Down with Up
Jul. 27th, 2013 07:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinI actively dislike Up. I know that is something of a heretical stand, and I've spent hours discussing it with people at lunch, but have never been able to go into exhaustive depth because I just couldn't be bothered to do the research (i.e. watch the movie again and waste more time thinking about it). However, a couple years ago I was in a screenwriting class at work and we had to watch it as homework one week – I did manage to get through it all, by taking breaks to do more interesting stuff like make porridge and do the dishes – and took advantage of this enforced re-watching to make a list of what I liked, what I didn't, and questions.
The little piece of paper on which I'd written this has been kicking around for ages, and as I'm finally trying to do something about the 50,000 pieces of paper floating around my apartment, I need to get rid of it. Clearly the most important thing for me to be doing with my precious free time on a Saturday morning is to type it all out for the general benefit of the internet.
For the most part I'm just going to transcribe it verbatim, without commentary, as best as I can decipher my handwriting, but I need to explain something first: When I started at Disney Animation, which is overseen by the creative leads from Pixar, I learned very early on that Pixar has certain 'rules' for their movies. Some of these are obviously in opposition to the prevailing Disney paradigm into which Pixar was born, but some of them are just quirks of the people who founded it. As best I can recall, some of these rules are:
- No musicals
- No 'happy village' song
- Contemporary setting
- Everything that happens must be real-world-logical/make sense/hang together
- The world must be fully explainable, functional, and researched
- You can have humans, and you can have talking animals, but the animals cannot talk to the humans
One of the things that most annoyed me about Up when it came out was how it flouted some of Pixar's 'rules,' while the movies we were making were suffering from over-adherence to them, and it was annoying to see this hypocrisy writ large on the big screen.
All right, here you go, see if you can make any sense of this, because after this I am done talking about Up:
LIKE
The first 14 minutes*
The tag sticking up on the Shady Oaks guy's scrubs
The fantasy of hanging Russell out the window
Turning off hearing aid
Kevin's animation
No Ellie voiceover on her last message
Dogs in biplane** – the movie finally crosses the line it's been awkwardly walking and is genuinely silly
Russell's atomic bomb badge:
*My favourite review of Up was on some BBC topical comedy show; they had a guest on who was a movie reviewer and the host mentioned liking Up, to which the guest replied “No, you didn't like Up. You think you liked Up, but what you really liked was the first ten minutes; everything else you thought you liked about it just reminded you of the first ten minutes.” I wish I could remember which show or who said it, but that says it all really.
**YES I LIKE THIS – I may be the only one in the entire world but it was such a relief for the movie to stop trying so hard and just be fun. Like a Muppets movie. Up would have been better in every way had it been done by the Muppets.
DISLIKE
Russell YELLING
Going through storm too easy – Playskool storm (+music)
And then suddenly in Venezuela? Overnight? One storm? Not enough time even to deflate balloons.
Russell stops house drift or what?? Friction?
And then wind picks up?
A constant source of annoyance was how, on top of the tepui, Carl and Russell go from exposed barren rock to lush jungle with no rhyme or reason – wide establishing shots of the mesa show only the flat barren terrain, and you never see them go from one to the other in the course of a scene. If so much attention hadn't been given to explaining some things, it would have been much easier to accept the things that weren't explained.
33:30/34:10 See flat rocky top
35: forest
40: rocks
Mention helium leak
The dog translation collars: making enormous effort to get around the talking animals rule for one joke
- different voices?
- electricity? GPS? Video?
- How did Muntz get all these things if he's been stranded alone in the jungle since the '30s?
43:19 Lampshading the joke of Alpha's voice. Just let it be funny.
Talking dogs contribute too much dialogue. SHUT UP.
Doug's voice sounds like Junyer [Junyer Bear from the Chuck Jones shorts]
Suddenly massive cliff face – where? Feels like valley floor rather than mesa.
Explaining 'broken translator'
Cutting the net:
... When Kevin has been netted and runs away, the net catches on a protruding stone, and Carl spends an intense few seconds cutting it free. But the way the net snagged means he could have just lifted it off, saving valuable time. I know it increases the drama but it just looked dumb – if you wanted to have the anxious net-cutting time, make the net snag in such a way that lifting it off would have been impossible; maybe show Carl trying to lift it and failing and then cutting – I know this a silly thing to get hung up on (so to speak) but this sort of moment is indicative of so much that bothers me about Pixar's contrivances and lack of presence of mind.
Set fire to house but not so bad really
Alpha v. blue (I have no idea what I meant by this)
1:20 – what is that, the 'rock ship' lever?
Lack of peril – if house had fallen it could have floated
Muntz death anticlimactic
QUESTIONS
Much care is taken to show how Carl controls the weather vane from inside, but how does the weather vane steer the house?
Are the forests in gullies atop the tepui, which you wouldn't see in a wide shot? Establishment would be nice.
How does Doug know about Kevin's babies?
Where does Muntz get his food? It's not local.
What do they lose if Muntz gets the bird?
Why should we care if Carl gets the house to Paradise Falls? - only intellectual
Squirrels in the jungle?
Why push Russell out of airship if Carl is already coming? Not bait.
OK, he's annoying, and Charles Muntz is evil, but still no sense or lead-up.
Kevin's leg just got scratched? It's OK by 1:26, when it's no longer necessary to be lame
Fuel for ship?
And now into the recycling with this piece of paper ... only 49,999 more to go.
The little piece of paper on which I'd written this has been kicking around for ages, and as I'm finally trying to do something about the 50,000 pieces of paper floating around my apartment, I need to get rid of it. Clearly the most important thing for me to be doing with my precious free time on a Saturday morning is to type it all out for the general benefit of the internet.
For the most part I'm just going to transcribe it verbatim, without commentary, as best as I can decipher my handwriting, but I need to explain something first: When I started at Disney Animation, which is overseen by the creative leads from Pixar, I learned very early on that Pixar has certain 'rules' for their movies. Some of these are obviously in opposition to the prevailing Disney paradigm into which Pixar was born, but some of them are just quirks of the people who founded it. As best I can recall, some of these rules are:
- No musicals
- No 'happy village' song
- Contemporary setting
- Everything that happens must be real-world-logical/make sense/hang together
- The world must be fully explainable, functional, and researched
- You can have humans, and you can have talking animals, but the animals cannot talk to the humans
One of the things that most annoyed me about Up when it came out was how it flouted some of Pixar's 'rules,' while the movies we were making were suffering from over-adherence to them, and it was annoying to see this hypocrisy writ large on the big screen.
All right, here you go, see if you can make any sense of this, because after this I am done talking about Up:
LIKE
The first 14 minutes*
The tag sticking up on the Shady Oaks guy's scrubs
The fantasy of hanging Russell out the window
Turning off hearing aid
Kevin's animation
No Ellie voiceover on her last message
Dogs in biplane** – the movie finally crosses the line it's been awkwardly walking and is genuinely silly
Russell's atomic bomb badge:
*My favourite review of Up was on some BBC topical comedy show; they had a guest on who was a movie reviewer and the host mentioned liking Up, to which the guest replied “No, you didn't like Up. You think you liked Up, but what you really liked was the first ten minutes; everything else you thought you liked about it just reminded you of the first ten minutes.” I wish I could remember which show or who said it, but that says it all really.
**YES I LIKE THIS – I may be the only one in the entire world but it was such a relief for the movie to stop trying so hard and just be fun. Like a Muppets movie. Up would have been better in every way had it been done by the Muppets.
DISLIKE
Russell YELLING
Going through storm too easy – Playskool storm (+music)
And then suddenly in Venezuela? Overnight? One storm? Not enough time even to deflate balloons.
Russell stops house drift or what?? Friction?
And then wind picks up?
A constant source of annoyance was how, on top of the tepui, Carl and Russell go from exposed barren rock to lush jungle with no rhyme or reason – wide establishing shots of the mesa show only the flat barren terrain, and you never see them go from one to the other in the course of a scene. If so much attention hadn't been given to explaining some things, it would have been much easier to accept the things that weren't explained.
33:30/34:10 See flat rocky top
35: forest
40: rocks
Mention helium leak
The dog translation collars: making enormous effort to get around the talking animals rule for one joke
- different voices?
- electricity? GPS? Video?
- How did Muntz get all these things if he's been stranded alone in the jungle since the '30s?
43:19 Lampshading the joke of Alpha's voice. Just let it be funny.
Talking dogs contribute too much dialogue. SHUT UP.
Doug's voice sounds like Junyer [Junyer Bear from the Chuck Jones shorts]
Suddenly massive cliff face – where? Feels like valley floor rather than mesa.
Explaining 'broken translator'
Cutting the net:
... When Kevin has been netted and runs away, the net catches on a protruding stone, and Carl spends an intense few seconds cutting it free. But the way the net snagged means he could have just lifted it off, saving valuable time. I know it increases the drama but it just looked dumb – if you wanted to have the anxious net-cutting time, make the net snag in such a way that lifting it off would have been impossible; maybe show Carl trying to lift it and failing and then cutting – I know this a silly thing to get hung up on (so to speak) but this sort of moment is indicative of so much that bothers me about Pixar's contrivances and lack of presence of mind.
Set fire to house but not so bad really
Alpha v. blue (I have no idea what I meant by this)
1:20 – what is that, the 'rock ship' lever?
Lack of peril – if house had fallen it could have floated
Muntz death anticlimactic
QUESTIONS
Much care is taken to show how Carl controls the weather vane from inside, but how does the weather vane steer the house?
Are the forests in gullies atop the tepui, which you wouldn't see in a wide shot? Establishment would be nice.
How does Doug know about Kevin's babies?
Where does Muntz get his food? It's not local.
What do they lose if Muntz gets the bird?
Why should we care if Carl gets the house to Paradise Falls? - only intellectual
Squirrels in the jungle?
Why push Russell out of airship if Carl is already coming? Not bait.
OK, he's annoying, and Charles Muntz is evil, but still no sense or lead-up.
Kevin's leg just got scratched? It's OK by 1:26, when it's no longer necessary to be lame
Fuel for ship?
And now into the recycling with this piece of paper ... only 49,999 more to go.
