Elemental

[Marce82]

Disney's Divinity, I disagree about the look.

But ultimately, it all comes down to whether the story works. So we shall have to wait and see.

[D82]

New stills. The captions reveal some new details about the story.

CATCHING AIR — In Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental,” fire-, water-, land-, and air-residents live together in a place called Element City. Many of the elements are big fans of Air Ball—a sport kind of like basketball, if basketball were played in the air and the hoops moved. Teams like the Cropdusters and Windbreakers are made up of air-athletes—they may look fluffy, but they can be downright stormy during the games.


GOOD VIEWS – In Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental,” fire-, water-, land-, and air-residents live together in a place called Element City. It’s a diverse city, featuring architecture, transportation and landmarks created by and for each of the different elements. But since the fire-residents were the last to immigrate here, it’s not yet completely comfortable for a fiery young woman like Ember (voice of Leah Lewis) to navigate.


FIREPLACE DREAMS — In Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental,” fiery young woman Ember (voice of Leah Lewis) has worked alongside her father in the family shop, Fireplace, for as long as she can remember. Someday soon, her father will retire and Ember will take over—at least that’s what they’ve been planning for years.


CRUSHIN’ IT — In Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental,” fire-, water-, land-, and air-residents live together in a place called Element City. Clod (voice of Mason Wertheimer) is a young land guy who has a crush on fiery Ember (voice of Leah Lewis), but she has other things on her mind.


UNCHARTED WATERS — In Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental,” fiery young woman Ember (voice of Leah Lewis) is invited to join go-with-the-flow guy Wade (Mamoudou Athie) at his family’s apartment for dinner. Ember quickly realizes that their family dynamics are vastly different from her own—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Source: https://pixarpost.com/2023/03/elemental ... facts.html


There's also some concept art and info on the making of the film on these articles:

https://mamasgeeky.com/2023/03/designin ... ental.html
https://www.fandom.com/articles/pixar-e ... ry-romance
https://www.joblo.com/elemental-what-yo ... rs-latest/


And here's the standee that was recently posted in better quality:

https://twitter.com/DrissiAdv/status/16 ... 2QksQtAAAA

[D82]

New book cover:


Source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/073644369X


Drawing of Ember and Wade from a T-shirt the press got as a present:


Source: https://twitter.com/MamasGeeky/status/1 ... 5150435331


The film's official Instagram account reveals this is Fern, the character voiced by Joe Pera:


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CqVqm84Lj06/

[MaQu]

The trailer made me more excited about this movie, perhaps it will turn out to be an unexpected gem.

[Farerb]

5 Things to Know About Disney and Pixar’s Elemental
https://d23.com/5-things-to-know-about- ... elemental/

[D82]

New article from Empire UK:

INSIDE PIXAR'S ELEMENTAL ECOSYSTEM
Director PETER SOHN on forging his fiery, wet, windy, earthy new animation

PIXAR HAS MADE characters out of toys, feelings, lamps, you name it — now, Peter Sohn’s Elemental fills a city with living elements. The film, which sees short-tempered fire being Ember (Leah Lewis) make friends with watery Wade (Mamoudou Athie), is set in a world inspired by Sohn’s New York upbringing. “The diversity of [the people] that arrived in my parents’ grocery store in The Bronx really impacted me a great deal,” he says. Speaking with Empire, the director explains how he brought the elements to life.

1. AIR
The seeds for the air characters were sown in Sohn’s short film Partly Cloudy (2009), which featured cotton-textured living clouds. Newer tech allowed the Elemental team to give their vapoury creations a more graceful flow. But just because they’re “wispy characters”, it doesn’t mean all of the air residents are soft. “We designed one character that’s meant to be a really intimidating force,” Sohn says. “It was interesting to showcase characters that get stormy — where they start to pull moisture out of the air and show their emotions, with lightning forming.” They may look fluffy, but this film’s most ethereal creations bring the thunder.

2. FIRE
Hothead element Ember was the first, and perhaps most difficult, character to design. “We learned early on that realistic fire was really scary,” says Sohn. He remembers testing out a pair of eyes and a mouth on a photoreal flame. “It looked like a Balrog,” he laughs. “A crazy monster from Lord Of The Rings or something. That wouldn’t do for our character.” Sohn mentions his love of Calcifer, the chatty hearth fire in Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle, while describing the design process. “Miyazaki movies are something that I grew up with,” Sohn says. “They have really extreme, organic, imaginative ideas.”

3. EARTH
Designing the earth characters, inspired by roots and plants, forced Sohn to tackle some existential questions. “Is a flower alive? Is the dirt?” Sohn recalls musing. “For earth, we really focused on having the soil be the soul, essentially, of the actual creature or character.” These muddy elements could then sprout things like leaves and flowers. Sohn references one character, Claude, who grows a flower out of his armpit as he’s going through puberty. The animators had fun exploring different subgroups, like jungle plants and desert plants. “There were these little meatball earth characters that long Redwoods [trees] grow out of,” says Sohn of one early idea. “They were so squat! There was a lot of really jokey exploration that happened from there.”

4. WATER
“He’s [literally] transparent — his emotions are on his sleeve,” says Sohn of Wade, the elemental chalk to Ember’s cheese and the prototype for his watery kin. The animators were keen to avoid a Jell-O-type consistency for Wade, so looked at aquatic animation from throughout the years, going all the way back to Disney’s Fantasia, plus live-action, big effects movies. Could this be Pixar’s answer to The Abyss? Soil meatballs be warned.
KAMBOLE CAMPBELL

[Farerb]

Pixar Director Peter Sohn Shares Insights Into the Creation of ‘Elemental’ at Press Conference
https://charactermedia.com/pixar-direct ... onference/

[PatchofBlue]

I don't think I had previously heard that Sohn's parents passed away during the making of the film that he made specifically to honor them. That's gotta cut deep.

It's also interesting to me to think that the film's advertised storyline has mostly been the inter-elemental love between Ember and Wade, yet Sohn has all the while been telling us that this is a story about his parents. The theme of parents has played little role in what we've seen so far, except for maybe the bits with Ember's dad being unwelcoming toward Wade. I'm interested to see how those threads all come together in the finished product.

[D82]

New book covers from Spain:


Source: https://www.amazon.es/dp/8418940867/ref=sr_1_8


Source: https://www.amazon.es/dp/8418940875/ref=sr_1_34


Source: https://www.amazon.es/dp/8418940840/ref=sr_1_35


Source: https://www.amazon.es/Elemental-Libroav ... ef=sr_1_14


Source: https://www.amazon.es/dp/8418940859/ref=sr_1_7

[Farerb]

Pixar’s ‘ELEMENTAL’ has been delayed in the UK and is now set to release in theaters on July 7
https://twitter.com/hollywoodhandle/sta ... zQW0Q&s=19

[D82]

Pixar’s ‘ELEMENTAL’ has been delayed in the UK and is now set to release in theaters on July 7
https://twitter.com/hollywoodhandle/sta ... zQW0Q&s=19

Has any reason been given for the delay? I hope the same doesn't happen in Spain.

[Farerb]

https://twitter.com/DisneyAPromos/statu ... yQYIA&s=19

[Farerb]

Has any reason been given for the delay? I hope the same doesn't happen in Spain.

As far as I know it has something to do with their summer vacation.

[Woodrow Pride]

From Pixar's website:

[Woodrow Pride]

I don’t know if this image has been seen before, but when Pixar released Renderman 25 today, they released a reel with this image from Elemental:

[Farerb]

Pixar Animation Set for Cannes Film Festival Comeback with ‘Elemental’ on Closing Night
https://variety.com/2023/film/global/pi ... 235588478/

[Farerb]

https://twitter.com/Disney/status/16486 ... Wt-oQ&s=19

[Farerb]

Wade's mother:

[Sotiris]

Why does no one seem to care about this movie? It's so weird to me given it's based on a very typically-Pixar concept and a return to form for the studio. Not only there's very little interest here, but elsewhere online as well. I follow a lot of Disney and animation accounts on social media and there's no chatter or buzz about this. What's going on? Is this another case of a movie not generating interest online but performing well at the box office or should Disney be worried?

[UmbrellaFish]

I don’t know if Disney should be worried or not. But the movie looks very been there, done that. I personally am not excited for it. It looks like the Pixar formula distilled in its most “elemental” form. Other people have said the logline sounds like a parody of a Pixar movie and I agree. I think the Pixar brand still has a lot of cache, but they have a recent history that proves they can disappoint audiences and push out derivative products to make a quick buck— which was not the popular perception of Pixar even 10 years ago. Lasseter is gone and I think both Disney and Pixar would do well to leave his formula behind and be creative again. Keep letting Domee Shi do her thing.