The Most Emotionally Devastating Scene In Pixar History Experienced Multiple Last-Minute Changes [Exclusive]

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Pixar's "Up," the Oscar-winning classic that's probably still best known for making audiences bawl their eyes out at the film's devastating opening 10 minutes. (The rest of the movie? Also great!) To celebrate the anniversary, I spoke with composer Michael Giacchino about his experience crafting the film's Oscar-winning score, and naturally, our conversation touched on that tearjerking opening montage and the song that underscores it, called "Married Life." As Giacchino explained, he and the filmmakers targeted that scene with precision in order to make it as resonant as possible:

"On the 'Married Life' scene, there were a couple areas that every time we did it, I'd look at it and go, 'Well, it works, but maybe it'd be better if we try this.' Because you don't really know until you put something up there, until you get there with the orchestra, you hear what it's going to sound like, you do the whole thing. So there were one or two times where I went back to that, to just target a certain area that could be better and make sure [it was]. 

It's nice to have those moments to be able to go back. That's why we sort of spread out the scoring schedule so that you have time to live with what you did, and you can go back and you have what we call a 'fix day' to go in and change anything I want to change, do any last minute tweaks. But 'Married Life' had a couple of those, because we just wanted it to be perfect. And even in the development of that scene, it took a while for them to really get to this place of 'this is what the story is' in the storyboard phase. So for me, it was very similar. There were a few areas where I kept needling at going, 'Oh, maybe this is too fast now. This should be slower here.'"

"We overwrote that opening like crazy," director Pete Docter told The Ringer in 2022. "I would guess we had 30 to 40 minutes of material that we slowly whittled down." Some of that whittling included cutting out dialogue that was originally slated to appear in that scene, but eventually, they realized they could rely solely on Giacchino's score and the visuals to tell this part of the story. "Being [a] fan of silent films, I kept pushing to see how much we could take out, and discovered that it seemed like the less we had the more emotional it felt," Docter said. "No dialogue, no sound effects — just music and visuals. It's pretty tight. Every shot is a setup for elements we use later in the film."

Striking the exact right balance was tricky. They even toyed with removing the part where Ellie has a miscarriage because they thought it might be too heavy for audiences; thankfully, they put it back in, and the film retained the full emotional portrait of Carl and Ellie's journey. "We made lots of changes and adjustments, and it was really hard to know whether we were making it better or breaking it," Docter said. "Some days it would be super emotional, and other days we wouldn't feel anything at all. Oh no, we took out three frames — did we break it?"

You can listen to my full conversation with Michael Giacchino on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast below:

You can subscribe to /Film Daily on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and send your feedback, questions, comments, concerns, and mailbag topics to us at bpearson@slashfilm.com. Please leave your name and general geographic location in case we mention your e-mail on the air.

"Up" is streaming on Disney+, and while you're there, don't forget to check out the short film "Carl's Date," which serves as a sequel to the movie.