Flasz On Film

So, I took my nine-year-old daughter to the cinema on Sunday, partly to just get out of the house and do something together. We settled on watching Elemental, purchased the tickets, loaded up on snacks and proceeded with the screening. Having now watched this movie twice, despite never really imagining I would do so, I think I have a few additional thoughts on how this movie is faring, why I think this might be the case, and I might have some unsolicited feedback aimed at Disney and Pixar as well.  

First of all, I was quite positively surprised that the cinema was almost packed on a lazy Sunday afternoon, which is always nice to see. Busy cinemas tend to stay in business, and I’d like them to continue their trade for as long as possible. This corroborates, at least anecdotally, the recent reports of Elemental’s box office staying power, now projected to gross more than half a billion dollars globally, which is nothing to sniff at, even if Pixar has had much more impressive successes before. However, I remain unconvinced as to the alleged reasons behind this film’s resilience, widely attributed to solid word of mouth and synaptic messaging spread across local friendship networks via Facebook.  

I think it is more likely that families choose to go see Elemental because there is otherwise very little to choose from, at least in the UK. If you’re planning a family outing to the pictures, you are realistically limited to Elemental, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and one of the last screenings of The Little Mermaid.  

At this point, I don’t believe anyone will actively seek out The Little Mermaid, unless they have a little girl who really needs to see it now and cannot wait for it to turn up on Disney Plus. Also, nobody is even aware of Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken which has been unceremoniously dumped with zero marketing behind it, like the new Miyazaki movie in Japan. And that’s a real shame because my personal experience would dictate that my daughter would have loved it, had we known, especially because it looks like a movie that is actually aimed at younger audiences; though, it cannot be discounted – and Dreamworks has been known to do this – that the movie is still littered with innuendo and adult-oriented humour aimed to keep the captive parental audience from doom-scrolling through their social media during the screening.  

In addition, taking your entire family with kids below ten to see Mission: Impossible 7 or Indiana Jones 5 wouldn’t be the best idea because (a) these movies are clearly too intense for younger children and (b) a good part of any enjoyment extracted from these experiences relies on prior awareness of the series and/or a distinct nostalgic connection to them. You can’t expect a little kid to feel fondness towards Dial of Destiny based on their love for Raiders of the Lost Ark. It just doesn’t work that way. The same logic can be extended to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which also appeals to a rather narrow sub-demographic among the young audiences. 

By way of elimination, all you’re left with is Pixar’s Elemental, aka the only safe bet. Pixar’s brand is widely recognized among parents who simply trust they can take their entire families to see whatever their new movie is without risking anyone coming out of the movie traumatized. So, the film’s staying power is merely a result of the simple fact there is nothing else to go and see. As the old Polish saying goes, in a fishless pond a crayfish is a fish. Families still want to go to cinemas even at a time when their disposable income has shrunk considerably, so what they end up doing is simply playing it safe.  

However, they’re not emerging happy either. Based on my own private Jane Goodall-esque observations of the screening room I was in, eavesdropping on the chatter on the way out and interviewing my own personal child whom I took to see this movie, I am inclined to believe that Elemental isn’t knocking anybody’s socks off. The movie doesn’t engage the viewers enough to elicit even as much as a chuckle and it seems that people watch it in silence and gee-tee-eff-oh immediately thereafter. A good bunch of parents were also bored enough to spend most of their time on their phones and some even chose to watch something else courtesy of Netflix on their piddly little screens, as though in defiance of the movie they had just paid to see. This doesn’t scream success. I fully realize this is an anecdotal observation and that I might have been just unlucky to participate in the most disengaged screening of Elemental in the UK, but it is equally possible that – despite rather positive ratings found online – the movie just doesn’t wow its audiences the way it perhaps should, or the way its creators wanted it to. 

And it all begins with a simple question I asked already: who is this movie for? Is it for kids? Well, I asked my own kid what she thought about it and she just told me she liked it. Now, before you breathe a sigh of relief, you must know that if a child tells you something’s alright, it’s code for something else. And when you prod further, you will realize that children often package a whole slew of ancillary information into how they review a movie, especially when they see it theatrically. The movie is only a part of the experience, and it is equally valid for them to like or dislike the movie they saw based on the entirety of the experience of watching it. So, Elemental got a pass because it was a nice day out with her daddy where she got to eat popcorn, had a slush puppie, got a poster to take home at the end of it all and it was an all-round a nice afternoon. Four stars. Ask about the movie itself and you will find she liked how it was animated and that the coolest talking point for her was to decide which element she’d like to be. Which immediately informed me she did not pay any attention to the social commentary, cultural divides or the immigrant experience, even though she could project herself onto the main character with extreme ease by virtue of having immigrant parents. 

But she did not care at all. Things she usually cares about – an interesting character for her to latch onto, entertaining action and relatable world-building – weren’t present enough to make a mark. Nothing was cool enough. Everything was just about alright and the only moment where I could see her react viscerally to what was happening on the screen involved Wade and Ember racing to the surface, trying to make sure the air bubble in which Ember was trapped would not disappear and kill her in the process. What is more, she also scoffed at the tonally weird love story, which she found awkward and embarrassing to watch. Why? Because it wasn’t geared towards children. It was aimed at adults – the same adults who probably missed it because they were busy staring into their rolling Instagram feeds.  

Ironically enough, when I asked my daughter what the absolute standout was in her opinion, she bypassed Elemental altogether and said she was the most excited by the trailer for the upcoming Wish, a Frozen-esque Disney princess movie that at least looks as though it was put together with children in mind. This is a lesson executives in Hollywood need to learn: kids don’t care about subliminal messaging and social commentary in the movies made for them. In fact, saturating kids’ movies with overtly adult themes without any moderation works against the interests of this demographic. What’s more, doing so does not reliably increase the engagement of the adult portion of the audience either, unless the movie in question, like Soul, effectively aims to endear adults as its primary audience. Point is choices must be made.  

If you want to make sure kids get the most out of a Pixar or a Disney movie, make the movie with kids in mind. Slant it towards them. There is a reason why they responded so well to The Super Mario Bros Movie, or Luca. A movie must be relatable for kids to latch onto them and a ten-year-old is unlikely to relate to Ember and Wade the way they would to Luca, who is also a child. And if you make sure they can relate to the world at large, the action or the lore, you can get them to relate to middle-aged Italian plumbers too. But they must be able to relate to something. Choosing to ride the middle of the road, like Elemental did, can only ensure the movie would appeal to a small subsection of film critics who will really love it. But I don’t think too many “normal” people truly adore this movie the way they adored Toy Story movies, Finding Nemo or Frozen. People like it because they have very limited choices during what is shaping up to be known as the Flopbuster Summer. After all, in a fishless pond, a crayfish is a fish. And in times when even crayfish are scarce, an elemental will do.