Disney Pixar's Soul Is Officially Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes

Disney Pixar's Soul is one of the newest films released, and it's already one of the most popular [...]

By Adam Barnhardt

Disney Pixar's Soul is one of the newest films released, and it's already one of the most popular movies of the year. Released on Christmas Day, the acclaimed Pixar hit has official got its Certified Fresh badge on Rotten Tomatoes after it has held onto its near-perfect Tomatometer score throughout the weekend. Though the film originally debuted with a rare perfect score, five "Rotten" ratings have since been filed to reduce the movie to its current near-perfect 97-percent Tomatometer score.

That's well within range for the site's coveted Certified Fresh badge, which Rotten Tomatoes handed down Sunday afternoon.

The feature has made a bit of history as it's Pixar's first project featuring a Black character in a lead role.

"Joe's character, it's interesting because, again, it was all very organic, and it was really... I feel like a broken record because I've been saying this a lot in that people can be afraid of cultural specificity. And I think that that's actually the key to uncovering these universal themes that we can all relate to," Soul co-director and writer Kemp Powers recently told ComicBook.com. "I think that one of the things we've been able to do on this film that I'm the most proud of is actually not shy away from the fact that Joe and his culture, while American, are also Black. You saw in the footage that you saw, there's a flashback where Joe says, 'Dad, I don't like jazz.' And his father corrects him and says, 'Black improvisational music. It's one of our big contributors to the culture of this country.'"

"That, to me, is a very potent, important thing to actually acknowledge, the specificity of the Black contribution to American culture in a very, very subtle small way that might go right over a little kid's head," Powers continued. "But for some little kids, it's going to be really, really important. It's going to say that you are a part of this country. You are a part of this thing that we have today. So I think the fact that when they decided it was going to be a jazz musician, that it became important that it be a Black jazz musician, is key because that allows us to lean into the Black, the very African-American contributions to not just jazz music, but music in general."

Soul is now streaming on Disney+. If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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