Pixar’s first openly gay main character has debuted in a new short film titled “Out.”
The nine-minute short film, which released on Disney Plus on Friday, tells the story of a man named Greg, who struggles with coming out as gay to his parents, frustrating his partner Manuel. Through some magical mishaps, Greg accidentally switches bodies with his excitable dog Jim and attempts to hide a picture of him and Manuel from his mom and dad, who surprise him with a sudden visit.
Check out the trailer in this tweet:
The latest heartwarming tale from @Pixar’s #SparkShorts. Start streaming Out tomorrow on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/gRvBEdK1Iw
— Disney+ (@disneyplus) May 21, 2020
Out debuted as part of Pixar’s SparkShorts series, which lets independent creators showcase animation projects.
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Technically, this isn’t the first gay character in a Pixar film, although it is certainly the first gay main character. When Pixar’s Onward released last March, actress Lena Waithe voiced a gay cyclops who worked as a police officer. That cyclops ultimately only served as a side character, and evidence of her sexual orientation was relegated to a throwaway line referencing her girlfriend.
In older films, like Toy Story 4 and Finding Dory, Pixar has added very minor evidence of gay characters, including a brief shot of two women who fans suspected were a lesbian couple. Oddly enough, in an ET Canada interview, Finding Dory star Ellen Degeneres (herself one of the first openly gay actors in contemporary Hollywood) said that there was no lesbian couple in the film simply because one had short hair.
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Disney has been somewhat slow to include greater LGBT representation in some of its biggest properties. Avengers: Endgame featured co-director Joe Russo making a cameo as a gay man in Captain America’s therapy group who briefly mentions he is going on a date with another man. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker briefly showed two women kissing, and while fans criticized Disney for making the moment so missable, IGN editor Joshua Yehl had much more positive thoughts overall.
As for future properties, Marvel’s The Eternals is set to feature an openly gay superhero.
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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.
Source: IGN.com Pixar Debuts First Gay Main Character in New Short Film