FILM · 2009 · USA
Up
- Directed by
- Pete Docter
- Runtime
- 96 min
- Studio
- Pixar
34 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
Carl Fredricksen spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.
Summary: TMDB
12 Facts From Behind the Scenes of Up
- #014
While recording the role of Russell in Up, Docter encouraged Jordan Nagai to act physically as well as vocally, lifting him upside down and tickling him for the scene in which Russell encounters Kevin.
- #020
In the DVD extra "The Many Endings of Muntz", Pete Docter and his team discussed how difficult it was to settle on the character's final fate.
- #022
In 2004, Pete Docter and eleven other Pixar artists traveled by airplane, jeep and helicopter to reach Monte Roraima, where they spent three days and three nights painting, sketching and encountering wildlife including ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, frogs and snakes.
- #023
Pete Docter said the real rocks and plants the team saw could not be used in Up because reality was so strange that audiences would not believe it.
- #026
Pete Docter sought a stylized look for Up in which Carl's squarish head suggests his containment within his house, while Russell's rounded shape evokes a balloon; Docter said the effect worked better than the realistic humans of Toy Story, who suffered from the "uncanny valley".
- #027
The human designs in Up drew on cartoonists Al Hirschfeld, Hank Ketcham and George Booth, and simulating realistic cloth on the caricatured characters proved harder than creating the 10,000 balloons that lift the house, prompting new programs for the cloth and for Kevin's iridescent feathers.
- #028
To animate elderly characters in Up, Pixar animators studied their own parents or grandparents and watched footage of the Senior Olympics; the directors limited Carl's movements, barring him from turning his head more than 15–20 degrees without turning his torso or raising his arms high, though they wanted him to become more flexible and "action hero"-like near the film's end.
- #029
For Up, a technical director calculated that Carl's house would need 23 million balloons to fly, but Pete Docter found that this number made the balloons appear as small dots. The balloons were instead made twice Carl's size.
- #030
Up used 10,297 balloons for shots of the house simply flying and 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence, with a varying number in other scenes.
- #032
Pete Docter's priority for the music of Up was emotion, leading Michael Giacchino to write a character theme-based score that producer Jonas Rivera felt enhanced the story.
- #033
In Up, "Muntz's Theme" is the first music heard, playing as young Carl watches a newsreel about Muntz in a movie theater; it begins as a celebratory theme and echoes through the film when Muntz reappears 70 years later.
- #034
"Ellie's Theme" in Up is introduced when Ellie appears as a little kid and recurs in different versions, including a full orchestral arrangement during the sequence where Carl lifts his house with balloons; Michael Giacchino compared the film to opera because each character has a unique theme that changes at particular story moments.
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- Wikipedia Up (2009 film) — Wikipedia
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