Most blockbusters are waiting out the pandemic, moving further and further back on the theatrical release schedule, as if to avoid what happened to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (at least in America). But Disney has been embracing streaming. Last week they announced Soul, the latest Pixar joint, would skip theaters entirely and wind up on Disney+ — and not even at an extra cost, as they did with their live-action remake of Mulan. On Christmas Day, subscribers will be able to watch the animated company’s latest tearjerker. And judging from the film’s latest trailer, there will be tears.
Honestly, it’s been a touch hard to grok what exactly Soul is about, but the latest trailer makes it much, much clearer. Jamie Foxx voices a middle school music teacher and jazz lover who dies in an accident. He’s reborn as a fuzzy blob in the after life, only to wind up in a kind of before-life, observing how souls develop personalities before they inhabit bodies.
It all looks pretty cosmic and clever, and very much in keeping with the other Pixar films helmed by Pete Docter, whose Monsters Inc., Up, and Inside Out are even more overtly existentially-minded than the others. The message, it seems, is to enjoy life while you’ve got it — and given what 2020 has been like, that’s bound to hit home extra hard as the year comes to an end.
You can watch the trailer for Soul, which hits Disney+ on December 25, in the video above.