![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsTime to bring a short mini-series out of mothballs...
(With apologies to Paste Magazine's It Still Stings :-))
Animation moves on, but we haven’t. In Well, That Happened, we relive animation moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction. We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved.
If Bob Peterson had a nickel for every time Pixar followed up an Inside Out movie with a troubled production that he was involved in and ended up underperforming at the box office, he'd have two nickels*... With Pixar's latest film Elio having a soft (VERY soft) performance at the box office, especially by their standards (my local cinema pulled it after two weeks, whereas they kept Inside Out 2 for like a month and a half, in the original soundtrack version even), and the recent Hollywood Reporter article that came out about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that supposedly reduced its box office potential (more on that in a bit), I suppose I should tell my Elio story...
(* Peterson was the original director for The Good Dinosaur before being replaced by Peter Sohn, though was still credited for the story; and his voice features in this scene from Elio... fun fact, he's also voiced Roz from the Monsters Inc. universe... in three different decades [the 2000s original, the 2010s prequel, and the 2020s spinoff])
I was one of those who were somewhat intrigued by the initial promotion for Elio, but by the time my local got physical posters to put up alongside the release of Wish (another tersely-titled Disney animated flop :-\) the film had already been delayed from spring 2024 to summer 2025, and the posters thus said "Coming soon" (of course, the original online version had the date) Elio didn't return to my radar until around the time it was presented at the 2024 D23 Expo (alongside the announcement of its new directors, Madeline Sharafian and Domee "Turning Red" Shi, and recasting/rewriting of Elio's parental figure), and a bootleg of the video presentation/"trailer" made the rounds on Twitter... Although the video was decidedly less than cinematic in quality, it certainly looked like it was going to be a gorgeous movie (well, mission accomplished :-)) More pertinently, Yonas Kibreab's titular protagonist seemed more actively interested in being abducted by aliens in this iteration rather than the apprehension he had in the initial teaser :-) Pete "Inside Out" Docter said at the time that the new directors "made some major discoveries on him that really helped the audience to connect and to move forward with the character into the second act"... Seems like at least one of those "major discoveries" was rewriting Elio as being an orphan being taken care of by his aunt, so that they could have him complain to her that "You're not my family" and thus really justify him wanting to be abducted by aliens :-)
Later, I also started regularly reading (via Nitter) a couple of Twitter fan accounts helping to promote awareness of the movie (I hesitate to say "follow", since I'd reserve that for those who have accounts) The second teaser trailer showed up in November, alongside the rather striking poster, giving us our first look at the rework (and for some reason, a different logo :-)) After the reworking, the titular protagonist seemed the right kind of quirky to appeal to me, and he was now outright excited to be abducted by aliens... Between that and Sharafian saying that the film would have sci-fi horror references, the way I saw it, it was essentially The Owl House, except with aliens :-) (The Latinx rep in both works didn't exactly dispel the comparisons, either ;-) And the film itself would turn out to have a storyline that parallels an Owl House subplot as well :-)) Another thing I kept thinking was that it was going to be one of Pixar's most political films ever (though maybe it was a function of the poster tagline and the timing)... Turns out, not so much, but that probably would not have helped this film anyway :-\ (But seriously, imagine a Yes, Minister-like farce with Brandon Moon's alien ambassador, Helix, with Jameela Jamil's fellow ambassador Questa as his graceful but sassy colleague ;-))
I actually watched the YouTube premiere of the March 2025 trailer, the first public one to put significant focus on Remy Edgerly's space worm Glordon (after previously only featuring in the D23 trailer) and his budding friendship with Elio :-) In early April, Pixar showcased some Elio footage at the Cinemacon event for theater owners, plus a few dedicated press events elsewhere... UK DVD retailer Zavvi hyped that it had "an opening scene that will make you cry faster (and harder) than Up", while Yahoo UK also tipped it to be Pixar's next Inside Out... To paraphrase a famous meme gif, Pixar had my curiosity, now they had my attention :-) (Well, turns out comparing it to such generational films sounds a bit hyperbolic in retrospect, but hey, gotta get people interested, right?) Later that month, Elio managed to land a cinema-exclusive special look as part of "Sneak Peek Showcase", and it turned out to be one of the only pieces of new footage to be presented at an event advertised as bringing the Cinemacon experience to general audiences (false advertising much?) This one focused on Elio being shown around the gorgeous Communiverse, and the aforementioned friendship between Elio and Glordon, and by this point, I was all in on Elio :-)
The aforementioned Twitter fan accounts, among others, were pushing the narrative that the future of original stories at Pixar depended on Elio's performance at the box office, and there was some hope that even if it didn't open well, it could at least gradually make money all summer long a la 2023's Elemental... Hovering like a dark cloud above Elio's box office potential, however, were the two elephants in the room...or rather, two Chris Sanders creations, now being remade into live action :-\ Disney seemed to be pouring most of their promotional effort into Lilo and Stitch (giving Stitch his very own Super Bowl spot, say), whereas at one point, Elio was slated to come out the same week as How to Train Your Dragon; though Elio eventually moved to the following week (also spacing it a bit further away from juggernaut Stitch), it also meant that unlike previous Pixar efforts, Elio wasn't getting IMAX screens, with those going to Dragon instead :-\ Initial tracking reports suggested that Elio could make around $34m in the states on its opening weekend (only better than the original Toy Story and Elemental at $29m), and although that wasn't great, in retrospect that would have been a good problem to have, since it ended up dropping to $20m (while its fellow opener 28 Years Later dropped from $41m to $30m)
A personal aside relating to Lilo and Stitch: I have a nephew who was born on 6/26, aka Stitch day, and her grandfather (my uncle) actually had a Stitch profile pic in his chat in honor of that :-) I brought up Elio a couple of times in chat, usually alongside mentions of Stitch :-) There wasn't much attempt from Disney to create synergy between Stitch and Elio, though, as it was mostly limited to using Stitch to introduce a special look at Elio and this Tiktok (though to be fair, I wasn't looking around that much; but over here one cinema was offering swag to anyone who bought tickets to both movies on one particular day)
When the film came out, I saw it on my local's discount day in the first week (would've rather seen it the first weekend but their weekend schedule didn't work for me; couldn't watch it later because they were pulling original soundtrack screenings after the first week), and it was... well, to paraphrase TVTropes, "So Okay, It's Average" (albeit average by Pixar's higher standards, and propped up quite a bit by the gorgeous visuals and that poignant opening scene) Which is still a step up from their previous go at sci-fi, a take on Buzz Lightyear that I heard was more serious and somber than it ever needed to be (Indeed, many a review noted that Elio had the lighter tone that Lightyear should have had, and many speculated that the director replacement was an effort to avoid this exact issue) Although it was not doing so great at the box office, to quote Glordon's own words: "Well, I like you, and you seem fine to me" :-) Even then, people were dismissing the movie simply for its art style, which takes closely after Luca and Turning Red, both of which originally went out on streaming due to the pandemic, and thus Pixar had no real baseline to gauge how well the art-style would go down with cinemagoers (not to mention, of course, the argument that it made Pixar originals less of a cinematic event) Meanwhile, others were complaining about the film being "woke" because of, I dunno, the Latinx rep and Elio's aunt being in the military? (shrugs) Others were blaming it on sci-fi being a particular unsuccessful genre in western animation, and there were even others blaming John Lasseter's forced departure for Pixar losing their mojo, which yuck :-\ (As if his work for Skydance has left much of a mark on pop-culture) None of these were an issue to me; it was a nice enough watch, even if not to the level of the Inside Out films (which actually account for most of my Pixar cinemagoing :-)) Which arguably is part of the financial problem, because there's a lower bar for remakes, sequels and IP adaptations to clear to win at the box office, while original works almost have to be generational to stand a chance (hello there, Sinners)
Anyways, the Hollywood Reporter report showed up, and besides mentioning that a test screening audience for an early draft version enjoyed the film but didn't think it was something they'd pay to see in a theater (...proving the above points, it seems), also revealed that Pixar made an active effort to remove all queer-coding from the film (as well as a brief scene showing Elio being environmental and fashion-loving by collecting trash and making apparel out of it; now it just seems he's wearing a trash cape because he's quirky), and all hell broke loose on social media, with people pinning the blame either on the queer-coding removal, or on the notion it was even there to begin with... Even before the film came out, I remember reading somewhere when the new directors were announced that the original director, Adrian "Coco (and soon its sequel)" Molina, happened to be openly gay, and some people (perhaps even those aforementioned Twitter fan accounts) were speculating that they were doing something like that to this story when they removed him, and at the time I thought that the overarching plot they were selling the film with was pretty queer-coded, what with Elio having to pretend to be something he isn't just to be accepted by others and all that (it's telling that the March trailer downplayed this aspect, before coming back with a vengeance in the May trailer) An anonymous source, a former Pixar artist, noted that the studio leaders "were constantly sanding down these moments in the film that alluded to Elio’s sexuality of being queer", and dismissed that "Elio just becomes about totally nothing" without it... which seems a bit too harsh, given that in an interview after the 2024 D23 Expo, Pete talked up Elio, saying that "Inside Out 2 seems to have really stuck a chord because people can identify with Anxiety. This one, I think, really does a similar thing in loneliness... This film really speaks to that in a sort of cathartic way, which I think is going to be really beautiful." No lies detected :-) And as with The Owl House, the matter of representation made no difference: As long as it tells its story well enough and I have a good time enjoying it, it's good enough for me :-) (Doesn't even matter that the film's plot is fairly predictable, as can be attested from Hollywood Reporter's own review, as well as this April tweet, posted after an Elio press event, that accurately anticipated one particular plot payoff :-) Though the film doesn't exactly make as much of a meal of that payoff as one might expect :-\)
Though the final word on Elio's financial performance has yet to be written, with all the kid-friendly competition it's dealing with this summer (beyond dragons and Stitch, there's also dinosaurs and two new cinematic iterations of iconic comic book heroes) it's not looking like it'll be very good; it doesn't look like it'll even beat Lightyear, the film whose tone they specifically avoided seemingly to improve their box office chances :-\ (even if to be fair, Elio isn't bleeding audiences as badly) Pixar fans are already looking ahead to their next film as the next(-to-last) great hope for animated originals, but while I'm also interested in and excited for Hoppers (have been since the initial 2024 D23 Expo presentation), it does already appear to have one cloud hovering over it: A previous Hollywood Reporter report noted that the film was forced to downplay its planned message of environmentalism, with an anonymous former Pixar source adding "Unfortunately, when you have your whole film based around the importance of environmentalism, you can't really walk back on that. That team struggled a lot to figure out, 'What do we even do with this note?'" Which wouldn't be the first, or even second time someone tried to take environmentalism matters out of a Pixar feature: besides the above stuff with Elio's trash cape, an early trailer for Shi's previous film Turning Red showed Mei and friends holding an environmental demonstration at school (presumably right after meeting up at the start of the film), but that doesn't happen in the finished product... In both of those cases though, environmentalism matters seemed to be somewhat incidental to the plot; whereas with Hoppers it's the whole point, since it's about a teenage girl trying to protect a habitat she's explored since she was a kid from being paved over with a highway... by hopping her mind into a robotic beaver (yeah, it's cute Avatar; the Pixar people have already said as much) While I can begrudgingly understand Disney/Pixar not wanting queer themes in their works (there are plenty of people who would dismiss that stuff as woke garbage; just look at this USA Today editorial defending another instance of Pixar being made to de-queer their work), being against trying to keep the planet habitable for the next generation is really not a good look, to put it lightly (especially since it's the studio that made WALL-E :-\) Plus, taking away environmentalism matters out of a story like this, would be like writing a story about someone having to rescue their ex with help from their current love interest, and then completely ignoring the conflict of interest that inherently entails; to borrow a quote from the Elio exposé, it would just become about totally nothing :-\ That said, it does appear that Pixar is getting their way with this one, since it's been reported that unlike Elio's, its test screening went well, and their first footage shown at the Annecy Film Festival suggests they're going all in on the whole environmentalism business, showing that one of the main beavers has created a sanctuary for animals that have lost their homes :-)
(Aside: Check out this tweet thinking it's stupid to have beavers trying to fight off human development because "Beavers are the most pro development mammal out there", as well as these tweets... Sure, they're great at making dams, but I doubt they'd be all for having their lake paved over with a highway for the humans :-\ And somehow, there are people against what Pixar's trying to put down with this movie, dismissing it as "woke agenda" and "peak NIMBY", plus even an appropriately screen-named user really rooting against the protagonist, just some of the many replies under DiscussingFilm's tweet about the film... Which is all the more reason Pixar needs to follow through on the environmentalist messaging IMO, just as long as it's not overly preachy; as a user at Box Office Theory notes: "It's also values that we quite urgently do need to instill in impressionable youths. Anyone who has a problem with that can F off.")
For now, according to a Fast Company interview with Pete Docter, Pixar has landed on a cadence of one original film followed by one sequel, more or less, with Pete adding, "We have to find out what people want before they know it. Because if we just gave them more of what they know, we'd be making Toy Story 27." Pete gets it; here's hoping Hoppers or some other original can really strike a chord with the public :-)
(ETA: For those curious about the original version, a test screening viewer chimed in under this Reddit thread to describe the original plot :-))
(With apologies to Paste Magazine's It Still Stings :-))
Animation moves on, but we haven’t. In Well, That Happened, we relive animation moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction. We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved.
If Bob Peterson had a nickel for every time Pixar followed up an Inside Out movie with a troubled production that he was involved in and ended up underperforming at the box office, he'd have two nickels*... With Pixar's latest film Elio having a soft (VERY soft) performance at the box office, especially by their standards (my local cinema pulled it after two weeks, whereas they kept Inside Out 2 for like a month and a half, in the original soundtrack version even), and the recent Hollywood Reporter article that came out about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that supposedly reduced its box office potential (more on that in a bit), I suppose I should tell my Elio story...
(* Peterson was the original director for The Good Dinosaur before being replaced by Peter Sohn, though was still credited for the story; and his voice features in this scene from Elio... fun fact, he's also voiced Roz from the Monsters Inc. universe... in three different decades [the 2000s original, the 2010s prequel, and the 2020s spinoff])
I was one of those who were somewhat intrigued by the initial promotion for Elio, but by the time my local got physical posters to put up alongside the release of Wish (another tersely-titled Disney animated flop :-\) the film had already been delayed from spring 2024 to summer 2025, and the posters thus said "Coming soon" (of course, the original online version had the date) Elio didn't return to my radar until around the time it was presented at the 2024 D23 Expo (alongside the announcement of its new directors, Madeline Sharafian and Domee "Turning Red" Shi, and recasting/rewriting of Elio's parental figure), and a bootleg of the video presentation/"trailer" made the rounds on Twitter... Although the video was decidedly less than cinematic in quality, it certainly looked like it was going to be a gorgeous movie (well, mission accomplished :-)) More pertinently, Yonas Kibreab's titular protagonist seemed more actively interested in being abducted by aliens in this iteration rather than the apprehension he had in the initial teaser :-) Pete "Inside Out" Docter said at the time that the new directors "made some major discoveries on him that really helped the audience to connect and to move forward with the character into the second act"... Seems like at least one of those "major discoveries" was rewriting Elio as being an orphan being taken care of by his aunt, so that they could have him complain to her that "You're not my family" and thus really justify him wanting to be abducted by aliens :-)
Later, I also started regularly reading (via Nitter) a couple of Twitter fan accounts helping to promote awareness of the movie (I hesitate to say "follow", since I'd reserve that for those who have accounts) The second teaser trailer showed up in November, alongside the rather striking poster, giving us our first look at the rework (and for some reason, a different logo :-)) After the reworking, the titular protagonist seemed the right kind of quirky to appeal to me, and he was now outright excited to be abducted by aliens... Between that and Sharafian saying that the film would have sci-fi horror references, the way I saw it, it was essentially The Owl House, except with aliens :-) (The Latinx rep in both works didn't exactly dispel the comparisons, either ;-) And the film itself would turn out to have a storyline that parallels an Owl House subplot as well :-)) Another thing I kept thinking was that it was going to be one of Pixar's most political films ever (though maybe it was a function of the poster tagline and the timing)... Turns out, not so much, but that probably would not have helped this film anyway :-\ (But seriously, imagine a Yes, Minister-like farce with Brandon Moon's alien ambassador, Helix, with Jameela Jamil's fellow ambassador Questa as his graceful but sassy colleague ;-))
I actually watched the YouTube premiere of the March 2025 trailer, the first public one to put significant focus on Remy Edgerly's space worm Glordon (after previously only featuring in the D23 trailer) and his budding friendship with Elio :-) In early April, Pixar showcased some Elio footage at the Cinemacon event for theater owners, plus a few dedicated press events elsewhere... UK DVD retailer Zavvi hyped that it had "an opening scene that will make you cry faster (and harder) than Up", while Yahoo UK also tipped it to be Pixar's next Inside Out... To paraphrase a famous meme gif, Pixar had my curiosity, now they had my attention :-) (Well, turns out comparing it to such generational films sounds a bit hyperbolic in retrospect, but hey, gotta get people interested, right?) Later that month, Elio managed to land a cinema-exclusive special look as part of "Sneak Peek Showcase", and it turned out to be one of the only pieces of new footage to be presented at an event advertised as bringing the Cinemacon experience to general audiences (false advertising much?) This one focused on Elio being shown around the gorgeous Communiverse, and the aforementioned friendship between Elio and Glordon, and by this point, I was all in on Elio :-)
The aforementioned Twitter fan accounts, among others, were pushing the narrative that the future of original stories at Pixar depended on Elio's performance at the box office, and there was some hope that even if it didn't open well, it could at least gradually make money all summer long a la 2023's Elemental... Hovering like a dark cloud above Elio's box office potential, however, were the two elephants in the room...or rather, two Chris Sanders creations, now being remade into live action :-\ Disney seemed to be pouring most of their promotional effort into Lilo and Stitch (giving Stitch his very own Super Bowl spot, say), whereas at one point, Elio was slated to come out the same week as How to Train Your Dragon; though Elio eventually moved to the following week (also spacing it a bit further away from juggernaut Stitch), it also meant that unlike previous Pixar efforts, Elio wasn't getting IMAX screens, with those going to Dragon instead :-\ Initial tracking reports suggested that Elio could make around $34m in the states on its opening weekend (only better than the original Toy Story and Elemental at $29m), and although that wasn't great, in retrospect that would have been a good problem to have, since it ended up dropping to $20m (while its fellow opener 28 Years Later dropped from $41m to $30m)
A personal aside relating to Lilo and Stitch: I have a nephew who was born on 6/26, aka Stitch day, and her grandfather (my uncle) actually had a Stitch profile pic in his chat in honor of that :-) I brought up Elio a couple of times in chat, usually alongside mentions of Stitch :-) There wasn't much attempt from Disney to create synergy between Stitch and Elio, though, as it was mostly limited to using Stitch to introduce a special look at Elio and this Tiktok (though to be fair, I wasn't looking around that much; but over here one cinema was offering swag to anyone who bought tickets to both movies on one particular day)
When the film came out, I saw it on my local's discount day in the first week (would've rather seen it the first weekend but their weekend schedule didn't work for me; couldn't watch it later because they were pulling original soundtrack screenings after the first week), and it was... well, to paraphrase TVTropes, "So Okay, It's Average" (albeit average by Pixar's higher standards, and propped up quite a bit by the gorgeous visuals and that poignant opening scene) Which is still a step up from their previous go at sci-fi, a take on Buzz Lightyear that I heard was more serious and somber than it ever needed to be (Indeed, many a review noted that Elio had the lighter tone that Lightyear should have had, and many speculated that the director replacement was an effort to avoid this exact issue) Although it was not doing so great at the box office, to quote Glordon's own words: "Well, I like you, and you seem fine to me" :-) Even then, people were dismissing the movie simply for its art style, which takes closely after Luca and Turning Red, both of which originally went out on streaming due to the pandemic, and thus Pixar had no real baseline to gauge how well the art-style would go down with cinemagoers (not to mention, of course, the argument that it made Pixar originals less of a cinematic event) Meanwhile, others were complaining about the film being "woke" because of, I dunno, the Latinx rep and Elio's aunt being in the military? (shrugs) Others were blaming it on sci-fi being a particular unsuccessful genre in western animation, and there were even others blaming John Lasseter's forced departure for Pixar losing their mojo, which yuck :-\ (As if his work for Skydance has left much of a mark on pop-culture) None of these were an issue to me; it was a nice enough watch, even if not to the level of the Inside Out films (which actually account for most of my Pixar cinemagoing :-)) Which arguably is part of the financial problem, because there's a lower bar for remakes, sequels and IP adaptations to clear to win at the box office, while original works almost have to be generational to stand a chance (hello there, Sinners)
Anyways, the Hollywood Reporter report showed up, and besides mentioning that a test screening audience for an early draft version enjoyed the film but didn't think it was something they'd pay to see in a theater (...proving the above points, it seems), also revealed that Pixar made an active effort to remove all queer-coding from the film (as well as a brief scene showing Elio being environmental and fashion-loving by collecting trash and making apparel out of it; now it just seems he's wearing a trash cape because he's quirky), and all hell broke loose on social media, with people pinning the blame either on the queer-coding removal, or on the notion it was even there to begin with... Even before the film came out, I remember reading somewhere when the new directors were announced that the original director, Adrian "Coco (and soon its sequel)" Molina, happened to be openly gay, and some people (perhaps even those aforementioned Twitter fan accounts) were speculating that they were doing something like that to this story when they removed him, and at the time I thought that the overarching plot they were selling the film with was pretty queer-coded, what with Elio having to pretend to be something he isn't just to be accepted by others and all that (it's telling that the March trailer downplayed this aspect, before coming back with a vengeance in the May trailer) An anonymous source, a former Pixar artist, noted that the studio leaders "were constantly sanding down these moments in the film that alluded to Elio’s sexuality of being queer", and dismissed that "Elio just becomes about totally nothing" without it... which seems a bit too harsh, given that in an interview after the 2024 D23 Expo, Pete talked up Elio, saying that "Inside Out 2 seems to have really stuck a chord because people can identify with Anxiety. This one, I think, really does a similar thing in loneliness... This film really speaks to that in a sort of cathartic way, which I think is going to be really beautiful." No lies detected :-) And as with The Owl House, the matter of representation made no difference: As long as it tells its story well enough and I have a good time enjoying it, it's good enough for me :-) (Doesn't even matter that the film's plot is fairly predictable, as can be attested from Hollywood Reporter's own review, as well as this April tweet, posted after an Elio press event, that accurately anticipated one particular plot payoff :-) Though the film doesn't exactly make as much of a meal of that payoff as one might expect :-\)
Though the final word on Elio's financial performance has yet to be written, with all the kid-friendly competition it's dealing with this summer (beyond dragons and Stitch, there's also dinosaurs and two new cinematic iterations of iconic comic book heroes) it's not looking like it'll be very good; it doesn't look like it'll even beat Lightyear, the film whose tone they specifically avoided seemingly to improve their box office chances :-\ (even if to be fair, Elio isn't bleeding audiences as badly) Pixar fans are already looking ahead to their next film as the next(-to-last) great hope for animated originals, but while I'm also interested in and excited for Hoppers (have been since the initial 2024 D23 Expo presentation), it does already appear to have one cloud hovering over it: A previous Hollywood Reporter report noted that the film was forced to downplay its planned message of environmentalism, with an anonymous former Pixar source adding "Unfortunately, when you have your whole film based around the importance of environmentalism, you can't really walk back on that. That team struggled a lot to figure out, 'What do we even do with this note?'" Which wouldn't be the first, or even second time someone tried to take environmentalism matters out of a Pixar feature: besides the above stuff with Elio's trash cape, an early trailer for Shi's previous film Turning Red showed Mei and friends holding an environmental demonstration at school (presumably right after meeting up at the start of the film), but that doesn't happen in the finished product... In both of those cases though, environmentalism matters seemed to be somewhat incidental to the plot; whereas with Hoppers it's the whole point, since it's about a teenage girl trying to protect a habitat she's explored since she was a kid from being paved over with a highway... by hopping her mind into a robotic beaver (yeah, it's cute Avatar; the Pixar people have already said as much) While I can begrudgingly understand Disney/Pixar not wanting queer themes in their works (there are plenty of people who would dismiss that stuff as woke garbage; just look at this USA Today editorial defending another instance of Pixar being made to de-queer their work), being against trying to keep the planet habitable for the next generation is really not a good look, to put it lightly (especially since it's the studio that made WALL-E :-\) Plus, taking away environmentalism matters out of a story like this, would be like writing a story about someone having to rescue their ex with help from their current love interest, and then completely ignoring the conflict of interest that inherently entails; to borrow a quote from the Elio exposé, it would just become about totally nothing :-\ That said, it does appear that Pixar is getting their way with this one, since it's been reported that unlike Elio's, its test screening went well, and their first footage shown at the Annecy Film Festival suggests they're going all in on the whole environmentalism business, showing that one of the main beavers has created a sanctuary for animals that have lost their homes :-)
(Aside: Check out this tweet thinking it's stupid to have beavers trying to fight off human development because "Beavers are the most pro development mammal out there", as well as these tweets... Sure, they're great at making dams, but I doubt they'd be all for having their lake paved over with a highway for the humans :-\ And somehow, there are people against what Pixar's trying to put down with this movie, dismissing it as "woke agenda" and "peak NIMBY", plus even an appropriately screen-named user really rooting against the protagonist, just some of the many replies under DiscussingFilm's tweet about the film... Which is all the more reason Pixar needs to follow through on the environmentalist messaging IMO, just as long as it's not overly preachy; as a user at Box Office Theory notes: "It's also values that we quite urgently do need to instill in impressionable youths. Anyone who has a problem with that can F off.")
For now, according to a Fast Company interview with Pete Docter, Pixar has landed on a cadence of one original film followed by one sequel, more or less, with Pete adding, "We have to find out what people want before they know it. Because if we just gave them more of what they know, we'd be making Toy Story 27." Pete gets it; here's hoping Hoppers or some other original can really strike a chord with the public :-)
(ETA: For those curious about the original version, a test screening viewer chimed in under this Reddit thread to describe the original plot :-))
