Well, Elemental is...solidly middle of the road. It's not the worst Pixar movie by any means, but it is both very on the nose at times and conversely it did make me tear up by the end.
I will say, that I went into this movie knowing NOTHING. Beyond the fact that it was called Elemental and it was about elemental people. That's it.
It's essentially the first Pixar "rom-com". And I only put that in quotes because it's not the kind of dumb comedy rom-com that seems to exist currently, it's more of a romance with some comedy but also, you know, drama and stakes.
Weirdly, I would have put money on somebody associated with the writing or directing of this movie being second generation Middle Eastern or something similar, because the flame folks in this movie are SO incredibly Middle-Eastern-immigrant coded (down to the music, and a lot of the design in the fire part of town) that it's ridiculous. But, no, turns out it's at least partially based on director Peter Sohn's life as the son of Korean immigrants.
Interestingly, the water people are definitely Caucasian-coded. And we don't see enough of the air/cloud people or the earth/tree/grass people to draw a parallel.
I will say though, that the overall story isn't the greatest. It feels like it keeps picking new plot cards, playing with them for a short amount of time before throwing them away and picking a completely different card and going in another direction. It also feels like it introduces a main character trait at the mid point of the movie when it's never really been explored (I mean, kind of, but not in the way that makes it clear from the jump). Most of it gets paid off, but it's a little all over the place. Essentially, the script could have definitely done with maybe one more draft with a fresh pair of eyes.
I also maintain one of the same things I said after the abysmal Strange World, Disney, can you maybe pay for some therapy for your creators? They clearly have ongoing parental issues. I mean, I know what this story is going for, a story that while not "universal" is something that a lot of people can understand, but at the same time... issues.
And does this movie somewhat copy Zootopia's homework, less from a plot standpoint, but more from a design aesthetic? Absolutely. But that's going to happen when you set a movie in a fantastical city with design elements that lean into a world with a specific theme.
There are also a lot of design choices here that I love. I love the "formal" clothing for the flame folk that is essentially stained glass. I love that the fire people have legs that come to a point at the bottom, because of course flame spreads out as it rises. I love that there is no one look for the earth people. They're basically "dirt plus plants" in some combination, but they range from people with trees growing out of their heads to covered in grass and everything in between. At the same time, it's hard to do creatures made of air, and their shorthand was "cloud", but that's just water vapour, which essentially just makes them a different race of water folk.
As is expected, the effects of the fire and water and cloud are beautiful, there's a whole underwater section that is stunning, but that's only to be expected from a Pixar movie.
Would I have expected that I would get teary at the end based on even the midway point of the movie? No. But they still got me there, which I count as a success.
yani's rating: 3 sparklers out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment