Pixar is not what it used to be... Elio is on his way to another failure

Was always surprised Disney never became a giant video game maker. On paper, you'd think with all the legacy franchises they got they'd be able to release top notch games skewing to younger gamers. Then have a department that makes games for older people.

If they got giant money for animation, TV, movies, theme parks, it doesn't sound impossible to spend money to build a giant gaming department. Instead, it seems they prefer licensing out an IP to a game studio and ride the wave of royalty fees instead controlling the content's quality.

They got so many big budget products, their commitment to marketing (like Elio as there is no way they spent tons of money on this as many people have said they never heard of it) is hit and miss. If this was Toy Story, everyone on Earth would know about it. Elio is a huge budget movie and marketing seems muted unless just by luck all of us (me included) who thinks there's been limited marketing are all wrong and just missed all the promotions on TV and the net or cereal boxes.
Same, with the money they have and all the franchises available to them, some would think it's only logical.

My son has been saving his vbucks in fortnite ever since Lightning McQueen was rumored to be coming as a collab months ago, they'd make a fortune just putting out decent/good games of their franchises out there.
 
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Same, with the money they have and all the franchises available to them, some would think it's only logical.

My son has been saving his vbucks in fortnite ever since Lightning McQueen was rumored to be coming as a collab months ago, they'd make a fortune just putting out decent/good games of their franchises out there.
Thats why they stay in their lane. Success with theme parks and movies doesn't translate to making good video games. Far better for them to let others take all the risk, then license their IP, just like all the merch they already know, than to take on billions in a software company.

And really, up till the past few decades when apparently the US just erased the word "monopoly" from their lexicon, companies were actively encouraged to stay focused into smaller entities rather than the gargantuan behemoths we see today.
 
I didn't even know this existed. Pixar is basically irrelevant in our household now. It's honestly kind of sad, we went from watching Cars non-stop me and my son and treating every new Pixar release as a family event to this...
I do remember the days when we were the same, and a Pixar release was a big deal.

Well, or Star Wars for that matter. This is what Disney does to everything, runs it into the ground with bad content until you can't remember why it was special in the first place.
 
I do remember the days when we were the same, and a Pixar release was a big deal.

Well, or Star Wars for that matter. This is what Disney does to everything, runs it into the ground with bad content until you can't remember why it was special in the first place.
Marvel too.

I'm not even a superhero buff, but I know who all the big name IPs are due to old cartoons and my bro used to collect comics as a kid. But then got to a point there just seemed to be a million movies and TV series it's like there's always something superhero related going on every week. Then I'd read it's a big linked universe thing like a soap opera where to get the most out of it, you need to watch a lot of content to fully understand whats going on.

Who has time for all that shit? Why would anyone want to watch 9 episodes of She Hulk? Is she a comic character a normie like me would never understand is actually popular among fans?

And the movies would dump down to weird shit like Morbias or Madame Web etc.... Again, I'm no comic expert so I wouldnt know about these characters at all or ever stand incline to see them. But even comic book fans are like WTF? Thats' really fishing the bottom of the barrel for more movies.

And the dumbest thing I read. That the failed Morbias movie got brought back to theatres based off trolling memes saying it was actually good and fans wanted it back. Then it tanked again a second go around. And Disney execs believed the memes? lol
 
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Who has time for all that shit? Why would anyone want to watch 9 episodes of She Hulk? Is she a comic character a normie like me would never understand is actually popular among fans?

And the movies would dump down to weird shit like Morbias or Madame Web etc.... Again, I'm no comic expert so I wouldnt know about these characters at all or ever stand incline to see them. But even comic book fans are like WTF? Thats' really fishing the bottom of the barrel for more movies.

And the dumbest thing I read. That the failed Morbias movie got brought back to theatres based off trolling memes saying it was actually good and fans wanted it back. Then it tanked again a second go around. And Disney execs believed the memes? lol

She-Hulk has been a character since the 80's, so I don't see why she shouldn't be allowed to be adapted especially given how well-liked some of her runs are (your brother should have at least heard of her if he was collecting Marvel comics). I mean, the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie was adapting an at-the-time obscure IP to non-readers, and was based off the 2008 run, meaning at the time it was adapting a version of the team that had only existed for six years.

Why are you blaming Disney for something Sony did? Sony owns the rights to Morbius and Madame Webb, all that was purely in their ballpark.
 
Elio is flopping on an almost unbelivable scale. Worst Pixar opening ever.

In OPs article, it was projected to get 35 million in its opening weekend and be a massive flop.

It did far worse, grossing only 21 million.
 
She-Hulk has been a character since the 80's, so I don't see why she shouldn't be allowed to be adapted especially given how well-liked some of her runs are (your brother should have at least heard of her if he was collecting Marvel comics). I mean, the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie was adapting an at-the-time obscure IP to non-readers, and was based off the 2008 run, meaning at the time it was adapting a version of the team that had only existed for six years.

Why are you blaming Disney for something Sony did? Sony owns the rights to Morbius and Madame Webb, all that was purely in their ballpark.
Doubt my bro had She Hulk comics or else I would had knew about it. Or maybe he did but I dont remember it. He stopped buying them in probably about 1985 or so. He focused on the core Marvel IPs everyone knows like Avengers and West Coast Avengers, Spidey, Cap America, F4 etc... Dont think he ever bought DC comics. I dont remember any, plus he always said DC stood for Dumb Comics! I think his last or one of his last comics was the first Punisher set which had a typo on the cover..... something about saying it was 4 issues but was really 5. Or it said 5 issues but was really 4. Something like that. I remember he liked a comic named Longshot.

Googling it, it doesn't seem like She Hulk was very popular at all though. https://screenrant.com/she-hulk-marvel-comics-popularity-problem/

As for Morbius and Madame Web youre right. Those werent Disney. There's so many superhero movies hard to keep track. But googling it now, the Phase 5 movies in this list are all Disney. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marvel_Cinematic_Universe_films#Release

And similar to Pixar movies they are trending down in money and review scores.

As for GOTG being popular despite being a new comic, who knows. Maybe they took a chance on a motley crew new to people, instead of characters that werent very popular to begin with despite being around (similar to Sonys Morbius and Madame Web, or whomever made Kraven). If they arent popular known characters for comic fans, why bother making a big TV or movie out of it.
 
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It's probably decent but Pixar just had one too many flops in a row for a lot of people to get excited about what looks like a third string production.
 
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Doubt my bro had She Hulk comics or else I would had knew about it. Or maybe he did but I dont remember it. He stopped buying them in probably about 1985 or so. He focused on the core Marvel IPs everyone knows like Avengers and West Coast Avengers, Spidey, Cap America, F4 etc... Dont think he ever bought DC comics. I dont remember any, plus he always said DC stood for Dumb Comics! I think his last or one of his last comics was the first Punisher set which had a typo on the cover..... something about saying it was 4 issues but was really 5. Or it said 5 issues but was really 4. Something like that. I remember he liked a comic named Longshot.

Googling it, it doesn't seem like She Hulk was very popular at all though. https://screenrant.com/she-hulk-marvel-comics-popularity-problem/

As for Morbius and Madame Web youre right. Those werent Disney. There's so many superhero movies hard to keep track. But googling it now, the Phase 5 movies in this list are all Disney. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marvel_Cinematic_Universe_films#Release

And similar to Pixar movies they are trending down in money and review scores.

As for GOTG being popular despite being a new comic, who knows. Maybe they took a chance on a motley crew new to people, instead of characters that werent very popular to begin with despite being around (similar to Sonys Morbius and Madame Web, or whomever made Kraven). If they arent popular known characters for comic fans, why bother making a big TV or movie out of it.

You're assuming comic book sales A) "prove" the subjective quality of the title and B) will translate accurately to movie box office results.

By that argument, Aquaman would be the highest selling DC comic (and it isn't) since his first movie was the highest grossing film of the DCEU.

Regardless, John Byrne's She-Hulk run is still widely talked among comic book fans today as easily one of Byrne's best works (and it started in the late 80's, so your brother wouldn't know about it if he stopped in '85). And 60 issues is hardly a short run for a character who isn't one of the highest A-listers. And clearly there must be some demand for her runs because most of them have been reprinted in hardcover omnibuses. Marvel Comics doesn't invest in omnibuses unless there's demand for them. In fact, they do frequent polls to gauge interest on what fans want to be released in omnibuses. Sometimes runs don't do well initially but gain a following over time, especially with digital reading now an option it allows word of mouth to build on older runs with a cult following.

I also know one should double check sources claiming any particular run is "cancelled". Often a writer just wants to move on, very few want to stay on the same title for super long (Chris Claremont writing X-men, Marv Wolfman writing Teen Titans, and Geoff Johns writing Green Lantern for hundreds of issues is an exception, not the rule), and especially nowadays they will reset the issue number once the run ends and a new writer comes on afterwards. So in cases like that, the run wasn't cancelled, the writer just simply moved on and a new one came on later, yet most casual people who don't bother looking into it just see a number reset and the previous writer left and go, "oh, guess it was cancelled."

Also, if you look into it, Peter David's run of She-Hulk was sabotaged by editorial error. Peter was not informed that the character would be utilized in the main Hulk book written by Jeph Loeb, and that book was making it so her character arc in David's run didn't make sense, thus readers saw no reason to pick up the She-Hulk book due to the character being confusingly different between the two runs. Had editorial done its job, informed both Peter and Loeb about what was going on in both titles and thus able to coordinate better, the book probably would have lasted longer.

Limiting adaptations to only the most iconic characters would suck shit. There's a wealth of great stories and characters that people could discover if they gave it a chance. Guardians of the Galaxy proved that. For example, when the X-men join the MCU, I really hope we get X-Factor (based on Peter David's run) and X-Statix as they're well-written and unique characters and stories, rather than just catering solely to the casual "but why aren't Logan, Cyclops, Storm, and Beast on this team?" crowd.

Also, all your link proves to me is that I will never take CinemaScore, whatever that is, seriously. This is coming from one of the biggest MCU fans here: EVERT FILM in Phase 1-3 are at least an A?

high quality GIF


Incredible Hulk? Iron Man 2? Thor 2? Ant-man 2? Captain Marvel? These all deserve an A? I don't even full on hate any of these, but come on now.

Also, kind of worthless to only provide the critic scores from Rotten Tomatoes but not the audience score. For example, the audience score for Captain America: Brave New World was quite higher (77%) than the critic score (48%) for it.
 
Their art style is all over the place now. I still find their lesser stuff entertaining still, but they're nowhere near as distinctive as they used to be. They've veered in the direction of a lot of the more mediocre, mid 2000s selections from other studios.

All that said, I think Inside Out was one of their first offenders on this front, whole thing felt really barren to me, yet nearly everyone loved that.
 
People thought Inside Out 2 was going to bomb but it had legs and is now one of the highest grossing animated films of all time.

Elio was fantastic, word of mouth will spread.
 
People thought Inside Out 2 was going to bomb but it had legs and is now one of the highest grossing animated films of all time.

Elio was fantastic, word of mouth will spread.

Interesting, it does seem rated well on RT and even IMDb isn't being their usual miserable selves.

The problem is Disney clearly put way more marketing in the Lilo and Stitch remake, I don't think word of mouth can save Elio at this point. At least it probably won't bomb as hard as some are claiming, the marketing budget for this could not possibly be that high, many didn't even know this existed.
 

According to multiple insiders who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, Elio was initially portrayed as a queer-coded character, reflecting original director Adrian Molina's identity as an openly gay filmmaker. Other sources say that Molina did not intend the film to be a coming out story, as the character is 11.

a scene in Elio's bedroom with pictures suggesting a male crush
"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."

"Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing," says the former Pixar artist.

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That version of Elio would be fine for a 10 million dollar indie short, but for a 200+ million tentpole release? GTFO with that pitch. Clearly high on all the farts if Pixar leadership greenlit that story.

I'm still shocked that they don't have a hand sketched version of the film done before they give the go ahead to start filming. Shit like "hey, this 11 year old is totally gay" should have been sussed out right away and either killed the project or given a solid go-ahead if that's the vision for the studio. But seems like even the most cursory poll of the ACTUAL audience for their stuff (versus the vocal tiny minority online) would have shown them which topics were verboten.
 








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Until the people who are obssesed with gender identity are tossed out of Disney, their movies will keep flopping. Maybe it's time for Disney to get out of California if this shit all that state has to offer.
 
Crazy. $200M production budget for Elio. Add in marketing, and you're at $250M+. Compared to other recent movies, the graphics dont even look as good or snazzy.

Currently at $72M global ticket sales. 28 Years Later has done more sales domestic and international in the same time. Lucky for Elio, US July 4th holiday is coming this Friday. So that should be a boost later this week.

Who knows what the final sales will be. Will probably cross $100M. But doubt it'll cross $150M. The worst Pixar gate receipt movie is Lightyear at $226M (excluding any of the movies affected by covid). So as a gauage compared to Lightyear, Elio is only 1/3rd the way there to match.
 
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The whole article is about nothing else but representation and identity. Nobody gives a damn about telling great stories for a wide audience. No wonder Pixar movies are failing at the box office if that's the only thing Pixar employees care about. That whole studio has to be cleaned out, all the activists need to be kicked to the curb.
 
Until the people who are obssesed with gender identity are tossed out of Disney, their movies will keep flopping. Maybe it's time for Disney to get out of California if this shit all that state has to offer.
But this flopped and the final movie didn't have that stuff.
 
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The whole article is about nothing else but representation and identity. Nobody gives a damn about telling great stories for a wide audience. No wonder Pixar movies are failing at the box office if that's the only thing Pixar employees care about. That whole studio has to be cleaned out, all the activists need to be kicked to the curb.
They have forgotten that the way to do this stuff "right" is to code it. If Elio was a robot assigned to be a street sweeper at manufacture but really was a battlerobot underneath his shell, then you have something for the kids where parents don't have to cringe but the LGBTBBQ folks can have their champion as well.
 
Watched it finally, really enjoyed it, if you have even a remote fascination with space exploration you'll probably like it.

The artstyle was alright, but there's one moment at the end where you see a forest during a sunrise and it's some absolutely top tier rendering, that combined with carl sagan's audio voice over was a pretty powerful sequence.
 


It already cost them $200 million to basically redo the entire film when it was basically the Dragon Age Veilguard of Pixar films wew

This explains why it was sent out to die with no marketing. Disney decided enough was enough and wanted to cut their losses on it
 
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It already cost them $200 million to basically redo the entire film when it was basically the Dragon Age Veilguard of Pixar films wew

This explains why it was sent out to die with no marketing. Disney decided enough was enough and wanted to cut their losses on it

haha, love the way they're trying to spin this now

It was a beautiful work of art with a queer character, they removed all the queer and killed the movie! pixar staff was angry!

What a bunch of lunatics
 
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It's funny how that article say that a bad thing and it made me more interested in watching the movie. These guys have no self awareness at all and it's funny to see them think they are in the right

I'm not a fan of way Pixar has been doing their animation of faces lately. It's been a style they been using for quite a while and it turns me off

I had to drop Win Or Lose due to the way the faces looked. Not to mention there was certain agendas being pushed in that show. It's a shame because the concept sounded interesting. The show could have been great if they fixed the faces and character designs and they didn't have any agenda in it. Boring ass show too
 
I would be willing to bet that the part where they asked the audience if they liked the movie was also not very rosy and the article tries to stretch the truth there… "[the viewers] expressed how much they enjoyed the movie" might mean they basically mumbled or stayed silence and before asking them if they would buy a ticket to see it a Pixar staffer shouted to the other "write they enjoyed it so much they were speechless when asked about it!"…

One could read it so that the fact nobody raised their hand to signal they would buy a ticket to see it is how they expressed how much they enjoyed it… which sounds like what happened and the "journalist" trying to use clever wording there to minimise the damage while having plausible deniability.
 
I didn't follow Elio at all and only first learned about it through t.v. commercials. It's apparent why it flopped, I had no idea what the movie was about. Space movie, pirate movie, dragon movie?

I saw a bunch of creatures that looked like jellyfish, a one-eyed kid with a vegetable strainer as a helmet, and a sandworm with teeth. The commercials badly needed a two-sentence voice over that explains the plot to the viewer.
 


It already cost them $200 million to basically redo the entire film when it was basically the Dragon Age Veilguard of Pixar films wew

This explains why it was sent out to die with no marketing. Disney decided enough was enough and wanted to cut their losses on it

It was going to be doomed either way with those themes.
 
It was going to be doomed either way with those themes.

Disney did the right thing. A "queer coded" animated kids movie would have led to a boycott by not just conservative parents. And why are these lefties so desperate to insert these themes in kids movies anyway?
 
So the original Elio script had lots of gay undertones. Not surprised. No wonder it took a bunch of money and time to redo the script and VA making the budget zoom up.

Leave it to the media industry to always be chock full of people promoting their LBTAG viewpoints. Got to convince the world they are the greatest people on Earth. And in kids movies of all things.

All while every other industry just sticks to making products and services best they can at decent prices with zero politics or LGATB this or that. Ok, they might change their logo to rainbow for June and that's it (this year hardly any changed their logo rainbow on Linkedin). And they wonder why so many people think they are weird, unlikeable and have an annoying tendency to do grassroots style politics aimed at young kids in schools or in cartoons.
 
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Disney did the right thing. A "queer coded" animated kids movie would have led to a boycott by not just conservative parents. And why are these lefties so desperate to insert these themes in kids movies anyway?
It is an attempt to normalize. If they can capture the minds of kids then they can move the needle for a generation or two. People have been attempting to influence children with entertainment for a while.
 
Disney did the right thing. A "queer coded" animated kids movie would have led to a boycott by not just conservative parents. And why are these lefties so desperate to insert these themes in kids movies anyway?
Not just conservatives. A lot of moderates too. That's why something like identity politics (which is just one factor of many) pissed off lots of people so they voted Republican.

Ultra lefites big into hot topics like sex/gender/trans stuff know media (creative writers in particular, as I dont get a sense the audio recording engineer team or the sales guy selling action figures to Walmart have much say in the plot) is really the only industry they can preach their gospel to boost up their low self esteem. And when I say media, I dont just mean movies or games. But content in general (anything with lots of plot and content). So that's why education gets affected too since course material is really just different form of lengthy content.

So they choose industries where they can promote at length their LBTAG lifestyles hoping it clicks. And the more LGBAT people become that, the more they feel better (strength in numbers). If they worked at a brick and concrete company trying to promote that to the masses, all the bosses would tell them to fuck off and focus on making bricks.

You cant promote this kind of stuff working at a bank, roofing company, or drycleaners. Just about any industry you can think of is a very functional kind of company with a product or service that is very direct and to the point (ie. you need a real estate lawyer to sign off on documents you bought or sold a home. Or you bought a Panasonic microwave to heat up food. And that's all there is to it). But in class content, games or movies, they can fill the content with hours of gender politics. And media is a combo of pics, dialogue, text, audio etc...
 
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It is an attempt to normalize. If they can capture the minds of kids then they can move the needle for a generation or two. People have been attempting to influence children with entertainment for a while.
How long till we get an adult/child love story? I gotta think that is the next hurdle they want to cross.

Sure, we have had stories like that before, but they are usually exploitative or predatory by the end, no matter the time period. And they are DEFINITELY not marketed towards families/kids.

But imagine BIG now, or even reverse the genders for Tom Hanks and whatshername.
 
How long till we get an adult/child love story? I gotta think that is the next hurdle they want to cross.

Sure, we have had stories like that before, but they are usually exploitative or predatory by the end, no matter the time period. And they are DEFINITELY not marketed towards families/kids.

But imagine BIG now, or even reverse the genders for Tom Hanks and whatshername.

How many times have they made the movie LOLITA.
 
How long till we get an adult/child love story? I gotta think that is the next hurdle they want to cross.

Sure, we have had stories like that before, but they are usually exploitative or predatory by the end, no matter the time period. And they are DEFINITELY not marketed towards families/kids.

But imagine BIG now, or even reverse the genders for Tom Hanks and whatshername.
Isn't the upcoming series from the bluey creators about that?
 
So apparently an 11 year old boy is supposed to be a hard queer character that dances and jumps often, get colored stuff and has a room of teen boys he has a crush on.
Was this really supposed to be a kids movie? Imagine if this hadn't anyone to push their ears?
 
How many times have they made the movie LOLITA.
It's ART!

Lolita certainly isn't a story for children, nor does it paint the relationship in any kind of positive light.

But I can definitely see more effort to try to normalize men and boys. Girls have long been sexualized in media but rarely are they allowed a positive older relationship within the story (characterwise, I'm sure plenty of older male actors playing kids have macked on girls playing a girl, and we all know what happens backstage to these actresses [and some actors]). But directors like Joel Schumacher or Victor Salva were rarely making kids fare and if they were, the gay content was VERY subtle or coded. I think the Batman films were as kid focused as Joel ever got and bat nipples is about it (though let's face it, the whole Bruce and Dick stuff is already pretty gay :P
 
They have forgotten that the way to do this stuff "right" is to code it. If Elio was a robot assigned to be a street sweeper at manufacture but really was a battlerobot underneath his shell, then you have something for the kids where parents don't have to cringe but the LGBTBBQ folks can have their champion as well.
Let It Go is a cleverly disguised "coming out" song, as an example.
 
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