WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Soul, now available on Disney+.
Disney/Pixar's Soul carves out an emotional trip for jazz musician and teacher, Joe (Jamie Foxx), as he tries to catch his big musical break. However, it goes awry when an accident leaves Joe in a coma, so his soul has to get back to his body after entering a metaphysical realm. Joe wants to use the Great Before to come back, but it's tricky, as he's slated to die. During this time, he encounters a soul, 22 (Tina Fey), who's trying hard not to become human, so they scheme to get an Earth pass for the latter, which 22 would give to Joe. However, the plot gets a bit complicated, and the movie's twist ends up being along the lines of Get Out's.
Despite the rules of the Great Before, a portal allows the talented pianist and 22 to fall to Earth. Unfortunately, Joe's soul ends up in a cat, Mr. Mittens, while 22 ends up in Joe's human body. Now, the protagonist is scrambling to find a way back into his body while a character voiced by a white woman pilots his frame.
This results in Joe's Black body ending up in a kind of warped Freaky Friday set up for most of the film, all as 22 learns about love and life in Joe's form. In this sense, they discover the beauty of life by appropriating a Black man's body; meanwhile, Joe the cat relies on 22 in what could be seen as a white savior trope.
This is where it's similar to Get Out, where it's revealed white people are transplanting their essences into Black bodies, thus achieving immortality and dropping Black people into the "Sunken Place," which is the cat for Joe. Granted, he's actively trying to help 22 fix this, but it does feel like he's lost his agency, depending on 22 since he's limited in his new form.
It's a tad disconcerting, especially nowadays, to hear a white woman's voice complaining about everything wrong while they're in Joe's Black body. While the character 22 doesn't really have a gender or ethnicity, they admit they're using this specific voice, in this case the voice of a white woman, because it's annoying to other souls; however, a Black voice still could've been used for this character.
If anything, Get Out is about the exploitation of Black people, and it does feel like 22's unwittingly doing this to Joe, as they lose sight of the mission and try to keep the body for themself. This leads to Joe chasing them down as a cat to get back what's rightfully his.
It reminds viewers of Daniel Kaluuya's Chris, who's literally running for his life and trying to prevent his body from being stolen by the Armitage family. Soul could be construed as less sinister, since it is marketed as a family movie, but seeing as there's a history of cartoon characters of color being turned into creatures -- Coco, The Princess and the Frog, Spies in Disguise -- and having 22 use Joe as a vehicle for their own discovery, this makes the film feel insensitive, even if this was unintentional.
Directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers, Soul stars Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Questlove, Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs and Angela Bassett. The film is currently available on Disney+.