Just watched Up for the second time, and man, is it incredible and awesome and man, did I sob like a little baby-man.
It’s funny because the first time I saw Up, I recognized it was great, especially its mind-blowing, gut-punching first 10 minutes, but then I had issues where I thought the second half became too much of a conventional movie.
But re-watching it just now, I didn’t feel that at all. I was blown away that a cartoon with such silly, beautifully fantastical concepts could be so grounded in reality and tap into human feeling way more profound than most movies ever scratch the surface of.
And that happened the first time I saw Wall-E, too. I recognized it was really good, but I also thought it got slow or something in the second half, and it took a second viewing to truly get that it is really fucking good. Like masterpiece good. Said by someone who thinks the word masterpiece is kinda dumb.
Maybe it’s because these movies so subvert film conventions, and I’m so primed to love them already because they’re Pixar movies, that my expectations are always thwarted, and my brain can’t quite keep up in the moment to adapt to what the movie actually is, as opposed to what I was expecting it to be.
Haven’t seen Toy Story 3 yet, but I’m hoping I can just appreciate that fully and completely the first time around. Probably won’t, though.
This leads to a bigger realization I’ve been having about art and the expectations we bring and how insanely that affects our response to said art, but I’ll save my ramblings on that for another Tumble.
I kinda wanna watch Up again.