Disney played a hot 20 minutes of Elemental at CinemaCon

Pixar’s next movie Elemental is more than another Inside Out riff. As promised, the movie is very much an immigrant story about two flames who take a ship to Element City. There, they meet at Element City’s Ellis Island, where customs change the couple’s names to Bernie and Cinder Lumen—you get it.

Things don’t get easier when the couple arrives in the city proper. Unable to rent a house or apartment from water or tree elements for obvious reasons, the Lumens find a run-down tree house for sale, which they turn into a fire shop called The Fire Place. They sell coal nuts and sparklers and other things fire wants.

After the couple has a baby girl, Ember, the plot shifts to her. She has anger issues (all the elements personify different faces of the element’s characteristics) making it difficult for her to deal with customers. Nevertheless, some of the fires like Ember’s ability to roast.

Another issue facing Ember, her mother really wants her to marry a fire. It was her grandmother’s dying wish. Also, the mother is a psychic medium for some reason. Ember’s dream is to run the shop, but because of her anger, she keeps losing it on customers. Eventually, the fire in a tree house filled with running water becomes too much for her rage and she nearly destroys the building. The disaster sends her into the heart of Element City, where she must navigate as a flame surrounded by trees she can kill and water that can kill her. Though, it’s not clear how that works entirely.

Director Peter Sohn spoke about the film back in September at D23. “We immigrated to the U.S. from Korea in the early seventies,” Sohn said at the time. “They had no money, no family, no English. But they managed to create a life in New York.” From the first few minutes of the film, that history is evident.

The first 20 minutes move at a clip, with the plot shifting and evolving every few minutes. But the animation looks inventive and original, especially compared to the pear-shaped people that have populated the last few movies.