Pixar’s latest feature, this one titled “Elemental,” looked promising, but has now screened at Cannes and been met with disappointing reviews.
We should have taken it as a warning sign that Cannes decided to screen this one on the very last day of the fest, when most journalists have already left the Croisette. I’ll be watching this one next week.
“Elemental” has a 56 on Metacritic with some critics wondering if Pixar has lost its lustre of yore. It definitely has, I’ve been saying this for a few years now.
As it stands, the last truly great Pixar movie was 2015’s “Inside Out.” The last very good one was 2017’s “Coco.” 2019’s “Soul” was good enough, I guess.
Pixar’s dive into the business of sequels has watered down their brand. It’s fine, we all expected that to happen at somepoint. It’s a real shame though because they had this incredible streak of films going from the aughts alo the way to the early 2010s — every movie they released was either very good or a flat-out masterpiece.
They took the kind of major artistic risks that have now been missing in their output these last 7 or 8 years. Think of the radical, dialogue-free first act of “WALL-E,” the touching 10-minute life story of Carl and Ellie in “Up!”, the terrifying final few minutes in “Toy Story 3,” Nemo's mom dying in the opening minutes of “Finding Nemo,” and Bing Bong's “sacrifice” in “Inside Out”. All incredibly risky narrative decisions.
These last few years, Pixar has either released disappointing sequels/spinoffs ("Incredibles 2,” “Finding Dory,” “Toy Story 4,” “Cars 3,” “Lightyear”) or slight narratives that didn’t really push any artistic boundaries (“Luca,” “Onward,” “The Good Dinosaur,” “Turning Red”).