Pixar just unleashed a whirlwind featurette for Elio—and it's Star Trek meets Home Alone in the best way possible. Zoe Saldana, Hollywood's reigning space queen (Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy), drops behind-the-scenes gems about voicing Aunt Olga, while newcomer Yonas Kibreab stumbles into a cosmic identity crisis. The kicker? Elio's not just abducted—he's mistaken for Earth's leader. Cue intergalactic impostor syndrome.
The featurette's golden detail: Elio's “Communiverse” is a bureaucratic nightmare of aliens (including a character literally named “OOOOO”). It's The Office—if Dwight Schrute had tentacles. Compare this to Lightyear's box-office black hole, and Elio feels like Pixar's Hail Mary: quirky, risky, and so weird it might work.
Pixar's betting big on fresh voices—literally. Kibreab's a no-name, and the film's co-directed by Coco's Adrian Molina and Turning Red's Domee Shi. But here's the twist: Elio's plot mirrors E.T.'s “kid vs. the universe” charm, but swaps Reese's Pieces for existential dread. Anonymous source (aka us): “This could either revive Pixar's magic or become another Strange World—pray for the former.”
Genius or garbage? A kid diplomat negotiating with aliens sounds deranged—but so did Toy Story in '95. Fight us in the comments.
It’s Zoe Saldaña, with a circumflex.