The Buzzmeter: Why Elio Flopped is Not Something Hollywood Wants to Talk About

I read this column in Richard Rushfield's The Ankler with great interest. It begins this way:

I find myself more than the usual amount vexed by the underwhelming opening of Elio. It’s not that I haven’t seen this lately — a solid or better movie failing to connect on its opening.

But the Elio result is Exhibit #4758 that some piece of this world is just gone. Kaput.

And the usual suspects on the why of that, I find very unsatisfying. There’s something deeper amiss, and until we understand what that is, we don’t have much hope of fixing it. This isn’t a canary in the coal mine — this is the caving in of the central air shaft that supplies oxygen.

The title of the piece is on their original illustration:

Original animation is dead, according to the claim.

What a convenient explanation for everyone. The problem is that it is not true. Everything Rushfield mentions in his column is part of the reason, but it's not the big reason. Again, I will sound like a broken record to say what I keep saying, to no avail: Hollywood, Disney/Pixar especially, has destroyed its brand. It will take them time to rebuild it. And they will get no help from entertainment journalists who are too afraid to tell them the truth. None of them wants to end up like me, exiled by the ruling aristocracy.

It didn't matter what the movie was about, Pixar was the reason people turned out. The name sold it. Word of mouth traveled fast that these movies were good, really good. The quality of filmmaking, the writing, and directing was unlike anything we'd ever seen in animation. It was built by people judged only by their talent, their hard work, and their skill. They were the best and the brightest, making some of the greatest films ever. You can see how those ORIGINAL movies made the Pixar brand.

Toy Story resonated because it was a movie that most people could relate to. Did it represent every kind of person? No, but it was familiar to most of us. I was one of those people who resented every movie being about "one special boy." I spent years trying to turn that around. Little did I know how far they would go and how they would lose everything that used to make them so great.

All they had to do was keep living up to that brand. But some seismic culture quakes rocked Hollywood. First, the rise of Obama and the utopia built in his wake. The rise of Trump and the mass hysteria that ensued. Then, COVID, then the Great Awokening. All of these factors have impacted Hollywood in immeasurable ways. The worst thing that happened to Hollywood, in my view, was going "woke."

Every other pressure point, Pixar could survive—competition from YouTube and TikTok, streaming, social media, and even COVID. Going woke killed their brand. It began by eliminating their best and brightest, no longer prioritizing them when making movies. It's insane to imagine that they went that way but they did. They decided they didn't want to wait for marginalized groups to catch up. They could just decide to start hiring people based on skin color and/or gender identity.

Just as most people don't quote movies anymore - because we don't, as a people, share them anymore - no one references Pixar movies anymore the way they used to. They don't embed the way they used to.

Brad Bird left Pixar in 2020 (The Incredibles and Ratatouille). John Lasseter (Cars) was Me Too'd out of Pixar back in 2018. Andrew Stanton (Wall-E) is still with Pixar but hasn't directed a movie since Finding Dory in 2016. He's coming back with Toy Story 5, co-directed with McKenna Harris, because, of course, right?

Here is a list of Pixar movies - in blue, the original releases:

There is no doubt that the sequels to beloved Pixar movies made more money than the originals. Here is that same list sorted for final domestic box office take:

Here it is sorted for opening box office take:

Sequels will always do better because audiences already know what to expect. That has always been true with Pixar, but that doesn't explain what happened with Elio.

How Pixar Destroyed Its Brand

For many, Elio is a good movie. It had decent reviews and an A Cinemascore. It isn't the movie's problem. It isn't that it's bad. Audiences don't trust Pixar or Disney as honest brokers anymore. They are already well aware that there is always an agenda at play to get into their heads and tell them what they should think, feel, like, etc.

But for others, Pixar's desire to be intersectional in its hiring so they could have bragging rights for moving the needle significantly for minority groups made for a lackluster film that wasn't anywhere near up to snuff.

This reflects a studio more concerned with inclusivity than hiring the best and the brightest. Domee Shi made Turning Red, the film for which Sean O'Connell almost lost his job for giving a bad review. No one was allowed to say it was bad because those are the rules. If you dare criticize the film, you will be excoriated by the mob on social media. Woke, to me, means prioritizing marginalized groups over the majority, and that is what we saw when Turning Red came out.

So you ended up with this:

But it didn't matter because there is no such thing as reality in Hollywood anymore. Marginalized people fail upwards. If they lead a film to a box office disaster, it doesn't matter because their role is more important than plain old success. In the case of Turning Red, they can blame the audience - they're sexists! They're racists! They review-bombed the movie!

I'm not saying Elio is junk or Domee Shi is a bad director. But I am saying their measure of success at Pixar now is not judged by your talent or ability, but by what your presence brings to the project. What does an intersectional film like this do for Pixar? It raises their ESG score. It gets activists off their backs. It makes them seem like "good people doing good things."

Chris Gore and Alex Ng discuss how the skill level in this film is not up to Pixar's usual standards—something most people who write film reviews or cover Hollywood would never say.

Inside the bubble, that's all great. Elio will land an Animated Feature nomination and might even win. Having an intersectional team behind it makes Oscar voters feel good about themselves, too. It's just that what happened to Pixar over the past several years has made audiences wary about what might pop out of that cake without warning.

They are hesitant after the lesbian kiss in Lightyear, the non-binary character in Elemental, to bring their children to see a movie when they have no idea what the message of that movie will be. Anyone bringing this up will be savaged by LGBTQIA activists who just want to be normalized in children's films so they can be normalized when they grow up - but not all parents are down for that, in fact, most aren't. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Social justice/Democratic Party messages are always stuffed into every movie, especially animated films. It is Senator McCarthy's worst fear finally realized.

That's not to say I think the government should police messaging in Hollywood films. That would only make the problem worse. No, this ship has sailed. There is no going back and fixing it because there is no market pressure that Hollywood cares about. They care about their status inside utopia. A box office bomb proves what they already think about the unwashed masses outside the castle walls.

The reason sequels do better is that people don't have to worry. They already know what they're getting. Elio looks opaque to the average person. What's it about? A kid who isn't white and has an eye patch. That will read to most Americans as okay, another typical Hollywood agenda-driven movie where they will tell us how to think. They can feel comfortable waiting for streaming.

A soft opening for Elio isn't the end of the world, and it most definitely should not be used to say audiences don't turn out to see original content in animation films. They might, if Hollywood went back to serving audiences instead of itself, listening to the free market, and hiring the best and the brightest.

Will they? No. They value their status more than they do even profits. Pixar can turn around and blame the audience for their failures - they were just trying to improve the world. That's fine. Just don't blame audiences or original storytelling.

Will Pixar ever get better than Wall-E?

Probably not. It's too normal. Hollywood doesn't do normal anymore. They believe their mission is to "fix" normal. I guess I'm lucky to have lived through their golden days. Yes, they should make original films but not if they're not written and directed by the best and the brightest.