The Mailbox

I am watching Up now… even as I type. :laughing: And one thing that was brought to my attention was that when Carl’s house was lifted into the air, it didn’t take his yard obviously, thus possibly leaving his beloved mailbox. And we don’t see any other important scenes involving the mailbox. Then it occurred to me, he got into trouble because he was protecting his mailbox, so it would be silly and unprofessional to have him leave it behind. So, I rewound it to the night before the nursing home staff came to pick Carl up. That’s when I saw it. The mailbox was there alright, but when the scene transforms into the next morning, and if you look closely, it disappears. It’s gone! He took his mailbox with him! :smiley: I was excited to know that again Pixar didn’t fail in giving all the details, being altogether necessary to make the film seem more real, and not leaving out the important details.

So, I wanted to see if I was the only one on here who noticed that.

You may wanna put some spoiler warnings on this thread. ^^;

But anyways, yeah, I noticed too. Nice touch. ^^

Oh, yeah, I totally caught that. The antenna is also down, probably to get out of the way for the balloons.

I don’t think this warrants a spoiler tag, nothing huge here, and also Up finally got released in Japan! WHOO!

I never caught that! Good observation! I did finally get that you never see the head of “The Monster of Paradise Falls” until the dinner-with-Muntz scene. I’m very slow. :slight_smile: (I also thought, the first couple of times, “How did Russell get back in the house after Carl tried to lower him on the sheet and dropped him?” Yeah, very slow. :unamused:

I really did not catch that! Nice one, Sally Jonson.

And don’t worry, karly05, I didn’t completely get that at first, at least not until a few minutes later when I’d been thinking about it and then went, ‘oh…’ :laughing:

Thanks for bringing that to my attention as well, Netbug009. I didn’t think about putting the spoiler there. :unamused:

And here’s another thing I noticed.

When Carl has finally placed his house on top of the falls, towards the end of the movie, and he goes inside, putting everything in the living room back to order and sitting down, there was a difference in the coloring of the house. At this point of the movie, Russell is mad at him because he made the choice to save his house instead of freeing “Kevin”. The colors in the room reflect the mood of the movie. At any other time, the colors are bright and cheerful. But now they are tinted, making the room look dull and uninviting. This helps the viewer feel what Carl is feeling: emptiness, a sense of regret, dullness. Again, Pixar has given the littlest details that add up to the biggest affects.

This reminds me of two scenes from A Bug’s Life / Toy Story 2 where they also used subtle lighting changes to convey the characters’ feelings:

  1. the scene in the circus trailer where Flick thinks he has never done a thing right, until convinced otherwise by Dim and the others
  2. the scene when Woody’s arm rips for the first time
    You almost don’t notice it, but it is really effective.

Yup totoro, that’s the idea. Make it affect people without them realizing it. That’s the genius of color keys, you can kinda look into that with some color keys that are included in the storyboard sections in the Art Of books. Lou Romano did a ton of Up’s in the book. It’s really cool to look at.

Hi everyone :slight_smile:
I’m new here and I found out about this forum by searching about the Mailbox from Up in Google.
I had viewed the movie over and over again and only this lat time I noticed that little detail.
I think it’s sweet the fact that Pixar didn’t forget about the Mailbox, Carl couldn’t just leave it there. It was special to him .
Although, I was paying double attention during the rest of the movie 'cause I was hoping that the mailbox could appear sometime ahead, inside the house.
Unfortunately , it didn’t and it’s the only thing about the movie I think they should’ve done differently.
Other thing weird is the difference between the age of Carl and Charles in the beggining and in the end of the movie.
Aside from that, I completely love this movie <3

Welcome to the boards LipaAz!

I hadn’t even noticed the Mailbox disapearing, but now I know! I’ll keep an eye out for it next time I watch the movie.

I’m so obsessed with Up that I found this out around the time of my 6th viewing of the movie, I think. :stuck_out_tongue: