The Elemental Problem
Elemental is a 2023 american animated romantic-comedy drama movie produced by Disney and Pixar by the director, Peter Sohn who was also a director of The Good Dinosaur. Coincidentally right after the production of The Good Dinosaur, the concept for elemental was pitched thus resulting in a development time of about 8 years and was by far the most expensive (at least for disney & pixar) animated movie released so far having the budget of $200 million.
The story of Elemental largely revolves around what is supposed to be a stand in for an immigrant (most likely asian) family arriving in the fictional city, Element city (a very obvious stand in for New York city/America as a whole also yes the names really are like that.)
A summary/TL;DR of my feelings about this movie
Elemental is a movie that tries to have a discussion about topics such as racism, xenophobia, prejudice, and privilege but also actively avoids other possible deeper discussions about said themes it heavily bases itself on, all the while trying to make it so “one size fits all” that it ends up saying absolutely nothing at all.
Table of contents
- The tackling (or lack thereof) of themes such as racism, xenophobia, etc
- It's not even a good rom-com story in general
- Worst case of worldbuilding in a Pixar/Disney movie
- Nonsensical movie elements (heh) that didn't need to be included (lightning round)
