A Pixar artist admitted that the studio’s latest box-office disappointment Elio had no substance besides pushing an agenda about LGBT identity, telling The Hollywood Reporter this week that the movie was “totally nothing” without its original gay agenda.
“Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,” the artist told The Hollywood Reporter. “The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.”
Adrian Molina, who is openly gay, was the film’s first director, according to the outlet. After Disney showed the film’s first cut — without the original queer characterization — several creatives reportedly left the project. Molina left Elio to co-direct Coco 2. America Ferrera, known for playing Gloria in Barbie, left her role as Elio’s mom after Molina’s exit.
“It was pretty clear through the production of the first version of the film that [studio leaders] were constantly sanding down these moments in the film that alluded to Elio’s sexuality of being queer,” the former Pixar artist who worked on the film told The Hollywood Reporter.
In other words, without propaganda, Pixar is nothing.
Every story has a message born out of the main character’s arc as he comes into conflict with other characters and the events of the plot. A story without a message or theme is not a story at all. If Elio’s original queer themes were its central message, it makes sense that the story is empty now that they’ve been scrubbed.
Audience reviews for Pixar’s Lightyear made it clear that families do not want to see queer themes in children’s movies, leaving the studio caught between viewers and Disney’s gay agenda. As The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood noted, the removal of Elio‘s “queer-coded” elements may mean that Pixar is listening to its audience. But the movie still fell flat after the creative team failed to rework the movie around a new theme.
Is Disney capable of writing meaningful movies without the message of feminism or LGBT self-discovery? Recent movies and shows indicate the company is struggling to do so.
Pixar’s movies have lost their soul. To find it again, the studio needs to reject leftist gay propaganda and return to telling stories that promote virtue and heroism. Without these, their stories will continue to be nothing.
Jacqueline Annis-Levings is a correspondent for the Federalist. She is a rising junior at Patrick Henry College, where she is majoring in English.
