I know that this blog has already covered Elio, but I have had scattered thoughts about some of its thematic depths. The first part of this essay is a response to the review my colleague and dear friend Arturo Serrano wrote on this site regarding that film. He is an astounding critic and one I deeply admire (and I’m working with him on a shared world project), but there is one particular aspect of Elio that I feel his piece does not consider. It is regarding Olga, the aunt of the titular character, and how she fits into the broader narrative of the behavior of parental figures in regards to their children. Secondly, I consider the fate of the third child in the film that is thrust into a role that he does not want. Thirdly, I consider a parallel between Olga and Grigon that the writers almost certainly deliberately did not address.
Arturo makes the case that Elio is an inaccurate depiction of children who rebel against their parents (or parental figure, in the case of Olga, who is his aunt, and who stepped up after his parents died in an unknown event). He argues, basically, that Elio is rebelling against her because he sees her as abusive, and that the film agrees with him, even when Olga didn’t do anything wrong. He therefore argues that the film is wrong to condemn Olga for doing what anyone in her station would do.
This is where I disagree with my colleague and friend. I would argue that the film is not portraying Olga as an abuser. Consider all of this from her perspective. We do not know if Olga ever intended to have children, but in any case, she lost a sibling and the sibling’s spouse in some sudden awful event, and at some point must have realized that she must take over caring for her nephew very suddenly. She appears to be single, and she has a demanding job with the United States Air Force. I can very much imagine Olga having a conversation with Elio that resembles a conversation in 2025’s The Monkey, directed by Osgood Perkins, where two brothers who have likewise lost their parents are taken in by their uncle and aunt. There is a scene where the uncle point-blank tells his nephews that he and his wife never expected to have children, are inexperienced in the art of parenting, and should adjust their expectations accordingly. I can easily imagine a more tender, less wry version of that talk some years before the events of Elio. It is also similar to 2022's M3GAN, where Gemma is an aunt who is struggling to take care of a sibling's child; that film is very good at showing that exhaustion, and brings it down a horrifying direction.
One of the things that I think ought to be considered regarding why Elio wants to escape his life with Olga is the broader situation of his familial arrangements. Raising a child is hard. Raising a child by yourself, without a partner, is even harder. Raising a child without a partner while working a demanding job for the United States Air Force is harder still. It is, then, quite easy to imagine that Olga is running on fumes, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and after a certain point she has only so much to give, and that those points come with disheartening frequency.
When put in that context, I think a comparison with another recent Disney film regarding the treatment of parental figures is relevant. I refer to the 2025 live-action remake of Lilo and Stitch, which I have previously reviewed for this very blog. One of the things I praised that film was for explaining how difficult it is for the teenaged Nani, living in poverty and having suffered the loss of her parents, to take care of her little sister Lilo. Nani is slowly being ground down, having to forfeit a promising future to ensure her sister can survive. Without the intervention of close family friends (an intervention entirely absent in the original animated film), both Nani and Lilo would be sentenced to lifelong poverty.
Elio made the mistake of not making the weight of all this on Olga obvious enough. What the film risks imparting, especially to younger viewers, even more especially girls, is to portray women with a certain martyrdom complex. Reading between the lines, one could argue that the film is portraying Olga as naturally a mother by virtue of being a woman. She is frustrated with her nephew, yes, and she wants her nephew to be a bit more orderly, yes (as so clearly demonstrated by her choice to send him to a military school). Perhaps more clearly, she wants him to be a bit more normal.
This is a bit of a side note but I think in one particular aspect the film really fumbled a very obvious way it could have solidified its central theme: that of the fake Elio the aliens sent to take his place. So much of this film is about what parental figures want of their children, and this fake Elio is designed to disintegrate. To put it more bluntly, the Communiverse has created a sentient being with the express purpose of dying when it is convenient for them. Despite being a clone and a tool, he is a character in this movie. He has significant screen time, and is the instigator of a number of important moments in the story, and yet he is never given the chance to come up with an original thought. Instead of contemplating this fact, he allows himself to disintegrate, making a Terminator reference in the process, and does so to allow the protagonists to continue in their adventure. One child in this movie is ordered to be normal, and another is ordered to be violent. A third child, however, is literally ordered to die. It would have required ripping the guts out of the film to accommodate this, or maybe bringing it up to the length of a TV show, but it was such obvious thematic content that is just left at the wayside. Letting a child die in this way while others got to live left a bad taste in my mouth.
In terms of thematic potentials left unaddressed, there is a very obvious one that the writers missed in terms of contrasting Olga and Lord Grigon. Grigon serves a murderous, militaristic empire that cares little for life; that much is clear. What is less clear, when taking in the film’s framing as perceived by an onlooker, is that Olga also serves a murderous, militaristic empire that cares little for life, namely the United States military. Can you truthfully say that a military whose ultimate antecedents are genocidal militias in colonial times, and is currently leveling Gaza, cares about life?
I know that such things would never get into a children’s movie. I know that Disney takes plenty of money from the American military. I know that Disney is committed to a vague midcentury form of patriotism that likes to pretend everything is fine and dandy. I know that Disney, ultimately, is simply not brave enough to challenge American empire that openly. I know that this film had advisors from the military. Ultimately, though, the film is still portraying a menace to the world as benign, and ultimately good. Fighting Kessler Syndrome is undoubtedly good, but it ultimately comes off as akin to the time when America conquered Veracruz and focusing on when American doctors fought syphilis in that city. It’s a good act, yes, but it came out of a very particular context, and that context is not one of altruism.
The United States has ratified the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the militarization of outer space. The United States also has laws preventing it from providing weapons to governments committing genocide, and yet it does so anyway. Unfortunately, as long as the world is divided into competing empires, I expect the Outer Space Treaty will be about as effective as the Kellogg-Briand Pact was (indeed, the wide variety of objects cluttering the atmosphere may well violate the treaty in itself). What I worry is that many adults who may be firing those weapons at whatever poor country may come in America’s crosshairs, at poor, defenseless children, will have entered that grisly service because they saw Elio in theaters and were enchanted by space, and by the military.
On a basic narrative level I enjoyed Elio. I did, however, leave the theater feeling like there was fertile soil to have done even more with what had been laid out. The whole film, while enjoyable, felt like a massive missed opportunity to explore issues it merely raised. I know that this is wishful thinking and in one instance not particularly likely due to the interests of Disney as a company. But it stood out to me all the same.
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POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.
