Pixar’s latest creation, Elemental, brings the four elements of nature to life into a society of characters who interact with one another in a massive city. As the next release in upcoming Disney movies slate explores, what happens if fire and water mix through the characters of Ember and Wade? While audiences find out the answer to that question this weekend, CinemaBlend spoke to writer/director Peter Sohn about the making of the animated film.
One major feat of Elemental was creating believable characters out of elements as unpredictable as fire and water. When CinemaBlend’s own Sean O’Connell asked about the process of how the production played with fire, Peter Sohn had this to say (also in the above video):
[The fire characters] were one of our big fears, just to be frank, when we first started this. I think all I did were these drawings of fire, that were these static things and everyone was like ‘Boy, will we even be able to focus on the eyes,’ so very soon it was all about trying to control the fire, so the technology about that control. It was called NST (Neural Style Transfer), which I’m not a technical person, but it is taking a style of a drawing, like you could do [a drawing of a] graphic flame, and it would take that and start imprinting it into the three dimensions of the flames.
Release Date: June 16, 2023
Directed By: Peter Sohn
Written By: John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, Brenda Hsueh
Starring: Leah Lewis, Mamoudou Athie
Rating: PG for some peril, thematic elements and brief language
Runtime: 103 minutes
Peter Sohn, who conceptualized Elemental’s story from his family’s Korean immigrant story, voiced his early concerns for animating the fire characters of the movie because there are so much dynamics that come with the way the element moves. However, thanks to some sweet technology over at Pixar, the production team found a way to make the fire characters come alive, notably with the movie’s main character, Ember.
Elemental follows Ember, who is a flame that comes from an immigrant family of her own, as her parents came to Element City to set down roots and open their business, called The Fireplace. Ember is eager to run her family’s business, but she often gets caught in fits of anger that stalls her father from trusting her completely with the store.
Then she unexpectedly meets a water person named Wade. Sparks fly between them as they must help each other with a common problem. Pixar went to great lengths across seven years from concept to release to make Elemental palpable to audiences despite its characters literally being made up of the different elements of nature. The movie even made an original language from the inventor of Game Of Thrones’ Dothraki based on the sounds fire makes.
Ahead of Elemental’s theatrical release this weekend, the Pixar movie has received positive reviews thus far, including from CinemaBlend. Our Elemental review gave the movie 4 out of 5 stars, assuring audiences that the opposites attract-style romance will make one cry (as one has come to expect from Pixar). The movie hits theaters on June 15. Get to the theater early for a short at the top called “Carl’s Date.”
