Up is a 2009 American animated adventure film directed by Pete Docter who co-write with Bob Peterson. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film centers on Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), an elderly widower who, by attaching numerous helium balloons to his house, travels to Venezuela with youngster Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai) in order to fulfill a promise that he made to his late wife. Along the way, they befriend a talking dog (voiced by Peterson) as well as an exotic bird and encounter Carl's childhood idol Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer), who has sinister plans to capture the bird.
Originally titled Heliums, Docter conceived the outline for Up in 2004 based on fantasies of escaping from life when it became too irritating. He and eleven other Pixar artists spent three days in Venezuela for research and inspiration. The designs of the characters were caricatured and stylized considerably, and animators were challenged with creating realistic cloth. Composer Michael Giacchino composed the film's score. It was Pixar's first film to be presented in 3D format.
Up debuted at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival on May 13, 2009, and was released in the United States on May 29. It received critical acclaim for its screenplay, animation, characters, themes, narrative, emotional depth, humor, Asner's performance, Giacchino's musical score and its opening montage. The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named Up one of the top-ten films of 2009. Up grossed $735 million worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2009. It was nominated for five awards at the 82nd Academy Awards, winning two, and received numerous other accolades. Among its Academy Award nominations, it became the second of three animated films ever to receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture (after 1991's Beauty and the Beast and before 2010's Toy Story 3), ultimately losing to The Hurt Locker. Since then, it has been and continues to be regarded as one of the greatest animated films of the 21st century and of all time. A short-form sequel series, Dug Days, premiered on Disney+ on September 1, 2021.
Plot
Eight-year-old Carl Fredricksen idolizes famed explorer Charles Muntz, who is discredited when a giant bird skeleton he brought back from Paradise Falls in Venezuela is deemed fake. Muntz travels back to the falls, vowing not to return until he brings back a live specimen.
Carl befriends Ellie, another young Muntz fan, who keeps a scrapbook of her adventures and dreams of moving her "clubhouse" (an abandoned house) to Paradise Falls and having adventures of her own. Carl and Ellie eventually marry, renovate the clubhouse and move in, working at the city zoo as a balloon salesman and zookeeper, respectively. Ellie suffers a miscarriage, and they learn they cannot have children. The couple saves money for a trip to Paradise Falls, but are repeatedly forced to spend their savings on more pressing needs. Many years later, a now elderly Carl decides to surprise Ellie with tickets to Venezuela, but she falls ill and is hospitalized, giving Carl her scrapbook before she dies.
Now in his late 70s, Carl holds out while the neighborhood around him is redeveloped. After unintentionally injuring a construction worker who accidentally damaged his mailbox, Carl is ordered by a court to move into an assisted living facility. However, Carl resolves to keep his promise to Ellie to move their house to Paradise Falls and attaches numerous balloons to it in order to fly there. Russell, a young "Wilderness Explorer" scout attempting to earn his final merit badge for assisting the elderly, becomes an accidental stowaway. Before Carl can land and send Russell home, a storm propels the house all the way to a tepui in Venezuela.
Carl and Russell harness themselves to the still-buoyant house and tow it across the mesa. Along the way, they encounter a giant flightless bird that Russell names Kevin (though the bird is later revealed to be female) and Dug, a Golden Retriever whose collar has a device that translates his thoughts into human speech. After failed attempts to evade the animals, Carl reluctantly allows both to join the party.
Dug's pack, all wearing collar translators, surrounds them. The dogs' master is revealed to be an elderly Charles Muntz, who invites Carl and Russell aboard his airship and discusses his quest to capture the bird. However, Carl's initial excitement over meeting him fades as he realizes that Muntz's obsession has driven him insane. After Muntz shows them the bird skeleton, Russell notes its resemblance to Kevin. Becoming hostile, Muntz reveals that he has murdered other travelers he suspected of also seeking the bird. Carl, Russell and Dug flee, pursued by Muntz's dogs; they are rescued by Kevin, who gets injured in the process.
Hearing Kevin call out to her chicks, Carl agrees to take her home. However, Muntz captures her and starts a fire beneath Carl's home. Forced to choose, Carl saves his home, allowing Muntz to take Kevin away and losing Russell's respect. Disheartened, Carl looks through his wife's scrapbook and discovers that she had filled in blank pages with photos of their life together and written "Thanks for the adventure – now go have a new one!". Reinvigorated, he goes outside, only to see Russell flying after Kevin using balloons and a leaf blower. Carl lightens his house by emptying it completely, enabling it to fly again.
Russell arrives at Muntz's airship but is caught. Carl and Dug, the latter of whom stowed away, board the dirigible and free him and Kevin. Muntz pursues them and traps Russell, Kevin, and Dug inside the house, but Carl saves them just as the tether breaks. Muntz leaps after them, but gets his leg tangled in balloon strings and falls to his death. Carl's house, having lost several balloons, descends out of sight beneath the clouds.
Carl, Dug, and Russell reunite Kevin with her chicks before returning home to the United States in Muntz's airship. Russell receives his badge for assisting the elderly, and Carl presents Russell with a bottle cap Ellie gave Carl when they first met as kids years ago, which he dubs "The Ellie Badge". Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Carl, the tepui his house landed on overlooks Paradise Falls, fulfilling his promise to Ellie.
Voice cast
Ed Asner as Carl Fredricksen, an elderly widower and retired balloon salesman. Docter and Rivera noted Asner's television alter ego, Lou Grant, had been helpful in writing for Carl because it guided them in balancing likable and unlikable aspects of the curmudgeonly character. The appearance of Carl was designed to resemble Spencer Tracy as he appeared in his final film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. When they met Asner and presented him with a model of his character, he joked, "I don't look anything like that." They tailored his dialogue for him, with short sentences and more consonants, which "cemented the notion that Carl, post-Ellie, is a disgruntled bear that's been poked awake during hibernation". Jordan Nagai as Russell, a young "Wilderness Explorer". Throughout most of the film, he makes several comments to Carl that suggest that Russell's father and mother are divorced. Christopher Plummer as Charles Muntz, an elderly explorer and Carl's childhood idol. The name of his airship, the Spirit of Adventure, may have been inspired by Charles Lindbergh's airplane, Spirit of St. Louis. In various interviews, Pete Docter mentioned Howard Hughes and real-life adventurers Lindbergh and Percy Fawcett as inspirations for Muntz. Reviewers noted his resemblance to Kirk Douglas. Bob Peterson as Dug, a talking Golden Retriever. Peterson knew he would voice Dug when he wrote his line "I have just met you, and I love you", which was based on what a child told him when he was a camp counselor in the 1980s. The DVD release of the film features a short called Dug's Special Mission, which follows Dug just before his first meeting with Carl and Russell. Dug previously appeared in Ratatouille as a shadow on a wall that barks at Remy.
Additionally, Delroy Lindo, Jerome Ranft, and Peterson voiced Muntz's dogs Beta, Gamma, and Alpha, respectively. John Ratzenberger played construction foreman Tom, and David Kaye the newsreel announcer. Pete Docter's daughter Elie and Jeremy Leary voiced younger versions of Ellie and Carl, respectively. Other cast members include Mickie T. McGowan as police officer Edith, Danny Mann as construction worker Steve, Donald Fullilove (credited as "Don") and Jess Harnell as Shady Oaks nurses George and A.J., Josh Cooley as Muntz's dog Omega, and Docter himself, credited as camp master Strauch and uncredited as Kevin.
Production
Development
Originally titled Heliums, Up was conceived in 2004 by director Pete Docter. He developed the fantasy of a flying house based on the idea of escaping from life when it becomes too irritating, which stemmed from his difficulty with social situations growing up. When Bob Peterson left the project for three months to co-direct Ratatouille, actor and writer Tom McCarthy stepped in to work with Docter on the story for Up. It was McCarthy who came up with the character Russell. Docter selected an old man for the main character after drawing a picture of a grumpy old man with smiling balloons. In addition, Docter and McCarthy wanted the protagonist to be an elderly man because they felt the worldview of someone Carl's age would be a rich source of humor. Despite Up being ostensibly a children's movie, Docter was not concerned about featuring 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. Unable to make this version of the story work, Docter and Peterson realized that the most intriguing element was the isolation of the floating city. 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 cheerful, colorful balloons in Docter's drawing appealing. With Carl and Russell as the main characters, Docter and Peterson imagined the house landing on a Soviet-era spy airship camouflaged as a giant cloud, rather than on a tepui, but according to Docter, this concept was rewritten due to its similarity to another idea Pixar was developing at the time. Another idea Docter added, and 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.