WonderCon 2009: What is "Up" with Pixar?

On February 28th during WonderCon 2009 in San Francisco, attendees packed the Esplanade Ballroom of the Moscone Center to preview Pixar's upcoming feature animated film appropriately titled "Up." Scheduled for theatrical release on May 29th, "Up" is going to be a 3D feature and will keep the audience guessing and wondering, "Where is this going to go?" As a bonus feature for WonderCon attendees, the first 200 attendees to visit the neighboring Metron theater at the designated time would get to see the first 45 minutes of "Up."

Producer Jonas Rivera and "Up" director Pete Doctor greeted the audience and treated them to various clips of "Up" while explaining the story and its characters. The first clip introduced Carl Fredricksen, an old curmudgeon voiced by Ed "Yes, he's still alive" Asner who just wants to be left alone in his house. In the clip he dealt with Russell, an over eager "Wilderness Explorer" (not to be confused with the Boy Scouts of America) who aims to earn his "assisting the elderly" merit badge by assisting the elderly Carl. As previously stated, Carl just wants to be left alone and sends Russell on a snipe hunt (for you big city kids who never took part in a snipe hunt, think of it as a wild goose chase without the goose). The clip shows off one of the X factors of Pixar: Believable characters of which people can relate. In at least every neighborhood, there is at least one grumpy old man and one hyperactive child in desperate need of a dose of Ritalin. To prevent them from being stereotypes, Pixar will flesh the characters out as they endure through their various odd situations.

The next clip is the jaw dropping scene used in the promotional images of "Up." As an assisted living shuttle comes to evict Carl, Carl sets his plan to migrate to South America in motion. Not content with booking a flight--online check-in is probably too newfangled for him--he instead rigs a huge and colorful array of helium balloons to uproot his house from the ground and float to his destination. The fluid and lifelike animation used in this sequence combined with the sunlight reflecting off the balloons into disco lighting for an apartment floor and detail such as people's reactions to the flying house and birds picking at the balloons to Carl's annoyance bring another X factor of Pixar: Making the impossible convincingly real. Besides Lawnchair Larry, floating around with helium balloons is as impossible as it is impractical. Animation is a tool that helps storytellers pull off the visual feats that they cannot do in live action. By making it convincingly real instead of over the top cartoony, Pixar keeps the audience's attention as it tells the story.

The next featured clip has Carl and Russell tethered to the hovering house like a Macy's Day Parade balloon as they leg it to Carl's intended destination in South America. During an unscheduled bathroom break, Carl's lie catches up to him as Russell finds the fictional snipe that Carl described to him earlier. The alleged snipe--a giant colorful bird that likes chocolate and annoying Carl--joins the two despite Carl's objections. The basic slapstick and visual humor here appeals to both children and adults alike. Children are amused with Russell's and the bird's antics while adults can relate to the annoyances that a child and his giant bird can create when there are more serious things to do.

Two more clips introduce the audience to the conflict. A talking dog (I am not making this up) somehow tracks the bird and the two people. The talking dog is able to do so due to some technology that somehow translates the dog's barks and pants into human speech, albeit the human speech for this dog has the intelligence of Runt from "Animaniacs." There are also three meaner looking dogs with similar technology and meaner voices--except the alpha dog, whose defective technology give him a high pitched voice akin to "Alvin and the Chipmunks." What these four dogs are doing in South America and who gave them the technology remain a mystery as those were the final clips. Strategically not telling the audience about the origin of the talking dogs is a commendable one. It lives up to Docter's promise of me asking where this is going to go. I am curious how this will develop and will watch to see how it develops. With Christopher Plummer and the good luck charm John Ratzenberger providing their voices, "Up" promises to be an interesting ride.

Pixar has a formula include three elements in their films: Emotion, action, and humor. While action and humor are relatively easy in animation, I feel that emotion is the important element. If a film can make us believe in the characters and feel for them when they go through emotions, we will care more about them when placed in action sequences and laugh along with them during the humor.

It seems Hollywood computer animation film studios have the same mission statement: "Let's be like Pixar." While animated films about martial arts pandas, grumpy ogres in a fairy tale setting, and flies on the moon have the look of Pixar, they seem to lack the same X factor that makes Pixar animated films the commercial and critical successes they are.