Credit: Disney PixarPixar will release its 27th movie in June with Elemental (2023) – and we’ve just received our first proper look at everything the film has to offer.
Set in Element City, a metropolis inhabited by people made of Water, Earth, Fire, or Air, Elemental focuses on Wade Ripple (who’s made of water) and Ember Lumen (who’s made of fire). The pair are quite literally opposites, but, as the saying goes, opposites attract.
The film is directed by Peter Sohn, who previously led The Good Dinosaur (2015), worked on The Incredibles (2004), Finding Nemo (2003), WALL-E (2008), and Inside Out (2015), and voiced several characters from Pixar’s archive – including Emile from Ratatouille (2007).
Backed by such a strong resume, Elemental is sure to be an emotional Pixar classic. That seems especially inevitable when you consider that Sohn has previously explained to Variety that his Korean heritage – and the fact he married someone who isn’t Korean – serves as inspiration for the movie.
I married someone that wasn’t Korean, and there was a lot of culture clash with that in my world. And that brought to me to this idea of finding opposites. And the question of what if fire fell in love with water came. As an animator, what could be a fun world to play with…so the fire and water is one thing. But then tying that to culture clash, was part of that metaphor. And then in that world, all of a sudden this idea of sacrifice, and understanding what our parents had given started to make the soup of what this film is.
As if we needed any more proof, Pixar just released the first full-length Elemental trailer – giving us a more detailed preview of Wade, Ember, and their (quite literally) steamy romance.
The trailer introduces viewers to Element City, a colorful land where “elements cannot mix.” Ember (voiced by Leah Lewis) has never left Fire Town, scared her father will (again, literally) boil her alive. But that all changes when she meets Wade (voiced by Mamoudou Athie), who takes her on the ultimate inter-elemental adventure.
We also get to meet Clod (voiced by Mason Wertheimer), a young earth element, and Gale (voiced by Wendi McLendon-Covey), who is, as the name suggests, an air element. Pixar also dropped character posters to accompany the trailer, letting us get up close and personal with our new elemental friends.
While the trailer and posters don’t give too much away, they promise a starcrossed romance that’s totally different from anything Pixar has done before. This kind of originality is definitely a step in the right direction for a studio plagued with complaints about its reliance on sequels, prequels, and requels in recent years.
Curious how a romance between fire and water could ever work out? Catch Elemental in theaters from June 16, 2023.