Elemental Review
OH. MY. GOD.
I have no clue why it took me so long to watch this movie. I VERY aware that I am so late to this movie and I’m kicking myself as to why.
I had THOUGHT I had grown out of Disney and traditional children movies but apparently they are not ready for me to do so because this movie was a banger. I cannot speak for the rest of the movies that Disney, Pixar, or any other children’s animation movie company has put out this year. I didn’t watch those; Especially the new “Wish” movie that everyone is cracking down so hard on.
However, I did watch elemental.
I don’t know what it is about the Disney movies recently, but Elemental, much like Encanto, was AMAZING. I even watched the movie twice in one day because I needed to share it with my girlfriend. (To which they hated it because it made them cry)
There is something about the plot and the messaging with in the movie meshing together so well that just had me in a chokehold. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of watching this movie, in simple terms, the movie is about the love story between a fire girl and a water boy. T That’s pretty basic Disney stuff. It’s just a love story. But where this movie really changes corse is under the surface of said love story. Elemental explores immigrant problems and racial discrimination in big cities, among other things. That alone is pretty astonishing, especially for a Disney film, which are traditionally just love stories. The movie also goes deeper into the interpersonal relationships in interracial relationships and how outside influences, such as societal differences and parental pressures can affect relationships. As someone who is in an interracial relationship myself, I absolutely gushed at this portrayal.
The movie starts off with Immigration story. I won’t go too far into it for those who haven’t seen it, but it was an amazing starting point of the movie. Even though the audience have no idea what’s going on because we don’t know the premise of this world and the rules of it yet, educated viewers, who are not the children that this is necessarily geared towards, will understand the hints that we are given. We further go onto the conflict of the story, which is centered around the main character, Ember, and her father’s shop. That’s where she meets city inspector, otherwise known as the Water-boy, Wade. From when they first met, you can see that Wade is definitely the one who fell first and oh my God, I love a good movie where the love interest falls in love first, no matter what gender.
The movie progresses and the movie it makes it clear that Ember’s parents do not like the idea of water people being around. Mostly Ember’s. In fact, Ember‘s father, Bernie, hates water people because of the racial discrimination that he has endured in the past due to water and fire not mixing. They quite literally combat each other. His main and most memorable quote is “They keep trying to water us down”. Also, Ember does make it clear that Element City is not made with fire people in mind. She says “There will have to be a miracle to get me over that bridge.” The movie even showing the trains that push water off the sides that is very harmful to fire people. In the scenes featuring the city, there is water everywhere and while every other element is able to thrive in a water filled environment, it is clearly not sustainable for fire. This is a continuous discrimination towards fire people. Some people would argue that it’s not necessarily discrimination rather negligence and lack of better ways to fully support fire peoples needs. However, I don’t think that is plausible being seen that there are racial slurs in this movie geared towards the fire people.
Let’s not forget the iconic dinner scene, in which Ember meets Wade‘s family. Which in the scene his family were overall very welcoming towards Ember. However, they ultimately did not know how to react to her. At one point, Wade’s nephew almost pushes her into a pool of water asking her if she would die if she fell in. I’m aware that he is a kid but I was dumbfounded. Not helping their case, Wade’s uncle had told her that she speaks English surprisingly clear to which she replied, “It’s amazing what speaking the same language your entire life does”.
The dinner scene is also the scene where Wade first hints that he is in love with Ember. This is where she realizes that because they could never touch she doesn’t see the relationship working and it causes such a great sadness in her heart that she cries for the first time. This scene simultaneously tugged on a heartstring of mine, while reminding me that this is in fact a love story and not a political exposé on how people treat immigrants in America.
Throughout the movie, Bernie was consistently corrected on his English also. This annoys me throughout the movie. The words everyone corrected him on were words that you could tell what he meant. There was just no need to correct him and they did so just because he was wrong. Bernie really messed up his words when he was frustrated or flustered or feeling a great amount of emotion so it was warranted that he would mess up up on a language he had to learn so late in life.
I felt such a strong connection with Ember and Bernie, having such a strong connect to my father. They had such a good relationship. Sure they had their stuff but who doesn’t but they worked through it. I loved the healthy relationships throughout the movie but Burnie and Ember are my favorite.
The end of the movie also resonated a little hard with me too. As a person who has been called sensitive my entire life, Wade being such an emotional person showed me two things. It tells me that Disney is showing people that it was OK to be a little emotional, no matter if that means you have an uncontrollable temper or that means that you sob at every little sadness in life. As a person who can’t seem to get their emotions in check, that was such a good message to hear at the point that I am in life. The second thing that it showed me was Disney is trying to combat the idea that they have been pushing for literally a century about toxic masculinity. Never in my 17 years of life I have seen a Disney character (that was a male) cry so much. And on top of his crying, his family also cries the same amount as him showing them that they are emotionally mature people who can understand that being sensitive and having a lot of emotions isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even though they are seen to be a little dense.
Honestly, if I could, I would go on a literal 30 page tangent about how much I love this movie, and how much I wish that Disney would continue these types of movies for the next century to come, but I’m gonna spare you.
I don’t know if you haven’t got the message from this entire opinion piece but in my opinion, I think you should go watch this movie. Watch it with a loved one (or loved ones) and really soak in the messaging of the movie. Maybe you’ll hate it. Maybe you’ll find that some things were missing but I do think that it’s a movie worth watching. No matter if you find it horrible and it didn’t fully live up to the Disney potential that it could have, was it not still a good laugh?
