THE ANIMATION FREAK. UP.

 

                                     THE ANIMATION FREAK. 

                                                     UP.

Pete Docter and Bob Peterson are true iconic filmmakers and this film proves it. They both know how to produce emotions, comedy, and romantic scenes that every filmmaker can follow. They are honest in their interpretation of a film. With me when I see a film that has their names attached to it I can't wait to see it cause I know that it is going to bring out my emotions. They both have a passion for what they do and it is brought out in their films like this one. They both make pieces of art and share them with the world and I can't thank Pete and Bob enough for what they do.

What I loved about "UP" was the beginning where Carl and Ellie meet and then get married years later and what made it really emotional and real was the non dialogue between both characters all the way up until Ellie passes away. They remodeled the house they used to play in when they met when they were kids and built a life in it. The animation in this film was absolutely amazing as all Pixar films are but this one was more passionate and real that it all tide itself together and gave the movie goers a real authentic experience that they will never forget. They did their job on this film, they made you laugh, they made you cry, they made you think and made you part of movie magic. One thing I loved was it really pulled at your heat strings.  

Carl Fredricksen idolizes explorer Charles Muntz. But after he is accused of presenting a fake giant bird skeleton from Paradise Falls in South America, Muntz returns to the area intent on clearing his name by capturing a living specimen. Carl meets a girl and fellow Muntz fan named Ellie, who confides her desire to move her "clubhouse"—an abandoned house in the neighborhood—to a cliff overlooking Paradise Falls. The two later marry and live in the restored house, and Carl works as a balloon salesman. Suffering a miscarriage and unable to have children, Carl and Ellie make savings for a trip to Paradise Falls, but are constantly forced to spend them on more urgent needs. Ellie dies just after Carl arranges for the trip.

Years later, a now-retired Carl stubbornly holds out in the house while the neighborhood around him is replaced by skyscrapers. After Carl accidentally strikes a construction worker during a mishap, the court deems him a public menace, requiring his relocation to an assisted living facility. However, Carl resolves to keep Ellie's promise, turning his house into a makeshift airship using countless helium balloons and flying away. Russell, a "Wilderness Explorer" who visits Carl in an effort to earn his final merit badge for assisting the elderly, becomes an accidental stowaway. Before Carl can land and send Russell home, they encounter a storm that propels the house to South America.

The house lands on a mesa opposite Paradise Falls. Carl and Russell harness themselves to the still-buoyant house and begin to walk it across the mesa, hoping to reach the falls before the balloons deflate. Russell encounters a giant, colorful flightless bird, whom he names Kevin. They then meet Dug, a Golden Retriever who wears a special speaking collar; he joins them on their trek.

A pack of aggressive dogs led by the Doberman Pinscher Alpha take Carl, Russell, Dug, and Kevin to their master, Charles Muntz. He invites them aboard his dirigible and talks about his search for the bird. Carl realizes Muntz’s obsession with finding the bird has driven him insane. When Russell notices the skeleton's resemblance to Kevin, Muntz becomes suspicious of their intentions. The dogs pursue Carl, Russell, and Dug until Kevin saves them. Russell urges Carl to help Kevin get home and reunite with her chicks, but then Muntz captures her. He starts a fire beneath Carl's house, forcing him to choose whether to rescue it or Kevin; Carl chooses his home.

Carl looks through Ellie's childhood scrapbook and discovers that she filled in the blank pages with photos of their marriage, accompanying a note written from her hospital bed, thanking him for the "adventure" and encouraging him to have a new one. Reinvigorated, he goes outside, only to see Russell set out after Kevin using a leaf blower and some balloons. Carl lightens his house by throwing out his furniture and keepsakes. Muntz captures Russell, but Carl and Dug board the dirigible and free both Russell and Kevin. When Muntz pursues them to the tethered house, Carl lures Kevin back to the airship using a piece of chocolate. Muntz leaps after them, but his leg catches on balloon strings, and he falls to his death. The house descends out of sight.

Carl and Russell reunite Kevin with her chicks before returning home in Muntz's airship. Russell finally receives his "Assisting the Elderly" badge, and Carl presents Russell with a grape soda bottle cap that Ellie gave to Carl when they first met, which he now dubs "The Ellie Badge". Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Carl, the house lands on the cliff beside Paradise Falls, fulfilling his promise to Ellie.

Originally titled Helium's, Up was conceived in 2004 by director Pete Docter. He developed the fantasy of a flying house on the idea of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating, which stemmed from his difficulty with social situations growing up. Actor and writer Tom McCarthy aided Docter and Bob Peterson in shaping the story for about three months. Docter selected an old man for the main character after drawing a picture of a grumpy old man with smiling balloons. 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 about an elderly protagonist, stating that children would relate to Carl the way they relate to their grandparents.

Early concepts differed from the final film. The initial version featured a floating city on an alien planet populated with muppet-like creatures, with two brothers vying to inherit their father's kingdom, and when the brothers fell to Earth, they encountered a tall bird who helped them understand each other. But the story just didn't seem to work properly, and Docter and Peterson realized that the most intriguing element was the isolation of the floating city. Yet the people living there would consist of a whole community, and were therefore not really isolated. So the whole city was stripped down to a single flying house with just a single occupant, where balloons replaced the magic which kept the floating city up. After that they got the idea to use an old person, and found the contrast between the elderly grumpy man and the happy balloons in Docter's drawing appealing, inspiring them to work out his backstory. The next concept introduced many of the elements that eventually made their way into the film, but had Carl and Russell landing the house on a Soviet-era spy airship camouflaged as a giant cloud rather than on a tepui. This concept was rewritten due to its similarity to another idea Pixar was developing. Another idea Docter added, then removed, was magic fountain-of-youth eggs laid by the bird, in order to explain the age discrepancy between Muntz and Carl, but they decided this subplot was too distracting, and people would forgive the minor inconsistency. Also, the biggest single influence on Up early on was The Station Agent, by Tom McCarthy.

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. Docter recalled Grant would remind him the audience needed an "emotional bedrock" because of how wacky the adventure would become; here it is Carl mourning for his wife. Docter felt Grant's personality influenced Carl's deceased wife Ellie more than the grouchy main character, 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". Docter and Jonas Rivera noted Carl's charming nature in spite of his grumpiness derives from the elderly "having 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'."

Docter revealed the filmmakers' first story outline had Carl "just wanting 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." 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 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".

Docter created Dug as he felt it would be refreshing to show what a dog thinks, rather than what people assume it thinks. 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. 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. Russell was added to the story at a later date than Dug and Kevin; his presence, as well as that of the construction workers, helped to make the story feel less "episodic".

Docter auditioned 400 boys in a nationwide casting call for the part of Russell. Nagai, who is Japanese American, showed up to an audition with his brother, who was actually the one auditioning. Docter realized Nagai behaved and spoke non-stop like Russell and chose him for the part. Nagai was eight years old when cast. Docter encouraged Nagai to act physically as well as vocally when recording the role, lifting him upside down and tickling him for the scene where Russell encounters Kevin. East Asian Americans have positively noted Pixar's first casting of an East Asian lead character, in contrast to the common practice of casting non-East Asians in East Asian parts, particularly in the role of an "all-American" boy without any stereotypes typically seen with East Asian characters, such as martial arts.

Carl's relationship with Russell reflects how "he's not really ready for the whirlwind that a kid is, as few of us are". 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. 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.Docter and Rivera cited inspirations 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. 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. The character Charles Muntz comes from Howard Hughes and Errol Flynn. Overall, the budget was approximately $175 million

The opening sequence to the 2009 Pixar film Up (sometimes referred to as Married Life after the accompanying instrumental piece, the Up montage, or including the rest of the prologue The First 10 Minutes of Up) has become known as a cultural milestone and a key element to the film's success.

While the core concept of the film was to have a house float into the sky with balloons, the filmmakers needed a rationale for why a character would do such a thing. Their solution was to show the entirety of a married couple's relationship from the first day they met to the day the wife died. They envisioned it as a wordless montage that would play like a series of Polaroid home movies. Pete Docter always felt that an expository sequence to open the film was important because if the viewers do not love the characters, "then they're not along for the ride." In an early draft of the Ellie-Carl meeting, Carl is trying to capture a bird with a trap and Ellie punches him in the face, yelling about animal rights. This led into a montage sequence of a "lifelong sneak-attack punching game, lending the script some heart in a 'non-sappy' way", according to the Huffington Post. Co-director Bob Peterson said "we thought that was the funniest thing", noting that even when Carl visited Ellie's sickbed, she gives him a feeble slap. Nevertheless, the test audiences did not warm to the sequence. Docter explained "We showed it, and there was silence. I guess they thought it was too violent or something". From that point on, the filmmakers went with a sorrowful version of the sequence.

In one cutting room session, one part of the sequence in which Ellie is despondent having learnt she is not able to have children, received many notes from members of the studio, believing the moment may have pushed things too far. As a result, the scene was cut, though later put back into the film. Director Pete Docter explained: "You didn’t feel as deeply [without the scene] — not only just [with] that sequence, but through the whole film. Most of the emotional stuff is not just to push on people and make them cry, but it’s for some greater reason to really make you care about the story."

The "Married Life" piece was the first assignment Michael Giacchino had on the film. He explained: "We knew that was going to be one of the most difficult scenes in the film, so we tackled that first, and I was just working really hard to make that scene really work because I knew that was going to inform the rest of the story". Originally he had written a different piece to be played in that part of the film, but Pete Docter requested a song that would play as if from one's grandmother's music box. Giacchino subsequently conceived of the new composition. After recording the initial piece, they went back to make touch-ups at various points to match the emotional tone of the visual sequence.

The scene "sketches out Carl's early married life with childhood sweetheart Ellie". In general definitions, the 'sequence' excludes the earlier parts of the film's prologue in which Carl watches a film reel about Charles F Muntz and has a dialogue sequence with Ellie. The sequence is "only minutes in length and almost completely silent".

The sequence begins with a flash of a camera at their wedding, followed by their first kiss, and then shows how they fix up the house where they met so that it matches Ellie's childhood drawing. They spend their time doing three hobbies: cloud watching, working at the zoo, and reading together. On one cloud watching session, Carl points out a cloud that looks like a baby. Inspired, they decide to conceive a child and prepare a nursery, but as the music slows, the two learn at the doctor's office that they are unable to have children, leaving them devastated. At their house, Carl brings Ellie her childhood scrapbook, which consoles her. They begin to keep a spare change jar to save up for Ellie's dream trip to Paradise Falls. However, several events, including a flat tire, broken leg, and house damage, cause them to repeatedly break open the jar early.

A montage of Ellie tying Carl's ties follows, showing them getting ready for each day of work at the zoo. It is followed by them slow-dancing at home, now in their old age, the spare change jar having been shelved and forgotten. As they fix up their house, where they will spend their retirement, Carl looks upon Ellie's art, representing her dream trip, and realizes he has yet to fulfill his promise, which almost stops the music entirely. He goes to a travel agency to buy tickets for Paradise Falls and takes Ellie cloud watching, bringing the tickets with him to surprise her. However, Ellie struggles to reach Carl and collapses as her husband runs to her side.

As instruments drop out of the harmony, Carl brings a dying Ellie a balloon to the hospital as she once brought him one. Ellie pushes her scrapbook to him, and he kisses her on the head. Time passes by to show her funeral in the church where they married. Carl is still holding the balloon. As he climbs up the steps, they become the steps to his home. He sadly disappears through the door and pulls the balloon in after him. The screen fades to black as the music ends.