Pixar’s latest film “Elio” offers a fun and emotional movie experience that makes it worth seeing in theaters. However, Disney has largely squandered Pixar’s potential over the past 5 years.
“Elio” focuses on an 11-year-old boy named Elio who hopes to get abducted by aliens. He is raised by his Aunt Olga after his parents die. Elio manages to get abducted after sending a message to aliens who responded to a probe sent by Earth earlier in the film. After Elio lies and presents himself as the leader of Earth to the Communiverse, a council of aliens, he enters into a conflict with Lord Grigon, the villain of the film. Elio befriends Glordon, Grigon’s son, and must save the Communiverse from Grigon while discovering that he is not alone in the world. The film stars Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil and Remy Edgerly.
The main themes of the film center around family, isolation, loneliness and finding one’s place in the world. They are communicated effectively and successfully through Elio’s character and his feeling that no one on Earth wants him. Even though Aunt Olga loves and takes care of him, he feels alone because of everyone treating him like he is weird for being an alien-obsessed space fanatic.
Both kids and adults can relate to the universal experience of feeling alone and misunderstood by others. This is apart of why “Elio” is a worthy addition to Pixar’s catalogue. Their films usually have emotional centerpieces and messages that resonate with audience members of all ages. “Elio” is no different.
The other reason for the film’s merit is the sci-fi element. Because Pixar has rarely tackled the sci-fi genre outside of 2008’s “Wall-E” and 2022’s “Lightyear,” “Elio” is unique in that it tells an entertaining and heartwarming story set in outer space.
Critics and audiences seem to agree that “Elio” is worth seeing. However, none of that good reception has helped the film’s box office.
“Elio” grossed $35 million worldwide on its opening weekend, the lowest opening ever for a Pixar film. The previous film with that label was 2023’s “Elemental,” which grossed $44.5 million worldwide on its opening weekend.
What makes this worse is that the budget of “Elio” was reportedly $150 million dollars, not counting additional expenses and costs. “Elemental” ended up grossing a worldwide total of $496.4 million at the end of its run, so there is potential for “Elio” to bounce back and break even. However, that seems unlikely, considering the upcoming competition at the summer box office.
Outside of 2024’s “Inside Out 2,” Pixar has struggled with producing successful films since 2020. Historically, they have consistently produced critical and box office hits. Disney+ and the COVID-19 pandemic played big parts in the studio’s downfall.
2020’s “Onward” was released on March 6, 2020, right around the time the world shut down in response to the pandemic. Grossing approximately $142 million dollars worldwide on a budget between $175 million and $200 million, the film underperformed. Even though the pandemic is largely to blame for this, it could be said that the film was never going to be highly profitable. The initial and pre-COVID domestic box office projections ranged from $40 million to $45 million, and the film fell on the low end of that range, opening to $40 million.
From that point on, Disney opted to forgo theatrical releases for their next films until 2022 with “Lightyear.” 2020’s “Soul,” 2021’s “Luca” and 2022’s “Turning Red” were all mainly released on Disney+ with limited theatrical runs. Even though this was an understandable approach because of the state of the world at the time, this largely contributed to Pixar’s downfall when it comes to box office performance.
Pixar releasing a lot of their original films on Disney+ over the past 5 years definitely primed audiences to wait to watch them there instead of in theaters. “Lightyear” was not an original film but still fell victim to this strategy via its $226 million worldwide box office total. It also had a $200 million budget. A sequel like “Inside Out 2” grossed nearly $1.7 billion worldwide because it was the continuation to a story that audiences were familiar with and advertised as a big event film that deserved to be watched in theaters.
“Elio” was not advertised like that. Outside of some commercials, trailers and Internet chatter, not that much went into letting people know that the film was releasing. The currently crowded box office slate is also to blame for the film underperforming, but Disney themselves should bare the brunt of the blame.
None of Pixar’s recent films have been bad. The majority of them may not rank among Pixar’s all-time greats and classics, but they do not deserve their failures. Hopefully, “Elio” will bounce back in the coming weeks and Disney will learn to market their films better in the future.
This story was written by Christopher Hayden. He can be reached at christopher.i.hayden@marquette.edu.