I have similar feelings towards Elemental, Pixar's latest film, as many others (judging mainly from YouTube). On the strength of trailers and movie clips, I wasn't too eager to go to the cinema to watch it, and was tempted to wait until the Disney + release. When I did watch it at the cinema, however, I was pleasantly surprised and had a really good time.
Why wasn't I more excited for the film, then, as I could see from the trailers etc. that the animation would be stunning and colourful? The general impression of the Elemental's premise seems to be "haven't we seen this before?". A world with humanised elements doesn't come across as very innovative from a studio that has already given us humanised toys, bugs, monsters, fish, emotions and more. What bothered me more than a certain staleness in the Pixar formula, though, was the staleness of the themes addressed. Were we really getting "let's overcome prejudice" and generational conflict? Again?
I've seen the "let's overcome prejudice" theme in animated films and elsewhere many, many times. Zootopia (or Zootropolis in Europe, but as I don't know why the title was changed I'll stick to the original one) is the most high-profiled example among the animated flicks, and to be fair I thought it handled the subject matter rather cleverly. More recently, we've had Raya and the Last Dragon and Luca, and apparently Trolls World Tour from Dreamworks (which I haven't seen) tackled the same issues. It's especially popular to use allegories when trying to put the anti-prejudice message across, and while I can appreciate the good intentions behind them, I feel as if I see another clunky metaphor for immigration (looking at you, Marvel's Secret Invasion) I shall scream. I've already expanded on why I especially dislike allegories where humans are the discriminators and the discriminated against are another species of some kind. At least Elemental doesn't go down that road, but still: this has been done.
Generational conflict is the latest favourite topic of animated Disney films, and it sometimes crops up in Pixar too. I'm getting pretty tired of this as well, especially as generational-conflict films tend to be short on villains. Encanto, Strange World, Turning Red and now Elemental all have the younger generation questioning and/or wanting to break free from the older one, and zero villains.
But enough whining (for now). In spite of my misgivings, I very much enjoyed Elemental, which luckily isn't just Zootopia all over again. What I especially liked about the film was the romance. Here we have two protagonists – the prickly fire girl Ember and the somewhat mushy but endearing water guy Wade – unapologetically falling for each other in a classic romcom scenario. When's the last time we got that in an animated film? Seems like ages. And it's not just one of the characters doing all the running, either. Ember and Wade see the point of each other and complement each other: she appreciates his ability to connect to others, he admires her spark and can-do approach. It's really sweet.
The other main story thread, about Ember's parents' experiences as immigrants to "Element City" and how they affect Ember, has its moments too, though for my part I was more into the love story. Ember's sudden realisation that she doesn't really want to take over her father's shop felt as if it surfaced a bit abruptly after we've seen her repeatedly trying to prove to her dad that she's ready to take over. But maybe that's the point: she feels so guilty about not really enjoying shop work that she's suppressed her ambitions.
The main problem with Elemental is that the allegory of elements living together in one city doesn't serve either of these plot threads. Yes, it's visually impressive, and has inspired the animators to a lot of creative character and city designs. But it doesn't really work. However romantic the scene is where Ember and Wade finally dare to touch and manage to do so without destroying each other, you can't help wondering what will happen when they get even more tactile, plus if and how they'll manage to have children.
As for the immigrant story, its personal approach is both a strength and a weakness. Unlike Zootopia, Elemental isn't about bringing harmony to a whole society; it's just about Ember trying to have a relationship and find a career that fits her talents without upsetting her parents. This makes the film more engaging and less finger-wagging than if it had gone further down the social commentary route. On the other hand, it can't use the same gambit as Zootopia, where there were no one-to-one parallels between different animals in the film and different groups of people in the real world, which lead to more general and less infected musings on the nature of prejudice. But in Elemental, the fire people are immigrants; they've already been established as such within the story. However, the physical danger that water poses to fire, and fire to everything else, has no equivalent in the real world. Elements really don't mix, but humans can.
I don't think Element City is meant to be a one-to-one parallel to, say, New York (what would that imply about the air and earth people – that there are some immigrants who've had it easy?), but with some real-world parallels being so explicit, Elemental falls between two chairs when it comes to its world building.
Quibbles aside, Elemental is a heartwarming love story and sometimes touching family drama which is beautifully animated. It's definitely worth watching in a cinema. But Pixar does need to look out. In a film like Inside Out, they were really committed to the idea of animating a girl's emotional development by making her emotions into characters of their own. They had fun with the concept, whereas in Elemental, the animated elements are mostly a way to dress up a story that might as well have been told as a live-action romcom featuring humans. If the story and concept don't gel, then maybe one of them has to go.
