DVDizzy Forum

Pete Docter's latest film is set to come out June 19 2020, just a few months after Pixar's other feature, Onwards premieres.

The tagline for Soul: Ever wonder where your passion, your dreams and your interests come from? What is it that makes you … you?” Directed by two-time Oscar winner Pete Docter (Up, Inside Out), the film takes place between New York City and the cosmic realms.

https://deadline.com/2019/06/soul-pixar ... 202634880/
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/disn ... 203247534/

This movie sounds too abstract and philosophical for children.

I fail to see how this premise would interest kids.

The premise is too vague right now to really understand what the film is about. The title doesn't help with matters either. What intrigues me though is the mention that the film takes place between NYC and cosmic realms. I'm curious what these cosmic realms will be and if they'll involve some human character ascending to a higher plane of existence to learn more about him/herself.

Do you think it will feature the voice talents of any well known actors ?

DisneyFan97 wrote:This movie sounds too abstract and philosophical for children.

I fail to see how this premise would interest kids.

I don’t know, I think it could work. It sounds a great deal like Inside Out, except less about the mind and more about the essence of a person (the soul).

For some reason, I have an image in my head of this that's something like a cross between the beginning of The Boss Baby and that PIXAR short with the clouds and storks.

This sounds like another Inside Out. I wonder if religious people will get offended that the concept of the soul is being secularized and kiddified.

I can't help but feel a bit sorry for Dan Scanlon. I'm sure he thought Onward would get him the Oscar and he would finally be vindicated after MU failed to even garner a nomination, but now Docter is snatching those Oscar hopes right under him.

Docter's films all have very similar themes, especially Monsters, Inc. and Inside Out so this film sounds exactly like one of his concepts. Even the logo looks straight out of Inside Out, both the visual style and the colors which hearken back to Joy's design and the memory balls. I could see someone mistaking this for an Inside Out spinoff at first.

unprincess wrote:They wouldn't even let Elsa say the word "God" during Let it Go.

Supposedly, that was done so as not to offend religious people by taking the Lord's name in vain.

Well, at least it's title is not Heart or Mind

Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.

2 Original feature from Pixar in 3 months! Walt Disney Animation Studios can't create one in 3 years let alone 3 months

This movie sounds fantastic to me just on the little bit so far. But I'm religious, and well, if any of you were around when Wall-E came out, I had a fight and breakdown about the soul on this very forum. I even want to make my own film about it. Wonder which will come first.

I am a person of faith as well (or if you prefer the label religious that works too).

I suspect there will be uproar from some along the lines of, “This is bad theology” but most people will just appreciate it for what it is: a clever take on how faith/death/afterlife/etc works. To me, expecting a film like this to be accurate (and in a pluralistic society who decides which version to use) makes as much sense as being upset because there wasn’t actually a tiny train in your head when you lose your train of thought (as suggested by Inside Out).

Yes, it will probably be like that. I hope so! And I hope it doesn't get so much uproar it gets canceled or something. I really wonder how not just the film, but reactions, will turn out.

Disney Duster wrote:Yes, it will probably be like that. I hope so! And I hope it doesn't get so much uproar it gets canceled or something. I really wonder how not just the film, but reactions, will turn out.

I would be surprised if it did. So many Hollywood films have tackled it over the years like “Heaven Can Wait”, “Heart & Soul”, “All Dogs Go to Heaven” without a lot of fanfare. The concept is even tackled on TV in “The Good Place.” As a concept (assuming this is kind of the general theme of the movie) it’s almost cliche. I personally wouldn’t worry too much about it.

It the plot includes both cosmos and the soul, it makes me think of the so-called transmigration of souls. Astral projection and souls travelling through the universe was as you may know once very common in literature. Partly because many actually believed in it, and partly because it was seen as an excellent story device. Today it is way less common. It is actually five superpowers at once; invisibility, invulnerability, superspeed, the ability to fly and levitate, and the ability to walk through solid objects.

Camille Flammarion, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Eric Rucker Eddison and Olaf Stapledon are probably amongst the most known authors that used the concept. But also Marie Corelli and Dennis Wheatley, even if it was in a less cosmic context.

Its tempting to think they'll portray the afterlife like a day job/bureaucracy as in Toy Story or Monsters, but that concept had been done to death (e. g. Beetlejuice).

A story about the afterlife would be the first for Disney and Pixar animation studios.

Its tempting to think they'll portray the afterlife like a day job/bureaucracy as in Toy Story or Monsters

One common concept appears to be about what is happening to the world behind our back. Toys (and garden gnomes) are alive. Monsters are really hiding under the beds (and have been given a reason for doing so). Inside our mind the different emotions are communicating with each other.

It would actually be interesting to take that idea to the extreme (partly done in Sausage Party). What other phenomena could be real, and what other objects could be alive?

A movie about the workers in a broom factory where they produce brooms for witches? A story were we get to know what happens with the teeth the tooth fairy takes? Do devils and demons that does not return on time during Halloween have to pay a fine? What does microbes do when they are not observed under a microscope? Is there an afterlife in afterlife? What happens to all the memories and dreams we forget? What if Plato's universal forms are stored somewhere, and someone is stealing them?

Or maybe "Quarxs: The Movie" (a Ghostbusters concept) One of the first fully computer animated TV-series ever made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0LGKdJkFs

By the way, the teaser poster show us an O in "Soul" that looks like a tunnel of light, the kind we hear about in near-death experiences.

Interesting fact:

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/06/pete- ... 201889701/

Thank goodness that Docter insisted on finishing “Soul” as part of his agreement to take over creative control of Pixar.

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:A story about the afterlife would be the first for Disney and Pixar animation studios

Uh, Coco? Just two years ago.

Forgot about that one, probably because I haven't seen it yet. But that was a more physical afterlife, like Corpse Bride. A spiritual kind of afterlife, with heaven or whatever they decide to place it, hasn't been done yet (unless that's included in Coco as well).
Thinking about it, that's what Onward is about too; the brothers want to meet their dead father. If it includes a different realm remains to be seen.

RyGuy wrote:I would be surprised if it did. So many Hollywood films have tackled it over the years like “Heaven Can Wait”, “Heart & Soul”, “All Dogs Go to Heaven” without a lot of fanfare. The concept is even tackled on TV in “The Good Place.” As a concept (assuming this is kind of the general theme of the movie) it’s almost cliche. I personally wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Ok, yeah, you may be right, it's just this is about what the soul is and not just what happens when you die, you know? That may cause an uproar.

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:By the way, the teaser poster show us an O in "Soul" that looks like a tunnel of light, the kind we hear about in near-death experiences.

If that's what it is, that's cool!