Pixar needs space. Or maybe space needs Pixar.
The animation studio has visited the cosmos before, in the Academy Award-winning “WALL-E” and more recently in the underrated “Toy Story” spinoff “Lightyear.” But with the studio’s latest, “Elio,” filmmakers Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi focus on the title character (voiced by Yonas Kibreab), a lonely young boy who has lost his parents and who longs to be abducted by aliens. When he is secreted away to a space station called the Communiverse, full of creatures from disparate worlds, he starts to understand the value of community and finds friends he previously could only have dreamed of.
At the very end of the movie, he is forced to decide between remaining in this fantastical realm or going back to Earth, with its harsh realities and cruel truths. In opting to go home, he makes the tougher, more necessary choice. He parts ways with the wild cast of characters he’s encountered, more resolute and mature.
The scene where he bids farewell to his alien chums is one of the biggest tearjerkers in just about any Pixar movie. Try not to weep when all of the aliens say, “OK, bye, love you,” the phrase that got their attention in the first place. That moment was in the movie from its earliest iteration, even before Sharafian and Shi took over the project from Adrian Molina, who left to work on “Coco 2.”
“As an audience member in Adrian’s earlier screenings, that was the point of the movie that I always cried, no matter what,” Sharafian said. “Even if there were some other resolutions happening around it, that moment hit every time. When we took on the project, it was very clear that we need to maintain it and serve it and make sure that we’re leading up to it and that we don’t lose whatever about this is making it so emotional.”
“It’s this choice,” Shi added. “It’s this choice to return to Earth and to say goodbye to these friends that he made.”
Sharafian agreed. “I thought it was so brilliant, the way that it’s paying off what seems like a stupid joke, that aliens don’t understand what ‘OK, bye, love you’ means,” she said. “They don’t get it, so they just say it. But you feel like even though in theory the aliens still don’t really understand it, they do mean it when you hear them say it for the last time, which I think is so sweet. They really do love him for everything that he did against all odds.”
Shi said that while they preserved what had worked in the earlier version of the film, they “supercharged it emotionally” by adding the character of Olga (Zoe Saldaña), Elio’s aunt, to the scene.
“Having her and Earth on one side and the Communiverse and all the aliens on the other side, and Elio caught in the middle, and realizing that if he does stay here, he’s going to give up everything on Earth, including his relationship with Olga—that (became) a more emotional moment of, Which way is he going to go?”
This story first ran in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
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