Pixar's Soul is, first and foremost, a kid's movie. Yet, while it does a good job of making
its complex philosophical questions digestible for a young audience, there are a few moments
in the movie that only the grown-ups will really understand. Here the things only adults
notice in Soul.
When Joe Gardner is first introduced at the beginning of Soul, he's a part-time school
band director who dreams of becoming a professional jazz pianist. Joe's dreams seem set to come
true when he lands an audition with the Dorothea Williams Quartet, a highly respected jazz
group led by professional saxophonist Dorothea Williams.
As Joe rushes to his tryout, weaving through the bustling New York City streets, he runs
by several local businesses — but one sign stands out as obviously nodding to a real-life
brand: Jimmy Shoes. Adults will immediately recognize the store name as a reference to
Jimmy Choo, a high-end fashion house specializing in luxury shoes and handbags, founded by couture
shoe designer Jimmy Choo in 1996.
Why Soul decided to include a nod to a real-life company when most of the other storefronts
are either nondescript or fictional is anybody's guess. But while kids won't think twice about
the brands that appear in Soul's New York City, adults may at least get a chuckle out
of the one they recognize.
After Joe falls into an open manhole and awakens in the afterlife, he finds himself on a slow-moving
conveyor belt to the Great Beyond. Uncertain what's just happened, he asks the first group
of people he encounters what's going on, and they calmly inform him that he's passed on.
As Joe panics, one of the women in the group casually observes that the actual afterlife
beats her dream about the walrus.
It's hard to know for sure what this line is supposed to mean, if anything at all. It
could be just a silly, slightly surrealist one-liner. But if it is a specific reference,
it may be a nod to Disney's Alice in Wonderland, which features a pretty disturbing song called
"The Walrus and the Carpenter."
In this bizarre musical sequence, a scheming walrus and a human carpenter team up to lure
a family of child-like oysters away from their mother and into a restaurant, where the walrus
then distracts the carpenter so that he can eat them all.
"That was a very sad story."
"Aye."
"And there's a moral to it."
"Oh yes, a very good moral. If you happen to be an oyster."
The little oysters in Alice in Wonderland do bear somewhat of a resemblance to the unfinished
souls in the You Seminar, and, when you think about it, the walrus would have been the last
thing those oysters saw before they died. Is Soul making a morbid reference to a killer
walrus, or is it just a harmless quip about a weird dream? You decide.
When Joe first lands on the conveyor belt meant to transport him to the afterlife, he's
all by himself. As he runs away, he comes across the trio of souls, including the walrus
woman, who are more than happy to move on. Instead of joining them, however, Joe continues
to flee down the conveyor belt — and suddenly finds himself in the midst of a dense crowd
of hundreds of souls, all being shunted towards the Great Beyond.
There's something very disturbing about the implication of that empty conveyor belt suddenly
becoming very busy indeed. And sure, people may die every second in real life, but in
the world of Soul, that doesn't seem to be the case, since Joe and the first group he
met had their sections of the conveyor belt all to themselves.
The most obvious explanation for the sudden crowd is that something catastrophic happened
a few minutes after Joe fell into that manhole, resulting in massive crowds of people all
arriving in the afterlife all at once.
There are a few lines in Soul that have significant implications for a number of age-old debates
back on Earth. Take the exchange in which Joe asks Jerry if the You Seminar is where
personalities come from — and she kids Joe for believing people are just born with them.
Following Jerry's line to its natural conclusion, she seems to be implying that people get their
personalities — and also their souls — at some point after they are born. The process,
as it's laid out in the movie, seems to be that souls are first created, then given their
core personalities via the various pavilions in the You Seminar, and finally find their
"spark" through their mentorship under other souls who have already lived and died.
At the end of this process, the souls make the trek to Earth and, presumably, are assigned
to a body. Jerry's line seems to indicate that those bodies already exist by that point,
and that the souls arrive after birth. This little detail may not seem particularly important
or noteworthy, but it's actually a highly contentious issue in a number of world religions
and philosophies. It certainly won't be lost on much of Soul's adult audience.
When cosmic accountant Terry discovers that the count of souls entering the afterlife
is off by one, he immediately brings his concerns to Jerry, raising the alarm that the count
is off. Jerry, unconcerned, brushes him off by assuming that he must have made a mistake,
since the count "hasn't been off in centuries." Reassuring, right?
Wrong. While most kids might assume that Jerry's line means that the count is always reliable,
the grown-ups in the room will quickly realize that "centuries" isn't actually all that long
in the grand scheme of things. Depending on when souls started filing into the Great Beyond,
we're talking hundreds of thousands, possibly up to millions of years of Terry counting
souls. If the count hasn't been off in "centuries," that could mean that a rogue soul has dropped
off the celestial grid literally thousands of times before.
"Huh."
Do the math on this one, and you might be left wondering what happened to all those
runaway souls — and whether they're still roaming about… somewhere.
As a soul who hasn't yet found her "spark," and thus hasn't earned her Earth pass, 22
has managed to remain in the You Seminar for a millennia. She has mostly managed this by
tormenting her various mentors and refusing to cooperate in the soul-giving process.
In fact, 22 has refined her defiance of the You Seminar down to an art form, when she's
mistakenly assigned Joe as a mentor. Of course, she has no intention of going along with the
system this time, either. And once Jerry catches her and passes her on to Joe, this happens:
"I'm gonna make you wish you'd never died."
"Most people wish that, 22."
"Off you go, bye!"
Which seems about right, until you remember that Jerry is in the unique position to actually
know how most souls feel about dying — and from the perspective of the afterlife, too.
While he works in the You Seminar, Jerry's interactions with Terry make it clear that
there's a decent amount of interaction between co-workers in the Great Before and the Great
Beyond.
So Jerry admitting that most people wish they'd never died seems to imply that the Beyond
may not be so great after all. If it really was so great, why would most people wish they
were still alive? What's really going on in the Great Beyond?
When 22 is first introduced, it quickly becomes clear that she has absolutely no intention
of ever leaving the You Seminar for a mortal life on Earth. Indeed, the Jerrys have spent
centuries upon centuries trying to find her the perfect mentor that will help her find
her "spark," but to no avail. 22 ultimately outlasts them all, and in her interactions
with Joe, she name-drops several recognizable figures who have tried to inspire her, including
Mother Teresa, Marie Antoinette, and Muhammad Ali.
But when 22 takes Joe through her home on her way to visit the Zone, you can see that
she's collected all the nametags of her past mentors — including a few familiar names.
Some of 22's collected name-tags include: Joan of Arc, Nelson Mandela, Harvey Milk,
George Orwell, Aretha Franklin, Amelia Earhart, Marvin Gaye, Martin Luther King, Jr., Johnny
Cash, Pablo Picasso, Babe Ruth, Harriet Tubman, and more. This is a brief scene, and kids
aren't likely to recognize many of the names — but it's still a fun easter egg for the
grown-ups.
Once 22 has agreed to help Joe return to Earth, the two of them embark on a tour of the You
Seminar, searching for 22's spark. Since finding a spark is easier said than done, 22 takes
him to the Zone, the place that exists between the physical and spiritual planes. 22 explains
that this is where living humans go when they're so deeply into their activities that they
literally transcend to a different plane of existence.
And 22 quickly points out that anyone can enter under the right circumstances, including
actors, tattoo artists, and basketball players. Of course, 22 enjoys disturbing people in
the Zone, and takes particular pleasure in thwarting a basketball player right before
he makes a basket, telling Joe that she's been messing with that particular team for
decades.
A look at their logo makes it clear that the team in question is specifically the New York
Knicks, making the line a reference to the NBA team's infamous losing streak. More than
anything else, that's a gag meant for the Knicks' long-suffering die-hard fans.
After breaking out of the hospital in Joe's body, 22 is understandably a little overwhelmed
by the bustling streets of New York City, and basically winds up huddling in a corner.
Joe, now in the body of a cat, lures her out with a slice of pepperoni pizza, igniting
22's previously undiscovered love of food. For the rest of the film, 22-as-Joe is rarely
seen without some sort of snack in her hand, whether it's a piece of pizza, a bagel, or
even a half-consumed slushie she finds underneath a seat on the subway.
One thing you might not notice, however, is 22-as-Joe paying for any of that food. And
that's because she probably didn't. While it's certainly possible that she's using Joe's
phone to pay for some of it, it seems more probable, given 22's complete indifference
to Earthly customs, that she's just swiping whatever looks good to her. After all, she
seems to have no concept of money, and is governed almost entirely by the id segment
of her personality.
It would almost be more out of character if she was stopping to pay. Obviously, this isn't
something that's going to cross younger minds — but adults will know all too well that
there's no such thing as a free lunch, no matter how good it smells.
In Soul, Joe's journey to the afterlife and back simply ends up being a matter of getting
his soul reunited with his body, as if it was only knocked loose by his tumble into
the manhole. And sure enough, once Joe finds his comatose body in the hospital, all it
takes is 22 diving inside for him to be back on his feet, good as new. Although it still
takes a good amount of effort for Joe to finally get the Jerrys and Terrys to agree to let
his soul stay in his body, the body itself seems pretty much no worse for wear.
While kids may accept this premise at face value, everyone else will probably be left
wondering just how Joe is up and walking around by the end as if nothing happened. After all,
his injury was severe enough to not only place him in a coma, but also jettison his soul
to the afterlife. Joe's presence in the Great Beyond seems to imply that he was functionally
dead for a while, indicating that he suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury — at
the very least.
Obviously, it's great that Joe gets a second chance at the end of the film, but many viewers
won't help but feel a little nervous about Joe's overall health, and wonder if the major
trauma sustained in his fall could have significant repercussions for his long-term well-being.
Or, y'know, maybe everything will be fine. It is a movie, after all.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite
movies are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.