When Pixar Feels Like a Love Letter: Watching “Elemental”

The theme of love is a recurring point that is seen in almost every Pixar movie. Whether that be familial love like Marlin and Nemo in Finding Nemo, or a platonic love between Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan in Monsters University, love exists in every single movie Pixar has created. As someone who grew up watching Disney and Pixar movies, I fell in love with the different characters throughout the years; from Lightning McQueen from Cars to Mama Imelda from Coco, there were many characters to love. 

I first heard of Elemental back when I still used to work as a boba barista at a food court. The colorful advertisements on the big screen of a humanoid fire character alongside a water character drew attention to my eyes, but I never thought any more of it since Pixar was releasing more and more animated movies that weren’t doing well at the box office. I chalked it up to another animated movie that didn’t have anything to do with me, but little did I know how much that movie would mean to me in a couple of years. 

Elemental is a movie that is set in an elemental world, where people are made up of four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. The story follows Ember, who is a young woman of fire, and Wade, who is a young man of water, in their unlikely journey and relationship in a world that marginalizes fire elements. This movie is an analogy of the structure of immigrant families, the struggle of cultural understanding, and the hardships that come with love. 

Essentially, Elemental is a love letter to the people who fall in love with someone outside of their culture. 

Growing up, I had my own version of what ‘love’ and ‘romance’ looked like to me. It was loud, unfiltered, and public. For me, romance was the ‘I love you’s’, big flower bouquets, and kisses exchanged in the streets, by the steps of the stairs, or secretly behind a space where two people shouldn’t have been. As a young girl, I always saw it as a big, grand gesture. 

And though my perception of love as a young girl was silly, I never realized how love can come in many different shapes and forms, especially a love that challenges you, calms you, and makes you feel safe. 

As the daughter of two immigrant parents, I have always worked hard. To be blessed with a good life and education, it was just the right thing to do to pay them back with my successes. To give them a good life as they gave me. I worked hard to get good grades, and in turn, pay my parents back for the life that they blessed me with. This mentality had been welded into my system as a young girl, and my whole life, I never really thought about what I wanted to do for myself. It was always the ideology of “work hard first, then everything else can come after,” and I never really allowed myself to stray far from that idea. 

With that kind of ideology, I never really took relationships too seriously. I was young, I could still make mistakes, right? I never thought about having the time for love because I was always content with my family and friends. But the yearning and longing for someone who would love me the way I wanted to be loved, it was always there. I wanted someone to love me for all of me—for all the crazy, overdramatic, and emotional girl I was. I was too afraid of being too much. That once someone finally knew the reality of who I really was, they would leave. And I knew I would feel guilty, ashamed, and heartbroken. For not just giving myself to get hurt once more, but knowing that I could’ve focused all that time chasing someone who never wanted me to do something more useful.

That’s why Ember from Elemental resonated with me so much when I rewatched the film again in my free time. I saw a reflection of myself in her: the hardworking daughter with something to prove to the world. 

In Elemental, when Ember first meets Wade, it’s an immediate notice that they don’t match at all. She’s literally fire, a hard, stuck-up, ‘takes-nobody’s-shit’ kind of woman. Wade, on the other hand, was someone who was level-headed, calm, and a negotiator. Their relationship throughout the movie starts out rocky, but after a while, it blooms into something gentle, understanding, and culturally different. Their relationship breaks the boundaries of many different barriers.

Which was a love just like mine.

Like Wade and Ember, my boyfriend and I come from two very different cultural backgrounds. So when I first met him, I was confused. There wasn’t a sudden flip in my body that was “fall in love at first sight” like a Disney princess. I fought against my feelings at first. I had really, and I mean really, tried to weird him out. With my addiction to fanfiction and hyperactive ‘never-shutting-up’ personality, I was sure that I would be ‘too much’ for him. 

And even after months of us getting to know each other, going on multiple dates, and him witnessing the real, true me, I was sure he wasn’t going to commit his time to someone like me. I was stubborn…and I still very much so am. Knowing him and falling in love with him has not changed who I am and what I believe in, but it did make me soft. I was vulnerable around him, and not the kind of vulnerability that my best friend or big brother would see; it was the kind of vulnerability that I would have never talked about, never would want to admit to. 

And that’s why Elemental felt so personal to me.

In the movie, Wade never, not once in the film, had he ever asked Ember to make herself smaller. He doesn’t try to extinguish her prominent flame. Instead, he stands beside her. He stands in front of her, in the way of, ‘I see you, and I won’t leave you.’ In a world that directed Ember to be practical, dutiful, and self-sacrificial for her family, Wade gave her permission to want and desire something for herself. 

Ember falling in love with Wade didn’t make her any less of a daughter to her immigrant parents. It didn’t make her ungrateful. It didn’t erase her culture or her beliefs. It simply expanded the nature and elements of life around her. 

That. That is what falling in love felt like.

For so long, I believed love was this big, prominent gesture. And though it is, it didn’t always need to be dramatic and loud and cinematic. It was someone listening to my rambling thoughts about fictional characters at 2 a.m. It was someone learning the weight of my family’s expectations and not running from it. It was someone meeting my intensity with steadiness, not fear.

Like Ember, I thought I had to carry everything on my own. My family’s sacrifices. My future. My responsibility. But love, that kind of love, didn’t distract me from my goals. It reminded me that I am allowed to have dreams outside of obligation. That I can be both a devoted daughter and a woman choosing her own life.

Wade and Ember’s relationship isn’t grand in the way I imagined love to be as a child. It’s not about dramatic rescues or sweeping declarations. It’s about understanding. It’s about cultural differences that don’t divide, but teach. It’s about someone holding your hand when the world feels too hot or too overwhelming, and choosing each other anyway.

Watching Elemental felt like watching a love letter unfold on screen. Not just to interracial or intercultural couples, but to the children of immigrants who feel torn between duty and desire. To the girls who think they are “too much.” To the ones who burn brightly and are afraid someone will get too close.

In the end, Ember doesn’t extinguish herself for love. She learns how to exist beside it.

And maybe that’s what this movie taught me: love isn’t about changing who you are so someone else can stay. It’s about finding the person who can stand in your blaze and still call it warmth.

Like water and fire, we weren’t supposed to make sense.

But that’s okay.

Love wins anyway.