Pixar’s newest movie, an emotional story about cross-cultural relationships and immigrant families, raises a million confusing setting questions. Like Cars.
Animation brings impossible, fantastical worlds to life in a way live-action just can’t emulate. Pixar is particularly masterful at crafting how these worlds look and function, whether it’s the monster society in Monsters, Inc. or the inside of a 13-year-old’s mind in Inside Out. But there’s a delicate balance in keeping a world rooted in reality while incorporating more fantastical elements — and Elemental, Pixar’s newest film, steps across that line.
It isn’t the studio’s first film to do so. There’s another Pixar film with mind-boggling worldbuilding that distracts from the actual core of the story, to the point where the big questions about how everything works are the only thing people talk about years later. Elemental is the new Cars.
[Ed. note: This post contains minor spoilers for Elemental.]
The core of Elemental is about cross-cultural relationships and the pressure of being a second-generation immigrant living up to parental expectations, while trying to figure out what you actually want out of life. The characters and their relationships are vibrant and fully fleshed out. Visually, Elemental is up there with Inside Out in just how dang cool it looks. But every tender, heartfelt moment in Elemental immediately raises a million worldbuilding questions. While fantasy movies certainly don’t have to address every single wrinkle of their settings, there comes a point where the cool aesthetic and zany elements erode the heart of a story.
Cars actually pulls this off slightly better than Elemental, if only because the story itself doesn’t go very deep.
