The danger of Disney’s corporate ownership of Pixar was always thought to be whether or not they’d change the company but in reality the frustration has become that they are seemingly not allowing them to change. Disney’s parenthood of Pixar seems to keep the animation titan in a state of arrested adolescence. There is now only lateral movement with brief glimmers of the possibilities inherent in more actual artistic freedom. To mine from one of Disney’s own stories, Pixar has become something like a Neverland for Lost Creatives, a world unto itself where what has already been made is taken as an eternal blueprint and nothing ever changes too much.
The discourse around Pixar films is stuck in the mud. Critical thought about their films has calcified into clichés. “Pixar follow their formula yet again,” or “what if (insert blank) felt emotions,” or blanket statements about whether or not Pixar should be making more New IP in-between their legacy sequels.
Here’s the thing: New IP does not mean new ideas. There are not new ideas in Elio. Elio is a Pixar movie. At some point, that branding has become the IP. Toy Story 4 (2019) or Inside Out 2 (2024), meanwhile, straining to justify their existence to an audience who wants new things but also only turns out for what they recognize, actually do have forward-thinking ideas we haven’t seen in other Pixar movies. They are not sequels in the Cars 2 (2011) and Cars 3 (2017) sense of “can you legitimately tell me the difference?” Then there are projects like Lightyear (2022) which are fundamentally different ideas (than the series it belongs to) and still feels like the same old story.
We might think of Lightyear often, while watching Elio, because they are movies from which we can draw separate but equal concerns about what is happening at Pixar. In Lightyear’s case, it’s that the studio seems to have started from a place of “how can we make a Toy Story movie that isn’t one,” and in Elio’s case, it’s that the vision for the movie has fundamentally shifted since its early development, and no longer seems to express any energy or reason for its existence, except to mildly entertain families. The impetuous for the movies may even be similar, in that they play with the tropes of sci-fi in a very basic way but have nothing much to say about why they’re doing it, the path doesn’t lead to a garden with more fervent ideas, it’s just a dead end path that leads to nothing. A path made for the sake of making paths. But what is a path if it does not move toward something else, but a little diversion from the course?
This is where the dialogue around Pixar has become troubling. We want original movies. But the original movies are not always original. Sometimes the sequels have been more original. Sometimes the sequels have also been nothing at all. If Pixar is the brand, we can think about a company like Nintendo, like the Disney of Japan, who understand that Mario is just an empty vessel for using any dynamic new ideas that they want to program for him. Franchises in videogames are opportunities to package new ideas so they also sell.
The Pixar problem is that the brand is no longer exciting. Because Pixar is the IP, in the case of Elio and when you show up, they will do what you expect them to do exactly as you expect them to do it, the push for New IP from within the company begins to feel like an empty way to engineer new movies. The reason why it’s beginning to feel that way is also because of how these movies are being developed.
Used to be that Pixar movies were proceeded by short films. Those short films, at least, ensured that you’d see the once-cutting-edge studio try something new every time you went to a Pixar movie. The directors of those short films, then, were so often given captain roles to direct their own new projects. It felt like creative energy was being cultivated, like each film was the result of some experimentation and then you’d also get this exciting prospect of a short outside idea that may also turn into some new experimentation.
But now the development structure of a Pixar film is more naturally oriented and risk-averse. The early trailers for Elio promoted a very different film. Elio was reluctantly abducted by aliens and had to learn something about grief and loss. In the years since, Elio has become something different and more simple. A more playful movie about a boy who wants to be abducted then does and has to learn about loneliness and alienation, but in a way he’s pretty jazzed about. Even the conflict feels like a non-conflict in this sense. Oh no, the boy was captured and finally got what he wanted and feels included now, why would that hold anyone’s attention?
It doesn’t. So, Pixar gets by on what they always get by on. Stirring the emotions thickly into their effective mould of animation. Yes, the animation is still high-quality in the general Pixar way most of their movies are. No, that’s no longer really thrilling in itself, except for the moments where it is.
It’s in those moments of heightened sci-fi adventurism where Elio soars and reminds us that this is a studio of world-class animators working in the tradition of an incredible company who have made very few duds, very many all-time classics, and a few medium-successful movies in-between. Most of the time Elio is another medium-sized success.
When the film does lean into its sci-fi, it resonates in a more exciting way. It allows the animators to be more at play with shape, form, and function, and they make some really fun character designs. But, there is also a sense of restraint now, this chopping down of sociopolitical possibilities within their movies.
There is a sense that everything must now be a little safer and more softly spoken, that movies like Elio will be neutered under the looming shadow of an administration that would rather shut them down if they said anything more. But now bravery is what’s needed and it’s not what Elio feels like. No, Elio feels cowardly and like a studio so afraid of its own shadow that it might just have to live under it in perpetuity.