Post date: Jul 26, 2013 8:47:13 AM
(By the way, spoilers will be offered for Up, so if you haven't seen it, stop reading right now)
Today I watched again Disney-Pixar's animated feature, Up, and, just like when i watched the movie for the first time, instead of feeling glad for the main characters at the ending, I felt unfairness, as the movie had broken a cardinal rule of fairytales.
Animated movies are known for their emphasis on believing in - and with effort achieving - one's dreams. Disney pioneered this formula in their earlier movies, telling the tale of Pinocchio who longed to be a real boy, and continued to use this concept right down to modern days, with Tiana in Princess and the Frog working two jobs to save money for her dream of owning a restaurant, and Rapunzel of Tangled sympathizing over the secret ambitions of a tavern-ful of rogues. Pixar also seems to follow this tradition: the Parr family from The Incredibles finally get to relive the glory days when superheroes were revered for their help, and Carl Fredericsen achieves his childhood dream of flying with Ellie to Paradise falls in Up. But if you look carefully even a little more in depth, in Up, one character had his dream snatched away at the last minute.
In the movie, the great adventurer, Charles Muntz, had dedicated his life to prove that a large flightless bird exists in the jungle. He gave up his comfortable life to rough it out in the wilderness, and vowed to never return until he finds the bird. Yet, at the conclusion of his movie, as he was about to taste the sweet nectar of a goal achieved and a name cleared, he was thwarted by Carl and Russell and fell to an ignominious death. His ending begs the question: why should the dream of Carl be furfilled, while Muntz is faced with disappointment?
In other movies, the audience would not feel ambivalent at this ending, as the villain would be a simple one-dimensional character we would be taught to hate. For example, Syndrome was shown as an all-evil character, destroying cities and attempting to kill superheroes to gain fame, and thus was not missed by the audience when he met his end. However, in Up, Carl and Ellie were always fervent admirers of Charles Muntz. I guess the writers made the decision of making the character noble and strong to allow us to share Carl and Ellie's love of Muntz's brand of adventure. In elevating the villain character, they had made the character easy to sympathize with. When I watched the movie, I imagined the isolated life of Muntz, away from his family and his friends, with nothing but his dogs for company, waiting for news of his quarry, struggling with himself to keep faith instead of breaking his promise and returning. In my eye, he was a gentleman, keeping his word, with his suspicions and his anger the result of living alone for so long. And yet the movie wants us to believe that his death was inevitable – that his dream cannot come true as it conflicts with the main character's desire.
Sure, one could say that, to create an ending, one person must be the loser. For example, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio was the target of a hurtful prank, and was the lone humiliated misfit amid other joyful characters that received happy endings. However, this movie is a fairytale, where the laws of physics can be bent (flying houses!), where time is charmed (a nap is all the time it takes to go across a continent), and where anything can happen. So why should Carl's wishes be fulfilled when Muntz, who had worked just as hard to stay true to his dream, be ignored?
Like E. B. Starr, I like to imagine an ending where everybody is satisfied. In my mind, I see Carl and Muntz reconciling, the bird excited to experience the sensation of flying for the first time on Muntz's airship, bound for the nearest city, the reporters vindicating Muntz, the bird hearing the call of another of her species in the forest beside the city and falling in love (again), and a stepfather arriving at the bird's nest as Carl, Muntz, and Russell fly off into the sunset, with glorious music playing. Everybody thus lives happily ever after. And really, isn't that what a fairytale is about? Not about deciding who should get to succeed and who to fail, but to give every person who dedicates his/her life for a dream a happy ending.