If you watched the trailer for the movie, there is a good chance you might have been expecting Luca to be Disney/Pixar’s first movie with an explicitly queer protagonist. That is not the case. What you get with Luca is a film about acceptance, one that can be read as heavily queer-coded (be that intentional or not).
Luca’s been told all his life to be a good sea monster he has to stay below the surface, that going above the surface would make him bad. Anyone who has ever struggled with their identity, be it sexually or otherwise, knows this feeling. He eventually breaks the surface with a pull from Alberto who introduces him to the wonders of the human world and the two dream about getting a real Vespa together and travelling the world. It’s a few parts The Little Mermaid and a few parts “A Whole New World”.
Even though I knew it was a Pixar entry of Disney’s, and therefore it wasn’t going to be a musical, I couldn’t help but expect a song to break out in the early goings of the film, especially as Luca was discovering the human items that fell to the floor of the ocean.
When Luca’s parents find out he’s been going to the surface, their reaction is to call his Uncle Ugo, who lives in the deep sea, to send Luca to live down there with him. Somewhere he won’t be able to get to land, to repress his desire to go to the surface. My queer reading of this was that it was akin to sending him to conversion therapy.
Luca instead runs away with Alberto to the human village. They quickly discover the humans want to kill sea monsters, so they have to hide their sea monster half as they try to win the money to get their Vespa and their freedom.
In the town, they have to beat an actual cartoon villain, Ercole Visconti, a man (though he claims and may only be 16) who competes in the town’s annual triathlon meant for the children. He is the nemesis of their ally Giulia.
Maya Rudolph, who voices Luca’s mother, has embraced being a voice actor of mom roles recently, with both The Mitchells Vs The Machines and Luca coming out within two months of each other. She’s great at it, they’re both completely different kinds of moms trying to connect with their queer kids (her daughter in TMVTM is canonically queer even if Luca is not).
Jacob Tremblay, who burst onto the scene with his star-making performance in Room, voices Luca and he’s voicing Flounder in Disney’s upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid. It’s funny that he’ll have two projects not very far apart, and made by the same company, that both appear to draw inspiration from the same Hans Christian Andersen story.
Giulia’s father, Massimo, is the heart of the acceptance storyline. He is who we see as the figurehead for the humans of this town, the ones raised to hate and fear the sea monsters. It’s because of his vocal acceptance of Luca and Alberto, because he got to know them and can see that they are still the same even if there is this new aspect to them he didn’t know about before, that the town embraces them after they reveal the part of themselves they were hiding.
Disney/Pixar know how to tug on the heartstrings, so be prepared to tear up. Especially as Luca and Alberto’s journeys of self-discovery start to pull them apart.
This movie might not be explicitly queer but the beats of acceptance will resonate within the queer community and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Luca and Alberto become queer icons. Should Disney ever decide to cash in on officialising it in merchandising, say a year from now for next Pride Month, they would probably clean up very nicely.
Whatever Disney chooses to do, by making this movie about acceptance they probably made it a little easier for some kids to accept a part of themselves they may have felt was too different to be loved.
Available on Disney+
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.