Photo from d23.com
On Friday, June 16 of this year, Disney and Pixar teamed up in their usual way to release their newest kids movie about personified elements. The story follows Wade and Ember (voiced by Mamoudou Athie and Leah Lewis respectively) as they navigate falling in love and being from two very different worlds. Most of the movie revolves around the tension between Ember and the expectations her father has set for her to take over the family shop, something she is slowly realizing that she doesn’t want to do anymore.
The movie is meant to be a commentary on immigration and a homage to the director’s family, which I think it did really well (from the point of view of a kid of an immigrant parent). But alongside this, I realized there was something more to the story than just that.
Early into the movie, the main character Ember (a girl made out of fire) says that the “world is not designed for her” and there are multiple times in which she and Wade set out to do something only to find that it is not accessible to her (usually because it is made out of water).
The moment I heard her say this, I felt seen.
As a disabled person living in a world built for able-bodied people by able bodied people, I learned at an early age that the world is not designed with disability in mind. So to see a movie, even accidentally, talk about disability in a way that was honest really meant something to me. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I am not still watching and waiting for Disney and Pixar to release a movie that talks about disability or has a disabled character, but it was still heartwarming to have this little bit of representation.
I watched a few interviews with the director, Peter Sohn, and learned that the intention with this movie wasn’t to tell a disabled story, but instead they wanted to tell a story that resonates with marginalized people as a whole. In an interview with TheWrap, Peter Sohn said, “The idea of belonging and not fitting in has so many gateways.” Not fitting in is something that everyone experiences at one point or another, and Sohn wanted this movie to speak into that with the story that he was telling.
“Elemental” is on Disney+ as of Wednesday, Sept. 13, and it is a movie that I could not recommend more. I really enjoyed it, not only for the accidental disability representation, but also just because it was fun. The world building for the movie was very detailed, including the creation of multiple types of cultures as well as languages, and the overall storytelling was fantastic! I really recommend watching.