Up vs. Soul: What Theme is Driving Your Writing?
UP vs. SOUL: What Theme is Driving Your Writing? Today we’re going to be looking at Soul by Pete Docter, Mike Jones and Kemp Powers. Soul is a fascinating movie, especially if we think of it in terms of the whole Pixar library, because the truth is Pete Docter has already made this film. Pete Docter, many years ago, made a film called Up. In today’s podcast, we’re going to analyze the scripts for Soul and Up, exploring how the two screenplays explore the exact same theme and structure through a different plot. Along the way, we’ll learn some powerful lessons about how theme can drive your writing. So, what’s the theme of Soul? The theme that Pete Docter is still hammering away at so many years later in Soul is the idea that by getting too attached to what we perceive as our life’s purpose, we can become lost souls. By becoming so obsessed with what we’re supposed to be doing, we actually end up missing life. In Up, the way that that problem gets created is through a man who is madly in love with his wife. She dies young. And he spends the rest of his life trying to preserve her memory, trying to get to this place called Paradise Falls, which he believes is his destiny. In a typically Pixar-magical way, in search of that destiny, he flies his house to Paradise Falls using balloons and ends up on the wrong side of the falls. Unfortunately, he has a stowaway passenger that he was really hoping not to bring along on the journey, this little kid named Russell, who is desperate for a father. To understand why that little stowaway is there, we have to look at the beginning of Up. There’s a beautiful 10 minutes of silent filmmaking at the beginning of Up that is pretty much a perfect short film. In the short film, Carl meets the love of his life, Ellie, and they dream of having a child together. And she can’t have the child. They build a life together and they get consumed by normal life obstacles, and they never make it to Paradise Falls before she dies. He gets obsessed with preserving what’s left of his destiny with Ellie, the things from their past and the things that they were supposed to have before she was taken from him. Having arrived at “the wrong side of the falls,” the house becomes a visual metaphor, literally tethered to him by a garden hose, as he drags it behind him to Paradise Falls. It’s like the albatross around his neck, and he’s so obsessed with getting that house to where it’s “supposed to be” that he almost misses the real destiny that’s right in front of him: this little boy who can become the son that he always wished for, that he always wanted with Ellie. So, that’s the structure of Up. By the end of the film, Carl finally lets go of the house, when he realizes that the things that mattered most to him with Ellie were not the big things that they dreamed of. The everyday little things in his life with Ellie was the real adventure. Like many writers, despite having made an absolutely perfect movie, Pete Docter is still not done with that theme. 12 years later, he’s still wrestling with it in a different form, this time in a movie called Soul. This is something that happens to all of us. Some themes will work themselves out over the course of a single script and other themes we have to look at from one angle after another. And it makes sense, because Pete Docter is one of the great producer-director-writers in history. He’s behind some of the greatest Pixar films, and always in collaboration with other brilliant artists (in the case of Soul with writers like Kent Powers and Mike Jones). Being that big head honcho and making those big things and doing these great things, it’s only natural to feel pressure between being the powerful creative force who you’re supposed to be– who you have the talent and the means to be...