If there’s one thing you can say about Pixar it’s that they’re always trying to do something new. Whether it be at the forefront of animation technology, developing original stories, or breaking records for animated box office returns, the famed studio always has something up their sleeve. Elemental proves yet again that their ability to develop unique stories in captivating worlds is tough to match in any form, let alone in animation.
Elemental follows Ember (Leah Lewis), a fire elemental growing up with her parents at their shop in Element City. Ember’s family are immigrants; they were amongst the first fire elementals to move to Element City from their native Fireland. When the shop, and subsequently all of the Fire district is threatened by mass water leakages (they’re fire after all), Ember teams up with bumbling water elemental and city inspector Wade (Mamoudou Athie). Together, the two set out to fix the water issues and find out that they may like each other more than they realize.
Element City is probably one of the most fascinating worlds I’ve seen from an animated film since Zootopia. The concept is just truly fascinating and the development of the cultures between each element works tremendously. I wish the film had taken more of a dive into the different elements of the city- various districts, dynamics between different types of elementals, and anything in between. I appreciated the care that Pixar took to make each district unique, but I would have loved some more to it.
Does the water district have an Ice Village? Does the Earth district (of which we see criminally little), have jungle villages and desert villages and mountainous villages?
I need to know the answers to these questions.
The film also took a bold risk in adapting a new immigrant story as a central theme to the plot. Yet, this was one of the most successful aspects of Elemental. It played extremely well into Ember’s personality and provided the central theme and conflict of this story. I am not born of immigrant parents, yet even I felt connected to their journey as if I was. That’s an impressive feat.
Unfortunately, Elemental does little to expand on these incredible engaging topics for a story that just felt below the potential they had set up. The water conflict was really just a means to get Ember and Wade together, and their relationship took center stage. And even at a 1hr and 42m runtime, it felt that their relationship was incredibly rushed. Pixar either needed to spend more time fleshing this relationship out or take the focus and put it towards the storylines that had more potential.
That’s not to say that the film isn’t entertaining or enjoyable. It absolutely has that Pixar magic, and it looks phenomenal on the big screen. Athie and Lewis have a really great chemistry that comes through on screen. There were some fun jokes and comedic moments, and there were some surprisingly well executed dramatic beats as well.
This all helped make Elemental fun to watch, and I could tell the families that were in the theater when I watched it were all having a great time too. That’s extremely important for any film coming out of Pixar and Disney. If the families connect, then they’ve done their job well.
Final Thoughts
Elemental delivers on the fun Pixar experience we’ve come to expect. With fun characters, solid comedy, impressive dramatic moments and gorgeous animation, audiences are bound for a good time. Yet, there were some truly great themes that, had they expanded on those and not the half-baked conflicts and rushed romance they opted for, would have lifted the film tremendously. The studio instead opted to play it safe, which doesn’t take away from the film, but doesn’t allow it to live up to the potential it had through its vast and uniquely interesting world and honest immigrant storyline. If you can, I would definitely check Elemental out, but you can wait until it inevitably drops on Disney+.
