But this is not supposed to be a film made for a niche audience, it just takes its inspiration from the personal experiences of the director. Whether it appeals to a wider audience or not and why is another issue, but it's not made as a film for children of Korean immigrants who grew up in New York even if that experience was the source of inspiration for the director.
Luca was brought up earlier as being meaningful for Italian Americans. Well, I am Anglo-Irish Australian and it's one of my favourite films from Disney or Pixar in a very long time and it was also the most-streamed movie in the United States the year it was released. That's not a niche movie, even if it was inspired by the filmmaker's lived experience.
Agree with all of this.
We went to see Elemental today
(in 3D even - so nobody can argue we weren't rooting for it) and I have to say, I went in wanting to like it and walked out wishing it had been a better movie than it ended up being.
The design and animation was of course,
beautiful - everything you expect from a Pixar movie in that regard.
Everything else?
Meh.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
While I think they did a pretty solid job with Ember's character and her family, Wade and his ilk felt like a weird bad parody. Honestly, the way his side of the love story played out, I wouldn't be surprised if his character went through a similar "love" story with someone else every other week. He came across as kind of a love bomber.
A walking body of water with the apparent depth of a puddle.
I understand they were playing up the opposites and all of that but how they demonstrate him "connecting" with others like in the stadium felt cringy and forced.
The idea that they went from meeting in bad circumstances as adversaries to "
true love" in less than a week was also stretching the boundaries of credibility.
How the boss went from anoyed and difficult to suddenly a buddy helping out with the underwater scene? That also didn't track unless Wade really just uses empathy to manipulate others.
Those are just a few examples.
The various messages being sent also seemed a little bit heavy-handed, to me, too.
They weren't bad messages but more and more, Disney's and Pixar's movies seem to be more about the message than the entertainment and if I wanted to watch an after school special, I'd start watching broadcast TV again - not trekking out to a theater.
Unlike Strange World that I feel would have needed a significant re-write to have saved, this one feels like it
could have been a great movie if it had gone through a tougher internal review process.
That what saved Wade in the end was his most melodramatic eye-rolling trait made it feel like that whole point about him and his "people" was forced in there just to have that be able to happen in the end.
They could have gone with how steam - a natural result of fire and water - isn't the end for either of them and how it cooled her without killing her because her "flame" was too strong to be extinguished that way
(great metaphor to address her coming to terms with her spirit and individuality while taming her temper) while also showing him he could be more resilient
(the heat doesn't kill him but transforms him) and not such a pushover.
Disney/Pixar being all about the message these days, it could have been a solid message about the need for both yin and yang and how everything is stronger with both.
The big message of the film was diversity and finding beauty in what makes us different, right? Wouldn't a melting-pot solution like that have driven
that message home?
Instead, they went with the solution being that he needed to cry some more.
It didn't feel earned.
I felt let down, not because it was an awful movie but because it felt like it could have been a great movie if - I don't know?
Someone else directed?
That's probably too harsh so I'd say, if someone or a group of someone's with some distance was providing the brutal internal critiquing that Pixar was once legendary for putting all their movies through before letting the public see them.
It's feeling like a lot of these newer movies haven't been getting that kind of love to me.
The ending was emotional but like Wade's ability to "connect", it felt more like shallow manipulation than what I'd at one time come to expect from Pixar movies.
Pete Doctor is already subtly blaming how audiences have been "trained" to watch Pixar on Disney+. I think that's completely the wrong takeaway. Every movie finds it's way on to
some streaming service sooner than later now days.
That's not why people with kids are taking them to other animated movies and avoiding Pixar and Disney's latest releases.
We went to see it in a theater on opening weekend. I wouldn't recommend anyone else spend money to see it that way and D+ grooming has nothing to do with why.
If anyone were to ask me, I'd say if you haven't seen Across the Spiderverse yet, go spend your money on
that one - it deserves it.
Wait until you can see this one for "free".
And I know, Pixar will be fine.