Disney’s Elemental isn’t Zootopia thanks to an immigrant story, says director

The trailers for Pixar’s ElementalImagine a large, lively city filled with colorful people. Disney enthusiasts were quick with their comparisons. Zootopia, Disney Animation’s 2016 film also set in a big, bustling city full of colorful inhabitants. Some differences are obvious — instead of animals, Pixar’s summer release breaks down the population into fire, water, earth, and air people — but as Polygon learned from director Peter Sohn (The Good DinosaurThe voice of Sox LightyearThe creative ideas behind were revealed during a March Pixar visit Elemental’s Element City go beyond the residential.

“It’s not like in Zootopia, where everything is disconnected from each other,” Sohn says. Element City was instead built around the concept of diverse people coming together and creating a large melting pot of culture, just like New York City. Instead of having separate communities like in, Element City is built around the idea that people can all come together and form a melting pot. ZootopiaFor the most part, the elements are compatible.

“It’s all about mixing,” Sohn says. “That’s what was so fun about this idea of: some elements can mix and some don’t. What does this relationship look like? Water spilling onto the earth is what grows people’s plants. It is the idea that firemen need wood for food. They all had to be in a mutually beneficial relationship. So we do our best to keep that relationship as strong as possible. It’s not 100% everywhere, but it was definitely one of our building blocks.”

The core of the company is ElementalThis is Ember Lewis’ immigrant story. Ember (Leah Lewis) is the daughter of firemen who fled an unknown fire country to start a new life in Element City. Sohn was inspired by his parents’ journey from South Korea to the Bronx in the 1970s. Although Element City has a lot of synergy, integration is more difficult for firepeople in an area where air, water and earth are first. Sohn believed it was necessary to inject some real tension into the story.

Image: Pixar

“It’s meant to have this feel of, like, Ah, what a wonderful place to start anew!. Our dreams can come true here… with a LittleA little bit of xenophobia,” the director says. Some elements can mix well, but others are very different. don’t. Water and fire, for example, can be in conflict. Ember meets Wade, a waterperson (Mamoudou Athie) and falls in love. This adds another dimension to an already unusual relationship. This is a true story. Is a couple that can’t even physically touch.

“Everyone is trying to mix well in Element City, but then [Ember’s] father, Bernie, having issues with some of the majority… He would start to [have] his own uncomfortable connection with water early on,” Sohn explains. “Obviously when Ember connects more with water characters, that would be an issue.”

However ElementalAnd ZootopiaSohn uses metaphors to uncover biases. He hopes to focus not only on the seeming doomed relationship between a waterperson and a fireperson, but also the relationships they have with their families, especially their parents. Both Wade and Ember’s families will need to connect with the other, despite their many, many differences. These challenges are made more difficult by the fact that Ember and Wade have to overcome physical incompatibilities because they live in a world with four elements: people.

“That connection between fire and water was the first thing I pitched to Disney,” Sohn says. “Could fire and water ever connect? Does that seem possible? And that hook really drove it.”

Elemental On June 16, the movie hits theatres