Pixar’s latest sci-fi adventure, Elio, can best be described as a surprisingly mature iteration of The Last Starfighter. While the story might be a similar tale of a youngster getting his intergalactic wish come true, there’s more thought placed into the perceptions of our universe beyond that whiz-bang excitement of space wars. Here is a film that has heart and hope that there’s more beyond the stars than mere monsters that eat us or pint-sized puppets who innocently eat our candy. It’s an animated film with a love of science and the unknown, speculating that there’s something more intellectually stimulating and wondrously transcendent beyond our human understanding.

The underdog allure runs high in the young Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab), looking towards the stars when life on Earth seems so dour. Having endured the loss of his parents and being unable to relate to his adoptive aunt, Olga (Zoe Saldaña), Elio’s interest in alien life is so fervent that he’ll spend all day trying to find a radio signal of their arrival. Sure enough, all his pining for extraterrestrial life leads to him being abducted by Communiverse, a collective of aliens that aim to learn more about the universe. It’s a dream come true for the plucky kid, considering he gets to hang out with beings capable of gravity manipulation, cloning, and understanding the meaning of life (should Elio care to look it up).

Of course, such an existence would be too perfect, and there is conflict for Elio’s trip to the stars. The Communiverse finds itself threatened by the destructive forces of Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), who leads a race of worm-like creatures housed inside well-armed mecha suits. With none of the intelligent aliens willing to negotiate with such vicious creatures, Elio steps up to the job of standing up to this bully. Thankfully, Elio finds a way to talk peace not through a mech suit or space fighter, but by connecting with Grigon’s misfit son Glordon (Remy Edgerly). For an alien with no eyes, Glordon forms a strong bond, considering he’s also an adventurous youngster who wants more than what his family and culture have dictated for him. The enthusiasm runs so high in the two of them that there’s plenty of time for them to have a wild night of zero-gravity binging on burgers and drinking so much they puke.

Despite the youthfully innocent tone this story could take, intelligence takes precedence over sci-fi busywork. Pixar’s more fantastical worlds are always fun to get lost within, and the realm of the Communiverse is presented with a high level of wonder to explore. There’s a wise nature to how quickly Elio embraces the mesmerizing sights of alien technology, leaving little room for ho-hum exposition. From the moment Elio arrives, he hits the ground running when introduced to the mind-reading Questa (Jameela Jamil) and the chipper Tegmen (Matthias Schweighöfer). The setting is given room to breathe, but with an urgency for Elio to focus his efforts on conflict resolution and leadership.

There’s plenty of smarts placed behind the thematic elements of family and empathy. There will naturally be a scene where Elio and Olga better understand each other, but it will occur amid the complicated mission of piloting an alien spacecraft out of Earth’s debris field of satellites, relying on grid coordinates and radio signals to survive. Elio will find ways to escape the intimidation of the violent Grigon, but more through gravity manipulation and cloning techniques than by finding the biggest blaster. For as non-violent as Elio favors his tactics, however, there are some surprising horror elements. If you thought the malformed clone from The Last Starfighter was freaky, this Pixar film takes that body horror to the next level with scenes of a decaying body played up for comedic effect with dark horror staging. I’m not saying Pixar created a cosmic horror with Elio, but it might be closest they’ll come to one.

Elio proves that Pixar can still dazzle with CGI when given the green light to explore and innovate. So many sci-fi films seem to get hung up on either the philosophical quandaries or the whiz-bang action of battles beyond the stars. This film posits that there’s more that can be done with the genre and grander ideas to speculate about our universe and connections, making the Carl Sagan quotations feel more appropriate than decorative. With an emotionally engaging script, the film taps into a relatable loneliness, evoking the longing for a life beyond our galaxy, one that harbors the same feelings we experience here on Earth. Elio evokes that wondrous sensation that intelligence will prevail if paired with love, rather than a giant laser beam and killer mech suits (cool though they may be in design).