Soul
Short description
Joe Gardner is a middle school music teacher and jazz enthusiast who finds himself separated from his physical body following an accident. He is transported to a realm where new souls develop their personalities and passions before being sent to Earth. To return to his own life, Joe partners with 22, a reluctant soul who has spent a vast amount of time in this training center without finding a reason to live. Together, they explore the meaning of existence and what it means to have a soul.
Directed by Pete Docter, this film followed his previous work on Monsters, Inc., Mike's New Car, Up, and Inside Out. The screenplay was written by Docter alongside Kemp Powers and Mike Jones, with Dana Murray serving as producer. The voice cast features Jamie Foxx as Joe, Tina Fey as 22, and Graham Norton as Moonwind, supported by Rachel House, Alice Braga, and Richard Ayoade.
Produced by Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures, the movie had a budget of 150 million USD and earned 122 million USD at the worldwide box office. It has been well received by both viewers and professionals. On IMDb, it holds a rating of 8/10 from 445,000 votes, while on TMDB, it has a rating of 8.1/10 from 11,746 votes. Film critics provided a slightly higher rating of 8.3/10 based on 361 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the initial script version, the main character was a soul named 22, not Joe.
- The prototype for the atelier owned by Joe's mother was Advanced European Tailoring in Berkeley, California. While working on the film, the animators spent a lot of time there, making sketches and notes.
- Joe Gardner was initially intended to be white. He would have been an animation enthusiast. Later, he was made a rock star, and then a Black jazz enthusiast.
- The character's name, 22, is a reference to the expression “Catch-22” (this is a legal, administrative, social, or logical paradox consisting of the fact that attempting to comply with a certain rule itself means violating that rule; an individual falling under such norms cannot behave rationally). In this situation, the only way to find an answer to the question of whether life is worth living is to live it.
- Initially, Kemp Powers joined the project as a screenwriter with a 12-week contract, but it was later extended. Over time, he became one of the film's directors, making him the first African-American director at Pixar.
- The subway train number is 2319. The same number appears in the 2001 animated film 'Monsters, Inc.' when a human sock enters the monster world.
- Joe's story—about striving with all one's might to achieve a single life goal, only to not know what to do next once it is reached—is based on a personal crisis experienced by director and writer Pete Docter. This crisis followed the success of the film 'Inside Out' (2015), when Docter struggled to determine if there were any peaks left to climb.
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