The Real Reason Pixar's Elemental Flopped in Theaters

hello everyone welcome back to my channel and today unfortunately I do have some pretty bad news to share with you guys wixar's new film Elemental just came out and boy is it not doing well it made only 29 million dollars in its opening weekend which is worse than the opening for the good dinosaur ours too in the freaking first Toy Story movie that came out in 1995. so yeah Elemental is not doing well like at all and to be honest I'm really not that surprised when the first Elemental teaser came out a lot of people were making fun of it for looking very generic and then when I reacted to the trailer myself I thought it looked like a zootopia knockoff like it just looked like the same thing just reskid with elements instead of animals I'm saying all that just to say that I'm not surprised at all that the movie is bombing this movie had a lot of negative Buzz up until release but now that I've seen the film I can say that I do think this movie is a lot better than the marketing made it seem I actually really enjoyed the this movie but at the same time even though I liked it I still understand why it flopped anyway let me explain now the first problem I had with elemental and I think one of the main reasons why I think a lot of people stayed away from seeing this in theaters is because I still think it does have a very generic story what do I mean by generic story well let me compare it to its closest counterpart zootopia both movies center around a young female protagonist with Ember and Elemental and Judy Hopps and zootopia who happen to live in a New York style bustling City full of different creatures who represent different races with zootopia its animals and with elements it's well elements while attempting to prove oneself they meet a young male protagonist who they grow a bond with over the course of the film meanwhile they investigate some things mysteriously going wrong in the city but directly affects one of the lead protagonists both have weak villains that are directly involved with the mystery of our main leads and they even have similar hairstyles I mean just look at this and mean they both even have the same clerical worker character it was slow at his job and hates his life and the similarities with this movie don't just stop with zootopia there's also a generational trauma storyline between Ember and her father where she's scared to live up to the expectations of her dad who then felt like he couldn't live up to the expectations of his dad and so on and so forth you've seen this same storyline in a lot of Disney movies lately and if you don't believe me just watch burning red which is a story about a daughter who struggles with familial expectations and wants to be her own person or you could watch Strange World which is a story about a son who struggles with familial expectations and wanting to be his own person or he could just watch Luca which is a story about a fish boy who struggles with familial expectations and wanting to be his own person or or just just a thought could watch CoCo which is a story about a little boy who struggles with his familial expectations and wanting to be his own person I think you're starting to get the point here Elemental would be Disney's fifth straight movie in five years that essentially has the same storyline at this point it just feels very repetitive and stale now I know that the story of Elemental is technically based off of the director's own childhood but honestly as they were hammering out the story I feel like someone should have raised their hand and went like hey I think we just made like four other movies with the exact same plot because I really think that's what's hurting this movie like first and foremost and because the story was so familiar and very predictable it did feel like the movie was just plodding along to the next plot point that you already knew was coming there was really no surprises in this movie at all and then there was a poor little kid behind me that was complaining that he was really bored because the movie was really slow and I kind of felt bad for the kid that being said I did like the immigration metaphor there's a whole subplot of the movie about how Emperor's parents are the first generation of immigrants to element City and I did find this to be an interesting Dynamic to add to the family and the relationship between Emperor and her father turned out to be my favorite thing in the whole movie I really wish the marketing for Elemental really doubled down on the immigration father-daughter aspect of this movie because I feel like it was those story lines that were the most unique things about this movie because everything else about it you have seen before instead the trailers really seem to focus on hitting a lot of the same beats and lines we've seen before in other films like for example this shop is dream of our family someday the will be yours why doesn't anyone get to tell you what you can do in your life remember I see a change in you I've been trying to fill my father's shoes but I never once asked what I wanted to do I mean you just heard all of these lines before every time the movie tries to do something a little bit fresh and a little bit different mainly with its immigration storyline it cuts away to random cutaway gags between the elements that don't really make a lot of sense if the elements aren't supposed to mix or it goes to like some really generic scene that you've seen a thousand times in a thousand Pixar movies and you're just like ah okay whatever like I don't even think these characters are really gonna be that remembered I think the most memorable character in this movie is Wade and I had a very very love-hate relationship with this character Wade is like single-handedly the reason so many things go wrong in ember's life and he constantly blames Emperor for it like I don't understand it I'm sorry but Wade got on my nerves like a lot in this film like a lot I'm not not gonna lie I did like the ongoing crying gag especially with his family I thought that was hilarious they made me laugh every time that was also something I really felt like they could have hyped up more in the marketing this movie could be genuinely funny at times which you would not know in any of the trailers because all they did was like focused on like the weird gimmicky gags of like all the elements like and how they would interact with each other which I don't think is nearly as interesting as Pixar thinks it is I thought Ember herself was also a pretty generic stand-in for any rebellious teen or young adult that wants to do their own thing and fight against their family you've seen the same kind of rebellious girl before I also did like the romance storyline between Ember and Wade I did think that they made a very steamy couple but compared to other Disney couples like Rapunzel and Eugene or even Kristoff and Anna and these just can't compare and above all I think the worst part about this movie and what I really think could have just given this movie more spice to make it more interesting instead and out more as if it had a villain yet again Disney gives us a film without a villain and I'm tired of it okay I just want a good villain like I just saw across the spider verse and they had a great villain in that movie I thought this spot was super creepy but also super well written and I think it made that movie a lot more intense and fun because they had a good villain this movie The Villain is ember's anxiety over disappointing her father like technically yeah there was also like the cloud puff lady Gail like she's sort of a villain but she doesn't really do anything seriously or anything really impactful in this movie so I don't even really count her as a villain the real villain of this movie is Emperor's internal struggle and I feel like Pixar has been doing that a lot lately like they've been turning the villain into like your own internal emotions instead of like an actual villain the protagonist has to face and I also am getting a little bit tired of that because I think this movie really could have been taken up a notch if it just had a really good villain I just feel like that was missing from the story I think it could have made it a lot more interesting and and stand out more like don't get me wrong I know I'm being very negative in this film but I actually do like the movie like I said I think that the romance story is very cute I don't think it's a bad movie at all in fact I think it's better than a lot of pictures other recent films if you liked turning red if you liked Luca you're probably gonna like this movie as well overall I'd give it like a solid 7 out of ten so it's not bad but I do think it exists on just the fine scale and I feel like a Pixar has been doing a lot of just fine they haven't really been doing extraordinary stuff like they used to and I feel like this is more of just meh and I'm kind of tired of getting meh from Pixar I think that Pixar needs to start being a little bit more bold in their storytelling I think they're really sticking to a lot of the saves safe tropes and story lines that we've seen over and over again I also think that they need to be more bold with their animation style now that we have movies like spider-verse and even the new Ninja Mutant Turtles movie I feel like there's really no excuse to still be getting the the same sort of lean animation that we've always been getting from them they need to add a villain make these movies a bit more spicy I think they need to make their characters more memorable overall but again it's fine I hate that I feel like a lot of commentary and criticism of movies now it's like either it's a amazing or it's terrible and I don't think Elemental is either of those I think it's just fine and those are the reasons why even though I like the movie I can understand why it's not really driving people to theaters right now but what did you guys think do you agree with me do you disagree with me please let me know in the comments what you think have you seen Elemental do you like the movie please let me know again as always please make sure you like the video it really does help the channel subscribe for more and I'll see you guys in the next video bye [Music] foreign

Channel: Brittney Reacts

Views: 245,850

Keywords: disney, pixar, elemental, animation

Id: e22ZJ4QccKQ

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023