Teaser Trailer for Pixar’s Up

This weekend at Comic-Con, Pixar previewed footage from their next film, Up, directed by Pete Docter. They’ve also just released the first teaser trailer for the film:

FirstShowing.net offers this description of the plot:

Our hero is the 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Edward Asner), a short and square little man who walks with a cane. When he was young he met a girl and fell in love with her. Her dream was always to explore Paradise Falls in Venezuela, but unfortunately life got in the way and it never came true. Now Carl is an old widower and he sets off on his own to head down to South America to live out that dream before his life ends. Most of the movie takes place in the wonderfully envisioned mountains of Venezuela, where Carl eventually lands after his house sails south…Along the way, Carl meets numerous other characters and creatures. One of them that Docter showed us was a young, chubby 9-year-old boy named Russell. He’s collected all the merit badges (for the Wilderness Club) except one – assisting the elderly. So he stows away in Carl’s house and floats with him down to Venezuela as well.

Footage from the film was premiered in San Diego alongside clips from Disney’s Bolt. While Bolt went over well, Up made “fanboys run for the exits,” according to this report on the Spout blog. Some people enjoyed it however. Entertainment Weekly says that there was no contest between which of the two films looked better: “Bolt proved suitably entertaining…then immediately lackluster, once director Pete Docter (Monsters Inc.) came out and debuted a few scenes from Pixar’s Up.”

Personally, all I can say is that I’m excited. In fact, I’m looking more forward to this film than any Pixar effort since The Incredibles. As much as the risk-taking and experimentation in Wall-E were commendable, the film taxed my patience with what I found to be unrelatable and largely uninvolving metallic leads. Up, on the other hand, is already in the plus column by having introduced a main character with a compelling and human story that I want to learn more about. My interest is piqued.

UPDATE: Harry McCracken gives in-depth and interesting perspectives of the Comic-Con footage he saw from Bolt and Up.