Are we alone in the universe? It’s a big question that many of our greatest scientists, philosophers, and thinkers have pondered, so naturally it’s one that Pixar’s latest animated feature tries to unpack. And though Elio is a wild space adventure jam-packed with all sorts of whimsical alien creatures, its answer to that question is surprisingly small and intimate. Though, if you’ve seen any Pixar movie, it’s probably not that surprising.
Elio follows Elio Solis (newcomer Yonas Kibreab), an 11-year-old boy who, after losing his parents, goes to live with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) on the military base where she works as a space debris analyst. Feeling alone and unloved, he develops a fascination with aliens after stumbling into the base’s planetarium, where he’s instantly awed by the wonders of the cosmos. Elio becomes obsessed with the idea of being abducted by aliens: he turns his wall into a murder-board of UFO sightings, he starts tinkering with a ham radio to try to catch signals from the deep reaches of space, and he goes to the nearby beach every day, laying on the sand surrounded by the message “Aliens! Abduct Me!!”
