https://ew.com/movies/2019/08/24/disney-pixar-soul-cast-jamie-foxx-tina-fey/

he cast of Pixar’s next next film is overflowing with its very title.

Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey will lead the voice cast for Pixar’s upcoming animated feature Soul, an original film helmed by Pixar staple (and newly minted chief creative officer) Pete Docter, who previously directed Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out for the studio.

Daveed Diggs, Phylicia Rashad, and Questlove will also lend their voices to Soul, in an announcement made by Docter, producer Dana Murray, co-director and writer Ken Powers, and writer Mike Jones at Disney’s biennial fan expo D23 on Saturday.

Soul aims to crack open the origins of our passions, dreams, and interests that make us all human, according to Docter. “I’m directing a film that asks the ultimate question that we’ve all thought about at one time or another: Why am I here? Where did I come from? And what am I here for?” Docter revealed. “But who would make a cartoon about that? Metaphysics? We’re calling it Soul.”

Soul tells the story of an unsatisfied middle school band teacher named Joe Gardner (Foxx) who believes his purpose in life is to play jazz — but life keeps getting in the way of him fulfilling that purpose. Finally, he gets the job of a lifetime, only to accidentally die (or, just, die) and find himself at the You Seminar, a celestial workshop for souls to be created and given personality traits before they move on to real humans. While Joe is at the You Seminar, he meets a new soul nicknamed 22 (Fey) who has such a loathing for humans, she’s avoided Earth altogether. However, Joe and 22 eventually work together to find a way to get Joe back to Earth, traveling along the cosmic realms along the way. “Joe’s adventure will make him think again about what it truly means to have soul,” said Docter.

Questlove will play a character named Curly, the drummer in Joe’s band; Rashad will play Joe’s mother; and Diggs will play Paul, Joe’s neighborhood nemesis.

Like Coco, Soul is a musical movie, if not exactly a movie musical. Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross are all working on the music, with Batiste penning original jazz for the film and Reznor and Ross composing an original score that traverses the realms.

“I’m so excited to be onstage with all these people and to be a part of this movie,” Fey said from the dais after receiving a standing ovation from the crowd. “Wait ’til you hear Jamie Foxx in this movie, guys. It’s really good. I think you’re going to like it. I think it’s real emotional. But also like, there’s nothing better than a Pixar movie, right?”

Soul was first announced earlier this summer accompanied by this cryptic tease of its scope: “…a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions.”

Soul will mark the fourth feature Docter has directed for Pixar, and the first he’s directed since taking on his new role at the animation studio. Soul will arrive in theaters on June 19, 2020, just a few months after Pixar’s March 2020 release, Onward, another original tearjerker (from Monsters University director Dan Scanlon) which was first announced at D23 two years ago.

I had to make myself watch "Up", which was kind of depressing from the beginning but c'mon, only anime makes good tearjerkers with a decent plot, in the U.S. cartoon movies are aimed at kids, so they will try their hardest to make this too dark probably by leaving out a lot of plot holes.

A movie about the afterlife, back in the day Hollywood use to do this with lighthearted comedy such as "Heaven Can't Wait (a personal favorite of mines)", "Here Comes Mr. Jordan", "The Devil & Max Devlin", "Oh Heavenly Dog", etc. but was Coco really that good, I didn't think it was that good at all, and Monsters Inc./Monsters University was terrible to me; so with that said I know I'm not going to like this "Soul" movie at all, especially it it has a ton of "singing montages" which I've always hated at Disney movies.

The romcom aspect makes the concept itself more like comfort food than a thinker even though it's pretty intensely thorough in its vision of an afterlife. It's ultimately pretty tropey in its overall construction but moment to moment it's always a really refreshing vibe for me. Plus it's Meryl at her most manic-pixie, an archetype I hate to admit I fall for over and over again in movies.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com

Soul | Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOsLIiBStEs

This and Onward are both weird.

I think they're leaning a bit too much on making kids movies that resonate with parents. It's like they think the defining emotional journey of childhood is learning to cope with death. It's part of it, for some, but they're kind of fixated on it. I wonder if the creators are projecting on their own stage in life as they deal with being a new parent, elderly parents and what not.

i feel like those Don Bluth movies were super dark and also heavily relied on those sorts of themes. i guess the folks who are writing and animating for Pixar today also grew up Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, etc.

Soul cleverly inverts so many tropes and invokes so many movies I love that...

I bristle at the idea this is a children's movie kids won't love, because even if kids won't love this movie I don't think this is supposed to be that. This is Pixar doing all their usual manipulative (a word I want to use only to exploit it) tricks while making a firmly adult movie. This is Studio Ghibli reminding us that we're all in need of a little imagination sometimes, supremely talented artists reminding us that the best thing about a waking life are the dreams we have when we drift across the planes.

There's a heartwarming vision of transhumanism here - as well as more relatable transgednerism - as well as a stark refutation of nihilism, agnosticism and in many ways the opposites of all that. Soul's message traffics in unspoken idioms and triumphs over simpler philosophical understandings of the human struggle to make the argument humanity isn't constantly struggling for purpose or meaning, but a more generic love for new experiences. It's one thing to play the keys, another entirely to realize the keys will keep thudding long after you're gone.

The movie is beautiful, from its depiction of the afterlife and its bettors (and I do mean bettors) to the shadowy, lively state of its real world. At every moment one gets the impression director Pete Docter only settled on animation because the humor and imagery would have fallen slightly flat in an impressionistic piece featuring real bodies. So to might the message have been dulled by attempting to portray life and death as separate planes of animation in the true sense, of bodies interacting and experiencing.

One of my constant worries is death, and therefore one of my favorite genre of movies has always been an explanation thereof; aside from Tom Cruise fighting Henry Cavill aboard dueling helicopters, it's the one physical reality we can't truly understand. Soul wants to feel good about that, but understand we ultimately must feel bad - after all, this is just another imagined space our minds have created to soothe the eldering of all of us. If the movie does devolve into tropiness, it's for a purpose - that is all life ultimately is, and our growing rejection of tropes is indicative of our desire to feel young, to be a youth, again and again.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

It fell flat to me. My attention kept drifting. I didn't care for 22 much at all. Or the way (I interpreted) Joe sacrificed himself for her.

Might give it a rewatch but....not great :/

They spent to much time «up there» imo, would love it way more if it was more of a coming of age story with Joe learning stuff about «soul» while touring and playing music etc along the way

It has merit, it just didn't hold my attention