Just before Pixar celebrated their first big win of the year at the box office with “Hoppers,” Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter explained why the company decided to cut the gay storyline in the original film “Elio” last year.
“Hoppers” is being lauded because it doesn’t push any inkling of LGBT themes that have become quite common in animated films recently. “Elio,” meanwhile, flirted with the idea, and it was widely considered to be a box office flop.
The original narrative included tidbits about former director Adrian Molina’s experience growing up gay, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. But Docter said the studio opted to change it up because parents weren’t necessarily ready to have those discussions with their young children watching the film.
“We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy,” the Pixar exec said. “As time’s gone on, I realized my job is to make sure the films appeal to everybody.”
The film tells the tale of an 11-year-old boy, Elio, who bonds with aliens. The outlet noted that the original storyline showed Elio raising a child in the future with a same sex partner.
Upon its release, The Hollywood Reporter described Elio as a “queer-coded character” whose “characterization gradually faded away throughout the production process.”
LGBT activists who worked on the film blamed these edits for its poor performance. “Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,” one former Pixar artist told THR. “The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.” Another said the final character version was “generic.”
Meanwhile, there was speculation that “Elio” never took off because those “queer coded” themes were leaked to the media and parents were avoiding it.
After being understood as a hitmaker for years with beloved projects such as the “Toy Story” franchise beginning in 1995, “Monsters Inc” (2001), “Finding Nemo” (2003), “The Incredibles” (2004), “Up” (2009), “Inside Out,” (2015), and a slew of others, Pixar, which was acquired by Disney in 2006, seemed to lose its way by going too niche. It produced sequels to some of its most popular titles, but also came up with out-of-the-box concepts like the controversial “Turning Red” (2022), a movie about puberty.
Then there was that whole “Lightyear” same sex kiss fiasco in 2022, which proved that even Pixar films based on treasured IP weren’t guaranteed to hit, especially if they included topics parents didn’t want their kids to see.
