ANI-MOVIES, *Elio

Elio was Pixar's attempt at doing an original movie since Elemental, even though on its own that borrowed heavily from their parent company's film Zootopia. This movie could however be seen as a backwards version of Disney's Lilo And Stitch to which they conveniently remade into a live-action movie that came out the same summer. The one thing I noticed from most reviews of Elio was the vacancy of any comparisons to The Last Starfighter because it borrows a metric ton from the classic 80s sci-fi flick. The concept for the movie was dreamed up by director Adrian Molina when he was CalArts which is plainly obvious as a majority of character designs look like they were out of the cookie cutter "CalArts Style" that much of the older animation fans claim to be tired of, even though you could compare them to previous shows like Steven Universe. Molina directed this along with fellow CalArts graduate Madeline Sharafian plus Domee Shi with the screenplay written by Pixar regulars such as Mike Jones. However, all this talent didn't stop Elio from being Pixar's biggest dud losing out big time to K-Pop Demon Hunters which didn't even get a theatrical premiere and went straight to streaming. The family film is on its own a reasonably decent production, but Pixar's higher-ups had watered down Adrian Molina's original prospect partially due to his vision of the title character being queer-coded. If this is another situation similar to when Disney cancelled The Owl House because it was upsetting conservative parents because of its LGBTQ nature hasn't been fully confirmed, but Pixar's unwillingness to invest in the creator's original vision adds to Elio lackluster outcome. It is visually eye-catching with Pixar's new use of lenses and lighting help sell the interstellar benevolence you might be looking for in a movie with friendly and not-so friendly aliens.

Elio has dead parents like most Disney kids, so he's now living with his Aunt Olga who is a major at an Air Force base specializing in tracking down orbital space trash. Elio is obsessed with aliens and overhears a meeting Olga has about a signal which one of the crew claims is an alien response to the first Voyager space probe which causes Elio to respond to the signal causing the entire base to lose power. Olga sends Elio to a military camp where he gets taken by a collected organization of aliens called the Communiverse who believe he is the leader of Earth and send a clone of him to take his place on Earth. Elio wants to become part of the Communiverse, but they can't except any new members after the last one they rejected declares war on them. Grigon is the warlike leader of a race of huge caterpillars who stomp around in mecha suits modeled after giant crabs, and Elio tries to establish peace between them and the Communiverse, but fails to do so and becomes a prisoner. Grigon's son Glordon meets Elio and escapes with him to the Communiverse that hold Glordon as a bargaining chip to establish peace of which Grigon agrees to, but after having a fun time touring around all the sights the Communiverse has to offer, Glordon admits he doesn't want to go back to become bonded to his own mecha suit. Elio makes up a clone of Glordon to takes his place, but Grigon is not fooled and takes over the Communiverse which reveals Elio's deception, and they send him back to Earth. Glordon accidently uses Elio's star craft to go to Earth which is secured by the Air Force base, so Elio, his clone, and Olga rescue Glordon after taking back the spaceship. Once back at the Communiverse, Elio is able to work out a peace treaty and gives up his shot as an ambassador to live on Earth with his aunt, even though he still keeps in contact with Glordon via ham radio.

Elio wasn't seen as being a failed production because of the quality Pixar put into its visual aesthetics, but instead to how few people actually went to go see the film in theaters. Disney didn't have as much confidence in this as they had for their Lilo And Stitch retread, so they didn't put any genuine advertising into it, least of all any merchandise. The premise of a boy wanting to be abducted by aliens isn't all that original, even though Pixar managed to add their own touches to make it gratifying. This wasn't Pixar's hugest departure from their former glory, however Elio suffers from poor management and a blitzed ad campaign.