COMING ATTRACTIONS

Pixar’s Soul Will Probably Give You (Another) Existential Crisis

These animated films have become increasingly deep as of late.


Disney Studios Showcase Presentation At D23 Expo, Saturday August 24
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Pixar has released the trailer for their next film, called Soul, and it’s left us with a few big questions: What is going on over there at Pixar? Are all of those animators okay? And who are these movies for, again?

It seems like, in recent years at least, these animated Pixar films have been getting deeper and darker be the day. Inside Out was all about the importance of feeling your feelings. Coco made grown people cry as they grappled with the inevitability of death. And as if a scene from Toy Story 3 that showed Woody and the gang about to be incinerated to their deaths wasn’t upsetting enough, Toy Story 4 had to up the ante and introduce a character named Forky, a depressed spork voiced by Tony Hale who not only can’t tell if he’s a fork or a spoon, but doesn’t know if he even qualifies as a toy.

Now, with Soul, viewers will watch the story of a man on the brink of an existential crisis. A jazz musician named Joe Gardener (voiced by Jamie Foxx) realizes time is of the essence and everyone should just lean into their passions. Just as he finally books the gig of a lifetime, he narrowly misses death by car only to fall into an open manhole on the street. Once inside (where he is apparently dead) he becomes a little blue orb (presumably what the creators imagine the human “soul” to look like.) He meets another little blue orb, voiced by Tina Fey, who seems unfazed that she no longer inhabits a human body.

Prepare for your very own mid-summer existential crisis once this movie hits theaters on June 19.

Related: Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx’s Relationship May Have Ended How It Began: In Secrecy