Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (2024)

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (1)

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (2)

Opposites React

Set in Element City, where Fire-, Water-, Earth- and Air-residents live togetherElemental 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..

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Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (5)

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (6)

Ember Lumen

Ember Lumenis fiery… and not just because she’s a Fire element. She’s tough, quick-witted, smart, and a bit hot-headed. But, as the only child of immigrant parents, Ember is keenly aware of how much they sacrificed to give her a better life. Because of that, she is dedicated to repaying them by being a perfect daughter. That is, until she meets Wade, a Water element whose different perspective on life prompts Ember to ask some burning questions about her place in the world.

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (11)

Wade Ripple

Izzy Hawthorne is the eager leader of the Junior Zap Patrol, a volunteer team of self-motivated cadets training to become protectors of the nascent society that’s taken shape on the planet. Izzy dreams of becoming a Space Ranger like her grandmother Alisha—but that’s easier said than done: Izzy has a secret that is standing in her way.

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Bernie Lumen

Bernie Lumenis a Fire element with a big, crackling personality that burns with pride… about his homeland, about his daughter, Ember, and about the shop he runs in Element City. He and his wife Cinder left Fire Land to provide a better life for their only child, bringing with them just their dreams. And make a better life is exactly what they did. Their neighborhood shop has become a destination for Fire elements, and Bernie is patiently awaiting the day Ember is ready to take it over.

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (21)

Cinder Lumen

Cinder Lumenis a Fire element and Fire Town’s matchmaker. And it all comes from her natural gift to smell love in a Fire person’s smoke, whether they’re ready to admit it or not. She is brusque, no-nonsense and traditional. As a self-appointed community matchmaker who is responsible forhundredsof matches, her biggest concern is her daughter Ember, who just can’tmake a match…no matter howsingle-minded and determined Cinder might be trying to find her a flame.

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Clod

Clodis a romantic, young Earth kid who looks up to Ember. He’s street smart but is also caring, genuine, has a gentle heart, and is always throwing corny lines Ember’s way.

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Brook Ripple

Brook Rippleis a loving, supportive, empathetic artist and Water element who loves having a good cry with her tender-hearted son, Wade. But she’s also a wildly driven and successful architect with eye for talent, who is always ready to help someone out if they need a boost.

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Gale

Galeis a Wind element with a big personality, a lot of bluster and strong opinions. As Wade’s boss, she’s no-nonsense for sure. But beneath it all, she’s got a strong sense of what’s fair – teamwork and community are what’s most important to her.

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Fern

Fern is an overworked, exhausted, by-the-rules bureaucrat who has really grown into his job… literally! Because as a vine-covered Earth element who almost never leaves his desk, his office is a tangle of his leafy tentacles. He’s dry, sarcastic, slow-moving and does NOT suffer fools.

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (46)

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (47)

Firetown

The textures and palette of the materials of Firetown were selected to underscore who was using them—without being too on the nose. “We couldn’t go too realistic,” says color and shading art director Jennifer Chang. “We didn’t want to charthe whole thing. But we liked textures that might come from torching it like a crème brûlée. We played with pattern and specularity of objects. All the set design was pushing the idea of the shape of the flame—the triangle, diamond or a candlelight feeling to it. The shading considered all of the wear and tear—how flame would interact with this furniture in this world, while expressing it in the theatrical way.”

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The Water District

According to color & shading art director Jennifer Chang, artists wanted to create a contrast between Fire and Water and a big part of that was in the look of the environments. “If Firetown is represented by the reds, oranges, yellows—warm and dry—then the water district is the opposite of that,” she says. “It's full of water, and it's a cooler palette. Everything’s more slick, more reflective, more translucent, more transparent. And it's a world that represents some danger to Ember. When she's in that world it's uncomfortable.”

There’s nothing quite as uncomfortable as meeting that special friend’s family for the first time, as Ember discovers when Wade invites her to dinner at his mom Brook Ripple’s home. Says sets supervisor Jun Han Cho, “Wade’s mom’s apartment is a very exclusive penthouse, so we wanted the elegance and grace of someone who can afford something like that. At the same time, we wanted to have fun—her apartment is essentially a big indoor pool. There is a feeling of contemporary architecture—concrete, glass—but there are also pool noodles, lane lines and pool floaties for furniture. It all makes you enjoy the fact that Water people would, of course, live in an indoor pool. It’s so fun, but it also adds to Ember’s discomfort out in the world—how does a Fire character sit on a pool floaty without popping it?”

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (57)

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (58)

Building The World

Production designer Don Shank was tasked with extracting whatever was in director Peter Sohn’s imagination to create the world of “Elemental.” Shank and his team referenced a number of locales to capture the essence of Element City. “It was a more difficult challenge than we thought,” says Shank. “We were looking at big cities all over the world—in particular those based on canal systems like Venice and Amsterdam. And while Peter said it was not based on New York—it’s an immigrant story and New York is his hometown. We all fall back on what we know when discovering our stories.”

Element City, like a lot of large cities, is made up of districts. Firetown, which was the last to be established, is home to Ember, her family and many Fire characters. The rest of the city has dedicated districts for Water, Air and Earth—though since those elements have been there for generations, the areas are more diversified. Since the city itself was founded by Water elements, a canal system serves as the central mode of transportation—aptly called the Wetro—though each element has introduced their own methods of moving about the city over the years. “It’s not supposed to be a melting pot, really,” Shank says. “We didn’t want to create this homogenous world. We wanted to celebrate all these different cultures and characters living and working together.”

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Cyclone Stadium

It’s fitting that Cyclone Stadium would lead the pack in terms of kinetic architecture. “It’s a space for a game that is totally made up,” says Cho. “And Air Ball players can move in three dimensions, so we have a lot of pieces that are moving in that set. First of all, there are a bunch of fans inside the stadium. Below the seats, there are these gills with lights behind them that open and close in waves across stadium, adding excitement. Outside the stadium, while it’s static, the overall shape is meant to feel very dynamic—it’s a cyclone captured in time. To put it in motion, so to speak, there are little panels that sparkle and shimmer. Everything is alive and organic and awesome.”

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (64)

Graphics

Pixar Animation Studios is known for its attention to detail. Helping to find that magic in the details for “Elemental” was graphics art director Laura Meyer. Meyer was responsible for creating all things graphic for the film—"anything with letters on it,” she says. The film offered ample opportunity to have fun with the graphics—in fact, director Peter Sohn specifically requested funny, punny graphics. “He has such an amazing sense of humor,” says Meyer, who created what she calls a “homegrown” look. “I used very few typefaces straight out of the box—I did most by hand. I wanted it to fit into our environments, which are so stylized.” Meyer’s objective? “Imperfect and organic,” she says.

Her efforts called for more than her artistic talents. “I honestly spent more time researching to come up with good puns,” she says. “I had a running list of anything and everything remotely sarcastic anyone said. People would send me ideas.”

Beyond the puns, Meyer—a one-person team—was responsible for everything from the prominent signage—like the Fireplace sign of Ember’s family shop and the motion graphics in Cyclone Stadium—to the verbiage aboard the Wetro—the water-themed transport system. “The Wetro schedule is there—it looks like a periodic table—and there are loads of ads,” says Meyer.”.

Elemental — Pixar Animation Studios (2024)

FAQs

Why is Elemental rated so low? ›

Elemental has several obvious glaring problems. For one thing, the attempt to make the elements' differences an overt metaphor for race/culture is shallow and misplaced at best most of the time. The story's themes and plot itself are about as worn-out and tired as the art of the story itself.

Why did critics hate Elemental? ›

Review Summary

Elemental is an obnoxiously overt allegory without charm and, ironically, little chemistry. Its rehashed and meandering plot is only outdone by its lack of Imagination, sloth-like pacing, and general incompetence by all those involved in its creation. We can't wait for the live-action remake!

Why did Elemental do bad? ›

The final reason for Elemental's disappointing opening weekend box office is Pixar's marketing plan, or lack thereof, for the film. The studio needed to convince families that the movie was a must-see experience in theaters.

What was the controversy with Elemental? ›

For the first time, Disney's Pixar is featuring a nonbinary character in an upcoming movie, but the introduction is being mocked by many online. That is because the character in question, which will be seen in the new movie Elemental, is not a human.

Is the movie Elemental ok for Christians? ›

The woke, occult content in ELEMENTAL is gratuitous. It adds nothing to the story and will annoy many family moviegoers who don't want their children exposed to such content. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.

Was Elemental a flop? ›

Whereas that opening weekend was about as good as it got for The Flash, Elemental refused to yield and sustained far longer than any box-office experts predicted. If still not among Pixar's highest grossing movies ever, Elemental became anything but a flop at the box office.

Is there any woke stuff in Elemental? ›

The two lesbian characters don't do or say much, but they're clearly a politically correct nod to tyrannical woke politics. In addition, at least one crowd scene during the movie shows one same-sex couple.

What are the bad words in Elemental? ›

Language includes discriminatory comments said to fire folks (such as "go back to Fireland"), as well as insults like "stupid" and "jerk" and swearing stand-ins (e.g., "lazy ash").

What ethnicity is fire in Elemental? ›

Their language, “Firish,” at turns sounds South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern; their architecture and traditions are similarly inconstant; and the central family—protagonist Ember, her father Bernie, and her mother Cinder—consists of actors with Chinese, Filipino, and Iranian roots, respectively.

Is Elemental a LGBTQ movie? ›

Elemental Has Two Very Minor LGBTQ+ Characters

Elemental has two LGBTQ+ characters, but they are very, very minor characters. When Ember and Wade start to fall in love, Wade invites her to meet his family, which is quite an experience given that their apartment is flowing with water everywhere.

What was the biggest Pixar flop? ›

The 10 Lowest-Grossing Pixar Movies
  • 8 'Cars 3' (2017)
  • 7 'A Bug's Life' (1998)
  • 6 'The Good Dinosaur' (2015)
  • 5 'Lightyear' (2022)
  • 4 'Onward' (2020)
  • 3 'Soul' (2020)
  • 2 'Luca' (2021)
  • 1 'Turning Red' (2022) - $21.5 million.
Mar 16, 2024

How much did Disney lose on Elemental? ›

Pixar is damaged as a big-screen brand. That was one of the rather glum takeaways from the weekend box office, which found “Elemental,” a $200 million-plus Pixar original, arriving to a disastrous $29.5 million in domestic ticket sales.

Why don't people like Elemental? ›

The plot is fine, it's just not as open as other Pixar films are since it's more romance heavy. People who aren't as interested in the relationship between the main characters don't understand why it doesn't fit the main Pixar formula, which again is fine. And to me, it felt a little long.

Who is the first non-binary Disney character? ›

Voice actor Ava Hauser plays Lake Ripple, the historic first non-binary character from the renowned animation studio.

Who is the nonbinary character in Elemental? ›

Pixar's first non-binary character, Lake Ripple, belongs to the water element and is the younger sibling of Wade Ripple, the secondary protagonist in the film.

Why shouldn't you let your kids watch Elemental? ›

Why this film gets a 13+ rating is it features a same sex couple in a pivitol scene as well as a non-binary character. I don't believe children under 13 need to be exposed to this. Additionally, the film has too many almost swear words moments and mean language. This is very typical of modern Disney movies nowadays.

Is there anything bad in Elemental? ›

Elemental has some violence. For example: Ember gets frustrated with a customer, explodes with rage, and accidentally sets the shop on fire. Ember bangs into people and accidentally sets a tree person on fire.

Was Disney's Elemental a success? ›

An opposites-attract love story and parable about following your dreams, “Elemental” arrived to $29.6 million in domestic ticket sales in June — the worst opening in Pixar history, by a mile. Little by little, however, the $200 million film became a hit, collecting nearly $500 million worldwide.

What is the rating for Elemental? ›

The film is rated PG for “some peril, thematic elements and brief language,” per IMDb. According to IMDb's Parents Guide, characters engage in kissing, flirting and holding hands. The two main characters, Wade and Ember, have a burgeoning romance.

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