A Thorough Analysis of ‘Elemental’: Stellar Story, Horrible Marketing
Pixar Animation Studio has come out with their newest original movie, Elemental (2023). The story introduces us Element City, where people of water, earth, fire, and air live separately, but harmoniously. The main character, Ember Lumen, works at her father’s shop in Fire Town and is expected to take over the family business one day. But this trajectory drastically changes when she meets Wade Ripple, a man made of water. With Wade by her side, Ember embarks on an emotional journey of self discovery while trying to live up to her family’s expectations.
The plot is simple, but it is very heartfelt and comes from a personal place. The movie’s creator, Peter Sohn, took inspiration from his childhood experiences as a first generation child of a Korean immigrant family. Elemental proven to be a very relatable story for not only first generation kids, but primarily for minority groups who face similar situations dealing with racial discrimination, staying connected with one’s roots, living up to familial expectations, and forming relationships outside of one’s culture.
Despite the hard work that went into the project and the positive feedback it received during its opening weekend, Pixar took a devastating hit in the box office. Here, we’ll take a look at the film as a whole as well as what went wrong with Pixar’s marketing tactics leading up to the June 16th release date.
Now let’s take a look behind the complex chemistry of Elemental.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers! If you have not seen Elemental and do not want to be spoiled, DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT!
The Story
The film opens up with Ember’s parents, Bernie and Cinder Lumen, taking a boat to Element City. Cinder is visibly pregnant with Ember at this time. Upon getting off at the port, they step up to an officer who welcomes them and takes their names. But he is unable to properly record their names because they speak a language called ‘Firish’. According to Disney’s promotional Twitter, this new language is based on fire sounds. Thus, they are given the names Bernie and Cinder to make it easier for locals to understand. As they go through the city in search for a place to rent, they are rejected by multiple landlords of different elements due to the fear of fire people bringing destruction to the property. Finally, they manage to find an old abandoned building that they are able to build from the ground up. Ember Lumen is born not long after.
The building of the family shop encourages other fire people to move into the area, which is dubbed Fire Town. Fire Town and its people are coded in Asian culture, as it is very reminiscent of Chinatown. The residents of Fire Town primarily keep away from the rest of the city. Bernie especially has a vendetta against the water people due to water being the very think that can hurt and even kill them.
Ember and her family are shown to have a very close connection personally and culturally. In the shop, they have something called a Blue Flame that is meant to be a symbol of their strength and culture. This symbol is what made the fire people feel connected with each other. With Bernie’s declining health, he hopes to retire so Ember can take over the shop. Ember desperately wants to make her father proud by proving she can handle the responsibility, but her fiery temper constantly gets the best of her when she is under pressure. Her temper turns out to be how her anxiety manifests, which quite literally explodes in a fiery blast. Meanwhile, her mother, Cinder, teases Ember about finding a partner to settle down with. She has a fortune-telling booth in the shop and claims to be able to ‘smell’ love.
Bernie decides to put Ember’s skills to the test by having her take over the shop for a big Red Sticker sale. Immediately, there is a swarm of people who begin destroying everything faster than Ember can keep up with. Before her temper explodes in front of the customers, she hurriedly excuses herself to the basement and allows it to go off. This explosion triggers the pipes to burst. While Ember is trying to melt the pipes closed, we are introduced to Wade who got sucked through the pipes from the other side of the city. He is a city inspector and is very prone to getting emotional to the point of tears. During his encounter with Ember, Wade finds that the pipes in the basement are not up to code and rushes to take his citations to the city’s inspection department. This leads to Ember chasing Wade through the city in an attempt to prevent the shop from getting shut down.
At the inspection department, Ember tries to plead her case, but does not want to reveal any personal details. This anxiety causes her temper to explode once more and the citations get sent through to Wade’s boss, Gale. Ember goes home to see that the flooding in the basement has worsened and helps her parents fix the leaks. Bernie is rightfully upset and blames Wade for it, since he saw Ember chasing after him.
The next day, Ember is waiting to talk to Gale. But Wade tells Ember that Gale is at a Wind Breaker’s game, which is the air people’s version of basketball. Ember attempts to speak to Gale, but she is too fired up about the game. This results in the two budding heads with Gale calling Ember a ‘Fireball’ and Ember calling Gale a ‘Cloud Puff’. These are akin to racial slurs in this world. However, Ember stays through the game and is able to see how the other elements are able to come together harmoniously. The Wind Breakers win and Gale and Ember’s argument is reconciled.
Ember informs Gale again of the citations and the water leaking into her father’s shop and Gale reveals that the water line was supposed to have been shut off from Fire Town. Gale tells Ember and Wade that they have one week to find the leak and seal it up. If they can accomplish this, the citations will be forgiven. With this, Ember and Wade get straight to work by taking a hot air balloon over the city to find the leak. The two have a heart to heart where Wade expresses that he jumps from job to job with no clear direction for his life. Ember tells him a story of when she and Bernie went to an exhibit to see a rare Vivisteria flower, but they were denied access with a “NO FIRE ALLOWED” sign and being told to “Go back to Fireland!” The exhibit flooded a couple of years later.
Ember and Wade locate the source of the leak, where a water train is constantly passing by and the water is spilling through the broken doors. The two patch it up with sandbags and Wade asks Ember on a date. This leads to a wholesome montage of them taking a tour of the city.
After this, we see that the sandbags they put up are not effective and the water begins to seep through again. Wade goes to Ember’s shop disguised as water for flowers and tells Ember what’s going on. Bernie catches them together in the basement and sees Wade’s inspector badge. The two quickly lie and say Wade is a food inspector. Thus, Bernie puts this to the test by having him try the shop’s homemade coal nuts, which are small pieces of wood compressed down to fiery balls. Wade is barely able to handle the hot food, but says that it tastes good after getting past the initial spice. Wade accidentally offends Bernie by quite literally watering down the coal nuts and he gets banned from the store. Before Wade leaves, Ember tells him to meet her at the beach to make more sandbags for the leak.
While at the beach, Ember has her first true vulnerable moment with Wade as she expresses the thought of being a ‘bad daughter’ to Bernie. We see that her flame literally diminishes as she becomes more depressed and grows with her confidence. While she’s sitting in the sand, Wade notices that her heat is turning the sand into glass. But Ember thinks nothing of it and casually makes a piece of art with a ball of the melted glass. This gives Ember the idea to seal off the leak by using the sandbags to make tempered glass. Ember returns home and her mother, Cinder, notices a different smell on her.
Wade invited Ember to meet his parents, who live in a very nice condo in the water district. Ember does not know that Cinder followed her, but she is unable to follow Ember into the condo. Wade’s mother, Brook Ripple, is very kind and emotional like her son and the rest of the family. Even though Wade is voiced by an African American actor, he and his family are very white-coded.
Everyone in Wade’s family openly pursues a passion that makes them happy, which is a foreign concept to Ember due to her obligations to her parents. During dinner, Wade’s uncle Harold tells Ember, “You speak so well and so clear!” Everyone at the table is visibly uncomfortable at the statement, to which Harold regrets immediately. This statement is something that many people of color have heard at least once or twice.
During dinner, someone accidentally breaks a glass vase and Ember repairs it. She treats it as “just melted glass”, but Wade’s family is very impressed. Brook lets Ember know that the entire water district is made of melted glass, indicating that her skill can take her big places. She offers Ember an internship to which Ember says she’ll think about it. After dinner, they play the No Crying game, which is a game where the opponents have to make each other cry. During Ember and Wade’s turn, Ember states that she has never cried. But when Wades expresses his love for her in a very heartfelt way, she sheds her first tear.
Wade takes Ember home and Cinder finally catches up to them. She is angry about Ember’s relationship with Wade, expressing that fire and water cannot be together. She tries to prove this with a love reading, where the two must light two wooden sticks and Cinder reads the smoke. Of course, Ember lights it. Wade is unable to on his own until he uses Ember’s light to reflect and generate heat on his stick. The three watch as the smoke swirls together. Wade leaves when Bernie comes downstairs and announces that he is retiring in two days. To celebrate, he has a new shop sign made for Ember that says “Ember’s Fireplace”.
Additionally, Bernie tells a story about when he and Cinder left Fireland. A storm wiped away their home and they had to leave. As his father watched Bernie take off, Bernie did what is known as the ‘big bow’, which is a great sign of respect and a form of giving one’s blessing. But Bernie’s father did not return the bow for his son’s send off. Here, Ember is trapped between a rock and a hard place. She is realizing that she does not want to take over Bernie’s shop, but still feel obligated to do so to repay her parents for the sacrifices they made for her.
The next night, Ember meets Wade and Gale at the Vivisteria flower exhibit, which is flooded. But with the help of Gale’s air bubble and Wade’s swimming, she is able to go down to see the Vivisteria flower along with the other exotic plant life there. The two swim back up to the surface where they have a wholesome moment under a bridge. They finally push the limits on their physical relationship and touch for the first time. Instead of Ember being extinguished or Wade evaporating, they cancel each other out and create steam. This leads to their first hug and they even dance together. But during this moment, she begins to see flashes of her father and the shop and pushes away from Wade.
Wade follows Ember to the station, confused about what’s wrong. Ember tells him that they can’t be together because she still has her obligation to her family. But Wade does not understand this. Ember calls Wade a rich kid who does not know what it’s like to have to build everything from the ground up. She breaks up with Wade and takes the train home.
The time comes for Bernie’s retirement party and Ember’s initiation into the family business. All is going well until Wade crashes the party and confesses his love for Ember. This is the first time he says ‘I love you’. But Ember tries to get him to go away by saying she does not love him. During this, Wade let’s it slip that Ember was the one who caused the basement to flood. Bernie cancels the party and his retirement because he has now lost all trust in Ember.
The next day, Cinder and Bernie are cleaning up the shop after the party while Ember takes time to herself. Meanwhile, the tempered glass she put over the leak gave way to the constant onslaught of water. Wade, who is in the area at the time, sees this and rushes to tell Ember. Ember rides her motor bike through Fire Town, telling everyone that a flash flood is coming and to get to higher ground. As the shop is being overtaken by water, Ember goes inside to save a piece of the Blue Flame. They are able to save a piece of it, but they get trapped in the hearth chimney where the flame was kept. Ember seals up the holes of the debris so she will not be extinguished. But the room becomes hotter and Wade begins to evaporate. Ember begins to panic, but Wade tries to reassure her that it is okay. They embrace each other and Wade evaporates into the walls.
Bernie and Cinder rescue Ember from the debris and, in tears, Ember confesses to Bernie that she loved Wade and did not want to run the shop. She also apologizes for not living up to his dream, but Bernie tells her that the dream was in Ember’s happiness and success and not simply running the shop. This emotional display causes an evaporated Wade to cry and drip into a nearby cauldron. Ember, Cinder, and Bernie say a string of heartfelt things to get him to cry and Wade is back to his normal self. He and Ember embrace and finally share their first kiss.
The finale shows that the shop has now become more inclusive toward all Elements. We see earth, air, water, and fire people shopping and mingling together. Bernie hires two friends to take over the business and Bernie can finally retire. Ember and Wade are leaving on a boat for the internship Brook mentioned. Before she boards, Ember does the ‘big bow’ as a sign of respect and thanks to Bernie. Bernie returns the bow and Ember boards the boat.
The Characters
Ember is the main character of the film. Starting out, she is very confident in the work she does to make her family proud. She is introduced as a fiery young woman who can let her anger get the best of her at times. But she is able to become more emotionally vulnerable with Wade as she becomes exposed to new things and discovers who she is and what she wants.
Many relate to her character because she is a first generation immigrant. Her experiences speak to viewers who are either first generation immigrants themselves or have had similar situations with being part of a racial minority, especially in a predominantly white society.
Wade is the leading male character of the film. He is introduced as very emotional and a bit accident prone, but he is very sweet and patient towards Ember as he helps her on her journey of love and self discovery.
Despite his privileged upbringing, Wade harbors his own set of struggles. He never had a clear direction for his life and often jumps from one job to the next. He laments to Ember that he and his father had a strained relationship and he passed away before Wade could express how he truly felt towards him. Along with showing Ember the wonders of Element City, he teaches her to never allow fleeting moments with her family to pass by because she may never get that chance again.
Bernie and Cinder are Ember’s parents. After a natural disaster that destroyed their home in Fireland, they moved to Element City in search of a new life. They built their ship from the ground up, which encouraged more fire people to move into the area that is now known as Fire Town.
Bernie and Cinder take great pride in their daughter. They express their dreams and expectations for Ember’s future, but they do so with good intentions. They simply want what they think is best for their daughter. While that may not be communicated until the very end, it is clear that the family has a close bond and want each other to be happy.
Gale Cumulus is Wade’s boss and the only air person we meet. She has a big personality and has high expectations for her employees. Despite her and Ember’s heated argument at the Wind Breakers game, they make amends and Gale helps Ember in saving her family’s shop from getting shut down.
Even though we see little bits of each of Wade’s family members, Brook Ripple is the most essential. Just like Wade and the rest of the family, she is kind and very emotional. In admiring Ember’s talent for glass blowing, she offers her an internship that could take open up several opportunities for her.
Box Office Blunder
Even though Elemental has received great press from those who have seen it, Pixar suffered its second worst box office blunder during opening weekend according to statistics. The first worst release was Lightyear (2022). According to an interview from NPR with film critic Keith Philips, the film had a budget of $200 million and only brought in about $30 million internationally.
But if the movie is so good, why did it do so horribly on opening weekend?
To put it simply, marketing.
In November 2022, Pixar released a teaser trailer to announce its upcoming original film. The teaser showed Ember going through the city’s metro train and we see how the different elements interact with each other. She is able to casually slip by, but has to be careful to not accidentally burn anybody. At the very end, Ember and Wade have their first interaction and introduce themselves. The dialogue is very minimal, but it is still a great view into this new world Pixar has created.
Initially, audiences were intrigued by the concept and excited for the full trailer to release. However, the official trailer only left potential viewers skeptical and confused about the actual plot.
Pixar released the official trailer in March 2023, which now has over 35 million views on YouTube. While the trailer does a great job in providing more snippets of Element City and how the elements interact with each other, it does not give any hints of the upcoming complex story outside of “elements cannot mix” and a small bit about Ember taking over the family business. Many predicted that the film’s storyline was going to be very predictable and goofy without any real substance.
Additionally, as the release date drew closer, Pixar began releasing official teaser clips of the anticipated film. Production studios are switching to this marketing tactic to draw in hype for their upcoming projects. Viewers were impressed with the animation, but were quickly losing confidence in the story. One such clip that received some of the the most criticism is titled “An Act of Clod”. The clip introduces an extremely minor character named Clod, who is a young earth person meant to be used as comic relief. In the actual film, he shows up a total of three times and tries to hit on Ember twice. During those three times, he is not on screen for possible more than a minute. While some viewers thought it was a little cute, others were becoming cautiously optimistic about the film.
To add insult to injury, during the film’s opening weekend, an audience member illegally video taped a clip of Clod and posted it to the internet. Pixar’s marketing team took this clip, added a sound bite of cheering, and posted it to their official TikTok page.
Final Thoughts
Pixar has been experiencing some struggle with their most recent releases. If it were not for the poor marketing tactics, Elemental could have done exponentially better. It is a story that is simple, but meaningful for those who have had the same or similar experiences as Ember had. It is a story that is meant to make people feel seen, as is typical for Pixar’s storytelling formula. But because of the unfortunate box office blunder, it will take a lot of work for the studio and the creators to recover from it.
Is it worth the watch? Absolutely. As someone who is very critical of movies, it is rare for me to give films a solid 10 out of 10. But I believe Elemental deserves that rating. I do not give the rating simply out of sympathy for the creator, but for the amount of effort put into the animation, story, and the emotions and experiences being portrayed in a unique way. With Disney being deep in its era of sequels and remakes, it is very refreshing to see something new come through the woodworks.
If you have seen the film, I would love to know your honest thoughts on it. Thank you very much for reading!
