Elemental: Director Peter Sohn Explains How His Parents' Immigration Story and the Periodic Table Inspired New Pixar Film

Pixar Animation Studios' latest feature, Elemental, is now in theaters, taking moviegoers to Element City, a wondrous place where the various elements live and work together. It's the backdrop for a story of two young elements — the short-tempered fire person Ember (Leah Lewis) and the more go-with-the-flow water person Wade who begin to discover that while all the elements are different, they have a lot in common as well. It is, in many respects, an immigration story, and it turns out that much of director Peter Sohn's own family's immigrant story — as well as the periodic table — is a major part of the film and Element City's inspiration.

ComicBook.com was in attendance at a press day in March where Sohn explained who the neighborhoods with their different cultures and languages all influenced Elemental — and how when he started thinking about them, reminded him of a periodic table of elements.

"This is my dad's first grocery store…" Sohn said, displaying a photo of his father and his story. "I have so many memories of growing up in this shop. All my dad's customers came from everywhere. Like my parents, they left their homes to come to a new land and they all were mixing into a beautiful little neighborhood with their cultures and their languages. So, from that, it came to this, so the idea of beautiful little neighborhoods. When I saw the periodic table of elements, when I was a kid, all I thought about what that these were apartment complexes and that they all lived next to each other. Platinum lives next to gold but be careful of mercury because they have toxic relationships or whatever … Stories of what these elements were doing in their apartments just mixing around in my head."

But while there are personal aspects the film from his own experiences as the child of Korean immigrants, Sohn said that the film was careful to ensure that they created a culture was specific for the characters within the rich and expansive world and not just from any one place in the real world.

"When I first started pitching it, there were things of my own life that I would make fun of in terms of like, oh, I love spicy food. Wouldn't it be funny if Fire food was really spicy, that kind of thing," Sohn. "Once people started asking, 'Oh, are they Asian?' It was like, no, they're not meant to be Asian. Or 'is Air meant to be this culture?' Quickly I realized that no, these have to be universal. My biggest goal was to try to take the element itself and pull from there to make the culture."

Elemental Also Developed Their Own Language for the Film: Firish

"Yeah, there is," Sohn said when asked if there's a guide to the fire language. "In the Art Of book, they have a little breakdown of the language, but it really started off in a silly way. I remember pitching to the gang about if the parents were fighting next door, it should sound like a fireplace, like a roaring fireplace, like the pops and crackles of that. And then we actually tried sound effects over the language, and it didn't work. But then David Peterson and the language team took just the vocal things that we can do that sounded like fire, and then built the language from there." 

Producer Denise Ream added, "Originally, we were going to have a little bit more of the Firish in the movie. And then as things happen, it just was not as big of a part as originally, we thought. But yeah, we have a whole alphabet and everything. One of my favorite anecdotes is I went to UC Berkeley, so we have 'Go Bears' in Firish." 

Elemental Also Has Some Major Director Influences

"The visuals were definitely a combo of Gordon Willis and how he would shoot the cities between The Godfather and Manhattan and those movies, for sure. There was that. There was [Jean-Pierre] Jeunet. There's a lot of French love in this, for sure, in terms of how they made cities like postcards in some of their movies," Sohn explained. 

Ream added, "We watched so many movies for reference, for culture clash. That was also a big part of it. Romantic comedies, we watched. Sohn continued, "Yeah. There is a director, though, that I don't talk about a lot, but it was Norman Jewison. He did Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck." Ream explained, "Oh, both of us, that's one of our favorite movies individually." 

Elemental is in theaters now.