Why Elemental Bombed At The Box Office

Not every single film put out by Pixar draws audience plaudits. "The Good Dinosaur" disappeared without a whimper back in 2015, and "Onward" and "Lightyear" were denied much box office attention thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. "Turning Red," "Luca," and "Soul," meanwhile, were released straight to Disney+ to avoid that fate. Pixar films that count as outright financial flops, however, are few and far between. But the studio's big summer tentpole release, "Elemental," seems to have joined that small party of films.

The story — about a fire elemental named Ember (Leah Lewis) and a water elemental named Wade (Mamoudou Athie) who fall in love in spite of all of the cultural and societal differences between them — landed with barely a splash at the summer box office on June 16.  It earned $44.5 million worldwide during its opening weekend, an anemic total that puts it below every Pixar film released up to that time except "A Bug's Life" in receipts. It's not a very promising start for the studio's latest attempt at overcoming its box office doldrums.

Why did the film fail? Can we chalk things up to a voice cast that lacks name-brand actors? A lack of promotion? A weak storyline that didn't grab viewers? Or is Pixar's magic wearing off for a generation of young viewers who have spent the past three years without the studio's magic in their lives? It turns out there are plenty of reasons why audiences may have stayed away from "Elemental" — but it remains possible that the film could recover at the box office in time.

Typically, Pixar and Disney releases are incredibly heavily promoted. Even films like "Lightyear," which drastically underperformed at the box office, saw lots of television ads, promotional tie-in releases, and merchandise hitting the shelves before the movie was released. But "Elemental" didn't seem to have a similar amount of promotional enthusiasm behind it. Television ads for it were rare, and cast interviews were thin on the ground — perhaps due to the ongoing WGA strike and potential for a SAG strike.

Disney-related fan-run websites noted that the company didn't put a lot of promotional muscle behind "Elemental," leaving it to flounder much like the studio's winter release, "Strange World." Worse, when it did try to get people talking about the film, a mild PR disaster took place. Said incident was sparked by a tweet featuring Ember which parodied the poster art for "Turning Red." "Unleash your wildfire side with this Burning Red poster straight from Element City!" the caption attached to the image read. Sadly, the tweet's release coincided with widespread Canadian wildfires which sent hazy smoke into several Northeastern metropolises, resulting in Twitter users accusing the animation studio of insensitivity toward those suffering from its effects. 

While the image was deleted, it's emblematic of the lack of thought that went into the promotion of the film at large. While it's possible that Pixar was muscled out of the game due to other recently released big-name family films like "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," or Disney chose to allocate its marketing resources to "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" or already spent them on "The Little Mermaid," it's very clear that the movie didn't get a whole lot of attention from the media before being released.

Pixar fans usually turn to the studio for the exciting and unusual. Whether it's a tale of toys that become sentient when people aren't around, a rat whose sole ambition in life is to become a gourmet chef, a family of superheroes who have to live incognito thanks to government ordinances, or a robot surviving in a post-apocalyptic world who finds purpose in true love, this is a company that knows how to create unusual, original stories that still reflect the foibles of human life. 

We pointed out in our review of "Elemental" that the dull, beat-by-beat storytelling is what holds the movie apart from other enchanting Pixar films. Unsurprisingly, "Elemental" has failed to make much of an impression on animation fans as an original concept, bringing nothing new to the plate narratively even as it presents a pretty exterior package. The film's allegory is a well-trod subject, with its water, cloud, dirt, and fire people working as stand-ins for people of different races, religions, and gender orientations. Additionally, its fight between the people of Element City and Ember's battle to break free and see the world beyond its borders is a metaphor for the second-generation immigrant experience. While it's arguably a group of messages the world sorely needs to hear at this time, it's also a set of themes that have been done to death by Pixar by now — and ones that "Zootopia" tackled with more élan years ago.

There's nothing the summer box office loves more than family-friendly movies, but theaters are currently awash with other films that arguably give children much more interesting and complex  — or at least more entertaining — messages than "Elemental" does. "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," Disney's own live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid," "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," and springtime holdovers "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" and "Super Mario Bros. Movie" have all provided "Elemental" with stiff competition. Releasing "Elemental" too close to "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" threw another stumbling block its way.

While this might seem to portend doom for any project not based on previously-established IP, audiences only need to look over their shoulders at 2021 to remember when "Encanto" swept its way into the public's imagination and took hold of the pop charts with tunes like "We Don't Talk About Bruno." There's plenty of room for something fresh to break through without help from previous IP; it just needs to be a well-thought-out production. 

And then there's the fact that the movie's cast doesn't have any big-name actors to buoy it up to greater success. The film's best-known performers are Wendi McLendon-Covey, who portrays Gale, and Catherine O'Hara, who plays Brook Ripple. While It's arguable that movies like "Ratatouille" and "Toy Story" would have been just as successful if every single member of the cast were unknown, for a weaker film like "Elemental," it's possible that added star power may have driven audiences to the theaters in larger numbers.

Of course, big names don't always mean success. Chris Evans headed up the cast of "Lightyear" and he wasn't enough to drag the film out of the box office basement. And Disney's decades-long history of hiring talented character actors instead of big-name celebrities to play its animated characters has never damaged the brand before now. But in a world where there are many options at the theater, a little star quality definitely helps to get you noticed.

Finally, there's the ultimate question — has the fact that Disney placed Pixar's last three films, all of them intended to be big-screen successes, on Disney+ to both drive subscriptions to the streamer and protect viewers during the COVID-19 pandemic damaged the brand and made Pixar films must-stream TV?

While analysts have claimed that putting so many of the studio's films in a streaming-only arena has taught families that they don't need to go to the hassle of heading to theaters to see the latest in family entertainment, that's clearly a maxim that doesn't apply to movies like "The Little Mermaid," which was a hit with families, eventual Disney+ release or not. So if families are willing to show up to see Disney productions in movie theaters, why did "Elemental" score as such a miss? It's worth noting that the last Pixar movie to really score at the box office was "Toy Story 4." 

While it's clear that Pixar is struggling for a fresh point of view and a new way to tell its stories, the studio has definitely produced original, unique work before. It's quite likely that they will be able to climb back to those auspicious heights with time.