Everything GREAT About Elemental!

I'm genuinely surprised you didn't give a win for how Wade worked with Ember's light to create a fire in the matchmaking scene. It was such a huge moment for me that really showed how good of a match they were. With her help, he was able to find a way to participate in this cultural tradition for Ember even though they all initially thought it was impossible. And he did it because he knew this was important to them, so it became important to him.

The reason it got insane popularity was word-of-mouth that the movie was not bad and that it actually had a really touching immigration narrative— since the director based it on his own family’s immigration from Korea, I’m not surprised it’s performing really well there.

The thing that honestly made me the happiest is that we ACTUALLY see the two leads not just get together, they show the PROGRESS. They go on dates, they learn about each other, meet the family, it shows the care and growth and that just felt like such a nice breath of fresh air.

Missed win: It’s incredibly refreshing and also incredibly realistic to see romantic leads going on actual dates instead of falling in love in one evening-montage Ding

What a great movie with such terrible marketing. They made it look like a generic story, "Zootopia with elements", love at first sight. But it was more complext, an immigrant story, personal, relatable and just genuine and beautiful. Cried like Wade at the end, Pixar always gets me, and this is as someone who isn't that much into romantic movies. But the way they fell in love felt real. Glad the word to mouth advertising came through for it :)

Fun fact: Pixar released a storyboard of a cancelled end scene where they showed Ember and Wade had a baby made out of steam but they cancelled it because they said they wanted to tell a lot more stories about them before thinking of starting their own family so that might be a confermation that they'll make a sequel or a series. ^^ What do you guys think?

I loved this movie so much. My favorite part about the Vivisteria scene is how Wade wasn't even focused on the injustice of her not being able to see the flower. He's focused on how she was unsafe in the face of prejudice. I thought that was so beautiful and masterfully done.

These characters would work perfectly in a Romeo and Juliet story with two rival families and them dying at the end since they extinguish eachother.

People were saying this was going to be generic and "Pixar's biggest flop", then they actually saw the movie and it turned out to be a great romantic comedy! Such a great time. Pixar's first full-blown romantic comedy is lovely. It's not subtle with its fire and water metaphor for characters from different cultures falling for each other but it's very heartfelt and sweet.

The fact that this movie came out so successful at the box office after a terrible opening WARMS my heart so much because this movie to me was something really special and Im glad ppl supported it when it looked generic to others.

Wade’s talk about a temper is how anger works. Anger is RARELY a raw emotion unless it’s HYPER specific. And even then that can be a cover for being in trouble. It’s ordinarily a mask for another emotion you aren’t comfortable with or don’t want to/can’t recognize. Being scared or sad are the big ones. I’ve learned finding that emotion INSTANTLY subsides the anger. And it really helps recognize through others anger too.

There were a lot of crying moments in this movie for me and many were shown in the video but for me, the scene that takes the cake is Ember telling her dad "I am a bad daughter". I cannot even imagine the absolute horror in a parent's brain when they hear their offspring say that.

I think one of my favrite bits that's not really addressed in the movie is something with the fire people. Where most stories would have fire elementals be big, bombastic, and destruction incarnate. While it does show that they CAN be destructive, it also shows just how creative fire is. This movie has every single one be a craftsmen. They weld pipes backtogether, they make their food literally by hand, and repair things with insane ease.

Something I loved was how Ember was always taking care of her parents, especially her dad when he's sick. It's so common to see movies about parents caring for their children, but so rare to see the flipside of the now adult children feeling the need to look out for their aging parents while still giving them the love and respect they deserve. It's such a powerful emotion and it makes it so much more understandable why Ember is struggling with her relationship with Wade so much. It was never just needing to live up to high expectations, it was legitimate love and desire to provide for her family.

I need to point out that during the bow between Ember and her dad that she didn’t feel the need to open her eyes and check like her dad had. She KNEW he was bowing back.

Something that I don't see brought up much is that the Vivisteria flower, according to Ember, can trive in any element, incluiding fire. So Ember and her dad were in fact not a threat to that garden station since the flowers can live with fire anyways - they had no reason to be kicked out

I liked the scene after the date, when Ember walks home and the water coming down from the train station. Before she meets Wade this water was more like a threatening force, crashing down. After her date the water appeared softer, calmer. Almost like an embrace.

Elemental is very personal to me because my Brazilian parents immigrated to the NYC in the 90s, and they had to navigate a world that was completely alien to them. I deeply sympathize with Ember for her realistic anger attacks and introverted personality, which are two things I have. My partner is Bulgarian, and Bulgaria couldn’t be farther apart from Brazil in every way. He’s my Wade. Ember and Wade are just so 100% us from the backgrounds to personalities. So now you know why it’s my newest comfort movie and thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

As someone who REALLY liked this movie, I'm glad someone is finally giving it justice! CinemaWins, keep doing cool stuff like this!

This film deserves so much better. Disney actively sabotages Pixar’s work because pixar employees threatened a walkout last year. Because Disney tried to cut queer content out of Lightyear, just like they did with Turning Red and who knows how many other films, and they had the audacity to stand up to the mouse. So now the mouse intentionally has their films bomb by doing no PR for them and shoving them into terrible release windows to have an excuse to fire the ppl who stood up to their queerphobic business practices