Soul

Vibe

Watch for

• Joe’s initial pursuit of his musical dream, establishing the film’s central tension around purpose.
• The dynamic between Joe and 22, which drives the film’s exploration of meaning and perspective.
• The depiction of the Great Before and its abstract design, contrasting with the grounded reality of New York City.
• The quiet moments of everyday life, where the film’s message about appreciating simple experiences comes into focus.

Production notes

Soul was Pete Docter's fourth feature as director, after Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out — and his first as Pixar's Chief Creative Officer, a role he had assumed after John Lasseter's 2018 departure. Co-director Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami) became Pixar's first Black director. The film required extensive cultural consultation on Black American jazz culture and the New York City music scene; Pixar engaged a team of cultural advisors including jazz pianist Jon Batiste, who composed the earthbound jazz score and provided Joe's piano performances on screen. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scored the abstract 'Great Before' sequences. Jamie Foxx voiced Joe Gardner, Pixar's first Black lead protagonist; Tina Fey played 22, with supporting voices from Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs, Questlove, and Angela Bassett. The film was released directly to Disney+ in December 2020 due to COVID-19 theatrical closures. Production cost approximately $150 million.

Trivia

• Jon Batiste — bandleader of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — composed the earthbound jazz portions of the score and provided Joe Gardner's on-screen piano performances; he won an Academy Award for the score (alongside Reznor and Ross), making it one of the most distinguished Pixar soundtracks ever assembled.
• Kemp Powers became Pixar's first Black director with Soul; he had been brought in to ensure cultural authenticity in the depiction of Black American life and music, and was elevated from cultural consultant to co-director during production.
• Soul was Pixar's first feature with a Black lead protagonist — Jamie Foxx as Joe Gardner — and the studio's most extensive consultative process around Black cultural representation; the team consulted with jazz musicians, barbers, and community members across New York City.
• Due to COVID-19 theatrical closures, Soul was released directly to Disney+ on December 25, 2020, becoming the first Pixar feature in studio history to skip a theatrical release entirely; the film was made available free to Disney+ subscribers without an additional Premier Access fee.
• The 'Great Before' sequences featuring abstract spirit characters were scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), making the film one of the rare cases of two completely separate composing teams creating distinct musical universes for the earthly and spiritual realms.

Legacy

Soul represents Pixar's most spiritually and philosophically ambitious film — a meditation on purpose, passion, and what makes a life worth living, from the studio's most metaphysically inclined director. It won two Academy Awards (Best Animated Feature, Best Original Score) and a third nomination for Best Sound. The Disney+ premiere on Christmas Day 2020 gave it an enormous initial household audience, but the lack of theatrical release left its commercial performance impossible to compare against earlier Pixar releases. Critically, Soul received the strongest reviews of any Pixar film in years; many critics and writers treated it as a major cinematic achievement and as Pete Docter's most personal film. The film's central thesis — that purpose isn't a single passion to discover but the experience of living itself — became one of the most-discussed messages in any Pixar release. Soul's depiction of Black American life and Black American jazz remains one of mainstream animation's most respectful and detailed; its place in conversations about representation in film extends well beyond the animation industry.