Up: Animation Isn't Just For Kids

I've been reading a lot of comics recently.  Comics have always had this thing going on where no one takes them seriously.  You've got all these great stories like Sandman and Watchmen and all the really famous ones like Maus and Persepolis (or however you spell it), but no one respects them because the medium has such a bad rep.  Just because the people who wrote comics in the 30s and 40s made pulp superhero novels doesn't mean that all comics are about superheroes or that all comics are mediocre pulp in quality.  There's some seriously good stuff going down out there and a teeny-tiny audience appreciating it.  Web comics have helped, but there's still very little in the way of comic "books", graphic novels if you will.  Most of the well appreciated stuff is single strip at a time ala xkcd or Questionable Content.  One joke a day, soap opera plots at best (good ones mind you), etc.  I freakin' love those comics, but I still don't see much in the way of more serious stories being told with comics.

Animation, I feel, is in a very similar boat.  People have done awesome things with animation - look at Bugs Bunny, etc.  The Simpsons is a landmark television series.  Disney has (had?) been winning awards for decades by putting out amazing animated movies.  But when you get down to it, there hasn't been a lot of "adult" stories told with animation.  It has the reputation of being a medium, you know, for kids.  That's fine since it gives us stuff like Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story, and so forth, but there's this huge untapped potential for animation that involves telling the same kinds of heart-wrenching, gotta see 'em love stories, fast paced action, blockbuster, cry-all-the-way-through, beautiful tales that you get in great live action film.  Occasionally you get the great innovative piece ala The Triplets of Belleville, but that's not often.  Then you've got all the stuff the Japanese have been up to... In fact, if you speak Japanese, a lot of what I've just said is just lies.  They're way ahead of us in comics and animation.

Whatever.  Animation is a hugely untapped medium for story-telling.  Thankfully, the guys who founded Pixar figured this out back in college and have been slowly getting us, the public, ready to accept animated movies for adults.  There's always been jokes for the adults - pop culture references if nothing else - but Pixar has been pushing the morals of their stories farther and farther with every movie.  The Incredibles was all about suburban life, a topic the depths of which elude most tweens that I know this sort of movie is classically marketed towards.  WALL.E was something special.  That opening sequence could've just gone on for ages... I feel like the world building they did there was for an ageless audience.  Then the lesson about nature was for adults as much as it was for kids.  Still felt kiddy once they left Earth, though.

Up, however...  Up is not a kids movie.  The whole plot is about letting go of the dead.  That whole opening montage of Mr. Fredrickson's life is just... beautiful.  That sequence is probably entertaining for kids, but I just can't imagine the full impact of it hitting anyone under a certain age.  Honestly, I don't believe the full impact will hit me until I'm middle aged at least.  Sure the whole movie is peppered with stuff for the kids.  The talking dogs, Kevin, most of what's going on with the boyscout...  It's all kid stuff.  Not that I didn't like it, quite the opposite.  It's just that's the sort of kid targeted stuff I've come to expect from animation.  I have not come to expect shots like the one of the house floating down through the clouds as Mr. Fredrickson finally lets go of his wife.  That's just... That's just amazing.

So bravo, Pixar.  Your master plan of introducing animation to adults has finally come to fruition.  And I, for one, applaud you for it.  Bravo indeed.  I loved everything about this movie except for the fact that I had to pause in the middle of it.

Before I go, I want to step back to my more broad points about animation to say that I'm sort of lying.  After all, we see more and more CG in every summer blockbuster, and what is CG but animation?  Motion capture is blending the line between animation and live action more and more, redefining what we think of as "cinema" at every turn.  Already we don't notice the line between the real and the computer generated.  And really, who's to say what constitutes "real" on the silver screen?  That sounds like a whole paper all by itself.  In a couple years, maybe "animation" will be the standard for all films.

Anyway, I just hope the ride through uncanny valley isn't too bumpy.