‘Elemental’ Review: Pixar’s Fire & Water Metaphor For Tolerance & Differences Is Sadly Dull & Safe

Note: The following John Hoberg and Kat Likkel interview discusses major spoilers for “Elemental.”With “Elemental” now in theaters, audiences are seeing the beauty of both Element City and the love story between a fire element named Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) and a water element named Wade (voiced by Mamoudou Athie). They’re also seeing how emotionally charged and, at times, sad their love story can be. Screenwriters John Hoberg and Kat Likkel came onto the story in 2019, after three previous versions of the script had already been workshopped.

Did you know that some stars have earned $100 million from making just one movie?

Elemental is unfortunately not burning up at the box office.

Elemental,” is a charming drama about family and identity, centering the story of two elements, Ember and Wade (voiced by Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie, respectively), who fall in love with each other. Many different themes are tackled within, from questions of personal identity to the struggles of immigration. But at a certain point Ember talks about how, as a fire element who can cause things to ignite just by standing next to them, the “world is not designed for me.”My ears immediately perked up when I heard that line.

Vanessa Feltz were among the famous faces pictured at Vue West End in London’s Leicester Square on Sunday. Pixar, which is owned by Disney and known for animated films including Wall-E, Up, Finding Nemo, Coco, and Toy Story, has set the new adventure in Element City, where elements such as earth and fire live and work. Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie and Ronnie del Carmen are among those providing voices for the film, in which a fire elemental called Ember explores a relationship with water elemental Wade.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor The story behind Pixar’s latest animated feature “Elemental” is a personal one to filmmaker Peter Sohn. The opening shows a family arriving at the fictional port of Elemental City, which closely reflected the immigration story of Sohn’s parents from Korea to New York. The story breathes life into the earth elements of fire, water, land and air, depicting them as residents of Elemental City. When Ember (Leah Lewis), a fiery young woman, meets go-with-the-flow water being Wade (Mamoudou Athie), they discover that, despite their conflicts, they have a lot in common. As the two fall in love, Ember is faced with the internal conflict of being with Wade or following in her parents’ footsteps and running the family business. As the son of first-generation immigrants, Ember’s struggle reflected not only Sohn’s personal experience, but that of many of the animators and storytellers behind the scenes.

's title character and EVE,'s Woody and Bo Peep, or (get your tissues ready)'s Carl and Ellie. But not until has a Pixar movie focused so directly on a love story between the central couple, drawing inspiration from beloved rom-coms of the past to shape the chemistry between its main characters: Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis), a young, headstrong fire element, and Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), a fun and sensitive water element.Lewis and Athie joined ET's Matt Cohen at Pixar Animation Studios in San Francisco recently to discuss more about their characters and the upcoming film, which has been seven years in the making for director Peter Sohn, who previously directed  for Pixar. takes place in Element City, in a universe where different elements — fire, water, earth and air — traditionally keep to themselves, sometimes facing xenophobic attitudes as they strive to live alongside one another.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Pete Docter, Pixar’s creative chief officer, is hoping the animation studio’s 27th release, “Elemental,” will draw families to movie theaters this weekend. Peter Sohn‘s film is a story about immigration, families, duty and love. Not only does Docter say the visuals are “a spectacle,” but believes it should be experienced with an audience. Docter, who has been with the studio since the beginning and was upped to CCO in 2018, has come under criticism recently that Pixar has lost its magic touch. Here, Docter sits down with Variety over Zoom to discuss Pixar’s approach to programming, Cannes, “Elemental,” and what’s next for the studio.

on Rotten Tomatoes) and little being sold beyond “Hey, it’s the next Pixar film!”), the Peter Sohn-directed flick could struggle to match the $29 million Fri-Sun debut (amid a $39 million Wed-Sun launch) of “Toy Story” back in 1995, let alone the over/under $39 million Fri-Sun debuts of “The Good Dinosaur” in 2015 and “Onward” (which opened a week before COVID shut down the world) in 2020.Just running the numbers, if “Elemental” legs over the weekend like “Lightyear” ($51 million from a $5.2 million Thursday), it’ll open with just $23.5 million by Sunday night. Being more optimistic, however unlikely, if “Elemental” legs like “Cars 3” ($53 million/$2.6 million), well, then it opens with $49 million and you can ignore the next few paragraphs of doom-n-gloom.Generally speaking, animated movies tend to make less of their money on Thursday night, since general audiences are more inclined to wait until the proper weekend to take their kids.

Elemental” has several classic film inspirations behind it, ranging all the way from the 1967 romantic drama “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” to 1974’s “Godfather 2” (you read that right). For director Peter Sohn, no film was off-limits for a story that held deep personal connection to him.

Disney and Pixar’s new movie Elemental is now playing in theaters and will give families a great new option for their summer plans.

the struggling animation studio has picked their most rudimentary characters ever — fire and water. Far from the ingeniously realized robot in “Wall-E” or the scrappy rodent chef of “Ratatouille,” here simple flames gab, droplets ride the subway and blades of grass work office jobs. Fire riding a bicycle — really? The movie walks a fine line between clever adventure and Pixar self-parody.Running time: 103 minutes.

Extraction 2” comes in, with the director (also a stuntman and choreographer, though not on this film) returning after 2020’s first “Extraction,” a film (reportedly) received so well by the audiences that the filmmakers changed its ending and made a survivor out of its mercenary (anti)hero, Tyler Rake.Written by Joe Russo from a story by him, Anthony Russo and Ande Parks (also the creator of the source graphic novel, “Ciudad”), “Extraction 2” feels meatier in its action-packed set pieces than its predecessor, with Chris Hemsworth’s approachable and brawny Rake giving puppy avenger John Wick a genuine run for his money when it comes to high-kicks and knockouts. (Speaking of puppies, let’s not forget to mention that Rake’s sweet dog and pet chickens make it through this new mayhem in one piece.)All that said, “Extraction 2” largely skipping theaters for a quick sprint to streaming feels like a massively missed opportunity for Netflix.

The Sundance Institute revealed on Wednesday that it has received the largest endowment gift in its history, a $4M endowment in support of the the Institute’s Indigenous Program from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which will provide new support for artists from California-based tribes, both federally and non-federally recognized.

McKinley Franklin editor It’s time to take a dive into the Communiverse.  Disney and Pixar have released the first official trailer for the upcoming animated science fiction feature “Elio,” which is set to debut on March 1, 2024.  “Elio” spotlights the story of an underdog character of the same name who suddenly finds himself transported into the Communiverse, a world encompassed by out-of-this-world, extraterrestrial characters. Upon arrival, Elio is mistakenly identified as Earth’s ambassador, a role in which he’s not quite ready to take on. “For centuries, people have called out to the universe looking for answers — in Disney and Pixar’s all-new movie ‘Elio,’ the universe calls back! Elio must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, survive a series of formidable trials and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be,” reads the film’s official logline.

The late Roger Ebert swore by the “Stanton-Walsh rule.” He claimed no film featuring character actors Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmett Walsh could ever be entirely bad.

Karen Idelson While debates about the use of A.I. take center stage across the entertainment industry, the technology has been quietly assisting animation and visual effects crews for years. It had made some of the most astonishing visual images possible when artisans have been asked to do what was previously thought impossible. When helmer Peter Sohn wanted characters based on the elements of fire, water, air and earth for his new film “Elemental,” VFX supervisor Sanjay Bakshi and his team at Pixar looked to A.I. to make the process smoother. The look of the characters depended on adjustments that would align them with Sohn’s vision. “We used A.I. for a very specific kind of problem, and we used a machine learning algorithm called neural style transfer,” says Bakshi. “Our animation is so highly scrutinized. We go through so many review cycles for every shot and the animators are really handcrafting it and there’s not a lot of places where machine learning is applicable in the current form.

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Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters over his recent show in Berlin, describing it as “deeply offensive to Jewish people”.Last month, Waters appeared on stage at his show wearing a black trench coat with a swastika-like emblem during a segment that revolved around a character from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, who imagines himself as a fictional fascist dictator during a hallucination.The musician claimed that the segment was a statement against fascism, injustice and bigotry and called criticism of it “disingenuous and politically motivated”.US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, called the concert “Holocaust distortion” and amplified a tweet denouncing Waters by the European Commission’s coordinator on combating anti-semitism.I wholeheartedly concur with @EUAntisemitism’s condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion. https://t.co/9gfdH94TZl— Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt (@StateSEAS) May 25, 2023According to Reuters, the State Department supported Lipstadt’s comment and added that Waters’ Berlin concert “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust,” in an email.The department went on to add: “The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”Waters has faced significant backlash following the show in Berlin.