“Elio” is a flop, which sucks because the movie is actually rather fun. It’s got great alien designs, an entertaining story, and a Carl Sagan quote designed that will make you quite emotional about the possibilities and power of science while also just reminding you of one of the most fascinating minds to walk this planet in the last century.
Sure, it’s easy (and not unfair) to blame the marketing for the failure of “Elio” at the box office, combined with the competition from other, higher-profile films. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that this simply wasn’t Pixar’s best. What’s more, reports have surface that the movie suffered heavily behind-the-scenes, undergoing creative changes that resulted in a vastly different film hitting theaters than the one imagined by the project’s creator and original director.
An article by The Hollywood Reporter highlights the series of changes made to the film and its story, ranging from the erasure of its queer elements to the movie’s Latino representation being all but removed. This is also what led to voice actor America Ferrera and director Adrian Molina leaving the project, and reading the report, it’s hard not to be furious at how Pixar ruined what could have been a very special film (by turning it into one that’s just fine) because it was afraid of how the public would respond … yet no one bothered to see the movie anyway.
