I just saw a preview of UP, where a shroud covering the balloons opens and suddenly the mass of balloons pulls the connected house off it’s foundation and lifts it aloft. I’m fairly sure that some of the technologists at Pixar must have balked at the concept, knowing full well that because the balloons were covered they had no less lift, and would have pulled the house (perhaps with just a few more balloons than shown) off it’s foundation, covered or uncovered. But, some bigwig said “who cares, think of the dramatic impact”. Let me guess . . . . the shroud was heavy enough to hold back the balloons.
You know, I honestly hadn’t thought about that. Good point. 
And seeing as it hasn’t been brought up by anyone else yet, I think it’s safe to assume that the majority of people who have seen the trailer haven’t thought about that either. Now you’ve said it, it’s obvious, but it just isn’t obvious whilst watching the trailer. Yeah, I guess sometimes the dramatic effect of a scene has to be put before accuracy. Anyway, maybe the film itself will show Carl preparing the house for his adventures, and it’s explained, but you’re right, what we’re shown in the trailer doesn’t technically work.
And welcome to the boards, mikell. 
I just get so tired of how often movies ask that we suspend disbelief. I might understand technological considerations better then most, but I still have the feeling that a multitude of technical advisors must spend many many hours futilely trying to get a director’s attention, considering the almost constant onslaught of technically impossible movies.
Anyway, thanks for the welcome.
I agree to the extent that sometimes technicalities should be adhered to, but in this case there are also many other technical impossibilities- [spoil]a dog that can talk, the fact that the balloons lift the house up at all, and that when the house is lifted up into the air, it seems to stay pretty level[/spoil]- there’s always going to be things like that in Pixar films because they want to make you suspend belief. I think it’s okay for movies, and not only animated movies, to do that because that’s the point; in a movie, you can do whatever you want, so why follow the strict rules of ‘reality’? As long as the story has some meaning and it doesn’t go too far, and as long as the ideas behind it make sense (for example, Carl feeling like he hasn’t done enough with his life) then it’s fine. I’d hate it if all films were completely realistic, because then they’d be pretty boring.
I whole-heartedly agree with lizardgirl.
Talking fish who move their fins like appendages, upright-walking bugs, toys that can speak think and move like humans, monsters, sentient robots in love, superheroes, anthropomorphic cars, rats that can cook… technically none of those ideas are realistic either, but they work in a Pixar movie because the characters are so real, that the circumstances of their being don’t really matter.
I guess balloon logistics are different seeing as the balloons are not a character, and Pixar does try to stick to reality in physics when possible. But it all comes down to… what services the story best? Would this story about a balloon-salesman embarking on the adventure of his life be just as exciting if he flew away in a plane? Definitely not. The balloons are a symbol of fantasy, which is what this movie is about just as any other Pixar movie… even if- for the first time- the main character is a perfectly ‘average’ human being.
To be fair the film is about a house suspended by balloons…
The fact that the house doesn’t lift until the tarp’ is removed is hardly a major discrepency with physics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a scientist and I can see why you might dislike suspension of the norm in films. However Lizardgirl has brought up a fair point; it is a film, a form of escapism from the humdrum of normality.
So long as the film works well I’m more than willing to overlook a few barely obvious breaks in the laws of nature. Take Wall•e for example, obviously there should be no sound in space, that’s a given. However in Wall•e there is sound but the important thing is that it doesn’t matter, the first time a watched it I was so caught up in the story that I didn’t even clock that the laws of physics had disappeared.
I don’t mean any offense but minor discrepencies are hardly a cause for concern in any film, especially one with a well planned story, as I’m hoping Up will have.
Oh, and welcome to Pixar Planet by the way, possibly I should have said that at the top…
You assume they’re just in a tarp attached to the house. They’re behind the house and you can’t really see much of them. It’s possible and likely the tarp is anchored in the ground.
Film is most effective when used as a visual medium to depict emotional truths rather than literal ones. Some pictures are more surreal than others, but any string of images require a certain amount of disbelief just to believe they happened in sequence.
And technical nitpicking is, in the opinion of this gent, the lowest form of analysis. I don’t think there’s one member of the production crew that would purport to be making a technically sound movie. They are making one that will resound with your emotions, and feels the depth of humanity in surreal ways.
And… if you get technical, why does the house float when they are in it, yet when they are on the ground with the house tied to them, they can hold it down, despite them still weighing just as much as if they were in the house…
The point is, yes, technically, we do have to suspend disbelief, but we just have to believe in the UP world. If there is something that really doesn’t make sense, like Tom Cruise’s character in Mission Impossible making a screw spin out of it’s hole with a magnet, for the world that it’s in, then it doesn’t really bother me.
Yes, UP is going to have a lot of fantasy elements, like flying houses, talking dogs, etc., but it’s all going to be amazing. It is a fantasy story, so we just have to let go of our set rules of the real world, and escape to the ones that apply on screen. Besides, how many adventure-style movies can you really name that could actually happen in real life? That’s why their fun. They only exist on screen. IMHO, this movie is going to be great.
- C-3PO
My reaction to any claim that a movie is unrealistic is always “who cares?” Not me, certainly. It’s a film, and suspending disbelief is just a part of the fun (heck, we’ve been doing it since the earliest stories, perhaps even moreso when storytelling was mostly oral!) So the balloon-house thing wasn’t done realistically, I say good! I want a film concerned with character and emotion, not with making sure every bit of science is accurate.
Well, you don’t have to suspend disbelief in this film, you don’t even have to watch it if it bugs you that much. But I think if you’re gonna enjoy this film, you at least have to look at it as a fantasy and not reality.
Apparently, in hollywood they’ve given a term to things like this. It’s called “The gimme rule”
It appears to mean that most audiences will give you one ridiculous aspect of the story, and as long as everything else makes sense within that idea then nobody cares because it makes sense within the story.
For instance, it’d be like if a man gets bitten by a werewolf. That’s fine because it’s a werewolf movie, but if you then said something like “and the man is from space” apparently the audience will lose interest because it’s two different “out there” concepts within one movie. There’s only so far that someone can suspend their disbelief. I think that’s basically how they say it works, i’m not entirely sure on the specifics.
But onto UP, as people have mentioned before. When watching a Pixar movie you should know to expect something a little out there. I mean, Cars can’t actually talk and don’t live in their own world
Sometimes the “That would never happen” saying just has to be thrown out of the window. Because if we forever kept films under constant pressure to be realistic, then they’d lose a lot of the whimsy that people like about them.
I think now more than ever people want Escapism when they go to the movies, and as long as their intelligence isn’t being insulted then there’s really no problem here. We all know that Balloons couldn’t make a house fly all over the world. But teenagers don’t get bitten by radioactive spiders and gain super powers either (Sadly). Oz doesn’t exist you know
And this is animation, let’s not forget. If we were asked to suspend disbelief on these, then we’d never have any of the Disney Classics, and Pixar wouldn’t exist.
But if it does bother you that much, then as has been said before…There are plenty more films in the cinema.
On another note, I really liked Toy story…I just wished they weren’t alive