For military children, making new friends every few years is part of the routine, but it's not always easy. While the resilience of these children has been showcased on film before, a new animated movie is bringing some of their challenges to the big screen.
The Defense Department often works with Hollywood to create movie magic and lend an air of authenticity to military life depicted on screen. It's not as often that DOD works with studios on animated films, but when it came to "Elio," Disney's new Pixar movie about a military child, the department's experts were called on to lend their support.
The film is about 11-year-old Elio, whose aunt and parental guardian is an Air Force major and an orbital analyst. Elio is obsessed with space, and since he doesn't have many friends, he hopes to get abducted by aliens to find some. He makes that dream happen and goes on a galactic adventure where he becomes friends with an alien.
Naturally, chaos ensues.
The movie explores themes that many military kids can relate to, such as loneliness, being an outsider, finding one's place and the importance of friendship — no matter how different you are.
"I think the film does a really good job talking about relationships and showing what it could feel like as a military child who frequently deals with change and finding one's place in a new environment," said Develyn Watson, who helped support the movie as the deputy director of the Department of the Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office.
Pixar first contacted the department in early 2019 to see if Adrian Molina, the movie's cowriter/codirector, could get a tour of Beale Air Force Base in Yuba County, California. Molina was born at the base and had been writing a story centered on how he felt growing up as a child in a military family.
In February 2021, the studio requested a tour of Vandenberg Air Force Base, California — shortly before it was renamed as a Space Force base — so animators, writers, producers and others involved in the film could make the optics realistic. They also wanted to learn more from military personnel and their families.
At the time, officials said the Space Force was being stood up, so the Air Force was still heavily involved in space operations. Because the movie was written based on the Air Force, reality was bent a bit to move the narrative forward.
"It's not like in a live [action movie], where you can just switch out uniforms," Watson explained. "In animation, that could be several millions of dollars to change. The path was set for the Air Force, so that's how the character continued to be an Air Force person but has what is now a Space Force job."
Movie crew members also visited Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, to get a feel for what aircraft flightlines are like — something else pivotal to the film. Personnel at the bases offered uniform guidance and other feedback, especially from active-duty mothers.
Watson said one of the things the studio really tried to get right was the mathematical aspects of space flight.
"We had to get with our experts at Vandenberg to kind of work through … how can we keep this as accurate as possible?" Watson said. "We know it's a kids' movie, but … [the studio] also wanted to make sure that the adults could be like, 'You know what? They got that right!'"
"We think Disney and Pixar did a really good job," she added.
DOD entertainment officials said the department helped work on Disney's movie "Planes" about 15 years ago. Watson said the Air Force also helped with a lesser-known 2005 direct-to-video animated movie called "Tugger: The Jeep 4x4 Who Wanted to Fly."
Ahead of the movie's theatrical release, Disney/Pixar invited military families to special screenings across the country, including at an event hosted by the Motion Picture Association in Washington, June 17, 2025.