Elemental (2023 film)

Peter Sohn, who previously directed the feature film The Good Dinosaur (2015) and the short film Partly Cloudy (2009), pitched the concept to Pixar to develop Elemental based on the idea of whether fire and water could ever connect or not.[10] Sohn also says the idea for the film was inspired by his experiences as the son of immigrants in New York City in the 1970s. He stated: "My parents emigrated from Korea in the early 1970s and built a bustling grocery store in the Bronx." He also stated: "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."[11]

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sohn says the film's seven-year development period with Elemental is closely tied to his relationship with his family, when the idea first started, following the release of The Good Dinosaur in 2015. It is also revealed that Ember was born in Elemental City, but grew up in a fire town, since the neighborhoods are sort of split up in different ways. He stated: "I am quite emotional about getting the characters and the story out for sure." He also stated: "This movie is about thanking your parents and understanding their sacrifices. My parents both passed away during the making of this thing. And so, it is hugely emotional, and I'm still processing a lot of it."[12]

Sohn stated at D23: The Official Disney Fan Club: "The concept of the city itself started off with Ember." He also stated: "We thought, 'What's the best city we can build to support Ember's journey of identity and belonging?' It started by thinking about a city that would be hard for fire, and so we based it off of water. The idea is that Water got to this area first, and then Earth came, so it became a delta. Then, they built a water infrastructure with water canals and elevated water channels everywhere, making it even tougher for Ember. Then, Air came in after that, and Fire was one of the last groups to come into the city." Ember and Wade have chemistry, despite the differences. When Sohn first pitched the story and started developing it, he asked himself: "What's fire?" Sohn also stated: "People can see it as a temper. People can see it as passion. As a practical thing, fire burns and sparks—but what does it mean to burn bright? There are all these ingredients to what we already perceive as fire, and that started to form Ember's personality. It's the same thing for Wade. Water can be transparent. What does that mean? He wears his emotions on his sleeve. He goes with the flow. That helped form these personalities that were already pretty opposite, and then we had to find that Venn diagram of where they overlapped. That's the hopeful magic. I hope people can buy into the sparks, the chemical reaction, that could form a relationship."[13]

On May 16, 2022, Pixar announced a new film titled Elemental, with the anthropomorphic classical elements of fire, water, air, and earth as its central theme, with Sohn directing and Denise Ream producing.[14] Sohn and Ream reunite after having previously worked together on The Good Dinosaur.[14] Turning Red (2022) creative consultant Brenda Hsueh was hired to write the screenplay.[15]

On September 9, 2022, during the D23 Expo, Sohn, Ream, and Pete Docter presented a first look at the film. "Our story is based on the classic elements — fire, water, land, and air. Some elements mix with each other, and some don't," Sohn stated. "What if these elements were alive?" Shortly after the unfinished animation footage, a clip was screened, showing Ember and Wade on a date, walking through a park where Wade tries to impress Ember by running across water, sliding, and creating a romantic rainbow.[16]

Production of the film was completed on March 24, 2023, after the final frame was approved, and seven years were spent on it, both in the studio and at the filmmakers' homes. According to story artist Jason Katz, the team finished their story while working remotely from home. Similarly, Sohn had tears in his eyes when completing.[17]

Sohn cited romantic films like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Moonstruck (1987), You've Got Mail (1998), Amélie (2001), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), and The Big Sick (2017) as particular influences when he enjoyed leaning into the rom-com as a storytelling genre. Sohn used to doodle the periodic table in high school as an early form of expression with the movie's genesis, saying: "There was this funny drawing that I remember discovering about like a fire and a water character, and that triggering a whole lot of different ideas, and I just couldn't stop drawing these new, little things."[18]

For the language of the fire elements, David J. Peterson, who has constructed languages for Game of Thrones and Dune (2021), created "Firish" based on fire sounds that are part of Ember's family.[19]

On September 9, 2022, during the D23 Expo, Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie were revealed to have been cast in the leading voice roles of Ember and Wade, respectively.[20]

When the full-length trailer was released on March 28, 2023, more cast members, including Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O'Hara, Mason Wertheimer, and Joe Pera, were announced.[21]

When designing Ember and Wade, Sohn knew that he wanted the characters voices to reflect their elements: for Ember, a smoky voice, and Wade, a cooler one. Lewis was picked because of her role in The Half of It (2020). Sohn spoke on her performance in the 2020 feature, saying that "she could be hot-tempered, but still very appealing", and stated: "She had a vulnerability in her voice that also she could straddle with being so sincere and authentic." With Athie, it was his role in the 2019 miniseries Oh Jerome, No and his ability to cry that won over the director. Sohn described a cry he made at a point in the series as "sincere, but hilarious", and added, "Mamoudou has such a compassionate soul that when he was crying, you just went with him in it."[3]

According to Variety, at the Disney Content Showcase in Singapore on November 30, 2022, Sohn says that some of the inspiration came from his real-life family and marriage. He showed a picture of him as a child with his parents, saying, "Maybe it's because when I was a kid, I really didn't appreciate or understand what it meant to be an immigrant, to come to the U.S., and all the hard work that they did to give my brother and me our lives. That was one big nugget that was just sitting with me. On the other side, I married someone that wasn’t Korean, and there was a lot of culture clash with that in my world. And that brought to me to this idea of finding opposites. And the question of what if fire fell in love with water came. As an animator, what could be a fun world to play with… so the fire and water is one thing. But then tying that to culture clash, was part of that metaphor. And then in that world, all of a sudden this idea of sacrifice, and understanding what our parents had given started to make the soup of what this film is." He also talks about culture clash and diversity, "It has been the struggle of my life for sure understanding my place and what have I assimilated or my identity being a bifurcated identity. It's always been there, I assume that it'll be always a part of some amount of storytelling – having that kind of that diversity. Will it be a major thing? I don't know. But it's been a part of my life. And I love trying to reflect what the teams that we’ve worked with their lives and our lives into the work that we do."[22]

Sohn also showed footage from the film at the Disney Content Showcase and stated that "The film is about our differences that bring us together, but it is a love story. Hopefully, the audiences will get a deeper understanding of the loss in their lives between the partners, the friends or family."[23]

Sohn stated that the portrayal of Element City was inspired by many earlier live-action films, such as Roman Holiday.[24]

When addressed about similarities, Sohn denied that Elemental is inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender, despite their shared concept of personifying classical elements. Sohn stated: "No, it wasn't a touchstone, but I love the show. I saw it with my kids and it's great, but we're so different from it. There's no martial arts in our world. There's not anything like that. It's this city story with the romance, and this family drama. But I do appreciate the connection that people are making just 'cause they love that and hopefully they can love this, too." Sohn also stated:

Growing up, I always saw my parents a certain way, but then when I hit my 20s and got a real job versus working at my family shop, I saw them as people. That shift from parents to people affected me a great deal. All the stories they told me of their journey here I took for granted until I was like, 'Oh my God, they did this without speaking the language. They did this with no money. My dad was a hotdog cart guy and he made all this. I could never do that.' My empathy grew for them.[25]

Element City was modeled after New York City as a series of immigrant neighborhoods composed of organic materials that would complement each element. An example would be Fire Town, which was constructed with ceramic, metal, and brick. Production designer Don Shank says "design ideas inspired new technology, which inspired new design."[18] Sohn noted that he "went into more detail about how the design and tech process went for designing Ember and Wade." He believed personifying elements was a difficult challenge, although he declared that air was not nearly as difficult to portray as fire and water, having already personified clouds in Partly Cloudy. The character Wade Ripple is incredibly complex, with the biggest challenge being his transparency through creating visual effects. In order to make him transparent enough, the animators needed to find some middle ground for how to create the character.[26]

The set designers at the studio looked to cities like Venice and Amsterdam for inspiration. The water canals and the buildings that surround cities have immense detail and thought put into them. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in which most of the production took place, the production team of the film was unable to travel to these cities for research, so they spent many hours watching POV city tours on YouTube to get inspiration for Element City.[26] To feel less like an alien version of real-world cities, production designer Don Shank and his team brainstormed the evolution of elemental beings and their civilization.[27]

Over 151,000 cores were used for Elemental in three large rooms on the Pixar campus, making it a massive amount of computing power compared to previous Pixar feature films, due to Pixar having to upgrade and buy more computers for this film; for example, Toy Story (1995) had 294 cores, Monsters, Inc. (2001) had 672 cores, and Finding Nemo (2003) had 923 cores.[17]

On February 7, 2023, Thomas Newman was confirmed to compose and conduct the original score for Elemental. It marks Newman's fourth collaboration with the studio after Finding Nemo (2003), WALL-E (2008), and Finding Dory (2016), as well as his first Pixar film not to be directed by Andrew Stanton.[28]

Following the project announcement, the first look concept art of the film was released on May 16, 2022.[41] Nicole Clark for Polygon said fans are "pointing out the similarities to the Fireboy and Watergirl series of games, six in total, developed by Oslo Albet."[42] Following the voice cast announcement, a first look image and an exclusive teaser poster were released on September 9, 2022, during the 2022 D23 Expo Presentation.[20] The teaser trailer was released on November 17, 2022, set to Bakar's "Hell N Back".[43] Jeremy Mathai of /Film commented positively of the footage, saying it "looks wonderfully rendered and irresistibly charming."[44] An official full-length trailer was released on March 28, 2023, set to Astral's "High Five".[21][45] Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge commented positively, saying that "the movie's visuals are as imaginative as they are delightful", while noting that its "tough to say whether Elemental's take on beats from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) will land with audiences, especially considering how some of its characters seem prone to destroying one another simply because of how their physical forms interact."[46]

A series of books based on the film was published in May 2023, including novelizations, short stories, a sticker album, a behind-the-scenes book, and coloring books, while the graphic novel is scheduled to be published on August 29, 2023.[47] A line of action figures and toy packs by Mattel were gifted, while visiting the studios for the film's press day. It was available for the following month.[48]