Pixar: 5 Ways Soul Is Pete Docter’s Best Movie (& 5 Ways Inside Out Is Better)

As one of Pixar’s first animators, Pete Docter has been at the forefront of its creative team since the beginning. After working on many of the studio’s earliest films, he made his directorial debut with the critically-praised Monsters Inc., following it up with even more success in the form of Up, Inside Out, and Pixar’s newest film, Soul.

All of his films have had their fair share of critical acclaim, but his two most recent, Inside Out and Soul, seem to share the bulk of it. They’re both so good that it’s hard to deem one as being definitively better than the other, but it can be said that they’re both better at different things.

10 Inside Out: Excellent Writing

Inside Out is one of the best-written Pixar movies since 1995’s Toy Story. It has witty dialogue, humor that’s fun for both kids and adults, and excellent character development. All of these things ultimately service the killer story at its core.

It’s no wonder the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, making it one of the few animated films to be nominated for a screenplay Oscar (a category that also includes Toy Story, as well as other Pixar classics, such as Finding Nemo and WALL-E).

9 Soul: Creative Animation

Inside Out is one of the best Pixar movies when it comes to creativity in animation. It features several different animation styles and even some focus on abstract concepts, but it still pales in comparison to Soul.

Maybe it’s just the passage of time or technological advancement that has allowed Soul such extravagance in its animation and design, but from the streets to New York to the Great Before, Soul‘s fluid, captivating multi-format animation is a breath of fresh air for a storytelling medium hampered by studios unwilling to try new things.

8 Inside Out: Refreshing Originality

Soul‘s plot has been described by many as an amalgamation of Inside Out and Coco. It’s still different in many ways from these films, but despite being whimsically crafted, it’s just not as original.

Inside Out, conversely, was celebrated upon its premiere as having, to quote Variety‘s Peter Debruge, a “stunningly original concept” that made it “[Pixar’s] most vivid and relatable film yet.”

7 Soul: Spectacular Worldbuilding

Soul‘s worldbuilding is grander than many Pixar films before it. Inside Out uses its narrative to build an elaborate world within someone’s mind, but it doesn’t explore the real world as much as Soul does.

And while Inside Out might have the comparatively more creative fantasy world, Riley’s mind isn’t as well-introduced as Soul‘s “Great Before” is.

6 Inside Out: Incredible Voice Work

Make no mistake, Soul has an excellent voice cast, including Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Angela Bassett, and others. Every Pixar film has a great voice cast.

But in Inside Out, the performances of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Bill Hader, and Mindy Kaling, as the emotions in Riley’s head, go above and beyond. Despite each representing just one emotion, the vocal work doesn’t suffer as a result. Instead, it actually ends up benefitting from it, because the cast was able to get creative with how they would characterize the embodiment of something as distinct and unwavering as a single emotion.

5 Soul: Fantastic Music

Michael Giacchino won an Academy Award for composing the score to Up, and he clearly put just as much effort into Inside Out. But while Inside Out‘s music is wondrous and uplifting, Soul ends up the better of the two simply because it has a story based around music.

Jon Batiste’s jazz compositions are truly the heart of the film, giving Soul one of the most emotionally moving soundtracks in Pixar history, but NIN’s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (known for their frequent collaborations with David Fincher) also brought their A-game to create through music the lively aura of the Soul world.

4 Inside Out: Characters

Soul‘s characters can, at times, feel underdeveloped, due to how much the film focuses on its story and atmosphere. They aren’t badly written by any means, but it could be argued that Inside Out does do, at least, the human aspect of its story a little bit better.

You can understand everyone’s motivations, and they never really act out of character. Plus, despite the story’s fantasy setting, the writing for each character seems very personal, making the characters themselves feel incredibly real.

3 Soul: Themes

Soul‘s themes are a tad more complex than Inside Out‘s — and while that doesn’t make them any more important, it does make them more interesting from a philosophical standpoint.

Both films feel like they’re based, at least to an extent, on Docter’s own struggles, but Soul takes on perhaps the grandest query he’s made in any of his films: the meaning of life.

2 Inside Out: Emotional

Inside Out and Soul are both beautifully bittersweet films, and it is almost unjust to compare them because they both do such a great job of unpacking the human condition.

But overall, Inside Out is just the more heart-wrenching of the two. It shows both the promise and the pain of moving on from childhood, something almost every adult has had to grapple with, and its key message focuses on the importance of sadness as part of what makes us human.

1 Soul: Introspective

While Inside Out might be more likely to move its audience to tears, Soul is more likely to get them actually thinking about its messages in the context of their own lives.

There’s a reason many have called it “Pixar’s most mature movie yet.” Docter is a master of cinematic expression and the ideas about life’s purpose he presents in Soul could very well have the power to actually change lives.

About The Author