Every child, at some point, feels like he or she doesn’t quite fit in. That they’re on the outside looking in: unseen, unheard, misunderstood. Pixar’s latest animated sci fi film Eliowhich blazes a new path for Walt Disney Pictures and the studio with hits like Toy Story (1995) and Finding Nemo (2003) in its kitty, turns that feeling into its core idea.
Elio Solis, an 11-year-old boy, who lives on a military base with his aunt Olga (voiced by Zoe Saldaña), after losing his parents, is that kid. He draws, dreams, and spends his afternoons lying alone on a beach, hoping to be abducted by aliens because he feels invisible on Earth. His aunt, Olga, is a strict US Air Force major who’s better at leading troops than expressing affection.
In the constellation of Pixar protagonists — talking toys, timid fish, lonely robots — Elio Solis (voiced by 14-year-old Filipino-Eritrean-American actor Yonas Kibreab, known for Merry Little Batman) has got to be the most human of them all. He is sensitive, shy and different. When a message he sends over an old ham radio accidentally reaches outer space and aliens mistake him for Earth’s official interplanetary ambassador, Elio is swept into something vast, absurd, and moving.
Elio’s signal is misread as a global transmission. And just like that, he is beamed aboard a spaceship and taken to the Communiverse, a gathering of alien lifeforms from all over the galaxy who work together to share knowledge and prevent conflict.
It’s basically the United Nations, but with glowing jellyfish, bug-eyed warlords, and shape-shifting liquid computers. Most of them assume Elio is a scientist or diplomat. He tries to explain the mistake but gets caught in what unfolds next.
A powerful alien named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett of A Bug’s Life and Ratatouilledebuting as a villain for the studio) threatens to leave the Communiverse if he’s not accepted into it. The only one who seems even more out of place than Elio is Grigon’s son, Glordon, a creepy-cute worm-like creature (voiced by Remy Edgerly) who, like Elio, doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the grown-ups around him.
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Glordon has leathery skin, no eyes and too many teeth, but like Elio, he just wants to be understood. Though Glordon looks odd, inside they’re both outsiders. Elio, naturally, connects with Glordon. When Grigon threatens to leave the Communiverse unless his son returns home safely, Elio steps up. With Glordon, he makes a plan involving a clone of himself to cover his tracks while rescuing the alien boy.
A confusing double-swap ensues. Elio is briefly imprisoned, then escapes alongside Glordon. Back on Earth, Elio’s clone holds his place temporarily. Meanwhile, Glordon crashes back to Earth and is seriously injured. Elio and Olga rush across the base, find the crash site, and launch Glordon back into space via an escape shuttle. They reunite him with his father aboard the Communiverse, and Grigon apologises both to his son and to the alien council.
Elio is offered a permanent ambassadorship. But he declines. He realises Earth, and Olga, imperfect though their relationship is, is where he belongs, and matters most. In the climax, Elio rebuilds his ham radio on Earth. Crackling with static, he hears Glordon’s voice from across space. Their friendship endures, even across galaxies. The film closes on the idea that feeling connected can be the greatest adventure of all
Elio is a film about how longing, loneliness, and grief can sometimes feel more alien than any galaxy far, far away. Pixar has explored similar themes before. Inside Out (2015) showed the various shades of childhood emotions, underlining how embracing sadness is essential to mental health. Coco (2017) centered on the power of memory, family heritage, and honouring one’s ancestors. Luca (2021), a celebration of self-acceptance, used sea monsters as a metaphor for feeling different and hiding one’s true identity.
In recent years, Pixar has taken more personal, emotional risks with films like Soul (2020), Turning Red (2022), and now Elio. These films don’t always aim to entertain everyone. But they seem to tell kids, and some adults, that it’s okay to be weird, to grieve, and to feel lost. That fitting in isn’t the goal, but belonging is. Elio may drift among worlds, but he lands in our hearts.
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Visually, Elio is stunning, and strange. The alien worlds are translucent and dreamlike. That’s because the filmmakers used real-world materials — oil, water, glitter — and photographed them up close to create textures for space. This unusual method, called the “College Project” inside Pixar, helped the film stand out from other animated movies. Instead of space looking cold and distant, it looks organic and alive.
Pixar also used a new lighting tool called Luna, which let them treat animation like live-action: the studio could use shadows, lens flares, and camera angles in new ways. Adrian Molina (Party Central, The Good Dinosaur), who conceived of the story based on his own childhood: a Mexican-American kid on a military base, drawn to art and feeling both seen and unseen in equal measure.
Originally, Olga was written as Elio’s mother and voiced by America Ferrera (Ugly Betty, Barbie). But when directors Madeline Sharafian (Burrow) and Domee Shi (Turning Red) took over the project from Adrian Molina (who conceived the story but later left to direct Coco 2), they made a key change: turning Olga into an aunt.
This was done to bring in a dose of emotional distance: an adult trying hard but not always succeeding, which mirrors Elio’s own confusion. Loneliness, born of grief or adulting, is what the movie sets out to explore. Like Molina, both directors identified with the sense of waiting for a place to belong. Shi has spoken about in interviews that the film is grounded in the question, “where’s my place?” rather than, “what powers do I have?”
Elio is currently running in theatres
