Pixar has released a trailer for their next film, Soul.
They were probably trying to time its release to piggyback off the success of their expected hit Onward last weekend. But disappointing box office results killed any possible momentum they were hoping for.
Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. But one small misstep takes him from the streets of New York City to The Great Before – a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks and interests before they go to Earth.
Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. As Joe desperately tries to show 22 what’s great about living, he may just discover the answers to some of life’s most important questions.
Leading the voice cast are Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey. Pete Doctor of Inside Out and Up fame is the director.
But perhaps the most interesting name behind Soul is that of Trent Reznor. That’s right, even though the film focuses on the world of jazz music, Pixar hired the guy from Nine Inch Nails to compose the soundtrack.
If you told me 20 years ago that the guy who wrote “Head Like A Hole” was working to compose music for Disney I would have laughed in your face, but yet here we are.
It’s a Pixar movie, so of course it seems like it’s worth a look when it’s released even though the plot seems kind of obvious and you can tell how everything is going to play out.
The trailer appears to make it a point to try and check all the necessary boxes that are needed socially when making anything now ’cause I’m told that’s what everyone is crying for.
This is Pixar’s first film in which the main character is black. They were expecting to be celebrated for it, but instead there is a backlash coming at them from the internet.
It seems that after seeing the trailer a number of people are worried about Jamie Foxx’s character because he is black, but at one point he transforms into a different body, one in which he is not easily identifiable as African-American.
This is a common thing in Disney cartoons, someone of color inhabiting a different body in order to hide their race. It also happened in The Princess and The Frog. The worry is that it undermines and weakens the impact of having a person of color in your main role.
Pixar: Elves, fish, cars, monsters, dinosaurs, robots, rats, bugs, white people, and even whiter people.
Brown people: …
Pixar: Sorry. Yeah, brown people for the first 10 minutes then magic happens and they're not brown anymore.
Brown people: Rats in a kitchen, tho. pic.twitter.com/NwjvulO3sR— Marc Bernardin (@marcbernardin) March 12, 2020
listen I LOVE. Princess and the Frog. Tiana changed my entire perception of myself. But with that pigeon spy movie and Soul coming out… we all need to sit down and talk about why animators constantly feel the need to take black animated characters out of their bodies.
— k; (@human_espresso) December 24, 2019
funny how brother bear, princess and the frog, coco, and pixar’s new movie soul all include people of color turning into something else for the majority of the movie😐
— angel misses macdennis (@macdennies) March 8, 2020
This isn’t the first time Pixar have been accused of being tone deaf in regards to race. The studio though successful, has been criticized in the past for having a staff which very few dark faces exist.
Soul hits theaters June 19.
