Hot Take on Elemental
Pixar’s Elemental debuted back in June, and while it didn’t make the splash that most pre-pandemic Pixar darlings made, it’s still an enjoyable, visually dazzling film.
The story follows the Lumen family, a group of living fire people immigrating to Element City (Pixar’s so good at names), which is mostly made up of water, earth, and air, people.
And yet the AVATAR is NOWHERE???
Nah, I’m just kidding. Protagonist Ember Lumen tries to support and prove herself worthy of taking over her father Burnie’s corner-shop. She meets Wade, a water-person city inspector whose work threatens Burnie’s shop but wants to help Ember make things right.
The film is as visually stunning as you’d expect, filled with tons of little sight gags and some of Pixar’s best lit scenes of all time. It’s a story about connection, communication, and empathy in the face of division, prejudice, and struggling self-esteem.
But none of those things are the real villain of the story. No, for reasons that become clear pretty early on in the film, the real villain is, wait for it…
DECAYING PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE.
Behold the face of terror… Blurry, blurry terror.
Look, the whole inciting incident of the film may have to do with Ember’s internal conflict/combustion, and the story may be about her learning from Wade and vice versa as they fall in love, but the greatest threat to an entire community’s safety is a lousy spillway system that lets water into Fire Town (again, Pixar, take it easy with those names!), kicking off the threat to the shop and eventually everyone made of fire.
And no wonder: our quick glimpses of City Hall involve a mid-level bureaucrat who’s clearly checked out and his superior, a cloud lady with no idea of the problem who has to be schmoozed at private box in a stadium, and a bunch of public workers who just refuse to do their job because they’re mad at someone.
This is not a healthy municipality, people. And that’s without even getting into the systematic inequality of city building projects. This whole city needs a Universal Design system to make sure our new buildings are accessible, inclusive, and usable, so fire people don’t, you know, die while using the sidewalk.
You know, I’m shocked I haven’t seen any articles about how Elemental is “too political” for a kids movie, but I applaud the creative team for tackling a real issue that’s particularly pressing here in America. I just hope that people don’t get the wrong idea: while unsafe irrigation and building codes may lead you to your soulmate/life’s true purpose, we can’t just leave these things broken. Your meet-cutes aren’t worth people’s lives!