Things Only Adults Notice In Soul

pixar's soul is first and foremost a kid's movie yet while it does a good job of making its complex philosophical questions digestible for a young audience there are a few moments in the movie that only the grown-ups will really understand here are the things only adults notice in seoul when joe gardner is first introduced at the beginning of seoul he's a part-time school band director who dreams of becoming a professional jazz pianist joe's dream seems set to come true when he lands an audition with the dorothea williams quartet a highly respected jazz group led by professional saxophonist dorothea williams as joe rushes to his tryout weaving through the bustling new york city streets he runs by several local businesses but one sign stands out as obviously nodding to a real-life brand jimmy's shoes adults will immediately recognize the store name as a reference to jimmy choo a high-end fashion house specializing in luxury shoes and handbags founded by couture shoe designer jimmy choo in 1996 why soul decided to include a nod to a real-life company when most of the other storefronts are either nondescript or fictional is anybody's guess but while kids won't think twice about the brands that appear in seoul's new york city adults may at least get a chuckle out of the one they recognize after joe falls into an open manhole and awakens in the afterlife he finds himself on a slow-moving conveyor belt to the great beyond uncertain what's just happened he asked the first group of people he encounters what's going on and they calmly inform him that he's passed on as joe panics one of the women in the group casually observes that the actual afterlife beats her dream about the walrus it's hard to know for sure what this line is supposed to mean if anything at all it could be just a silly slightly surrealist one-liner but if it's a specific reference it may be a nod to disney's alice in wonderland which features a pretty disturbing song called the walrus and the carpenter in this bizarre musical sequence a scheming walrus and a human carpenter team up to lure a family of childlike oysters away from their mother and into a restaurant where the walrus then distracts the carpenter so that he can eat them all that was a very sad story hey and there's a moral to it oh yes a very good moral if you happen to be an oyster the little oysters in alice in wonderland do bear somewhat of a resemblance to the unfinished souls in the youth seminar and when you think about it the walrus would have been the last thing those oysters saw before they died is soul making a morbid reference to a killer walrus or is it just a harmless quip about a weird dream you decide when joe first lands on the conveyor belt meant to transport him to the afterlife he's all by himself as he runs away he comes across the trio of souls including the walrus woman who were more than happy to move on instead of joining them however joe continues to flee down the conveyor belt and suddenly finds himself in the midst of a dense crowd of hundreds of souls all being shunted towards the great beyond there's something very disturbing about the implication of that empty conveyor belt suddenly becoming very busy indeed and sure people may die every second in real life but in the world of soul that doesn't seem to be the case since joe and the first group he met had their sections of the conveyor belt all to themselves the most obvious explanation for the sudden crowd is that something catastrophic happened a few minutes after joe fell into that manhole resulting in massive crowds of people all arriving in the afterlife all at once there are a few lines in seoul that have significant implications for a number of age-old debates back on earth take the exchange in which joe asked jerry if the use seminar is where personalities come from and she kids joe for believing people are just born with them following jerry's line to its natural conclusion she seems to be implying that people get their personalities and also their souls at some point after they are born the process as it's laid out in the movie seems to be that souls are first created then given their core personalities via the various pavilions in the u seminar and finally find their spark through their mentorship under other souls who have already lived and died at the end of this process the souls make the trek to earth and presumably are assigned to a body jerry's line seems to indicate that those bodies already exist by that point and that the souls arrive after birth this little detail may not seem particularly important or noteworthy but it's actually a highly contentious issue in a number of world religions and philosophies it certainly won't be lost on much of seoul's adult audience when cosmic accountant terry discovers that the count of souls entering the afterlife is off by one he immediately brings his concerns to jerry raising the alarm that the count is off jerry unconcerned brushes him off by assuming that he must have made a mistake since the count hasn't been off in centuries reassuring right wrong while most kids might assume that jerry's line means that the count is always reliable the grown-ups in the room will quickly realize that centuries isn't actually all that long in the grand scheme of things depending on when soul started filing into the great beyond we're talking hundreds of thousands possibly up to millions of years of terry counting souls if the count hasn't been off in centuries that could mean that a rogue soul has dropped off the celestial grid literally thousands of times before do the math on this one and you might be left wondering what happened to all those runaway souls and whether they're still roaming about somewhere as a soul who hasn't yet found her spark and thus hasn't earned her earth pass 22 has managed to remain in the youth seminar for millennia she has mostly managed this by tormenting her various mentors and refusing to cooperate in the soul giving process in fact 22 is refined or defiant to the use seminar down to an art form when she's mistakenly assigned joe as a mentor of course she has no intention of going along with the system this time either and once jerry catches her and passes her on to joe this happens i'm going to make you wish you never died most people wish that 22. [Applause] which seems about right until you remember that jerry is in the unique position to actually know how most souls feel about dying and from the perspective of the afterlife too while he works in the u seminar jerry's interactions with terry make it clear that there's a decent amount of interaction between co-workers and the great before and the great beyond so jerry admitting that most people wish they'd never died seems to imply that the beyond may not be so great after all if it really was so great why would most people wish they were still alive what's really going on in the great beyond when 22 is first introduced it quickly becomes clear that she has absolutely no intention of ever leaving the u seminar for immortal life on earth indeed the juries have spent centuries upon centuries trying to find her the perfect mentor that will help her find her spark but to no avail 22 ultimately outlasts them all and in her interactions with joe she name drops several recognizable figures who have tried to inspire her including mother teresa marie antoinette and muhammad ali but when 22 takes joe through her home on her way to visit the zone you can see that she's collected all the name tags of her past mentors including a few familiar names some of 22's collected name tags include joan of arc nelson mandela harvey milk george orwell aretha franklin amelia earhart marvin gaye martin luther king jr johnny cash pablo picasso babe ruth harriet tubman and more this is a brief scene and kids aren't likely to recognize many of the names but it's still a fun easter egg for the grown-ups once 22 has agreed to help joe return to earth the two of them embark on a tour of the u seminar searching for 22 spark since finding a spark is easier said than done 22 takes him to the zone the place that exists between the physical and spiritual planes 22 explains that this is where living humans go and they're so deeply into their activities that they literally transcend to a different plane of existence and 22 quickly points out that anyone can enter under the right circumstances including actors tattoo artists and basketball players of course 22 enjoys disturbing people in the zone and takes particular pleasure in thwarting a basketball player right before he makes a basket telling joe that she's been messing with that particular team for decades a look at their logo makes it clear that the team in question is specifically the new york knicks making the line a reference to the nba team's infamous losing streak more than anything else that's a gag meant for the knicks long-suffering die-hard fans after breaking out of the hospital in joe's body 22 is understandably a little overwhelmed by bustling streets of new york city and basically winds up huddling in a corner joe now in the body of a cat lures her out with a slice of pepperoni pizza igniting 22's previously undiscovered love of food for the rest of the film 22 is joe is rarely seen without some sort of snack in her hand whether it's a piece of pizza a bagel or even a half-consumed slushie she finds underneath a seat on the subway one thing you might not notice however is 22 is joe payne for any of that food and that's because she probably didn't while it's certainly possible that she's using joe's phone to pay for some of it it seems more probable given 22's complete indifference to earthly customs that she's just swiping whatever looks good to her after all she seems to have no concept of money and is governed almost entirely by the id segment of her personality it would almost be more out of character if she was stopping to pay obviously this isn't something that's going to cross younger minds but adults will know all too well that there's no such thing as a free lunch no matter how good it smells in seoul joe's journey to the afterlife and back simply ends up being a matter of getting his soul reunited with his body as if it was only knocked loose by his tumble into the manhole and sure enough once joe finds his comatose body in the hospital all it takes is 22 diving inside for him to be back on his feet good as new although it still takes a good amount of effort for joe to finally get the jerrys and terry's to agree to let his soul stay in his body the body itself seems pretty much no worse for the wear while kids may accept this premise at face value everyone else will probably be left wondering just how joe is up and walking around by the end as if nothing happened after all his injury was severe enough to not only place him in a coma but also jettison his soul to the afterlife joe's presence in the great beyond seems to imply that he was functionally dead for a while indicating that he suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury at the very least obviously it's great that joe gets a second chance at the end of the film but many viewers won't help but feel a little nervous about joe's overall health and wonder if the major trauma sustained in his fall could have significant repercussions for his long-term well-being or you know maybe everything will be fine it is a movie after all check out one of our newest videos right here plus even more looper videos about your favorite movies are coming soon subscribe to our youtube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one

Channel: Looper

Views: 454,876

Keywords: looper, looper movies, soul, pixar soul, things adults notice, soul movie, pixar, disney, things adults notice in soul, adult references in soul, pixars soul, disney pixar, pixar movies, soul plot, soul easter eggs, soul joe gardner, soul jimmy shoes, soul walrus, soul 22, soul references

Id: ksK5bpFZjqc

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020