Pixar Pint #23: Soul

The first true Disney+ Pixar release. How was it?

Welcome back to Pixar Pints, our two-summer-long journey through all 26 Pixar films in release order.

Soul resulted in a couple more firsts for Pixar, still breaking new (to them) ground in their 25th year since breaking into the mainstream with Toy Story.

Within their control, it was their first movie that told a Black story. The lead, Black jazz musician/teacher Joe Gardner, was voiced by Jamie Foxx.¹ The majority of the cast was Black, and Pixar went to great lengths to consult their Black employees² in making sure they were telling the story correctly.

Outside of their control, it was the first Pixar feature film that was released directly to Disney+ due to the COVID-19 pandemic.³ Originally slated for an October 2020 release, the film was first pushed back to November before its theatrical release was abandoned in countries that had access to Disney+. Most of the world first saw Soul on Christmas 2020, and—unlike with Onward—it was released directly to all subscribers instead of first being released for standalone purchase.

Let’s get into it.

Soul quick facts

Release date: December 25, 2020 | Director: Pete Docter | Music: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross; jazz compositions by Jon Batiste

Starring: Jamie Foxx (Joe), Tina Fey (22), Graham Norton (Moonwind), Rachel House (Terry)

John Ratzenberger as: No one! This was another first for Pixar: the first feature film without Ratzenberger’s voice in it. In a chase scene through a subway station, a character model based on Ratzenberger is briefly visible as an Easter egg.

Budget: $150 million | Box office: $121 million

Academy Awards: Won Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score; also nominated for Best Sound but lost to Amazon Studios’ Sound of Metal

Eli

This is the first time I’d seen this movie.

Aesthetic: 9/10 | So much care went into this movie’s presentation. It’s not easy to accurately capture the frenzy of New York outside of live action, but they pretty much nailed it (although you can tell they got the license for exactly one sports team and wanted to get the maximum use out of it). The Great Before is kind of a blank canvas, but that’s clearly on purpose due to the film’s subject matter, so it mostly works.

Animation: 10/10 | No notes. Loved the sequence where Joe fell into The Great Before.

Story: 6/10 | I enjoyed the message but the details kinda lost me. Joe’s primary struggle of “full-time band teacher” vs. “jazz performer” never struck me as pressing given that you can still pretty easily have nighttime hobbies with a full-time job. The movie seems to want you to think Joe is the first person ever to reject death, or at least that it isn’t very common, which…no? I had it in the back of my mind for a lot of the movie that the real Bjorn Borgenson was gonna appear as a plot hurdle, The Good Place style, but that never happened. I have a lot of smaller nitpicks to make that sound like overwrought CinemaSins-esque commentary, but I dunno. They kind of add up when there are so many of them. I liked the plot more than I didn’t, and the message rang true in the end, but it’s not very clean storytelling.

Characters: 6/10 | If Coco was a love letter to Mexican culture and a landmark for Latin American representation, I’m not sure what Soul was supposed to be. It’s a majority-Black movie of which the fabric wouldn’t have changed if the characters were white; you’d just have to replace jazz with some other genre of music. 22 is supposed to be cultureless, raceless, and theoretically genderless given she hasn’t lived a human life, but the movie treats her as a white woman throughout, which makes her precocious mastery of Joe’s lifestyle as a Black man seem…off? I liked Moonwind.

Acting: 7/10 | Man, I just really don’t understand why they had to cast Tina Fey as 22. Why couldn’t it be a Black person? You want an irreverent comedienne with improv and writing experience? Go get Maya Rudolph! She was in Luca less than a year later, so I bet she would have said yes! Everyone else is good-to-great—it’s Pixar—but that one casting decision makes the rest of the movie significantly worse. It’s baffling that they still treated white as the default.

Music: 10/10 | Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are musical geniuses whose style works extraordinarily well for the setting of this movie, and they might not even be the best musicians Pixar got for this film, as Jon Batiste’s work really just steals the show. When Pixar makes movies about music, they go all out. This was a home run.

Final score: 8/10 | I think I want to like this more than I actually do, but there’s a certain air of cultural neglect here despite Pixar’s attempts to avoid it. I’m not Black, so maybe I’m just talking out of my ass, but it feels very neutered. That said, when Dorothea Williams told that fish story near the end…that stuck with me, and so will most of the messaging in this movie, no matter how convoluted it was.

Leah

Aesthetic: 10/10 | They did a great job visualizing abstract concepts, like being in “the zone”. (Showing Joe there at the beginning was a great choice.) They also did a great job capturing the aesthetics of New York.

Animation: 10/10 | I loved the animation of Joe falling into The Great Before; it gave the effect of falling through a place beyond the physical world. I also enjoyed the way the Jerrys (and Terry) were animated. Their abstract forms were a good contrast to the more concrete cartoony world, and the character designs were used creatively, especially when Terry visits New York.

Story: 5/10 | This is where the movie misses the mark for me. A few things about the storyline feel contrived or don’t stand up to scrutiny. Why the binary between having a full-time job and getting a dream job? If it’s so easy to get from The Great Beyond to The Great Before, why is Joe the first(?) to have done it? I can’t believe he’s the only one who freaked out while facing death in the year of our lord 2020. Most egregious was the way the body swap plotline took away from Joe’s agency. After watching the movie, I read this review and I think it explains why Soul misses the mark on Black representation.

Characters: 6/10 | The supporting cast was very fun and well rounded. I liked Moonwind, the Jerrys (and Terry), and Dorothea. The main characters are fine but the narrative does them a disservice.

Acting: 7/10 | This movie is worse for Tina Fey being cast as 22. Having her play a Black man for a significant portion of the movie was weird in a bad way.

Music: 10/10 | The score fit the surreal nature of the movie really well, enhancing the immersion. The jazz was an aurally gorgeous experience.

Final score: 8/10 | Soul has gorgeous visuals and music, with creative was of showing abstract ideas. The story doesn’t reach that level of artistry, dragging the overall experience down. Cool concept, mixed results in the execution.

Maddy

Aesthetic: 9/10 | Animation: 8/10 | Story: 6/10 | Characters: 7/10 | Acting: 8/10 | Music: 9/10

From December 2020 to March 2022, Pixar released three original, non-sequel movies (all to Disney+). It was a nice change of pace from the sequel fodder of the 2010s, but to me, it showed a long-needed change for Pixar. To return to what made the studio great: creative stories that could be enjoyed by everyone.

And they were really good movies! Soul, Luca, and Turning Red are the closest, in my opinion, that Pixar has recently gotten to capturing the magic of their run of films in the 2000s. Soul was the start of this three-movie run and…it’s probably the weakest. But I think it has the highest highs of modern Pixar.

When the movie isn’t dragging itself with highly questionable body-swapping nonsense or kinda monotonous scenes with 22 early on, and when it’s diving deep into its themes of life, death, and one’s self worth, it’s a truly impactful movie that will make you think about your worth and your spark (as the movie focuses on). Finding worth and peace with life. It’s such an adult movie in that respect, but the 22 aspects keep the kiddies involved. Sometimes it’s fine and other times, as mentioned, it’s really questionable (though the body-swap portion still does have some great moments!).

It’s messy, it’s profound, it’s weird, it’s…Pixar, in a sense. Using kinda out-there ideas to tell really good stories that can be enjoyed by everyone. There’s a lot holding Soul back, but it’s still a great start to the Pixar early 2020s run of fantastic movies.

Final score: 47/60 or 7/10

David

Aesthetic: Like I’ve said for the past few movies, these are almost always 9s or 10s, so it’s hard to keep these categories distinct—but in this case, I’m glad I did. The way they nail the frenzy of New York, the way they depict The Great Before and everything after death—it’s beautiful, it’s familiar, and it’s exactly what I wanted. Among the best they’ve ever managed.

Animation: Delightful.

Story: I think, not unlike others have said, there are some minor issues that kind of swap me out a bit. I feel as though a lot of the movie centers on a conflict that isn’t unique, and in that, I was a bit lost—but at the same time, I think it’s well depicted. Ups and downs. Similarly, I think that it’s a bit weird that so much is hinged on Joe’s inability to keep playing music. I mean, look, it’s hard, but I manage to make time for my hobbies outside of work. There’s no reason he can’t too.

Characters: I think everyone’s good, some are great, no one’s truly outstanding—except for, maybe, the Jerrys. They were funny as hell. I think casting 22 as they did was an impossibility in some sense; yeah, you can portray them as genderless, raceless, what have you, but to earnestly do that, you have to make them appear that way, and—like it or not—Tina Fey is specifically “white woman” the whole way through. Which leads me to…

Acting: …Tina Fey, while funny, is not a good choice here, because it turns the emotional climax of the film into a moment where a white woman pilots a Black man’s body to experience all of these feelings. If you wanted to make it a movie truly centered around the Black experience, go get Maya Rudolph. This was before Quinta Brunson broke out, I think, but she probably could have been another fantastic choice—the more I see her work, the more I like her. Outside of that, stellar as always.

Music: Bro. Broooooooooo. Holy hell. Reznor and Ross, absolutely. Yes. Please. More. Jon Batiste, though. My guy. My guuuuuuuuuuy. Up there with the Cars soundtrack.

Final score: 9/10 | Honestly? This one’s great. Minor details, yes, but god, what a joyous experience.

Final notes

More movies should make fun of the New York Knicks.

Numbers next to each film are each reviewer’s overall rating out of 10.

Next up: Luca

1. Except for when he wasn’t, but we’ll get to that later.

2. As well as some other culturally prominent Black people—mostly musicians like Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones

3. The credits make light mention of the pandemic at the very end, noting that the film was produced both at Pixar Studios in Emeryville, California, and “at our houses, at least six feet away from each other”.