Ok I might be totally wrong here but Pixar’s animated character designs just seem shockingly recycled lately. Inside Out, Soul, and now Elemental all feature largely monochrome, vaguely bulbous/geometric cutesy figures that all have that shimmery effect (which I read was incredibly expensive to develop and maybe why it’s being used constantly) and are abstractions of some kind or another (emotions, elements, souls). Am I the only one who finds them weirdly similar and (with the exception of their first use in Inside Out) kind of dull?
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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For Inside Out and Soul I thought they both made sense artistically. But I simply don't understand what new story Elemental is telling.
Fire is attracted to ice! It's so wacky! They're from totally different cultures! How could they possibly get together?!?
Agreed. When I first saw the adds for Soul, I assumed it was going to be a lazy cash grab banking in on Inside Out's success, because the art style was near identical. Only ended up watching because a friend talked me into it-- and it was a great movie!
Honestly, I think it would have done better if Pixar had put more effort in to distinguish it visually from Inside Out.
Yes, we have noticed it also. It's either as you said because they were expensive to develop or due to lack of talent.
Manga artist each have their own style, which is recognizable from book to book. Pixar is basically one artist doing many books.
Water elemental: Wow you are hot.
Fire elemental: Excuse me?!
please laugh
Is that really in there? That's the kind of humor that's so low effort that I literally made that joke off the cuff in City of Heroes (back when it was a thing) when I met a Fire Superhero while playing an Ice Super Hero. "Yo Fyre Tank: U R Hot!11!"
Going go against the grain here, but I really really enjoyed this movie. I think it’s themes are specific (immigration, family responsibilities, class), but it dealt with them in a very accessible and way. It might be over some younger viewers heads, but as a grown adult I loved it. It’s a great romance and perfect movie for couples as well.
I have a feeling you went against the grain by simply seeing this movie.
From the few trailers I saw, I didn't get a hint of any of the themes you mentioned.
Do you like this type of film, or is there something about the subject that resonated with you personally?
Not the OP, but I just left the theater and really enjoyed it. Not the best Pixar film in any sense, but the themes really resonated to me, as a kid with immigrant parents.
It really did a great job evoking the themes of the sacrifices our parents made coming into a new world, the apprehension they developed towards the people already living there, and trying to blend the difficulties of maintaining old cultures/values while growing up in a completely separate ones. I saw that the director, Peter Sohn, had Korean immigrant parents, and it really felt like it was a story of his struggle.
I agree that the trailers were absolutely atrocious and didn’t made any mention of the things I listed above; if my girlfriend didn’t want to watch it, I probably wouldn’t have gone. However, I’m glad I did and even shed a few tears at the end
I remember when every Pixar film was a huge deal, whenever there was a new one we had to see it in theaters. And then brave came out, and we saw it, and it was incredibly underwhelming. Since then I just haven't really cared for any Pixar release.
Fortunately it feels like other studios are making up for it, especially since into the spiderverse. The new one was absolutely incredible, and I can't imagine elemental coming anywhere close to that.
I wish I could find the specific article about it, but it's like a decade+ old and google isn't cooperating. If I recall right though, Brave was the first film idea that Pixar put out which had entirely been conceived without the original core team at Pixar's input. All the other stuff, even if it hadn't come out when those people left yet, had been brainstormed by that group and their lack of involvement is why from that point on it all feels so much lesser than Pixar's golden age.
From my PoV a lot of more recent Pixar work feels very safe. I recognize they are now Disney-owned (rather than Disney being the distributor), but even then Pixar films don't really feel any different from films produced and created by Disney Animation.
Moana, for example, is a Disney Animation work you could easily convince me as something recent Pixar did.
If you tried to convince me current/recent Pixar is just another Disney Animation studio by another name, I would 100% believe you, because it really does feel that way.
I think that was close to inevitable when they got bought out, though it is a huge shame. Even with an incredibly strong internal cutlure, they are under Disney's corporate leadership and the fact they aren't completely independent in terms of leadership, picking projects, and internal promotions means they'd tend to converge and be absorbed for all intents and purposes.
Watching the trailer for elemental before seeing spiderverse did elemental absolutely no favours. Even that TMNT movie looks much more interesting visually
I wouldn't say even for the TMNT movie, it's clear that film is going out of the way to look good. Ever since the first spider-verse a bunch of Western Animated films are really dipping their toes into more avante-garde and unorthodox animation styles. The Last Wish was the same.
The Last Wish was in the works for years before Spiderverse came out, the unusual artstyle wasn't a result of Spiderverse.
It was by far the worst Pixar trailer I've seen. It basically looked like budget Inside Out to me, and my sister and nephews agreed. We're likely skipping this one. It seems like others got the same feeling.
Huh I didn’t even know it existed before this post lol
Yeah, same. If there was a marketing drive for this movie then I totally missed it.
Maybe they're expecting it to be completely overshadowed by Spiderverse and are just letting it slip under the radar.
The reviews seem pretty mixed.
I saw a trailer for it while watching spiderverse. Spiderverse is amazing btw
Ever since the pandemic I‘m not going to cinemas anymore. The people there were too gross and loud, plus the prices went from expensive to insane.
Even pre-pandemic I stopped. People talking over the film, phones in use, way too cold, SFX louder than dialogue, STOOPID expensive ...
I was already iffy on them for all that too yeah, and people kicking my seat for no reason.
However my last time there, probably for my entire life, was when right after things opened back up I sat next to the grossest guy who coughed and pulled up snot the whole movie, not before or since have I heard anyone sound this ill in in public. Couldn‘t tell you a single thing about the movie either, all I remember is this. Never again.
I really thought the art style was interesting in the trailers, sucks that it's apparently not that great.
The character art style looks interesting, but the story (at least from the trailers) seems extremely whelming. And I saw the trailers play before into the spiderverse. That is a masterpiece of style, element looked deeply uninteresting by comparison.
had no idea what it was about, but of course they had to anthropomorphise elements.
Some Pixar executive: "we need to make characters more abstract"
I don't know who these movies are for, but I'm still surprised they made that much money.
when I first saw an ad for it online I thought it was a joke
I haven't even heard of the movie :/
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