The real-life creature’s graceful, ribbon-like movements give Questa a hypnotic way of drifting through the air. “It really works for her because she
The real-life creature’s graceful, ribbon-like movements give Questa a hypnotic way of drifting through the air. “It really works for her because she’s always analyzing people, and she’s very empathetic,” Jessup says. “And she can read characters’ minds with the little fronds on the top of her head.”
Other creatures drawn from the minuscule include the Gomesia, a collective of brief creatures with concave heads that resemble a cluster of miniature mushrooms with upside-down caps. They also call to mind another frequently overlooked minuscule item: earbuds. (“I hadn’t thought of the earbud idea, but I think you’re right,” Jessup says.)
Lastly, Elio’s best friend and sidekick, Glordon (voiced by child actor Remy Edgerly), is based on one of the most notable microscopic creatures ever uncovered—the tardigrade, a.k.a. “water bear.” In addition to being too diminutive to see with the naked eye, these eight-legged chunk-a-munks are renowned for being nearly indestructible.
Glordon is fireproof like a tardigrade, but is a softy by comparison. He’s part of a species that has become warlike and mechanized, with his father, Lord Grigon (voiced by Brad Garrett), terrorizing the galaxy—and his own citizens—by conscripting them to wear ferocious body armor as an exoskeleton. “The fact that they all are expected to adopt this armor is a sign of insecurity, hiding the fact that they’re vulnerable little worms,” Jessup says.
While Glordon spends most of the movie in grub form, Rice designed Lord Grigon to look nothing like his son. “Grigon, out of all of them, was geared toward being less organic and a more machine,” Rice says. The result was an arachnid-like body armor that calls to mind scorpions or spiders—things that are still diminutive, but nonetheless threatening.
What Jessup noticed while designing the look of Elio was that the things from the miniature world often echo things from the natural world that exist on a massive scale. “Looking at a nebula, that could be a tiny, microscopic thing but is actually a vast millions of miles across.”
As another notable alien once said: “Size matters not.”
COMMENTS