The Opening Montage – Up (2009)
It’s no question that the most famous part of Disney’s 2009 animated adventure, Up, was its first 10 minutes. Usually, animators must be sure establish their character’s legitimacy because they aren’t, for the most part, human; and then they go in for the punch. But Up was different. It didn’t take long for us to relate to its hero, Carl, or for us to be reaching for the tissues.
The film starts out with Carl as a quiet young man, aspiring to be a great adventurer. He then meets Elle, a fellow pioneer who shares his dreams, and wants to travel to the beautiful “Paradise Island.” Flash-forward twenty-odd years; they get married and move into the broken old house they met in. Together, they renovate and make it their own. We watch them grow older and they seem happy just to be together. We then find out she can’t have kids, as she goes into a deep depression; but Carl’s still by her side, the picture of Paradise Island hangs over the fireplace.
The husband decides to surprise her with a vacation there, but before he has a chance to give it to her, she collapses walking towards their favorite picnic spot. In the hospital, she hands him her adventure book and the next thing we see is Carl at the funeral.
That’s deep for a kid’s movie. Totally unexpectedly, Pixar becomes more life-like than the company’s ever been before; these 10 minutes are a better representation of love and marriage than most live-action movies, and it’s more than likely that the element of surprise at the anguish felt by Carl is what throws the entire audience off balance. You could not have possibly seen this one coming.