5 Curiosities About Soul: Pixar's New Hit

This Christmas came to Disney +, after a long wait, the movie Soul. The new Pixar movie starring Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey, with Peter Docter as director.

As expected, the film quickly became a global success and managed to entertain and excite people of all ages.

Soul tells the story of Joe Gardner, a New York high school music teacher who loves jazz and who, no matter what time goes by, has a dream of becoming a professional jazz player.

However, when he gets a great opportunity to do so, he falls into a sewer and dies, or something like that. And it is that his soul resists going to the "Great After" and escapes to "The Great Before", a place where souls are prepared to find their life purposes before reaching Earth.

It is there where he meets 22, a young, somewhat nihilistic, and rebellious spirit that even the best teachers have not managed to educate. Joe ends up becoming a mentor, helping 22 achieve his earthly life. While he is sent back into his body, giving him a second chance to live to the fullest.

Curiosities of the new Pixar movie, Soul

1. The importance of music

This Pixar film has music as a secondary element, so the director chose to join the team to a multi-award-winning duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who won an Oscar for the soundtrack of David Fincher's film, The Social Network in 2011. They also received a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 2013 for the film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

2. Change of protagonists

Originally, the protagonist of the story was going to be 22 (Tina Fey) and the movie was going to tell the story of her only in the world of the Soul since she did not like life on Earth. But eventually, they decided it was a better idea for Soul to star Joe (Jamie Foxx) and to be in charge of showing him the good things about life on Earth.

3. 22's Mentors

The labels that appear on the wall of 22 with the names of their former mentors belong to personalities who have passed away in real life such as Aretha Franklin, Steve Jobs, Prince, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King, and Joe Ranft, the former voice actor of Pixar.

4. Long time

In the movie, 22 receives its name because it is the number that corresponds to it since its creation, that is, it was the 22nd soul created in history. As a reference to know how much time passed, the soul that was named before her was in the 100 billion.

5. Remote work

At the end of the film, in the credits scene, a new phrase can be seen next to the usual text "Made by Pixar": "And in houses at least six feet apart in the Bay Area". This is a reference to all the producers, animators, and editors who worked remotely from their homes to finish the film amid the coronavirus pandemic.

6. Making history

Joe Garner, played by Jamie Foxx, is the first black male lead in Pixar movie history.

7. Original Ending

In the original script by Pete Doctrery Kemp Powers, the protagonist's fate ended in a much more depressing way. This was confessed by the director in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.

Pete revealed that, initially, Joe was not going to have a second chance at life.

There was a lot of back-and-forth debate, but I think the more we watched him live his life and think about his mother, Libba, and all of those factors, it felt like the right ending: that he was able to enjoy his life the way that he wanted it because he had learned so much throughout the film

To this, Kemp Powers added that the chosen ending generated "more debate than any other element in the film".

He basically ends up as a mentor in the 'You Seminar.' He stayed in the Further Back and ended up being the best mentor of all time, introducing new ideas to the seminar. It revolutionized it a bit. It was very nice and a lot of fun, and it pissed off some people. But you know, you only learn if you try. It didn't work, but it was a funny exploration process

He explained that as the film was being made, they changed their minds because, if there are several scenes where the protagonist sees his life and realizes that "I did not live this correctly," it did not seem appropriate not to give it a chance.

You can't teach this guy to enjoy his life and then steal that from him

In fact, there were at least three possible scenarios for the ending: Joe does stay dead; the chosen one: Joe gets a second chance; and we can see Joe's life a year later.

Therefore, the final shot of the film shows Joe's soul returning to his body, taking a deep breath, and starting a new life.

On the other hand, he indicated that before starting production, the idea was that 22 would be the protagonist, as mentioned in point 2.

The soundtrack of the film is undoubtedly wonderful. We cannot appreciate it as we should because of the closing of the cinemas. But the soundtrack is a combination of talents between Trent Reznor (lead singer of Nine Inch Nails), Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste, incredible.

While Reznor and Ross compose the music of the "afterlife," Baptiste takes the lead on earth and jazz.

Soul dares to touch noble ideas like life after death and the things that make life worth living.

It is a story that faithfully depicts an urban environment, with its sounds and smells (from the desperate horns of cars to the scent of hot pizza), but also with moments of almost spiritual beauty, like when the sunlight shines and sneak between leaves and buildings.

The movie is not perfect. It is far from perfect. But it almost perfectly combines skills, feelings and, motivation, becoming a movie that everyone should see, since it is not a movie only for the little ones, it is a movie that all the public can enjoy and feel.