*** Official UP Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[nolesrule]

First, he gets angry that no one believes him about the bird. Then he goes off and spends decades in solitude trying to find the bird alive. His attitude becomes more and more bitter over time as he tries and fails. Nothing's going to get in his way, so he can prove everyone wrong. It's become his Moby Dick, his sole obsession. Apparently he's murdered others in the past who have gotten in his way.

At first, he does think they are after the bird and he's wary of them, until he finds out that they are just a couple of lost people, an old man and a little kid. As soon as he finds out they've been in the company of the bird, he snaps back into his old ways immediately.

His characterization made perfect sense to me. The age thing, explanation or no, doesn't bother me.

 

[Pete-D]

I think maybe what they could have done is set up Muntz as having taken a son or a younger colleague to Paradise Falls with him, and Muntz died years earlier, but the son/colleague having gone quite mad in the years since was still trying to prove Muntz was a great man.

Wasn't really a dealbreaker for me, I'll let things like this slide if the movie is good enough and Up certainly was.

The movie seemed to be a bit of a love letter to the OT Star Wars in some ways, with the evil dog's voice seeming like a bit of a parody of Darth Vader and the airplane sequence sorta winking towards Star Wars too, but the end credits really sorta sealed it.

 

[Brian-W]

Nope, not saying that at all. I've watched this film evolve so to speak over the last two years, so I've seen variations in the story line (and segments) along the way. The final product is good, damn good. There were some things I saw previously that I thought worked a bit better, but then again, I'm not a director.

 

[Brian-W]

Well, looks like the director let the cat out of the bag:

The Pixar Blog

 

[DavidJ]

Saw this today and thought it was very good. It was poignant, laugh out loud funny at times and often beautiful---I'd like to hang a few of the scenes on my wall. But it's more of a meditative movie than previous Pixar films.

I'm not saying that's bad. I just wonder how the pacing will play with kids. There are some scenes and characters that kids will really like, but it takes a while to get to them. I found it more of an adult themed fable and I really liked it on that level.

 

[todd s]

A bit off topic. My son enjoyed the movie. So two weeks ago I sent Ed Asner (Carl) a photo. In less than 2 weeks I got it back signed.



Its now hanging in my sons room. Nice to see some actors still appreciate their fans.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'm glad they didn't go that route, even though it would help explain the Muntz age discrepency. If Carl could become young again, it would undermine the heart of the film, which is that time passes and sometimes we find the important things when it's almost too late.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I really liked this movie, loved parts of it, but something about it bothered me -- well, "bother" is a strong word, but I couldn't find myself falling completely head over heels in love with it the way a lot of people seem to have. I had the same problem with Wall-E as well, where I really liked it, loved parts of it, but couldn't get to that special place that would allow me to think it was an all-time classic.

Now that I've thought about it, both Up and Wall-E have the same problem, at least for me. They both open up as really unique, special films... in Wall-E, we spend the first half hour with a couple robots sans dialogue, and it's great. In Up, we begin with one of the best animated montage sequences I've ever seen, and then move on to a crazy (and fun) adventure with a grumpy old man.

Through that point, I'm with them both.

But there seems to be something in Pixar's blood, or maybe Disney's makeup, or whatever, that won't allow them to end the film with the same sense of originality and inventiveness in which they begin. In Wall-E, the problem for me comes when the humans show up. It's a far more compelling film without them.

And with Up... it's so unique and wonderful, but by the end of it, it's just another movie with another fight between the good guys and the bad guys in some cartoonish Indiana Jones/adventure movie type fashion. And that was a disappointment to me personally. Up had the potential to be the kind of film that didn't really have a villain, and it would have been better for it. Carl's adventure is exciting enough without the film being reduced to a cliche by the end. If there was ever a film that didn't need a bad guy or a conventional narrative structure to work, it was this film. And it was disappointing to see something that started out so original ending with such a pile of cliches. Even if they had to meet the Muntz character (and I'm not convinced it's necessary to the making of a good film), was it really necessary that he be some dastardly villain, and that it all comes down to two people fighting? For a movie that was so original to that point, the final third was remarkably uninspired storytelling from my point of view.

At least I finally figured out what bothered me about it.

 

[Chris Atkins]

My 3 and 5 year old both loved it, and sat silently throughout.

 

[PaulDA]

Your reservations about each film have merit and I might feel similarly to the way you do but for the fact that, for me, what these two films do right sufficiently outweighs the shortcomings you describe. Of course, with these kinds of films, I also tend to be swept up by the enthusiasm of my children, so perhaps I'm not as critical a viewer of them as I might otherwise be.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a big fan of both films - I own Wall-E on Blu-ray and I'm sure I'll buy Up as soon as that comes out as well. I keep a little tally of the films I've seen, using the four star rating system that the papers use, and on that scale I'd give both Wall-E and Up three-and-a-half stars, which is obviously a very positive review. There's far more that I like about them than not. It's just, to me, it's almost as if the beginnings of both films make a promise that the endings can't live up to. I just remember sitting in theater for Up a couple weeks ago, and as it began I'm loving it, thinking I've never seen a movie quite like this... and that feeling continues throughout, and as the movie continues on its adventure, I'm really loving it because I have no idea where the movie is going, it's just really unique... and then it just ends in the most conventional, unsurprising way. A film that can do what Up does in its first ten or fifteen minutes should have something better in store for its last ten or fifteen minutes.

As a side note, it would be really cool if Pixar could perhaps make a film that didn't in some way involve the plot of "I'm lost away from home in a strange place and I don't know how I'm going to get back."

These are mostly nitpicks, for sure, and I wouldn't want that to get in the way of a mostly-good experience (I've recommended the film to all of my friends, without the reservations I've expressed here...I think it's worth seeing especially if you don't know much about it), but they're the kind of things that so far have kept Pixar from making what I would consider to be a truly transcendent film.

 

[Greg_R]

Did anyone else feel that the Carl&Ellie segment was overly manipulative (emotionally)? I think they hit every possible button except having a pet dog get run over by the bulldozer.

I enjoyed the movie but have started to worry about Pixar's direction. During the past two movies, they seem to be less subtle with presenting their message.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Greg_R, I don't know if I agree that Pixar has gotten less subtle in their presentations. But I do agree that Wall-E would have been better if it had been a little more subtle. One of the points the film tries to make is the dangers of rampant consumerism, and how the result of a culture based entirely on consumption is the loss of progress, that society becomes stagnant and we lose sight of what's really important. Not to mention that thoughtless consumerism is probably bad for the planet. But I didn't need to see Wall-E and EVE travel to a spaceship full of enormously fat people who had never even seen Earth and who live in an automated pleasure palace. The first half of Wall-E makes the point far better, and far more subtlety, than the second half.

With Up, I felt that the filmmakers spent the first half of the film getting us really emotionally involved in the characters and the story they were telling, and then wasted a good portion of the second half by having a bunch of fighting. Up was a wonderful movie, but not a perfect one -- with both Wall-E and Up, it felt to me almost as if they got cold feet about following-through with the inventiveness with which they started. So instead of it being a film about robots left on a desolated planet in the shadow of what's left of mankind, Wall-E ends up being about a bunch of fat humans trying to get home, even if they don't quite understand what home is or why they left or what's wrong with their life. And where Up starts as a film about an old man unable to come to terms with the loss of his wife and a deep sense of unsatisfaction because of the disappointments he faced in his life, it ends as a movie with an old man and a cute kid getting all buddy buddy to beat the bad guy so they can (you guessed it) go home.

 

[PaulDA]

I suspect the "cold feet" came from Disney--"coming home" is a staple of "kid movies" (and Pixar films are "kid movies" first and foremost). Pinocchio comes to mind (I've recently watched the BD with my children). There are many others. In a sense, I think the kind of films you think WALL*E and Up could have been (and I would have liked) would probably have had a better shot at being made if Pixar had gone the independent route. Pure speculation, of course, on my part but I think it is plausible.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Certainly makes sense.

I picked up the Pinocchio BD when that came out and watched it recently -- I realized at some point that it had been twenty years since I had seen it, and that might have been the first time I had thought to myself it had been twenty years since anything, funny how that works. Anyway, I loved it just as much as I did when I was a kid, if not more. A really beautiful and well done film, top notch all around. If I ever end up with kids of my own, I'm going to enjoy watching it with them.

Are Pixar films really "kids" films? I suppose they're marketed as such, but I'd like to think the reason the old school Disney stuff was so good was because Walt wasn't trying to make stuff just for kids, he was aiming to make entertainment that the whole family could enjoy. For the most part, I'd say that Wall-E and Up fall into that category, more all-ages appropriate than merely made for a kids-only audience.

Anyway, it's not that I have a problem with the "coming home" theme in general (OK, actually, it's not my favorite storyline, but it's not a dealbreaker for me on principle), but there's really nothing in Up that suggests that would be the logical destination point for the story. I mean, the first third of the movie is all about Carl trying to get away, and then the second third is about him trying to move his house to exactly where he wants it in the new location -- at no point in the film is anyone trying to get home, because Carl's exactly where he wants to be. Going home was never a motivating factor for the characters, until the plot demands that it be one -- one gets the sense that perhaps the filmmakers didn't know how to end it.

I know I'm nitpicking here and probably in danger of repeating myself (sorry!), and I definitely don't want it to be lost that I really did enjoy these films, they're easily my favorite Pixar films.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread was how wonderful the short "Partly Cloudy" was -- it played before Up at the theater I saw it in. I'd love to see the team at Pixar that makes the shorts be given a chance to do a feature. They excel at original storytelling, aren't afraid to go without dialogue or conventional characters, and perhaps they'd be a good candidate to take an idea all the way to feature length without grafting a traditional plot structure to it.

 

[BrettB]

Why do you suspect Disney meddling? I've never gotten the idea that Disney suits have any input of note in Pixar films. Some influence was attempted with Toy Story to disasterous effect. After that I imagine Disney knew to let them be.

UP & WALL*E followed similar general paths for me as well. Brilliant beginnings, a little bit of a drop off, then a strong finish.

Pixar is certainly not above criticism, but I think it might be a little unfair to say that they are dropping the ball and that they should go all in with artsy fartsy experimentation and what not. These films take about 4 years to make and the budgets are massive. The fact is they can't afford a flop. These films have to make money. It would be a little easier to throw caution to the wind with a 20 M budget but that's not what Pixar is.

Also, Pixar films are family films, not kids films.

 

[BrettB]

Russell is Carl's adventure. Not sitting in an empty house by the falls. As such, going home to a "normal" life makes perfect sense.

 

[Greg_R]

Agreed. I think having zero humans (except old video) in the movie could have made a better film but IMO that direction would kill the family aspect of the movie.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It would have also undermined the whole purpose of the film. Humanity's continued existence is the reason EVE exists. The plant is the MacGuffin of the story, and is only important because it represents the future for humanity. EVE has to choose between fufilling the mission she was created for and saving WALL-E. In the trash compactor, she chooses WALL-E.

All the human stuff is window dressing on the film, but window dressing that gives the film greater complexity and depth. Having an entirely dialog-free film on the ruined earth would be more high-concept and artsy, but IMO would not have made a better film.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Adam, you make a great point... I guess my problem really isn't so much that humans are in the film (it's more often than not effective window dressing), but I think that their presence could have been minimized. It was just disappointing to me that at the end of this great movie, it kinda comes down to a fat half-wit captain fighting against a periscope version of HAL. Why does it always have to be fighting?