Pixar is the master of personifying non-sentient objects as characters for their animated films. Their latest effort takes it all the way down to the elements that make up life. Literally. In the newest effort from Disney and Pixar studios, Elemental features a world where Earth, Air, Fire, and Water make up the population of a metropolis called Element City. All the elements encounter each other regularly throughout their daily lives. However, minor complications arise whenever elements occasionally mix on incidental situations.
The official synopsis reads,
“Disney and Pixar’s Elemental is an all-new, original feature film set in Element City, where fire, water, land, and air residents live together. The story introduces Ember, a tough, quick-witted, and fiery young woman whose friendship with a fun, sappy, go-with-the-flow guy named Wade challenges her beliefs about the world they live in. Directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur, Partly Cloudy short), produced by Denise Ream (The Good Dinosaur, Cars 2), and featuring the voices of Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie as Ember and Wade.”
Our attracted opposites are using the voice talents of Leah Lewis, who had appeared in the recent Nancy Drew TV series and voices Batgirl in Batwheels, and Mamoudou Athie, who was recently seen in the summer blockbuster, Jurassic World: Dominion. The film also added character actress Catherine O’Hara to the cast. O’Hara, known to most as the mom in Home Alone and Beetlejuice, is lending her voice to play the mother of Mamoudou Athie’s water character, Wade.
The director, Peter Sohn, had talked about how the film was based on his own life experiences, “My parents emigrated from Korea in the early 1970s and built a bustling grocery store in the Bronx. We were among many families who ventured to a new land with hopes and dreams—all of us mixing into one big salad bowl of cultures, languages, and beautiful little neighborhoods. That’s what led me to Elemental.” He had also told Collider, “That’s something fun because they’re such polar opposites. The Venn diagram of what connects the two of them is universal for all of us, in terms of being vulnerable and seeing each other for the first time. Why they fall in love is that Venn diagram. I don’t wanna spoil anything from the movie, so the best I can say is that it’s a thin window of shared [commonalities] for them.”