Every Pixar film begins with a question. For Elio, the question wasn’t about aliens or outer space. It was about identity: What if the one person who felt the most lost was suddenly asked to represent everyone else?
Adrian Molina, the writer and original director, was not setting out to build a galactic empire. He was reaching backward—to childhood. The film’s genesis traces to Molina’s own experiences as a child of military parents, frequently uprooted, always adjusting. That gnawing feeling of being out of place, never quite landing—Elio emerged from that ache. Not as a complaint, but as a cosmic exploration.
“I wanted to write a character who didn’t fit where he was, but whose difference made him extraordinary,” Molina shared. That spark became the foundation: a gentle, awkward boy suddenly catapulted into space, mistaken as humanity’s voice to a council of eccentric alien lifeforms. He doesn’t speak for Earth, not really. He’s still figuring out who he is.
Handing the Reins: From Molina to Shi and Sharafian
As Pixar shifted its internal roster, Molina handed directorial duties to Domee Shi (Turning Red) and Madeline Sharafian (Burrow). Each brought a distinct emotional intelligence to the story.
Shi, known for threading adolescent identity through high-concept fantasy, sharpened the emotional stakes. Sharafian, whose storytelling leans into expressive character design and vulnerability, deepened the story’s relational core. Together, they transformed Elio from a straightforward misfit-in-space concept into something more layered—a tale about the unspoken power of difference, communication, and misunderstood emotion.
Producer Mary Alice Drumm emphasized the trio’s synergy: “They weren’t afraid to get weird. But they never let go of the emotional spine.”
What If Space Wasn’t Scary?
In Hollywood, first contact usually means terror. Abductions. Cold steel tables. In Elio, the abduction is… amazing. Elio is pulled from his bedroom into a radiant spaceship—his expression? Pure wonder. Space is strange, yes, but also welcoming. The Communiverse, a galactic council of sentient species, mistakes him for Earth’s leader. And for the first time, he feels seen.
This inversion wasn’t accidental. The filmmakers drew on cinematic DNA: the elegance of Contact, the unease of The Thing, the awe of Close Encounters. But they flipped expectations.
“Aliens aren’t the enemy,” Shi said. “The real challenge is: who are you when you don’t have anyone to speak for you?”
And Elio doesn’t speak—at first. He stammers. He hides behind his hoodie. He’s a quiet observer. That silence became powerful. Animation supervisor Jude Brownbill explained: “We wanted stillness to be his strength. When others posture, he listens.”
Designing a Universe from Scratch
Pixar’s Communiverse isn’t just imaginative—it’s textured, surreal, and scientifically strange. Production designer Harley Jessup described it as “what a child’s dream of outer space might look like if that child read quantum physics.” Think anti-gravity cities. Liquid corridors. Glowing particles suspended in midair like pollen.
To build it, the team turned to real-world weirdness: jellyfish, deep-sea organisms, thermal vent bacteria, and microscopic plankton. They used VR sculpting tools to sketch in three dimensions, and even staged macrophotography experiments in water tanks—glitter and oil swirling under colored lights—to find the right “feel” for the Communiverse.
Claudia Chung, visual effects supervisor, led the technical charge. “We didn’t want digital sterility. We wanted weird organic geometry. Nature, but alien.”
The Faces of the Void: Crafting Alien Life
Each alien in Elio is a character, not just a creature. They are expressive, strange, and deeply specific.
- Glordon is a highlight: a limbless, worm-like being with no face—but undeniable charm. Designers referenced tardigrades and cephalopods. Despite having no eyes or mouth, Glordon exudes warmth through movement, color shifts, and body language.
- OOOOO, the Communiverse’s living computer, is a liquid AI that shifts form constantly. Animators first tested 2D morphs, then built a rig combining traditional Pixar elasticity with new simulation rigs to keep the character fluid yet emotionally readable.
Even the more humanoid aliens bend perception. Some are tall and crystalline, others shimmer in and out of existence. Their voices were equally curated: whispery tones, layered harmonics, and sound design that blends speech and music.
Cinematic Choices: Light, Lens, and Atmosphere
From the start, cinematographers Derek Williams and Jordan Rempel treated Elio like a live-action film. Anamorphic lenses—digitally simulated—created sweeping flares, blurs, and shifts in focus that lent realism to even the strangest scenes. One long take follows Elio through a rotating corridor, weightless, as lighting reacts to his emotional state.
The lighting itself—made possible by Pixar’s Luna system—was integrated from preproduction. This allowed the directors to control shadows and glows like a painter works with color, often using light to isolate Elio emotionally within enormous rooms or place him in warm halos when he makes a connection.
“We weren’t lighting a scene,” Chung said. “We were lighting feelings.”
Cloth, Cape, and Character Physics
Elio’s cape isn’t just a visual flourish—it’s a character in itself. Jasmine Derry, technical director, led the cloth simulation team. The cape clings when Elio is scared. It billows when he’s confident. It wraps around him like armor, then trails behind him like a comet.
“In many ways, the cape is his emotional barometer,” Derry explained. “It shows what he can’t say.”
Every fold was keyframed or simulated depending on scene need. The result is expressive motion that reflects character growth.
A Human Voice in a Galactic Chorus
Casting for Elio was deliberate and personal. Yonas Kibreab, a young rising star, voices Elio with remarkable subtlety. His delivery balances anxiety with curiosity, vulnerability with wit. “He just was Elio,” Sharafian said. “He didn’t perform it. He lived it.”
Zoe Saldaña lends gravity as Olga Solis—Elio’s fiercely protective, no-nonsense mother who works at a top-secret military base. Originally voiced by America Ferrera, Olga was reimagined mid-production. Saldaña’s voice brought new steel and warmth to the role.
Other key voices include:
- Brad Garrett as the towering, skeptical Lord Grigon.
- Shirley Henderson as a creature who communicates via musical pings.
- Jameela Jamil and Remy Edgerly, rounding out the alien ensemble with equal parts menace and mischief.
The Epitome of the Story: Misfits, Masks, and Meaning
At the pithy of Elio is not a message, but a question: Can you represent others if you don’t yet understand yourself?
Elio isn’t brave. He isn’t chosen. He’s lost. But in that loss, he finds something universal. He begins to listen—not to fix, but to understand. And in doing so, he slowly earns the trust of beings far more powerful than he is. Not by dominance. By empathy.
The story echoes real-world anxieties: imposter syndrome, the weight of representation, the quiet panic of growing up too fast. In one pivotal scene, Elio, facing trial, speaks not for humanity—but for himself. It’s raw, quiet, and achingly sincere.
And that moment lands. It shifts the film from whimsical adventure to something with gravity.
Impression
Elio is set to release on June 20, 2025, a full summer showcase of Pixar originality. Unlike recent sequels or nostalgia plays, this is a fresh property—a world completely imagined, unbound by previous canon.
Early test screenings and animation previews have drawn comparisons to Inside Out, WALL-E, and Up—not because it mimics them, but because Elio, like them, balances the intimate and the enormous. The cosmic and the close.
The Guardian hailed it “a psychedelic sugar-rush of ideas.” Entertainment Weekly called it “Pixar’s weirdest, most soulful film in years.”
Pixar is betting on originality again. And this time, it’s personal.
