After joining band teacher and aspiring jazz musician Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) through an existential crisis and on an adventure through the wild worlds of The Great Beyond and The Great Before, Pixar’s Soul give him an appropriate happy ending. As co-directors and co-writers Pete Docter and Kemp powers revealed in the advertising tour that led to the release of Soul, there were various alternatives that would have been very sad. On top of that, there were a few ideas that would further envelop the story of other characters.
Find out more about some of Pixar’s Soul alternate endings below, but beware big spoilers.
In Pixar’s SoulAfter Joe Gardner landed the whole kind of jazz performance he had been waiting for all his life, he accidentally falls dead and takes him to the waiting line of The Great Beyond. But instead of going to where he needed to, he ends up in The Great Before, the etheric level where souls get their personalities. Wrong for a mentor who helps new souls, Joe has the task of helping a soul named 22 (Tina Fey) finds her spark so that she can start life on Earth, which he regards as his only way to possibly return to his life on earth. The only problem is that 22 is in hell to stay in The Great Before and has been through many mentors before him.
After a quick fix for Joe and 22 to Earth without completing their task, Joe finds himself in the body of a therapy cat named Mr. Mittens and 22 are in Joe’s body and give us a classic scenario for body swap. As they experience life this way, 22 realizes that life on earth is much better than she initially thought, and Joe realizes what is really important in life, to simply enjoy it rather than obsessing over what he believes his purpose is. When the time comes to return to The Great Before to correct their opposition to the rules, Joe gets the chance to return to Earth, but he gives it up so 22 can finally live her own life on Earth.
Eventually, Joe is still given the opportunity by The Great Before’s overseers, The Jerrys, to return to earth. One of The Jerrys asks how Joe will spend the rest of his life, and Joe simply says, ‘I’m not sure. But I do know that I’m going to live from it every minute. Although we never see exactly what it means, Joe takes a step out of the front door of his apartment and takes a deep breath.
This is a poignant conclusion, but we almost saw one that got a little harder and sadder, because there were several other endings in which Joe would die instead of coming back to earth. In conversation with Collider, Kemp Powers explains that there are many repetitions of Soul with death concluding Joe’s story. Powers remember:
‘We did a lot of versions of Joe who died in the end and stayed dead, in all sorts of different ways. Some of them were much more emotional. Some of them were funny. We did a lot of different endings. ”
Pete Docter told USA Today that Joe learned the same lesson, but his sacrifice not to return to earth was ultimately not reversed. The director said:
‘We felt he had learned enough to appreciate things he did not initially appreciate. And so we felt, ‘Oh, it can work.’ It felt very noble that he sacrificed his chance to go back, and rather handed it over to 22. But as it turns out, so much of the film is about it that he first learned, ‘Hey, wait a minute. My barber has a whole life of which I knew nothing. I did not know that I could be honest and honest with my mother. ‘It felt like it was robbing him not to allow him to go back. ”
If Joe had not been allowed to return to earth, it would have made the lesson he learned bitterly bitter. Joe would never have had the chance to correct his short-sighted perspective on life and truly enjoy it through new eyes. It was undoubtedly the right decision, and it came to a much more constructive conclusion. The ambiguous nature of the ending is even more satisfying than seeing where Joe chose to take his life next. Powers explained the thought process behind the decision:
‘We know that audiences often want to tell exactly what happened to the character. They want to know that the character made the ‘right’ decision. But in the case of Joe, we did not want to make a choice on him. We wanted to say that he just appreciated life better, no matter what he ended up doing, whether it’s teaching, playing in an orchestra, or making a hybrid of both. ”
Just as Joe’s story is still open when it comes to what he wants to do with his future, the soul called 22 gets the same treatment. Although we know that 22 is going to lead a life on earth, we have no idea how it plays out. But Powers said there were other endings where we saw what happened to her. The filmmaker expanded:
“There was one where Joe was on tour with Dorothea and taught students privately on the side, and 22 was a new student and he realized it was her.”
Why then did they not carry it out in any form? Every time they came up with an epilogue, they changed their minds. Powers explained that ‘there was something unsatisfactory about it’. Since Joe’s end is much more satisfying without making a definite choice for the next phase of his life, I think it was also a smart decision to do so with 22.
The therapy cat Mr. Mittens almost had a series of credits that would reveal where he ended up. Eventually, Powers and Docter decide that the audience should not see where any of the characters end up.
Instead, Soul left to go over the moments that make up our lives, rather than where we end up, and that is ultimately what makes the film resonate so well.
Pixar’s Soul is now available on Disney +.
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