Film Preview: Elio (2025)

Film Poster

Page Revisions:

(December 1, 2024) Original
(March 23, 2025) New Trailer (#2) — New Posters (#3-#5)
(June 1, 2025) New Trailer (#3) — New Posters (#6-#16)
(June 8, 2025) New Trailer (#4)

Release Date:

June 13, 2025

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination, finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be.”

Poster Rating: C / C+ / C / C+ / B- / C+ / B- / C+ / C+ / C (2) / C+ (2) / C (3)

SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: (#1, C) A simple evocation of premise but the lack of details is uninspired. (#2, C+) A few more details help but the indistinctness of the characters in the background don’t make it seem more interesting.

(#3, C) A simplistic effort that gives space the attention it needs but without the creative depth you would expect from this studio. (#4, C+) A little more detailed than the prior but the vibrancy of the colors clash with one another, making it all feel very slapdash. (#5, B-) It’s nice to see lots of characters on the design but the accompanying character details are unfortunately lacking.

(#6, C+) A simplistic design with some nice detail work but not enough to excite or impress the viewer. (#7, B-) With so much detail it becomes a bit overwhelming but it’s a more compelling design than a lot of what Pixar and Disney have put together in recent years. It’s got a nice array of colors from green to blue to purple and that helps the design stand out. (#8, C+) Scaled back detail and adding in greens and pinks surprisingly diminish the work as it makes the upper section too busy while the lower, despite its detail, feels anemic. (#9, C+) Like the prior design, the infusion of new colors makes it look a bit too chaotic and while that might be true, it doesn’t help the viewer focus into the image itself.

(#10-#11 & #14, C) These format designs are minimalistic, they have few colors (not necessarily a bad thing) but little to get excited about. (#12-#13, C+) These are a little more interesting than their predecessors but still present too little creative energy. They seem like designs that they put a little bit of effort into to make them stand out but not enough effort to be richly compelling. (#15-#16, C) We finish the designs out with a pair of lackluster efforts that feature the prominent characters of the film but in ways we have either seem them before but with less detail or in somewhat new ways but which highlight the poor choice of meta elements that have dominated this studio’s poster output.

Trailer Rating: B- / A- / B- / C+

SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1, B-) The trajectory of the trailer is unfortunately reminiscent of that of Strange World, which was a huge flop for Disney. And like that film, the sense of wonder is fitting but the lack of narrative detail is also an issue.

(#2, A-) There are moments in this trailer that remind one of Onward crossed with Luca and Strange World; however, it has a lot of heart and humor that will appeal to young audiences as well as their parents and grandparents. It looks very much like the kind of quality effort Pixar used to put out pre-The Good Dinosaur.

(#3, B-) Reusing some of the jokes from the second trailer, this half-baked third trailer does little to convey information not previously presented and only makes the film look childish not childlike and half-baked rather than half interesting.

(#4, C+) It’s all down hill from here. The more trailers you release, the less excitement you build for a film, especially if that content isn’t substantially different. This trailer contains mostly the same material as the prior but compresses it down to a shorter length that doesn’t make it seem more interesting.