Elio has landed on a Bottom 10 list on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The new Pixar animated movie was directed by Turning Red‘s Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian, who stepped in amid a creative restructuring that saw original director Adrian Molina depart the project to work on the upcoming sequel Coco 2. The new movie follows alien-obsessed 11-year-old kid Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab) getting his wish by being abducted, only to be mistaken for Earth’s ambᴀssador by the intergalactic collective known as the Communiverse as it is under threat from the powerful alien warlord Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett).

Pixar’s Elio is the production company’s only movie of the year, leaving a major gap ahead of 2026, which sees the debut of both the original movie Hoppers and the sequel Toy Story 5. Although it is their immediate follow-up to the record-breaking Inside Out 2, which became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time in 2024 before being surpᴀssed by Ne Zha 2, Elio is not tracking as well as its predecessor. At the time of writing, projections for its opening weekend give it a domestic debut of just over $20 million, compared to Inside Out 2‘s $154.2 million.

Elio Has An 86% On Rotten Tomatoes, But It’s Still A Bottom 10 Pixar Movie

It’s One Of Their Lowest-Rated Originals

At the time of writing, Rotten Tomatoes has aggregated 105 different critics’ reviews of Elio, giving the movie an 86% score on the Tomatometer. Not only is this score 26% over the 60% threshold past which a movie can be considered Fresh, the amount of positive reviews is statistically significant and allows the site to deem the movie Certified Fresh. However, in spite of this, Elio has still earned one of the 10 worst scores in the history of Pixar. Below, see a breakdown of the Rotten Tomatoes scores of all 29 Pixar movies that have been released to date:

By falling below 2020’s Onward, which is the tenth lowest-rated Pixar movie on Rotten Tomatoes, Elio has officially become their ninth lowest-rated outing at the time of writing. The тιтles below Elio include the original Pixar movies Elemental, Cars, The Good Dinosaur, and Brave, as well as the lesser-regarded spinoffs and sequels Monsters University (which is a college-set prequel to the Oscar-winning Monsters, Inc.), Lightyear (which is presented as the fictional movie in the Toy Story universe that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy), Cars 3, and Cars 2 (which is the only Pixar movie to have earned a Rotten score).

Elio’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Low By Pixar’s Incredibly High Standards

Pixar Has Been On A Critical H๏τ Streak Since The Beginning

The reason that Elio has landed in the Bottom 10 is the fact that almost every movie that the production company has put out since they made their feature debut with the original Toy Story in 1995 has received glowing reviews from critics. In fact, of Pixar’s entire 29-film roster, only two тιтles (Cars 2 and Cars 3) have failed to become Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. With such a strong track record, which sees the Top 10 all landing between 96% and 100%, any score of 90% or less would have automatically placed a movie in their Bottom 10.

Pixar’s critical reception has been so profoundly positive that their Rotten Tomatoes domination extends far beyond just the ranked list of тιтles that they themselves have put out. On Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 100 best-reviewed computer-animated movies on the platform, there are seven Pixar тιтles (Toy Story 2, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Inside Out, Toy Story 3, Up, and Toy Story 4) in the Top 10, with the only other тιтles present being DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon (99%) at No. 4, Disney’s Zootopia (98%) at No. 7 and Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (97%) at No. 10.

Elio’s 86% Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Even Below Pixar’s Average Score

They Only Have One Major Outlier

In addition to placing it in the Bottom 10 for Pixar, Elio‘s 86% score sees it falling below the Rotten Tomatoes average for the company’s output. Although the Rotten score for Cars 2 pulls down their average significantly, at the time of writing it is 88%, so their new movie fell just slightly short. The fact that 20 of their 29 movies are above their own average also proves what tough compeтιтion the new adventure movie faced during its Rotten Tomatoes debut. Elio is even further below Pixar’s median, which is now the 94% score earned by 2016’s Finding Dory.

There are likely several reasons for the new movie underperforming compared to the majority of its predecessors. For one thing, the original concept for Elio was very different. The movie’s narrative was significantly retooled, changing the main character’s motivations entirely, which resulted in a certain unfocused sensibility that a number of critics picked up on. Other members of the small group of critics who gave it Rotten reviews called it unoriginal and bland, saying that it lacks the emotional punch of Pixar classics. Another compared it to The Good Dinosaur, another lesser-regarded original that is now Pixar’s 24th lowest-rated movie.

Elio’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Still Impressive, Even With The Bottom 10 Ranking

It Would Be A Solid Score For A Non-Pixar Movie

Even though Elio reviews can’t quite compare to previous Pixar тιтles, its Rotten Tomatoes score is still remarkable. By earning a Certified Fresh 86% score, it is tied as the 36th highest-rated movie of 2025 on Rotten Tomatoes in general and as the 13th highest-rated movie of 2025 when only counting major wide releases. This places it above a number of notable new releases, including the Celine Song romance Materialists (82%), the latest Wes Anderson outing The Phoenician Scheme (78%), the Tom Cruise sequel Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (80%), and the live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake (77%).

With such compeтιтion, it is hard for Elio to stand out, even though its 86% score would place it in the Top 5 of a number of major long-running franchises including Jurᴀssic Park (it would be No. 2 below the original movie’s 91%), The Lord of the Rings, (No. 4 below The Two Towers‘ 95%, Return of the King‘s 94%, and Fellowship of the Ring‘s 92%), and Harry Potter (No. 4 behind Deathly Hallows: Part 2‘s 96%, Prisoner of Azkaban‘s 91%, and Goblet of Fire‘s 88%). Therefore, a Bottom 10 placement does not necessarily indicate a failure on Elio‘s part.

Source(s): Rotten Tomatoes