Pixar's newest release, Toy Story 4 - the final installment of one of the production company's most beloved franchises. The film presents a fresh perspective on what it means to have a purpose in life and just how restricting that idea can sometimes be.
Soul follows the life - or rather, afterlife - of Joe Gardner, a struggling musician who works a day job as a middle school band teacher. After getting offered the gig of a lifetime with jazz saxophonist Dorothea Williams, Joe accidentally falls down a manhole and ends up in the Great Beyond. Fleeing from his impending death, Joe (played by Jamie Foxx) ends up in the Great Before, where he's assigned as a mentor to 22 - a new soul who's unenthusiastic about almost everything. The two end up making their way to Earth, but their souls have been mismatched; 22 ends up in Joe's body while Joe ends up in the body of a therapy cat. As they race against time to get Joe back in his own body, 22 discovers the many nuances and wonders of life on Earth along the way.
What's keeping 22 from becoming a fully formed soul is the fact that she still hasn't found her spark. Evidently, 22 (voiced by actor-producer-writer Tina Fey) has tried everything, and nothing has really stuck. In Soul, a spark is, in theory, what a soul is deeply ionate about. To Joe, his own spark is obviously the piano, jazz, and all things related to music. However, the entire premise of Soul is Joe's critical mistake of conflating a spark for a purpose in life. When he asks one of the Jerry counselors in the Great Before what 22's purpose ended up being, the counselor responds: "We don't assign purposes here... A spark isn't a soul's purpose. Oh, you mentors and your ions! Your purposes. Your meanings of life. So basic."
The plot in Soul shows just how toxic it can be to conflate a ion for a life's purpose. Toy Story 4 similarly explores this theme, albeit from an inanimate object's perspective, in diving into Woody's existential crisis that occurs when he discovers that he's no longer a top toy. Both films call into question the real meaning of the word "purpose" and push viewers to reimagine a world in which what you believe you were "made to do" isn't the only thing that inspires you, rather, simply the joy of being alive is the spark.
Soul takes this idea a step further by showing exactly what can happen if a spark becomes a purpose, adding to the message in Toy Story 4. Joe and 22 end up stumbling into "The Zone," a place where souls still tethered to their bodies transcend to another astral plane while indulging in their ions. There, they encounter terrifying, golem-like creatures who aimlessly roam the planes of "The Zone." These are lost souls, those who have become so obsessed with finding their sparks that they've lost touch with what makes life worth living. Here, Soul not only makes it clear that life is defined by so much more than a spark; the movie also suggests that too much focus on one's spark to the exclusion of all else is actually the path towards losing sight of what's actually important in life.
Pixar's Soul takes an already important message expressed in Toy Story 4 and makes it even stronger. It goes a step beyond just understanding the lesson and actually shows what can happen if a ion becomes an obsession. More importantly, Soul shows that life is still worth beautiful and worthwhile even if one has no great talent or ion for a skill; even without, a person still has value and worth.
