Pixar used to be infallible. From Toy Story (1995) up to Inside Out (2015) their films reigned supreme at the box office. Even a troubled production like 2012’s Brave was alright on the night (it grossed $554m globally). Their first major failure was The Good Dinosaur (2015), which was cute, weird, and badly marketed – much like Elio, in fact.
The original director, Adrian Molina (Coco), abandoned the project during the edit and Pixar effectively going back to the drawing board. Trailers failed to explain the story of this wannabe space cadet, who is mistaken for Earth’s ambassador. Most people had no idea it was out this summer. It came up against the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, which was smash-hit competition for exactly the same demographic.
Reviewers liked the film just fine – there are eight other Pixar films with lower scores on Rotten Tomatoes than the 83 per cent it managed. But audiences weren’t convinced and it now counts as the company’s biggest flop – bigger than Lightyear (2022, $218m) or their pair of Covid-thwarted releases, Onward and Soul (both 2020). While their next film, Hoppers, is a strange-looking business about a robot beaver that goes undercover, the one after that is an exercise in pure retrenchment: Toy Story 5.
