Elio has earned a solid Rotten Tomatoes score during the weekend of its theatrical debut, but it’s not enough for it to beat the majority of the iconic original run of Pixar movies. The 2025 animated feature had a complicated route to the screen, with original director Adrian Molina exiting the project in favor of the upcoming Coco 2, with Turning Red‘s Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian stepping in amid a major creative overhaul. In addition to the main character’s feelings toward alien abductions being entirely changed, America Ferrera as Elio’s mother was replaced by Zoe Saldaña as Elio’s aunt.

The Elio release kicked off on June 20, making it Pixar’s only movie of 2025. It is their immediate follow-up to 2024’s Inside Out 2, which became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time thanks to its enormous worldwide gross of $1.699 billion, though it has already been toppled by the Chinese smash hit Ne Zha 2, which premiered in early 2025. Although Elio‘s current box office projections show it opening with a 3-day domestic total of $22 million, which is far lower than Inside Out 2‘s $154.2 million, it has earned a solid, Certified Fresh, Rotten Tomatoes score of 85%.

Cars Is The Only Pixar Movie From Before 2010 Elio Beat On Rotten Tomatoes

The Cars Franchise Is Not Beloved By Critics

While the fact that critics’ Elio reviews have earned it an 85% score on Rotten Tomatoes makes it one of the better-reviewed wide release movies of the year, it still can’t compare to the early output of Pixar. The production company made their feature debut with 1995’s Toy Story, a widely beloved movie that kicked off a run of critical and/or commercial hits that are all Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, of the 11 movies that Pixar made between 1995 and 2010, only one – 2006’s Cars (74%) – had a lower score than Elio.

Generally, the Cars movies are the least beloved of Pixar’s entire 29-film output. In fact, the 2006 movie’s two sequels are the only two Pixar тιтles to not be Certified Fresh on the review aggregator platform. While Cars 3 (69%) still has a Fresh score, coming in a full 9% above the 60% threshold past which they determine a movie’s Freshness, Cars 2 (40%) is both the lowest-rated Pixar movie of all time and the only movie that they have made to ever earn a Rotten score.

Pixar’s Non-Cars Movies Before 2010 Have Elite Rotten Tomatoes Scores

They Hit The Ground Running

It has ultimately proved to be hard for Elio to compete, because the run of early Pixar movies was a nearly unmatched critical H๏τ streak. Although Rotten Tomatoes did not start until 1998, the original Toy Story retroactively earned a perfect 100% score, kicking off a stellar golden age for the company. With the exception of Cars and Pixar’s sophomore feature A Bug’s Life (92%), every single movie they released before 2010 had a score of 95% or above. See the full breakdown below:

Not only has Elio fallen below 10 of those 11 movies that were released before 2010, it is currently the ninth lowest-rated Pixar movie on Rotten Tomatoes altogether.

Elio’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Continues A Shakier Reception For Pixar’s Recent Movies

The Modern Era Has Been Less Kind To Them

While only the latter two Cars movies have had scores that could be considered middling for Pixar’s output, Elio‘s score is still indicative of a general downturn for their output. Even though their scores overall still represent a solid spread that would be ideal for any brand or franchise, Pixar’s track record has become undeniably spotty in the 2020s. Below, see a breakdown of the Rotten Tomatoes score for every Pixar movie released since 2020:

While the 2020s have hit highs that are similar to the golden age of Pixar with the 95% scores earned by Turning Red and Soul, four of their bottom 10 тιтles of all time (Elio, Onward, Lightyear, and Elemental) have come out in the last five years alone. While it still seems likely that Pixar will continue to find critical success in the future, the performance of their newest release casts even more doubt on whether they can ever recapture the level of performance that they had when they were in their prime.