The four classical elements, which consist of fire, earth, air, and water, just cannot mix—and that’s the one cardinal rule of the residents in Elemental City, where the four elements coexist harmoniously but separately. The upcoming Disney and Pixar animated film titled Elemental explores a unique take on the four elements, encouraging everyone to get ready to live, even outside their element. The film’s director, Peter Sohn, retells his personal story through the forthcoming animated featurethat discusses an important topic about differences. Sohn shared his influences in bringing the film to life, taking inspiration from his own immigrant story.
Sohn explained in a personal interview with CinemaBlend how his own immigrant tale hugely inspired Elemental. Raised in New York City by Korean immigrant parents, the film director behind The Good Dinosaur shared that his parents were able to create a harmonious life in the Bronx despite the language barrier. Sharing his memories about the shop his parents own, the director said: “All my dad’s customers came from everywhere and like my parents, they left their homes to come to a new land, and they all were mixing into beautiful little neighborhoods with their cultures and the languages and so from that came this.”
Elemental applies an “opposites attract” narrative in the upcoming movie, following Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) and Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis)—who are from different elements—fall in love with one another. With their differences that are very much evident, the two must collaborate to save Ember’s family business. Taking inspiration from the culture he grew up in, Sohn added:
“Growing up my grandmother’s dying words or like ‘Marry Korean, like we saw a little bit of that yesterday in the footage. It came from a real place. And, it created all these sort of culture clashes growing up. But, even with these sort of key pieces in place, we could go anywhere. The possibilities were endless, until we came up with the idea of opposites attracting, fire and water, these opposites, that became our clear focus of the film. And, once that was our North Star, we could adjust the characters, and obstacles that could happen to them.”
How Sohn Mixed His Experience Into the Story
Similar to the director’s personal experience, Ember—a fire—also had to deal with her grandmother’s request, which is for Ember to marry a fire. As a child, Sohn had always looked at the periodic table of elements as apartment complexes, living next to each other amidst their differences. Mixing his personal life with the story he created out of the elements from the periodic table, Sohn also explored mixing fire and water in a love story brewing between Ember and Wade. He also told CinemaBlend: “Stories of what these elements were doing in their apartments, you know, just mixing around in my head. And, then the last little piece was my wife and the experience of marrying someone that wasn’t Korean.”
It wasn’t Disney and Pixar’s first time to explore a unique concept, with the 2015 animated film Inside Out, which traversed through someone’s core emotions through colorful and fun storytelling. On the other hand, the two animation giants never fail to deliver tear-inducing films, including the 2009 film Up, which established itself as one of the greatest animated films of all time. Kicking off the film with probably an emotional short, an all-new Up short film will also be screened before Elemental, so that’s double the treat for viewers who will visit the cinema to watch the upcoming film.
Joining Lewis and Athie in the voice cast are Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Catherine O’Hara, Mason Wertheimer, and Joe Pera. Once again collaborating on a feature-length film, viewers can expect to run out of tissues when Pixar and Disney’s Elemental hits theaters on June 16.
