A few weeks ago Pixar released their newest original motion picture: Elio. When I saw it had released, I suddenly had a pang of recognition. A sort of deja vu, believing it was an old film they re-released or something. Until I remembered seeing the very first trailer for it—more of a teaser—years ago.
The fact I remembered that was a good sign. It meant the trailer was interesting and made me take a mental note of “check out the film once it’s released”. Now, years later, the movie finally released and I seriously considered going to the cinema to see it. Which is rare, because I can only afford to go to the cinema once every two years or so, and usually just tag along whenever another group is going to the biggest blockbuster of the year.
It shows how good my opinion of that trailer was. That it left such an impression. That I’d never forgotten after ~2 years and felt a bit of excitement for a movie that I knew nothing about except that it surely wasn’t made for someone my age.
And then … I discovered something. I just wanted to read the synopsis again, which also made me glance at some reviews, and … the story had completely changed?
I distinctly remembered Elio being abducted against his will. But in the final movie, he is very eager to go along.
I remember this really funny premise of him accidentally becoming the ambassador for Earth in a large galactic empire. But in the final movie, it’s more about his “inner journey” and fighting some generic bad guy. (Which, in the most common interpretation of that first trailer, was actually supposed to be a friend/ally.)
Some parts of that original trailer are certainly still there. Many parts are not. And those were the good parts.
Just seeing a glimpse of the new approach (used in the final film) made me lose all interest.
And so I wondered: why!?
No wonder the movie was delayed that much. They probably had to redo almost everything, after they’d already done enough work to release a good-looking trailer. It was probably a massive blow to the budget and to team morale.
When Elio was finally launched, there seemed no more money/interest/hype left to actually market it. Many people didn’t know it released. I only knew because I remembered that teaser from long ago.
And everyone who was in the same boat as I was? Everyone who remembered that trailer, was excited, and knew the movie released (or was about to release)? They had no interest anymore! Because the entire movie had changed!
And so the movie “flopped”. Reviews are okayish, but not great. It had the worst opening ever. And Pixar even made the childish move of placing blame on the people, telling them they “shouldn’t ask for original films if they’re not going to buy tickets for them”.
I’ve read/watched some interviews with the creators searching for answers. But, as usual, this was just a frustrating and fruitless search. The creators speak in these vague terms like “yes we changed the aspect ratio to widescreen halfway through, and it energized Elio’s inner journey so much”. What does that even mean? WHY? Specifics! Details! They might as well have said “oh and then we used the color red 5% more because it matched the vibe of our musicians”.
They don’t actually want to delve into it. They downplay the massive changes and only focus on “safe” things to talk about. Which obviously leads me to believe this was some big conflict that left a sour taste in the creator’s mouth. Maybe the good old “executives forced us to change all this for no reason”.
The one thing I discovered was them stating “you can’t show divorce in an animated movie for kids”. (And similar statements on other “serious things” you wouldn’t be able to show.) Was that it? The original idea had some elements that someone called “not kid-friendly” and forced them to change?
Even so, this is just plain false. Pixar literally earned its place at the top by creating a string of thoughtful movies about serious issues. The Incredibles opens with an attempted suicide. Up opens with the wife of the main character dying from cancer. WALL-E is about the massive destruction and climate change caused by humans, and it really explores that topic in no uncertain terms.
Looking at the new trailers and reviews, though, I do believe they’ve become much more “safe”. The main character (Elio, duh) is … generic. Their stories used to have adults in the lead, they used to have living toys and cars and whatnot, all unique and memorable. Now they just resort to very similar looking children all the time. And god forbid they gave them a clear personality or struggle, as it might offend or alienate some people.
Did the trailer not perform “well enough”? I find that hard to believe. If even I saw that trailer—someone who barely has free time and surely doesn’t spend it scouring the internet for animated movie trailers—then many must have seen it. And all of them were enthusiastic, if I remember correctly. Even so, Pixar never really seemed to care about viewing figures or likes on trailers before. But maybe this is a case of some executive discovering a new analytics tool and using it to “prove” the numbers weren’t high enough and that Elio had to change drastically.
As always, I hope the real reasons for such massive changes halfway through a project are released one day. They probably won’t be. Vague, deflecting statements by the creators in interviews is usually all we get ;) Until then, we can have fun speculating about the reasons.
I obviously can’t say if the old version of the movie would’ve been better than the new one. Because we’ll never get to see the old one, I didn’t see the new one, and this is subjective in any case.
All we know for sure is that the original director/executive behind the production was reassigned, forcing another team to step in. Which was then also reassigned somewhere else, forcing a third team to step in. But who made that call? And why? Even when all the people working on a film change, you can still keep the same script and general trajectory.
But I can use this moment to illustrate, again, that people should stop doing this to stories!
- Pixar destroyed their own hype/marketing completely by doing this. Everyone looking out for the movie was disappointed it had changed so much and likely didn’t go see it. Everyone else didn’t know the movie existed at all. Which leads to …
- Trying to appeal to everybody means appealing to nobody. You should actively make your characters and stories less mainstream and generic and “what the current market demands”. That’s how they actually stand out, get noticed, garner interest. That’s how I remembered that trailer in the first place. So pick your target audience, and stick to it.
- Stories never get better from drastically changing things halfway. Frankenstein stories—which try to fit all sorts of incompatible requirements into one thing—are always a terrible mess. If you’ve already blown through part of your budget (either money or time left until release), you simply can’t afford to make massive changes. You physically don’t have the time and money to make proper changes. So deciding to do it is just a decision to ruin whatever you have.
- In other words, the “constraint” of already having half a movie or script should be seen as a good thing. Use it to find creative solutions that work within this constraint. That’s how all those “happy little accidents” occurred that made movies extra special.
- Most of all, I really wish people would go back to writing the script first, and then pulling the trigger. Pixar, Disney, Marvel, everyone nowadays just barrels into production without having a polished script ready. And for what? Bad Frankenstein movies and millions of wasted money. Just wait a few more months until the writers have ironed out mistakes and are certain about the script. And once you commit—you commit.
I am reminded of Andor (Season 2), which also released a month or two ago. They didn’t start shooting until they had a pretty polished script. They ended up with 12 hour-long episodes … and only a single scene they shot was actually cut afterward. Think about it. A single scene. Everything else was shot following the script and kept in, wasting absolutely no time, money or effort. They knew the script was good—they followed it—the end product was good. What an invention!
I am reminded of Christopher Nolan. Perhaps the biggest, most profitable, and most celebrated director of the past decades. He always has a finished script ready before he actually starts doing anything. He is so dependable that studios say “yeah his new movie—Odyssey—will release on this exact date a year from now” … when Nolan still has to start shooting at all. He finished all his movies on time and within budget. What an invention!
Why isn’t everyone doing this? Why aren’t people perfecting their script—a cheap, fast, easy thing to do—before diving into the expensive and time-consuming part of making it? Why does Pixar even consider the option of completely overhauling the movie when half of it has already been made? It’s silly!
And so I mostly wrote this article to, maybe, somewhere, convince someone to stop doing this. It’s incredibly expensive (both in terms of time and money) to completely redo a segment in an animated film. It seems to me that you should always have a solid script to which you’re committed and even small deviations should be frowned upon. The time for experimentation, for realizing mistakes, for trying new things … is in the script-writing phase. Not after you’ve already released a good-looking trailer that has people excited, which reveals at least a good chunk of the film had already been made.
Finally, I want to say that absolutely nobody is falling for any of the vague corporate speak anymore. Just tell the truth. Why can’t a creator just say “we planned THIS story, but they forced us to do THAT story, so that’s what we did!”. Most people would respect that; many would go see the movie because you said that. Trying to be safe in interviews, trying to not offend or include any serious topics, just makes everybody shrug and walk away—because there’s nothing interesting or human about your project now.
Think about it. When I was (very) young I used to watch these DVDs/tapes we bought, and they always included extras. Behind the scenes. Bloopers. All sorts of things. I was often more interested by that than the movie. Most of all, they usually showed all their mistakes, and obstacles, and bad decisions they tried to cover up. It was fun. It was interesting. It made me appreciate how much effort went into the movie even more, it made me appreciate their clever solution for something in the final movie even more.
Telling the truth and being honest about human imperfection will always lead to better results. Especially long-term, especially on a large scale. These contracts that forbid creators/actors from saying anything negative or admitting any problems are just normalized fear holding back everything and everyone. Similarly, this Frankenstein process of creating movies that has tens of executives meddling and changing your story is also just fear (from them) destroying everything.
Elio could have been an amazing new movie. It ended up being a mediocre movie by most accounts, and a terrible movie in terms of revenue. And that is absolutely not the fault of the fans and the parents with young children—it’s the logical consequence of making massive changes to any movie halfway through production.
Hey, the original trailer is still up! The comments underneath confirm that the final movie is way different, and that most preferred the original idea shown here.
You can clearly see how Elio doesn’t want to be abducted, how the villain (Grigon) is a friend/one part of the council instead of clear major villain. You can see the humor work really well—for me personally, at least. You can see the very interesting idea of Elio being there against his wishes, but now he has to “defend Earth” in a “trial” of some sort. There’s a serious tone here—the trailer even starts with some ominous alien-y music—and artistic visuals with the frozen wave.
The actual final trailers have a lighthearted, adventure, happy vibe. They do away with all of this, Elio goes willingly, there’s a clear big bad to fight, the aliens become more generic/uninteresting, and the humor gets center stage while at the same just not working for me anymore. Maybe their “test screenings” showed this appealed much more to very young kids, but I doubt it. In any case, it’s parents buying the tickets, and I can see how the new trailers interest them way less than the original one.
Then again … the changes aren’t actually too bad. That’s my whole point. There are solid arguments for making Elio WANT to be abducted. For example: giving him a bigger motive and interest in the aliens for the rest of the story. The point is that making those changes halfway production, especially after already starting marketing, is pretty much always bad.
