hasn’t even started production? Why would I go see that film in theaters?
But with Disney there’s a clear line, whereas with other movies it might not be clear which service they will be appearing on and when.
There’s one more factor to take into consideration—the price of seeing a movie in a theater. Ticket prices are subject to inflation like everything else in the economy, and when you’re bringing the whole family along, that adds up quickly. Throw in the cost of popcorn and drinks, maybe parking too, and it becomes a luxury that not everyone can afford on a weekly basis. YUUUUUUP. Three tickets for me, my gal, and my kid to see Across the Spider-Verse ran over $50, after tax & fees. Concessions were another $30. It’s goddamned unreal.
City movie theater prices suck 🙁
its not much better in most major metros. Movie prices in NJ are all hitting 15 in most areas, so three tickets are 45 plus tax (or around that). Large popcorn and soda…like 20 bucks. Everytime my wife and I go to the movies its 60 bucks because for a two hour movie I want something to drink. I can skip the popcorn and bring my own candy (because they almost never carry acceptable gummy worms), but its 2 hours I want a drink. Family of 4, 120 bucks and you know the kids want candy/popcorn. Do that 6 times a year. its 700 something bucks. Just buy a nicer tv and a good quality sound bar. you will break even in a year and a half.
There’s a theater about 10 minutes from my house where matinees are $8.50/person but it’s an old school style one, which is the kind I like. I’m in the middle of nowhere and lucky that we even have that theater.Then there’s the drive in, $12/adult for 2 movies is a deal…I remember when it was like $8/carload though lol
Yeah, the only theaters anywhere close to me are all multiplexes. But I also only go to the movies for the types of movies that the small little theaters tend not to get. More and more I just find the theater experience to be subpar. People dont get off their phones. The prices of pop corn is disgusting. I get that theaters make their money off of concessions, but paying 14 dollars for pop corn…made from one of the most heavily subsidized and cheapest product in the us, with a drink of water and corn syrup also insanely marked up. The whole entertainment industry has gone psycho. Much like everything else, rich execs and uber rich shareholders demanding insane profits and trying to suck up as much money as possible has outweighed everything else.
Ya know, I’ve heard about these phone people for years but I’ve never actually seen them, even in more crowded showings. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a theater where a medium popcorn was more than $5-6. I guess you’re in a big city or at least a high income area?
Yeah, Im in northern NJ. Large popcorn is 10 bucks and up. I dont know people are talking on their phones as much, havent noticed that in some time. But people are using their phones constantly, and since all the theaters have stadium seating I can see the light noise. Ive never noticed it to be horrible, but its just another little thing dampening the experience. Im hardly alone with the high prices, Cali, the NYC metro, Philly Metro, Boston Metro, DC Metro, Chicago Metro, are all high priced and that is a huge chunk of the US population. I dont know what NYC movie pricing looks like as its been a good decade and a half since I saw anything in NYC, but it was pretty nuts back then. And AMC is going to start pricing seats differently so that the center and “good seats” cost more. I only go to theaters where I can reserve my seat, and I buy tickets early so that we can have good seats. If that is going to raise ticket prices it will just mean I will be more circumspect. It has been a while since a movie really blew me away. I used to go see every marvel movie, but while i have enjoyed them….the last few have been B B+ experiences. Im probably not seeing anything in a theater until Dune Part 2. Its not that I cant afford it, its that Im not sure i get the value i used to when coupled with price increases….we all have our own value judgment on this right?
Oh I’m not sure what a large popcorn costs around here, I usually buy a medium but don’t even eat all of that. I’m sure city prices are higher.
If you’re in northern NJ I’d encourage you to check out some of the PA drive ins, they’re not horribly far away depending on where you are and they’re always cheaper than regular movie theaters.
On the plus side, cities get all the rep houses and few remaining indies showing weird shit. For which I’ll gladly pay a decent amount.
That’s definitely true, if I want to see a non major studio film I have to drive at least 45 minutes.
but think about it this way – your $80 is worth less than it’s ever been worth, so maybe it was a deal at the end of the day.
On the other hand, those $80 were likely worth more than they’ll ever be in the future :/
Very true. Scrubbing for inflation, that’s only like $70 in 2019 dollars.
Weirdly enough, it seems like concessions haven’t really increased in price at all recently. I worked at an AMC from 2005 to 2009 and, when I went back to the same theater earlier this year, I noticed the concession prices were basically the same as they were back then. This may not be a universal experience, but I was actually surprised at how relatively affordable they were in comparison to what I was expecting.Do you mind asking where you live, btw? Adult tickets for non-premium formats run like $12-13 near me, in a decent-sized Midwestern city, so I was wondering how much worse it is in bigger cities. I guess with taxes and whatnot (remember when tax used to be included in movie ticket prices??) it would still not be too far off from $50 here.
True! I was kind of shocked that a large popcorn/nachos/a fountain drink ran only $25.I’m in the Metro Boston area. Shit’s pricey hereabouts.
This is very true. But it’s got nothing to do with why Elemental fared poorly while other films have done well.
Still, this didn’t stop families going to MARIO BROS.
And to do that with a kid who may or may not decide to leave in the middle is a lot harder.Box office data is showing that even the family movies performing well are doing well because of adult interest and not kid tickets.I think Pixar et al really need to consider PVOD as their main money maker. Smaller theatrical release for those who like a big screen experience. $20 – $30 rental for families who don’t want that.
Also- the last two movies I took my kids too were just SO long. Not just the movie, but the whole movie-going experience. The last three movies that we saw, I had to sit through TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES of trailers—including Elemental every time—made me really not want to see this movie at all. Just watching the trailer again just automatically makes my mind tell me I should be saving “the good popcorn” until the movie starts.Add in the stupid Noovie thing and all the ads for the theater I’m already in, and you’re asking the kids (and my bladder) to endure over 3.5 hours.
I bought three tickets to see Fathom Events’ special screening of Kiki’s Delivery Service for me and two friends, and that was $60 with no concessions! I feel like if I need a co-signer before I go out to the movies these days….
Try hitting the $5 matinee sometime.
Crap!!! This will cement in the mind of the Disney/Pixar bean counters that everything now HAS to be a sequel/reboot/spin-off/superhero movie. Great movies have often been great risk and the money is not there for risk anymore.
Pretty much. There’s a reason they just got handed an order to do follow-ups to Inside Out and Toy Story. Theyre not gonna be original, but theyre gonna make a lot more than Elemental.
Once those crash too then they’ll have to do some actual thinking
As much as I may agree with the political sentiment, I really don’t think that emphasizing the films connection to and commentary on the immigrant experience would have dramatically improved the box office for a CGI kids movie.It’s definitely something some people take into account, but accusations of “wokeness” aside it’s a secondary benefit – people went to see Spider-Verse because it looked cool, the good politics were icing on the cake… Not the other way around
I think it’s simpler: it’s ugly. It doesn’t look like Pixar; it looks like an Inside Out knockoff from the $5 Walmart video bin.
Lightyear was also ugly, as it happens. Was there a big change in Pixar’s art direction just before that?
The one still from Elio is not encouraging, either. And I think the theme is just going to remind people of Lightyear and Strange World.
seems so insane to triple down on cgi kids sci-fi movies when, not only have the most recent 2 bombed spectacularly, the entire concept has mostly yielded bombs, many of them the biggest of all time!
WALL-E is the counterpoint, but yes, recent history says it’s time to take a step back from it.
i think wall-e might be the only one! before wall-e you’ve got stuff like zathura and after wall-e you’ve got stuff like mars needs moms.
Seriously, does no one at Disney remember Mars Needs Moms or John Carter? If not for the fortuitous timing of the Marvel deal, those two actually could have legitimately bankrupted the whole studio. They literally lost over $300 million dollars on them!
I don’t think anyone views JOHN CARTER as part of this conversation, even if it was Pixar.
Hell, you can basically go back to Treasure Planet (which also came out around Titan AE, which single-handedly shuttered Fox’s once-promising animation studio), where its monumental failure was the first nail in Disney’s 2D coffin. Then Atlantis the next year…
The artistic design for ‘Mars Needs Moms’ was so baffling to me. Berkeley Breathed had such a distinct and recognizable art style – why would you change it to make something so bland and ugly?
nothing beats ‘we cast seth green as a child but realized at the last minute he should have a child’s voice’
You take that back! I’m expecting my 4K Steelbook of Mars Needs Moms 3: Mars Also Needs Non-Binary Parents to arrive in the mail any day now!
“It’s ugly”: hear, hear! It looks like any damn Illumination film.Also, The Good Dinosaur is one of the maybe five movies I’ve walked out of in my life.
It’s got its moments, but yeah, that is my least favourite Pixar (out of all that I’ve seen, anyway).
The first thing I said when the trailer came out was that it looked like the character models were just an Inside Out/Soul mishmash. Very uninspired.
Elio already has a trailer out:
Also do people really think Elemental looks like Illumination? I mean I’m not the biggest fan of the style, but that’s definitely comparison I would make…
Thanks. Now, that looks okay, nothing like the still in the link above. I have hope for that. Could use a better title.
One of these days, I’m going to make a video compilation of Pixar characters saying “No! Nononono!” Glad to see I already have Elio’s contribution.
Elemental looks like a commercial for heartburn pills.
You beat me to it. Even when Pixar plays the hits, and you’re just seeing another world building type “what if [insert thing] had feelings” type story, that can be really fun to enjoy, even if it’s not a creative step forward. Because if nothing else, you were going to see some gorgeous animation.But this animation just looks shit. The character design is utterly unappealing. The two leads look like an amoeba and a bacteriophage. They’re unappealing, and the whole film looks like a low budget rival studio’s attempt at Pixar-style animation.
I feel like Pixar reached the natural conclusion of their “what if X had feelings” era when they made Inside Out and just had the feelings themselves be the protagonists.I mean when you find yourself just going “OKAY BUT WHAT IF WATER COULD BE SAD” maybe it’s time to step back and find a new formula.
And if you want formula, that’s what sequels are for. I’d be perfectly happy with an Inside/Out sequel (which of course is in the works). But for other things, I wish they’d tell other stories. I thought Soul was a missed opportunity to tell a straight story. No whiz bang wondery or world building or magical creatures, just a guy with a dream to be a jazz musician. That would’ve been really amazing, and then it turns into a rip off of A Matter of Life and Death, and then it becomes a body swapping comedy, and. it felt like three failed concepts mashed together.
Inside/Out, of course, is the John Woo classic wherein Nic Cage and John Travolta swap gut microbiomes.
I don’t disagree based on the trailer, but most critics’ reviews have singled out the animation as being beautiful, so maybe it looks better in the context of seeing the whole film on the big screen? In any case, I don’t think anything this year could look as hideous as that DreamWorks kraken thing.
I read an interview with some of the animators where they talked about how much time and money they spent on getting the animation to realistically simulate the way Fire and Water looks when it moves, so it’s not like they were totally lazy with the animation. Clearly that isn’t translating into the movie’s appeal though, based on the many comments here about how ugly/uninspired it looks.
I think that it looks too much like Inside Out, and audiences were like, “I’ve already seen that movie.”
Pixar needs to grow out of its “house look”. They do keep improving the quality of their environments and the expressiveness of their characters and I love ever-advancing technical developments as much as anyone, but in the meantime the Spiderverse movies have exploded the idea of what a CG animated aesthetic can be.
100% agreed. Pixar movies look way too homogenized now, and it feels so uninspired next to something like the universe of Gwen Stacy with the watercolors and pastels in the background shifting with the mood.
Goddamn that scene between Gwen and her father with the colors shifting was so beautifully done.
Elio looks quite promising going by the new trailer. And Lightyear’s problem wasn’t scifi, it was that the whole concept felt forced, and contrary to the image Buzz as a character has built over the last 25 years. In Toy Story 1, where Buzz spends most of the film thinking he’s the “real” Buzz Lightyear and not a toy, he’s clearly meant to originate from some cheesy space cartoon. That was part of the fun of him: his world was ridiculous but he took all of it very seriously.Lightyear’s pitch to viewers was “now YOU have to take Buzz’s nonsense seriously too!” and it’s no wonder why people weren’t into that.
As for Strange World, it flopped because no one knew it existed. Disney dumped it out with no advertising a week after they released Black Panther 2, a guaranteed smash aimed at pretty much the same audience.
I saw this in the theater with my kid and thought the highlight was actually the visuals. It looked spectacular. However, the plot was a pretty generic R&J one that hinged around infrastructural damage of all things, and the message, while very admirable, was really, really on-the-nose and simplistic and done much better in Zootopia. The characters were also a bit one-dimensional and their concept and design kind of strange. It didn’t seem to want to appeal to either children or their parents, whereas the beauty of past Pixar was that those movies managed to appeal to both while also adding something innovative to the mix.
I think it’s simpler: it’s ugly. It doesn’t look like Pixar; it looks like an Inside Out knockoff from the $5 Walmart video bin.Ehhh…better than that, but still not up to what we think of as Pixar’s standards. The plot also feels a bit like Moana, only with a romance—I love Moana, but I don’t need to see it repeated over and over.
THIS WATER MOLECULE FUCKS!
The trailers made it look like a super generic story with some decent sight gags, no good reason to pay movie theater prices for it when I can watch it on D+ after a few months if I really want to see it.
The trailer does it no favors. The meet-cute scene from the teaser isn’t even in the movie and the movie in general is a lot deeper than the full trailer makes it out to be. Much like Lightyear and Strange Worlds, this was a perfectly fine movie that both myself and Mrs Lizardo enjoyed. Pixar’s marketing was pretty weak on all three of those. Lightyear was a very good SF story that shouldn’t have been shoehorned into Toy Story. Strange Worlds was hardly marketed at all. Elemental was mis-marketed.Then you have a hundred million households with Disney+, including half the US homes with kids under 10. Kids have short attention spans and if they aren’t persistent in their desire to see THIS SPECIFIC MOVIE or if it doesn’t hook in the adults then it is easy for the parents to let it wait a few months and watch it at home,
All good points.
I guess there’s also the old ‘once you’re at the top there’s nowhere left to go but down’ problem.
My daughter is 5 and has never been to a movie theater. I’m actively looking for a movie that’s worth bringing her to, and fuck if I can find one. I was hoping it’d be Elemental, but man if the reviews aren’t terrible. Maybe it’ll have to be Wish around Thanksgiving.
You mean she missed Tár in theaters? Come on, that’s just bad parenting!
Yeah, I had the same reaction to “Lightyear” when I watched it with Mrs. Hobbes last week. We both liked it, but what did it really have to do with Toy Story? How did that connection add anything of any value to the film?
Guessing it will only be a few weeks.
Weeks, months, whatever: I’m sure it’ll be a good ‘I drank until 3am Sunday morning so Sunday afternoon is a sit around, do laundry and watch something I don’t have to think about’ day.
This was it for me, 100%. The commercials make this movie look hackneyed. I’ve complained about it irl because I loved how Pixar kept making interesting movies that were still incredibly accessible. Elemental seemed so basic, I just assumed that executives had finally destroyed what made Pixar special, so I’d wait for it to show up on D+. Hearing what the allegory was in this article was legitimately surprising for me.
I took my kids to see it on Saturday, and my review was that it was “fine”, however my kids gave it a 9/10 (Mario is currently at 10/10 with them). Inflation may play a big role, but what isn’t considered is the easily accessible ways to stream movies from home that are still in the theater by pirating. I know of at least 5 different ways to watch movies in the theater from home.
Nobody cares what CHILDREN think about these films. They should get their own movies!
Exactly, that’s why I forced my kids to watch Encanto over 50 some odd times at my household, because it’s what I wanted to watch!
A better theory is that the kids have a billion options and there’s nothing about these characters that made kids tug on their parents sleeves and beg to go to the movies.
I think the problem is character design. The earlier Pixar films, while having less technology at their disposal in terms of lighting and shading effects, had simple but effective characters. Monsters Inc is a fine example of strong design. Then every other animation studio caught up and everyone is using the same template now. Does Pixar want to stand out? If yes, then they should pare it back, rethink it, and do something no one else it. Stop using the 1950s/60s-inspired character design model. Elemental looks bland, safe and samey – as do the last 5 Pixars before it.
I’m trying to think of the last time Pixar character design blew me away (WALL-e?). Even their most recent classic in my eyes, Inside Out, the character designs of the emotion is probably the least inspired thing about it.
Yeah, I love Inside Out but visually it’s just ‘ok’
One of the (many) things I wish I could drill into techbros’ heads (with an actual drill, preferably):TECH. DOESN’T. MAKE. YOU. A. BETTER. ARTIST.
I dunno. da Vinci and other renaissance painters often experimented with new pigments for paint. That was technology at the time! I’m pretty sure most of those guys would be into computers if they lived today.
Da Vinci was already a great artist. Synthetic pigments are great because the Impressionists used them; the Impressionists aren’t great because of synthetic pigments.
But it can certainly make you more prolific.
I agree with you overall on having more variety, but as someone who thinks Turning Red was underrated, I feel the need to point out that it did have a slightly different animation style that I enjoyed. It was more in the movements and editing though than the actual look.
It looked like Fire Zootopia, basically screams “Wait for Disney Plus”
Pixar used to be the vanguard of cinematic animation but their recent output looks so bland and uninspiring, especially compared to the breathtaking animation of Spider-Verse. I think that, whether they can articulate it or not, audiences recognize when they see something truly new and interesting, and sadly Pixar is no longer it.
No consideration whatsoever for the simple explanation that the movie looked bad? Every trailer and ad did absolutely nothing to sell me, I was left thinking “I saw this movie already, it was called Zootopia and it was way more charming than the really trite scenes you apparently thought were the most enticing parts of the movie”.
And then it got a middling reception at Cannes and then the reviews came out and confirmed that yes, it was bad, so I didn’t go see it! Sometimes it actually is that simple.
sending it and indiana jones out to cannes to die was one of the dumbest decisions disney has made lately, and that’s saying something.
Zootopia also has a much more interesting setting. A city where every kind of mammal lives together has a lot more potential than a city with four kinds of inhabitants. The background is packed with details showing how the needs of so many different creatures are accommodated, all of which feeds back into the movie’s theme of diversity. Zootopia’s setting is both more complex than Elemental’s, and easier to understand, because everyone already knows the concept of a talking cartoon animal. Whereas the concept of a talking….water? You have to spend part of the movie explaining how that even works, which makes it harder to get invested as a viewer.
I kept waiting for the Fire girl to get drenched and flame out while hanging with Water.
The one thing I didn’t get in Zootopia is it has every kind of mammal except apes and monkeys for a story about diversity it leaves out a pretty big animal.
I honestly didn’t think there were all that many trailers for it, tbh. It wasn’t even really on my radar relative to say Spiderverse or Mario in terms of just saturation, and I say that as someone who still has linear cable.It may have looked bad, but I wonder if it just got lost in the shuffle too.
You know what could work great for them? A movie about a newt. Why haven’t they tried that?
They did. They got better.
Apparently they prefer bears to newts
Marketing for Elemental focused on the fantastical setting and simplistic Romeo and Juliet
love story, without ever letting on that it’s also an allegory for the
immigrant experience and the ways in which outlier communities can be
systemically excluded from urban planning and development.
Um, question: why exactly is that a major part of the story of a movie made for kids? The Lion King didn’t examine the economic corruption inherent in a monarchical system. Aladdin wasn’t a #MeToo story about Jafar’s years-long habit of preying on Jasmine’s ladies-in-waiting. Hell, Wall-E wasn’t even about climate change, though that was an obvious key part of its background worldbuilding.
Maybe Pixar has been told they’re mind-blowing geniuses for so long, they think they can think up a complex, adult story first, and worry about making a solid kid’s movie several steps later. A Buzz Lightyear movie should have been a slam-dunk. So why did it only take place on one drab planet, and why the heck was it one big metaphor for the destructive potential of midlife crises?!Also, Elemental looks ugly AF.
Just cause you’re too stupid to pay attention to theme doesn’t mean we all are
We already saw this in the form of Zootopia. Why Disney decided to have a Pixar version of it instead of a Zootopia 2 or a spin-off is odd, but a bad sign that Disney is starting to be more controlling and dominating of Pixar, erode their creative autonomy, and is forcing them to crank out sub-standard product. The fact that they forced out Gayln Sussman and Angus Maclane and greenlit another Toy Sequel, it’s not looking good in the long term.
Others have said it better than I can, but the movie just looks boring. I’m sure it’s actually fine, but I’m kind of getting tired of the Pixar “what if nebulous thing had a bureaucracy” formula. The last movie they released that actually felt like a classic re-watchable Pixar movie was Luca (which I think is criminally underrated). Pixar won people over because of simple, clever, character-driven stories. They weren’t these grand epics that they seem to be trying to make these days. There’s enough epic movies out there, but not many quiet, simple ones.
Obligatory “TURNING RED Was Awesome And Not About An Anthropomorphized Bureaucracy” post.
Thank you! It’s a shame how Turning Red (and Luca and Soul) have been forgotten in all this talk about Pixar’s downfall. They still have it in them to make good movies that don’t follow an overdone formula, but I guess are doing a poor job of picking the ones they want to promote hard.
What went wrong with “Elemental”? – It wasn’t a good movie.
Where does Pixar go from here? – They either make better movies or continue their downward spiral.Did this really need 1,200 words?
Except it actually is good. It’s getting rave review from critics and audiences and has like an 80% RT professional score and 92% audience.So yeah, there actually are multi-thousand word analyses needed for why box office has been so disconnected from quality post-pandemic.
They need to get away from all the anthropomorphism of the abstract. Feelings, souls, elements… It’s gotten tiresome for me, even though I loved Inside Out and though Soul was good enough.Their earlier run of quality films went in all kinds of different, creative directions. Looking back at the premises of some of my favorites, it seems like big risks were taken creating and releasing them. And now, just about every time, I read the plot rundown and think, “Really? That’s all you got??”
This one’s easy: The trailers sold the film as a sweet romance, opposites attract.
I don’t know a single kid under the age of 10 who wants to see a sweet romance, animated or not.
If you start looking for a ten year old that wants sweet romance you end up on a list
I am surprised that they released this in June when. Most kids are still in school, since it looks like a movie mostly for kids. It seems way more like the kid of movie that you might take your kids to on a Thursday afternoon in July (or drop them off at when you go see something good).Yea I know that Mario was released during the school year, but like the article says it isn’t an unknown property so it had a built in fan base.
Most schools are out. Don’t know where you live.
mario was also released on a big juicy holiday weekend.edit: which i guess this did too!
School has been over for like a month, what??
It may be a different state thing but everyone in my area is out of school by the second week of June. If the school district has newer building with central air, They let the kids out before Memorial Day and then they start back the third week of August. If the district doesn’t have central air they go a few weeks into June but then the kids start after Labor Day. Both my boys have been done for weeks
Huh. Heat Weeks are a thing up there, too?
“we may be in for many more sequels. Which is fine, as long as they’re
loaded with original ideas, compelling characters, and smart stories.”Spoiler: they won’t be.
I know AVClub moved to LA now- are they really still doing a lot of masking or even acting like COVID is still a thing? I’ve been to doctor’s appointments for months without seeing anyone in a mask.
The major chains mandated masks in 2021 and proof of vaccine into early 2022, but beyond that, there haven’t been any visible COVID protocols still in place for about the last year, except for some locations going cash-free. The smaller theatres and independents still have signage recommending masks (given their largely older customers), but there’s no rule in place anymore (especially since California ended their procedures before the federal government did), and there hasn’t been for quite a while.More importantly, I’ve seen plenty of packed theatres for other, better movies over the last few months. COVID has absolutely nothing to do with this film’s failure.
Yeah, I’d assume the signage is more a matter of employee inertia (“I’m not taking it down until someone tells me to”) than actual intent. It seemed like all the COVID stuff was really grasping at straws here. Thanks.
I don’t know, I’d watch the hell out of a kid’s movie titled: “An Allegory for the Immigrant Experience and the Ways in Which Outlier Communities Can Be Systemically Excluded From Urban Planning and Development.”
Marketing for Elemental focused on the fantastical setting and simplistic Romeo and Juliet love story, without ever letting on that it’s also an allegory for the immigrant experienceDoesn’t it, though? The allegory isn’t explicitly referenced, but it’s incredibly obvious what it’s gonna be about: the ‘Elements don’t mix!’ part; the fact that the fire girl lives in a place called ‘Firetown’ and the general Chinese-codedness of that setting; her dad’s broken English and desire for her to take over running the family restaurant; the part where water guy tries the dad’s cooking and it’s too spicy for him…Also, perhaps more importantly than the right refusing to see it because of wokeness… it’s really not a good allegory, either. When you’re including scenes like the above, the whole ‘elements’ thing becomes less of a metaphor and more of a means to add spectacle to the story – you might as well just make it about actual immigrants (in New York, I’m guessing).It’s also, IMO, the kind of ‘woke’ allegory that circles back round and ends up being super un-woke. I’ve dated across cultures before, and while there can certainly be issues I can safely say that neither of us were at risk of death if we touched each other. When you make these kind of allegories it presents different cultures and their people as being fundamentally different, ‘other,’ or incompatible (except the protagonists, who only overcome those differences through a Herculean effort and, I guess, are special exceptions in some way) which actually isn’t really a great message. So I dunno if it holds much woke appeal either.
Also, why are the air people clouds? Clouds are water. That’s dumb.
They had to visually represent them with something, a problem when you need to make a literal air character. Perhaps a tornado inspired design?
The tanzanian devil.
The movie gets itself into all sorts of conceptual trouble. At one point it’s specifically laid out that Wade isn’t “water,” he’s a “water person,” implying that none of the characters are actually… elementals… since they exist apart from the elements they represent. Also, municipal water management plays a big role in the plot but the water people aren’t accountable for it.
what.
Wade isn’t “water,”…children, now.
Also, municipal water management plays a big role in the plot but the water people aren’t accountable for it.Okay, this made me laugh. Both the fact that municipal water management plays a big role in a kids’ film, and the second part.Just wondering what else could work that way: ‘The city’s air quality index plays a big role in the plot, but the air people aren’t in charge of it.’
Or any film! I can only think of Chinatown (not a kids’ movie) that deals with that (there’s things like Dune and the Mad Max films where water management plays a role, but not at a municipal level).
Quantum of Solace, too – alludes to the Bolivian water utilities scandal that happened back in the day.I reckon it’s probably ok for adult films to deal with this kind of thing, since it’s for adults. But in a kids’ film? Strong ‘trade disputes in the Phantom Menace’ vibes.
Now I want a version of Dune that takes place around a municipal water board.
Paul Atreides: I just want to know how much you’re worth. Over ten million solari?
Dr. Kynes: (chuckles): Oh my, yes.Paul Atreides: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? How much more water can you drink? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?Dr. Kynes: The future, Mr. Atreides, the future.
That was also a problem with Zootopia. The fact that rabbits and sheep weren’t big fans of foxes isn’t a great metaphor for racism because there is a real reason prey animals wouldn’t be big fans of predators.
Yeah, exactly. It’s not quite as bad, but I would also tentatively bring up X-Men here as an allegory for gay rights. Given that multiple mutants (i.e. LGBT+ activists) have the capacity to literally end the world, and frequently try to, I’m not too sure that these things map onto each other, really.
The real problem with Pixar and a lot of other beloved innovators (and Pixar’s animation was, at one point, HYPER innovative compared to the rest of the field, and they still obviously put a fuck-ton of love and money into their craft) is that they set the foundation for a new animation industry that they now have to live in – and compete. And quite simply, other studios suck up some of the momentum and overall space.
It was also just a bad movie. We took the kids this weekend and it was just kind of blah. The animation was ok, had some fun songs in the background but it was slow and boring and the ending was telegraphed 5 minutes in.
Looks like Osmosis Jones to me.
There’s a more basic problem here, which is that it’s getting hard to keep track of whichever colour coded gimmick Pixar/Disney movie is currently in rotation.Inside Out: colour-coded emotions!Soul: colour-coded afterlife!Elemental: colour-coded elements!
The Big Five of Hollywood’s Golden Age (MGM, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, RKO and Paramount) all had a spectacular run from the twenties through the mid-forties at which point WW II ended and the movies tanked almost overnight as everyone moved to the suburbs and stayed home to watch TV. All of them, with the exception of RKO which Howard Hughes ran into the ground Musk-style, had their share of subsequent sporadic hits (the Biblical epics, the wide screen fad, etc.) but their moment had passed they were all winding down until the sixties when things really came crashing down and the studio era effectively ended.Pixar and its imitators have had close to a three decade run now and CG cartoons in general seem to share a certain sameness within each studio’s respective house style. The novelty is gone, there have been too many sequels and an increasing number of WTF high concept flops nobody wanted to see. Most importantly there was a seismic shift in family viewing habits since COVID and I don’t see that changing soon. Maybe the reality check of the streaming era imploding will help a little eventually but the gravy train has left the station. There will certainly be exceptions like the Mario Brothers movie (whatever the hell it was called) and the Spiderverse thing (whatever to he hell it was called) that will draw crowds by either nostalgic appeal or the rare critical/public consensus that this is something genuinely fresh and exciting but Pixar is in serious trouble. Their “After School Special” messaging coupled with increasingly would-be high concept world building schtick feels exhausted. Most crucially, there is no visionary at the helm even though Lasseter himself had lost the Midas touch long before he pancaked his career. Worse, Pixar is merely a subsidiary of a once legendary studio that itself now seems to have relegated its future to little more than CGI regurgitating of its own animated legacy library. I really don’t have much in the way of hope for them. At one time Brad Bird might have been an option but he’s never seemed interested in running a studio and has also been consumed by his own ego and I don’t expect anything significant from him anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney effectively assimilates Pixar into the greater Mouse Collective within the next decade.
The last Pixar film we saw in theaters was “Inside Out”. My family has become accustomed to waiting for films to go to streaming where we can watch them from the comfort of home. I need a really good reason to bother going to a theater and – while it looked decent enough to me from the trailers -this movie didn’t provide me with one.
Lightyear was gorgeous. But it was super confusing for casual moveigoers.
The trailers just screamed “What if elements had feelings?” without much else. We’ve already had what if…..cars, toys, fish, feelings, and monsters had feelings so it felt very samesy
I really liked Strange Worlds that’s all. Just really enjoyed the movie and wished that it hadn’t bombed so hard.
“This character is made of fire, and is from Firetown! And they like a water character from Watertown!?!? WH-aAA—-?!?!” is why this didn’t do well.
Everybody is waiting for it to stream. Crusty, stained movie theater seats are so passé, so 2008.
I think your missing the biggest factors. The trailers for Elemental and Elio look like trash. Not cool, not funny, not conceptually interesting. If these represent the best parts of these movies, then the movies are downright terrible. And that’s all that matters, do the trailers make you want to see the flick. These didn’t. Pixar’s name means nothing these days, and without the name, people are going to judge each of their films based on what the trailer presents, and nothing more.
The problem with Elemental is the same problem I had with Cars, but much worse. With most Pixar movies, the plot is pretty simple and doesn’t lead to a lot of questions. It’s all make-believe of course, but there’s only like one major make-believe thing about it: Toys are alive. Monsters who scare you work for a scaring company. A family of superheroes. A kid and old man go on an adventure. Dinosaurs and humans live on the earth at the same time. Fish can talk.
With Cars—and given its success I’m probably in the minority—it was the first Pixar movie I didn’t like, because I had way too many questions about the world. Why are cars alive? Were there ever humans? If not, why are there seats in the cars? Same problem with Elemental. The premise is too complicated while the actual plot looks too simple. Oh, these people from different backgrounds fall in love? Crazy! But also… what are they and where did they come from and why are different elements alive and why is there one city where they all live but avoid interacting? I know it’s kinda ridiculous to complain about suspending disbelief for a cartoon movie, but there are too many things distracting you from just jumping into this world and enjoying the movie.
You’ve pretty much hit on why Cars never worked for me.
but at least with cars you can break it down to ‘kids have always liked playing with cars’ and there have been lots of movies with talking cars. this is just so abstract it’s clearly turning people off.
But kids love playing with fire and water!
clearly not enough!
I normally like Pixar movies (sometimes love!) but had no interest in this one after seeing the trailer because…While I don’t mind ‘lessons’ being embedded in the plot, I absolutely hate being lectured on something even when I agree with it. And this one looked like nothing but lecturing. Yes racism is bad, but I don’t want to spend 90 minutes being in my face (literally) lectured that racism is bad and other cultures have their own positives. You can do that transparently while doing something more interesting, like Zootopia did or Coco did.Plus the graphics looked mediocre, so I can’t overlook the (apparently) meh plot just for the spectacle like I did for Avatar: Way of Water.
Or maybe it just looks like shit and it sounds like a lazy idea. It looks like a parody of a Pixar film.
Let’s not ignore the fact that A LOT of theaters have closed, post pandemic also. I have a single screen theater up the road from me that mainly shows family friendly flicks. But if I want to see something they’re not showing, I used to have a Regal 15 minutes up the road. That’s no longer there. Now, if I want to go to a multiplex, the closest one is 30 minutes in the other direction.I really wanted to go see Flash and Spider-Verse the last few weeks, but I just don’t have the time to add a 1 hour drive on top of seeing a movie.
I’m a Pixar fan, but the marketing makes Elemental just look like a lazy Pixar knockoff. The formula appears to have become formulaic.
The story’s been done. A lot. Heasdstrong character that wants to defy their parents will? check Falls for someone the opposite of them in species and/or social standing? yepTurns out that thing the main character’s passionate about saves the day? gotchu fam Traditional Disney Death (Wade’s dead but not really) in the 3rd Act? uh-huh Now the parents give up their dreams so their child can fulfill theirs? presentA film like this might’ve been something in the 90s. Animated movies have come so far since then that the plot of this reads like a parody.
There’s also reportedly another Toy Story.Oh, no.No, no, no….Somebody stop Pixar before they sequel again.
Luca was great.
Luca was small, and quiet, and micro-focussed on an extremely specific, fully-realized locale. It felt like a Ghibli movie, its highest stakes were buying a scooter, and its villain was a dude whose power was riding a bicycle. Luca said ‘if you spend ninety minutes in a gorgeous Italian village in the late 50s watching two boys have a very queer summer complicated by a cool redhead you will walk away feeling spiritually refreshed.’
They were one hundred percent right, and every frame of it felt like it had a creative team behind it completely invested in the deeply personal story they were telling. Luca is wonderful and nobody watched it and it’s a shame because it was path forward that Pixar didn’t take: forget the spectacle, forget the big, and go back to telling a story that means something to the people telling it.
(Incredibles 2 might have the biggest box office but it is far and away Pixar’s worst movie—not because it is bad but because it is mediocre. It regresses all its characters to the first movie starting points, spends a full half hour doing a crummy remake of Jack-Jack Attack, and never justifies its own existence. It is so crushingly disappointing, and in that I think worse even than The Good Dinosaur, a genuinely bad and downright hideous movie that actively hates children and wishes them harm.)
The trailers were a big factor. I have friends who saw Elemental either out of blind faith in Pixar or because their kids thought it looked fun, and every single one of them (a) loved it, & (b) told me it’s NOTHING like how it was advertised.
Elemental also faced the disadvantage of being an original story that wasn’t based on existing IP.
IDK, I think it was based on an existing IP, a trite and overwrought Pixar formula.Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good recipe, and if I’d never had a Pixar movie before, I’d be like “wow this is great, more of this please”, but there have been over 25 Pixar movies at this point. We get it.Like when Pixar did Wall-E, it felt new and exciting, because they’d never done a sci-fi movie before.But not only does a film like Elemental come off as another “what if X had an internal life” film they’ve done so many times already, but the rate at which we’re getting these films has shot up exponentially.Pixar movies have gone from being bi-annual, to almost being bi-annual. From being something you’d see every other year, to having Turning Red and Lightyear release in the same quarter of 2022.Disney has amassed under its wings one of the biggest collections of IP in history, and instead of spacing things out and letting us miss something, and rotating between its IPs aggressively, they pick a couple, and shove them down our throat as a “franchises” until they’re ground down into a pulp.
Should never have got rid of Lasseter.
Uh…I admit I don’t work there myself, but my impression is that they actually had some REALLY GOOD REASONS for getting rid of Lasseter. Even if he was the single thing causing their movies to be successful–which is debatable–I’d still say giving him the boot was the right move.
I feel like there has been something going on at Pixar that people rather can’t see or don’t want to admit that has affected their output, and that is the firing of John Lassiter. I’m not saying it was wrong to fire him, but John Lassiter created Pixar and was the guiding light for most of their amazing run.
Maybe it’s just me, but it kinda sorta seems like Pixar’s also just been getting increasingly try-hard when it comes to being playing on our emotions, and Elemental has partly just kind of had the misfortune to come out when we’re all starting to become a bit immune to it. Don’t get me wrong, when it works it works — I cried like a baby at Inside Out — but ever since the ending of Toy Story 3, it sometimes seems like Pixar’s been trapped in a never-ending doom loop where they have to keep trying to wring every last tear out of us to the point where it sometimes feels like the movies are constantly shouting “Yes! This is the bit where we challenge youthful innocence! Feel the melancholy and angst! Isn’t this soooo bittersweet?! Isn’t your heart being wrenched so much right now?! Cry! Cry! CRYYYYYYYY!”And we’ve maybe collectively just reached a point where we’re like, yes Elemental, you’re right, the life of an immigrant is full of such hardships and woes (and I knoweth what I speaketh, incidentally), but you’ve done this all before and it’s all become a bit too much and it’s just not really working for me anymore, sorry.I mean, there’s a fifth Toy Story being made. A fifth one. And they threatened them all with incineration back in number three. God knows what they’ll have to do in the next one to get the same kind of toy-as-parental-metaphor highs of emotional manipulation, because the whole ‘empty nest’ stuff of the last one couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a come-down when placed against the threat of Woody and Buzz literally burning to death.
It looks like focus-grouped bullshit for the increasingly sucky theater experience. People have better things to do.
Nah, parents have had enough of Disney. It is snowballing.
I think the main reason could be summed up by this far-down paragraph opener:“Elemental also faced the disadvantage of being an original story that wasn’t based on existing IP.”
Does anyone else remember when Pixar was known for creating environmental art that had people just gobsmacked about it as much as for the narrative?Finding Nemo. WALL-E. Up. The Incredibles. Coco. Ratatouille. Inside Out. Even the first Cars movie, once you got out to Radiator Springs. It’s what differentiated Pixar from every other animation studio out there. It gave you a feeling that this was a studio of ideas.These days, though, Pixar seems to be chasing profits more than continually redefining their genre. Luca was the most forgettable movie of their recent output, and I say that even knowing that Onward exists. To me, the list of Pixar flops is growing much faster than their cultural landmarks. And while I personally loved Soul, it only really compares favorably to movies like the interminable Toy Story sequels (which should have ended, cold turkey, after TS3), Luca, Onward, Brave, The Good Dinosaur, and Elemental.Maybe, though, that is the destiny of all creative enterprises in the Age of Capitalism – make something original and awe-inspiring, and then eventually sell out while everyone else tries to copy it until the next original and awe-inspiring bit of entertainment comes along.
As mean as it might sound, I don’t know why they let the director of The Good Dinosaur direct another feature.
I’ll admit though, I get Pete Docter and Peter Sohn mixed up, so I was initially surprised when Elemental got not-great reviews. I had thought it was another film from the guy who directed Up, Inside Out, and Soul. But I only realized later I was mixing the two Pixar Petes up, and maybe it makes a little more sense now.
I think it was the marketing more than anything. Supposedly Disney spent $100M on marketing. I’d love to know where. Was it all on typical TV commercials? Because it would have to be. Watching YouTube – no ads for this movie. TikTok – no ads. Twitter – no ads. Any apps – no ads. Even on D+, not much promotion. Disney isn’t hitting the target audience with their marketing. I told my kids this came out – a teen and a tween – and they asked what I was talking about.
We need more joyful, limit-pushing animation like Mitchells vs the Machines. Still cannot believe that never made it to a theater. Pixar just needs to get out of its own head and stop trying to make PIXAR MOVIES and just start making movies again.
“While a world populated by the personified elements of fire, water, land, and air might sound interesting”It absolutely does not wound interesting.
Is Elio Pixar’s take on Call Me By Your Name, but now with 0% gay, like Luca?
1. It was barely promoted. Just like with Strange World, promotion didn’t seem to go past trailers just before other films. I didn’t recall seeing any promos for them on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
2. COVID. Even though we’re not at the same chances of exposure as we were in 2020, some people still refuse to go to theaters, and opt to wait until it hits streaming or Redbox. Which segues to…3. Disney +. Many people are now willing to wait until it drops onto Disney + within a month or two. This isn’t the VHS Dark Ages anymore, where you had to wait from several months to SEVERAL YEARS for a Disney film to make it to home video. The House of Mouse needs to put a six month waiting period before carrying over a film from the cinemas to D+.
I think it’s much simpler than that people don’t want to take their kids to see sexually deviant lifestyles depicted on the screen and they don’t want to have awkward conversations about questions that young children shouldn’t be asking yet because it doesn’t apply to them. Kids need time to be kids and play they’ll have plenty of time to explore their sexuality when they’re adults.
I think Disney is just losing audience because is somehow disappointing, I’m 32 and have a 2 and 3yo so when there’s now movies we’re excited but the constant ‘inclusion’ bombarding from Disney is just annoying! Yes the lgbtq+ and afroamerican communities are important but Disney needs to step aside because it seems they just wants to please this audience and the topics just goes around this over and over again, as a mom I rather expose my kids to content about personal growth or friendship
Did plasmas or Bose-Einstein condensates make a special appearance? Gotta appeal to the coveted ‘physicist’ demographic!
From promotionals and trailers etc. it just seems like Pixar on auto-pilot…