Disney, a movie dynasty coming up on its 100th year anniversary has come out with its latest movie Elemental, a visually stunning movie with impressive cinematography and thoughtful camera work.
This new film is available to watch on Disney+ and is rated 7/10 on IMDb for comedy/animation. Elemental has great reviews, but let’s see if Elemental lives up to its reputation.
Elemental is a movie about a firegirl protagonist Ember Lumen, played by Leah Lewis, who runs her family convenience store along with her father in the lower parts of Elemental City.
Ember falls in love with a forbidden waterboy Wade Ripple, played by Mamoudou Athie. The two go through the movie trying not to get Ember’s family shop shut down, and as she goes about this, Ember learns to connect with people and control her temper.
An article from CoopWB also implies that this movie is a clear metaphor for intolerance toward immigrants, with the fire people being inspired by a blend of South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern languages, and Water people being heavily white-coded.
The movie uses many analogies for racism and identity. In the movie when Wade Ripple tries to scarf down the fire food, when it doesn’t meet his expectations he decides to put water on it, this changes Lumen’s family recipe, and this allegory explains how many cultural foods are appropriated. They use metaphors like this to explain the immigrant experience in America.
Some may want to compare this movie to other Disney Pixar films like Zootopia which is also a metaphor for racism. In Zootopia the different animal species represent different races or ethnicities, and the division and stereotypes among them parallel real-world instances of racism. Although the plot and settings differ, both explore prejudices and discrimination.
To an extent, Disney Pixar’s ideas of discrimination seem to be a copy-and-paste story told by many other films; however, racism and the immigrant experience still remain important in America, making this film relevant.
In the end, I recommend this movie if you want to enjoy a captivating Pixar adventure while highlighting the reality of our current day.
