What's with the Elio Redemption Tour?

Gotta love how award season nonsense can throw you for a loop. While the outcome can be delightful, at other times, it can make your blood boil, because award voters decided to be generic with their choices. Also, it doesn’t help that we know some folks in the industry can and will exploit the questionable language within the Oscar rules to secure nominations. It’s still no less frustrating when a category that is already treated as the kids’ table of the major award, Best Animated Feature, is always a victim of some of the most generic voting possible. Instead of watching the amazing movies that have come out that aren’t just the ones made in the US, voters always seem to give favoritism to Disney and Pixar, even if they don’t deserve it. At one point, they were getting better at simply not letting two or more of the five slots get taken up by Disney and Pixar, but it seems like this year, they slipped back into letting Disney have two of the five slots. 

On January 22nd, the Oscar nominations were announced. The five films that were chosen were Arco, Little Amelie, KPop Demon Hunters, Zootopia 2, and, to everyone’s surprise, Pixar’s Elio. Voters apparently didn’t see the incredible 100 Meters, ChaO, Legend of Hei 2, Lost in Starlight, or the incredible Nobody or Nezha 2, which the producers didn’t even bother to submit to the Oscars. Not that awards are the end-all be-all of quality, but considering the completely disastrous release and production cycle behind Elio and the news that came out about it, it was rather shocking to see it get in. 

What is also worth noting is that, throughout much of last year, there was this underground redemption tour for the film, since every time an awards or critics group would reveal their nominations, Elio would pop up more times than not. Even Film-focused YouTubers were releasing videos around this time. What was going on? When the film originally dropped back in June, it came out the same day as KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix, and, well, we saw what happened. It underperformed, earning mixed to lightly positive reviews, and then the story came out about what happened with the production, and it felt like it was a doomed, unremarkable blip in Pixar’s film library and in 2025 film discourse. 

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. While many, including me, thought the film was just okay, people may truly like the movie. I know, in a world where art is subjective, some people like movies that I don’t. It’s just my burden to bear that other people have different tastes from me. I might dig too deep into this redemption arc for this movie, but sometimes, the simple truth of it all is that people liked it. It could have also been getting a lot of love and support as it hit digital and streaming, which can happen. Sometimes, we don’t go see movies due to negative press and then watch them later, or we watch them during their release, not liking them, but then come back months later and find ourselves either disliking them more or maybe even less than we did the first time. It happens. Of course, talking about what voters think can be dicey and very messy, since so many anonymous voters have shown how lazy, inept, and useless they are when they have officially said that they let their kids choose the noms for categories like animation. Perhaps people genuinely liked Elio, or perhaps voters didn’t do their job thoroughly enough to consider the other submissions, which were all better. 

Now, what about the actual redemption tour? As I said, there was always this weird vibe to thinking that of all companies, Disney would need to pull some kind of underhanded campaign to get it nominated, like with what happened with films like the infamous To Leslie or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close nominations. Why would they want to spend so much money that they already lost or are slowly recouping from the film to give it a big award season campaign when the much more loved and successful Zootopia 2 was going to be their entry in the award season anyway? 

It wouldn’t be the most far-fetched idea that Pixar and or Disney went to a few influencers and YouTube channels to help paint Elio in a much better light and make voters ignore that there are much better overall films out there for this category. 

We could dive into it as if we’re about to unlock some massive revelation that could change the film industry, like some animated-focused version of All the President’s Men, but I talked it over with my two podcast cohosts, Mike and Bri, since we were also perplexed by Elio’s nom. At most, after all the criticism and pushback to the final product and everything that came out after the expose about Elio’s nightmare production, it might be an attempted apology for screwing over the original director and the team that walked out after Pixar and Disney execs demanded a much more bland final product. Get them an award nomination because we screwed over their original plans.

Even then, why does it feel like the YouTube videos from the likes of Cinema Therapy that were gushing about the movie felt like they were part of that campaign? Their video on Elio was released during the voting time period for the Oscars. Could they legitimately like the movie, or are they doing this because they are one of the few YouTube Film-focused channels to also have the opportunity to sit down with Pixar at the studio to talk about Pixar movies? We could talk about the complicated relationship dynamic when a YouTuber gets access to studio connections, but that will be an editorial for another time. There was even that weird, infamous TikTok ad Pixar made that pointed out the fact that filmgoers don’t see original Pixar films. We could break down the details about that pedantically, but that’s a whole other mess of Disney shoving them onto their streaming service on Disney+ during the pandemic. There were also news stories about political parties and even nations paying influencers to spew propaganda for huge sums of money. It wouldn’t be the most far-fetched idea that Pixar and or Disney went to a few influencers and YouTube channels to help paint Elio in a much better light and make voters ignore that there are much better overall films out there for this category. 

Part of the fun about award season shock-and-awe incidents is how you then begin to feel like Sherlock Holmes, trying to piece the puzzle together as to why a film, a short, or an actor got nominated. Much of the time, it’s simply a cultural moment that has captivated audiences and voters. Sometimes, it’s some well-done or underhanded For Your Consideration campaigns. With Elio, it’s hard to know what exactly went down, unless some brave soul who does know gets in contact with me after reading this to anonymously give me the details as to what went down. Then by all means, I’ll be all ears. As I said above, I don’t think Elio deserves any nomination due to what the execs at Pixar did to the original project and the film’s director, and there were better movies to check out, but I’m also not the sole person behind the Oscars’ voting, nor am I behind any of the critics’ guilds or awards groups. If I were, I would ensure that it was up to me and a small group of critics who genuinely care about variety in animation to make sure that films like 100 Meters got their due. Not that it matters, because we all know KPop Demon Hunters or Little Amelie will take the award, and even in both a better or even worse year for animation, Elio still wouldn’t deserve it because no one should want to award a studio’s bad decision that they caused. Either way, I’m curious to see how the Oscars work out for Best Animated Feature.