Up is a 2009 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Pete Docter. The film centers on an elderly widower named Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Edward Asner) and an earnest young Wilderness Explorer named Russell (Jordan Nagai). By tying thousands of balloons to his home, 78-year-old Carl sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America and to complete a promise made to his lifelong love. The film was co-directed by Bob Peterson, with music composed by Michael Giacchino.
Docter began working on the story in 2004, which was based on fantasies of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating. He and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days inVenezuela gathering research and inspiration. The designs of the characters were caricatured and stylized considerably, and animators were challenged with creating realistic cloth. The floating house is attached by a varying number between 10,000 and 20,000 balloons in the film's sequences. Up was Pixar's first film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.[3]
Up was released on May 29, 2009 and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film to do so.[4] The film became a great financial success, accumulating over $731 million in its theatrical release. Up received critical acclaim, with most reviewers commending the humor and heart of the film. Edward Asner was praised for his portrayal of Carl, and a montage of Carl and his wife Ellie aging together was widely lauded. The film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, making it the second animated film in history to receive such a nomination, following Beauty and the Beast (1991).[5]
Production
Writing for Up first began in 2004 by director Pete Docter. The fantasy of a flying house was developed on the idea of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating,[15][12] which stemmed from his difficulty with social situations growing up.[22] Actor and writer Thomas McCarthy aided Docter and Bob Peterson in shaping the story for about three months.[17] Docter selected an old man for the main character after drawing a picture of a grumpy old man with smiling balloons.[17] The two men thought an old man was a good idea for a protagonist because they felt their experiences and the way they affect their view of the world was a rich source of humor. Docter was not concerned with an elderly protagonist, stating children would relate to Carl in the way they relate to their grandparents.[12]
Docter noted the film reflects his friendships with Disney veterans Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Joe Grant (who all died before the film's release and thus the film was dedicated to them). Grant gave the script his approval as well as some advice before his death in 2005.[23] Docter recalled Grant would remind him the audience needed an "emotional bedrock" because of how wacky the adventure would become; in this case it is Carl mourning for his wife.[17] Docter felt Grant's personality influenced Carl's deceased wife Ellie more than the grouchy main character,[23] and Carl was primarily based on Spencer Tracy, Walter Matthau, James Whitmore, and their own grandparents, because there was "something sweet about these grumpy old guys".[7] Docter and Jonas Rivera noted Carl's charming nature in spite of his grumpiness derives from the elderly "hav[ing] this charm and almost this 'old man license' to say things that other people couldn't get away with [...] It's like how we would go to eat with Joe Grant and he would call the waitresses 'honey'. I wish I could call a waitress 'honey'."[24]
Docter revealed that the filmmakers' first story outline had Carl "just want[ing] to join his wife up in the sky. It was almost a kind of strange suicide mission or something. And obviously that's [a problem]. Once he gets airborne, then what? So we had to have some goal for him to achieve that he had not yet gotten."[20] As a result, they added the plot of going to South America. The location was chosen due to both Docter's love of tropical locations, but also in wanting a location that Carl could be stuck with a kid due to the inability to leave him with an authority such as a police officer or social worker. They implemented a child character as a way to help Carl stop being "stuck in his ways".[25]
Docter created Dug as he felt it would be refreshing to show what a dog thinks, rather than what people assume it thinks.[26] Knowledge of canine communication, body language and pack behaviors for the artists and animators to portray such thoughts came from consultant Dr. Ian Dunbar, veterinarian, dog behaviorist and trainer.[27] The idea for Alpha's voice derived from thinking about what would happen if someone broke a record player and it always played at a high pitch.[17] Russell was added to the story at a later date than Dug and Kevin;[17] his presence, as well as the construction workers, helped to make the story feel less "episodic".[20]
Carl's relationship with Russell reflects how "he's not really ready for the whirlwind that a kid is, as few of us are".[23] Docter added he saw Up as a "coming of age" tale and an "unfinished love story", with Carl still dealing with the loss of his wife.[28] He cited inspiration from Casablanca and A Christmas Carol, which are both "resurrection" stories about men who lose something, and regain purpose during their journey.[29] Docter and Rivera cited inspiration from the Muppets, Hayao Miyazaki, Dumbo, and Peter Pan. They also saw parallels to The Wizard of Oz and tried to make Up not feel too similar.[30] There is a scene where Carl and Russell haul the floating house through the jungle. A Pixar employee compared the scene to Fitzcarraldo, and Docter watched that film and The Mission for further inspiration.[31] The character Charles Muntz comes from Howard Hughes and Errol Flynn.[32]
Music Of UP
Up is the third Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino, after The Incredibles and Ratatouille. What Pete Docter wanted more importantly out of the music was the emotion, so Giacchino wrote a character theme-based score that producer Jonas Rivera thought enhanced the story. At the beginning of the movie, when young Carl is in the movie theater watching a newsreel about Muntz, the first piece of music heard is "Muntz's Theme", which starts out as a celebratory theme, and echoes through the film when Muntz reappears 70 years later. "Ellie's Theme" is first heard when she is introduced as a little kid and plays several times during the film in different versions; for instance, during the sequence where Carl lifts his house with the balloons, the theme is changed from a simple piano melody to a full orchestral arrangement. Giacchino has compared the film to opera since each character has a unique theme that changes during a particular moment in the story.
Animation Of UP
Docter made Venezuela the film's setting after Ralph Eggleston gave him a video of the tepui mountains;[12][23] Venezuela and tepuis were already featured in a previous Disney film,Dinosaur. In 2004, Docter and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days reaching Monte Roraima by airplane, jeep, and helicopter.[11] They spent three nights there painting and sketching,[33] and encountering ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, frogs, and snakes. They also flew to Matawi Tepui and climbed to Angel Falls.[11] Docter felt "we couldn't use [the rocks and plants we saw]. Reality is so far out, if we put it in the movie you wouldn't believe it."[7] The film's creatures were also challenging to design because they had to fit in the surreal environment of the tepuis, but also be realistic because those mountains exist in real life.[23] The filmmakers visited Sacramento Zoo to observe a Himalayan Monal for Kevin's animation.[1]The animators designed Russell as an Asian-American, and modeled Russell after similar looking Peter Sohn, a Pixar storyboarder who voiced Emile in Ratatouille and directed the shortPartly Cloudy, because of his energetic nature.[15][34]
While Pixar usually designs their characters to be caricatured, Carl was even more so, being only three heads high.[35] He was not given elderly features such as liver spots or hair in his ears to keep him appealing, yet giving him wrinkles, pockmarks on his nose, a hearing aid, and a cane to make him appear elderly. Docter wanted to push a stylized feel, particularly the way Carl's head is proportioned: he has a squarish appearance to symbolize his containment within his house, while Russell is rounded like a balloon.[8] The challenge on Up was making these stylized characters feel natural,[12] although Docter remarked the effect came across better than animating the realistic humans from Toy Story, who suffered from the "uncanny valley".[23] Cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham, and George Booth influenced the human designs.[17][29][36] Simulating realistic cloth on caricatured humans was harder than creating the 10,000 balloons flying the house.[22] New programs were made to simulate the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers.[37] To animate old people, Pixar animators would study their own parents or grandparents and also watched footage of the Senior Olympics.[6] The directors had various rules for Carl's movements: he could not turn his head more than 15–20 degrees without turning his torso as well, nor could he raise his arms very high. However, they also wanted him to grow more flexible near the end of the film, transforming into an "action hero".
A technical director worked out that in order to make Carl's house fly, he would require 23 million balloons, but Docter realized that number made the balloons look like small dots. Instead, the balloons created were made to be twice Carl's size. There are 10,927 balloons for shots of the house just flying, 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, and a varying number in other scenes.
First Release
When the film screened at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California from May 29 to July 23, 2009, it was accompanied by Lighten Up!, a live show featuring Disney characters.[43]Other tie-ins included children's books such as My Name is Dug, illustrated by screenwriter Ronnie del Carmen.[44] Despite Pixar's track record, Target Corporation and Walmart stocked few Up items, while Pixar's regular collaborator Thinkway Toys did not produce merchandise, claiming its story is unusual and would be hard to promote. Disney acknowledged not every Pixar film would have to become a franchise.[1] Promotional partners include Aflac,[45] NASCAR, and Airship Ventures,[46][47] while Cluster Balloons promoted the film with a replica of Carl's couch lifted by hot air balloons for journalists to sit in.[48]
Basically, the message of the film is that the real adventure of life is the relationship we have with other people, and it's so easy to lose sight of the things we have and the people that are around us until they are gone. More often than not, I don't really realize how lucky I was to have known someone until they're either moved or passed away. So, if you can kind of wake up a little bit and go, "Wow, I've got some really cool stuff around me every day", then that's what the movie's about.[49]
