There seems to be a great deal of delight taking place that Pixar’s Elementals bombed at the box office.
Summit: A new Disney Pixar movie that features a non-binary character using they/them pronouns has completely flopped at the box office.
The production titled Elemental, which also features characters ‘tackling’ racism and xenophobia, ranks as one of the lowest box office debuts for a Pixar movie ever.
They spent around $200 million making it. It opened with a $29.5 million recoup.
You do the math(s).
Don’t get me wrong. I predicted this would perform poorly and didn’t want it to succeed. This movie was celebrated in the media for tackling racism, xenophobia, and for promoting a non-binary character with a they/them pronoun thing going on.
Hey, how about telling a good story with characters that feel real? Remember the opening love story in Pixar’s Up? It was beautiful.
It’s horrifying to me that writers, animators, and directors capable of such beauty are being forced to create political indoctrination films rather than telling beautiful stories. Where there could be grace, beauty, and love we instead get lectures, politics, and twitter level anti-patriarchy posturing.
It’s a cultural tragedy. So that’s what got me down about our culture. We’re still capable of greatness but we instead opt for deconstruction of our culture, rather than building something, creating something.
I wish it were different. I wish we still had a culture that believed in grace and faith. We no longer believe in objective truth. It’s your truths and my truths. Everything is a battle for superiority. My truth must win out over your truth because your truth is illegitimate so every opportunity must be taken, including using movies to win.
So, the battle wages on. Our stories become indoctrination. Our entertainment becomes just another front of the culture war. This is where we are.
