I like where your head is, sir, but I think you should have gone all the way with this. To that end, I offer a brief addendum: Up is a great movie because it, again like The Incredibles before it, works to demystify the patented Disney happy ending. Why should we celebrate this? Because the typical happy ending is no more than a ploy to sell sex to children. Yes, I said it.
"Yet -- and I mean this -- not everyone deserves to be special. Pixar gets this, and their oeuvre supports that claim.* The exceptional rise to the top, while those of the status quo get left behind. " -WHayes on Disney Pixar's Up
I feel like I've heard this somewhere before... Ohh that's right... Disney Pixar itself expressed much the same sentiment in another one of their movies already....
Disney Pixar's "Ratatouille's" main character, a rat named Remy, strives to become a great chef in the city of Paris. Remy idolizes a famous chef named Gusteau, and he considers Gusteau's book, entitled "Anyone Can Cook," to be a great chef's instruction manual.
Their biggest critic is Anton Ego, a dark and brooding journalist who is only too eager to slam Remy's cooking. By the end of "Ratatouille," however, Remy succeeds in making a dish (ratatouille, believe it or not) which takes Ego back to his childhood and ultimately wins his praise.
Ego's review of Remy's cooking at the end of the film is naturally quite complimentary, but it also offers a different take on the meaning of the title of Chef Gusteau's book:
"In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook". But I realize - only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."
The bold part is the important part. The message WHayes pulls out of "Up" is that even an old man, a random and strangely ambiguously ethnic boy, and a talking Golden Retriever can be special, remarkable, great. Not everyone can be remarkable, but a remarkable person can come from anywhere. This now seems to be a common theme in these Disney Pixar movies.
WHayes takes it a step farther by mentioning Disney Pixar's "The Incredibles" because this film depicts remarkable people who have been forced to live unremarkably. His idea is that remarkable people are born that way, and are so permanently.
This point WHayes offers in addendum to the main one, and now I will offer an addendum to this addendum: it seems to me that all of these Disney Pixar films are also demonstrating that it requires great adversity and terrible odds to force these characters to realize their remarkableness. It is only because Carl and Russell find themselves clinging to the side of a flying zeppelin that they discover their ability to cling to the side of a flying zeppelin.
And so, WHayes and JDub present "The Gospel, According to Pixar:"
"Remarkable people can come from all walks of life, and although it always requires a challenge, quest, or some kind of adversity for them to realize that they are remarkable, they're all born that way. So kids, dont be afraid of adventure, danger, scrutiny, and tribulation: these things are what allow you to realize your remarkableness, after all."
It seems to be this message that Disney Pixar is communicating in many of their films, and for my money (and my future kids), this is a far better moral than that of life being the persuit of some unatainable "happily ever after" idea.
Disney may not have come up with the idea of ending a story with the "happily ever after" concept, but they sure did perfect it. They also managed to convince 50 years worth of children that "happily ever after" is the way stories should end. Even in real life.
