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Pixar is no stranger to making fans cry, but no movie has been quite as successful at that as Up. While most Pixar films get you to spend time and invest in the characters before breaking your heart, Up did that at the beginning of the movie with an incredibly emotional montage. This... is not that version of Up.
Feast your eyes and ears on Up Remix from Pixar. It's basically a 90-second long retelling of the story of up, but it's done in a more traditional 2D animation. And it looks and sounds more like a Japanese anime than anything we'd normally see in the west. It may sound like a radical departure that could never work, but somehow, it does. It's beautiful, exciting, and just plain fun. Check it out.
Here the heartbreaking relationship between Carl and Ellie is only a few seconds long, and the music is so upbeat and exciting that you forget how sad the whole thing really is. We move on quickly to the heart of the story, the house flying away, getting caught in a storm, and finding Paradise Falls. The best part is when Charles Muntz appears and the whole thing goes full on Dragon Ball, with Charles and Carl battling, each one surrounded by their own color coded flames, at least until their backs both go out.
This isn't the first time Pixar has put together a remix of one of their popular films. The studio previously did a version of Wall-E done in the style of 16-bit video game graphics. This certainly makes one wonder what other remix ides Pixar might have up their sleeve. I doubt many of us would have ever guessed that an anime inspired Up was something that would work that well, but it really does. If nothing else, it's cool to see the film reimagined as something else.
I'll admit, this makes me want to check out Up again. While we all remember that opening sequence, it's easy to forget that the entire movie is still really good. Sure, it's not quite as action packed as this short might imply, but there really is a sword fighting sequence where Carl uses his cane to defend against a blade, and it really does end hilariously with both old men tweaking their backs.
Hopefully there are other Pixar remixes on the way. There are so many great Pixar movies and so many more animation styles to choose from that the permutations are numerous. Maybe we could get Finding Nemo as a black and white short from the 1920s. Brave in stop-motion animation. A rotoscoped Ratatouille. There's a lot of options that could make for some fun new creations.
And of course, the fact this turned out so well also makes one wonder if we could see Pixar create more like this. I'm sure if somebody at Pixar wanted to make an anime-style series, somebody at Disney+ would be interested in released it.
