Pixar's Elemental hits theaters today, but the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month to a middling response. This confused Pixar boss Pete Docter according to a new interview.

“That was a confusing half-hour there [at Cannes],” Docter admitted to Variety. “The film [Elemental] played, we got a seven-minute standing ovation, and you could feel the love beaming down from the audience to Pete. They really responded to it. THen the embargo lifted and some of the reviews were pretty nasty.”

He continued, “I guess there are probably a lot of reasons for that. This is our 27th film. For some reason, we seem to be critiqued not only based on other movies but on our own stuff.”

“So, people will say, ‘Oh, it's not as good as my favorite Pixar film, whatever it is,'” explained Docter.

Perhaps he has a point — though I think there's a balance between holding Elemental only up to the standard of your favorite film from Pixar (or the one you deem to be best) and merely saying it's not as good as your favorite for emotional reasons. It's hard not to compare Hayao Miyazaki's newest film to the standards that he set; ditto for Indiana Jones and the previous films. It's a tricky balance, that's for sure.

Pete Docter concluded, “On one hand, that's flattering, and it's also kind of a tough position to be in and very tricky. I'm not sure that we would say we regret going to Cannes or anything like that. It was such a fantastic audience of film lovers.”

Elemental is Pixar's latest feature film and follows two different elements — Ember (Leah Lewis), a fire element, and Wade (Mamoudou Athie), a water element — as they fall for each other. While the initial Cannes reviews may not have been kind, the film now has a 77% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Elemental is in theaters now.