Disney Pixar Carl and Ellie Mug - Up

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The “Married Life” section begins like a fairytale. Carl and Ellie work together at the zoo. They buy their house, renovate it, and give it the same multicolor paint job that Ellie had long ago envisioned. They picnic in the park, where they look up and see clouds shaped like turtles, flying elephants, and babies. Soon, they’re decorating a nursery with a stork mural and a mobile made of little dirigibles.

Up opened Cannes in 2009 and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It won two: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score. But more than anything else, the massive hit will be remembered for its first 10 minutes. “It definitely reaches very deep,” Kalache says. “It’s Pete Docter’s style. He really knows how to connect with the audience on a very, very deep level. I remember when we watched the movie with friends and family, we took my kid’s class, and the average age was maybe 10, 11. They were all crying after this sequence. I mean, it’s so powerful.” We figured the best way to make the audience understand—and care—would be to connect his house to a relationship, and unfinished business.” —Pete Docter By now, Docter is used to being told that the opening of Up is a tearjerker. “Pretty wild to think that something we created as an explanation for something else still affects people like that!” he says.It’s Pete Docter’s style. He really knows how to connect with the audience on a very, very deep level.” —Jean-Claude Kalache Originally, the montage had dialogue. But according to Docter, storyboard artist Ronnie del Carmen suggested that they should let composer Michael Giacchino’s piece, “Married Life,” do the talking. “Being [a] fan of silent films, I kept pushing to see how much we could take out, and discovered that it seemed like the less we had the more emotional it felt,” Docter says. “No dialogue, no sound effects—just music and visuals. It’s pretty tight. Every shot is a setup for elements we use later in the film.”

As soon as they meet, Ellie is pushing Carl to match her level of boldness. Literally, at first. After he accidentally lets go of his blue balloon—with the name of Muntz’s airship, “The Spirit of Adventure,” scribbled on it—she takes his hand and guides him to the attic where it’s drifted. Then she shoves him onto a single plank leading to his lost prize. Naturally, the board snaps in half when he takes a step and he falls and breaks his arm. The opening of Up lasts only about 10 minutes, but it didn’t start out so short. “With most of our stuff, we overwrote that opening like crazy,” says Docter, who also directed Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., Inside Out, and Soul. “I would guess we had 30 to 40 minutes of material that we slowly whittled down.”