This week we enter the great beyond...just kidding we don't go there at all and neither do these characters. I guess Disney didn't want to speculate on life after death. So instead we go to the BEFORE and learn about where souls come from and what gives us our spark. Does this movie make us excited about life or frustrated about the notes played? Find out now!
Storyline :Joe is a middle-school band teacher whose life hasn't quite gone the way he expected. His true passion is jazz and he's good. But when he travels to another realm to help someone find their passion, he soon discovers what it means to have soul.
Directors: Pete Docter and Kemp Powers
Writers: Pete Docter, Kemp Powers and Mike Jones
Stars: Jaime Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, and Rachel House
Awards: 123 Wins & 93 Nominations
Film Budget: $150,000,000
Gross Worldwide: $121,031,304
For a movie largely centered around music we honestly weren't too impressed by this one's soundtrack. Sad.
Everybody has a soul. Joe Gardner is about to find his.
Pixar chose to portray the film's main character as a musician, because they wanted a "profession the audience could root for," and settled for a musician after trying for a scientist, which "[didn't feel] so naturally pure as a musician's life." Pete Docter described Soul as "an exploration of: Where should your focus be? What are the things that, at the end of the day, are really going to be the important things that you look back on and go, 'I spent a worthy amount of my limited time on Earth worrying or focused on that'?"
In an initial draft of the story, 22 was the main character rather than Joe. 22 had a strong dislike for Earth, and the film took place entirely in the soul world. Joe was created to help show her why Earth is worth living in.
(at around 20 mins) The first soul assigned is number '108,210,121,415.' This lines up with the current (as of release) estimate from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), which estimates that more than 108 billion humans have existed on earth.
Animators used footage of several music performers, including jazz composer Jon Batiste, performing as reference for the film's musical sequences. By capturing MIDI data from the sessions, animators were able to retrace the exact key being played on the piano with each note and create the performances authentically.
Soul was initially released on Disney+ due to the pandemic and remains there for your enjoyment.