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64 free Up Movie trivia questions with answers. Pixar's Up begins with the most talked-about ten minutes in animation, a wordless montage of a marriage, and then straps ten thousand balloons to a house and flies it to South America. It opened the Cannes Film Festival, won two Oscars, and became only the second animated film ever nominated for Best Picture. This quiz has 64 questions across the whole story: the plot (the Ellie Badge, Shady Oaks, the leaf blower), the voice cast and how an eight-year-old who would not stop talking got the part of Russell, the production trip to Venezuela and the maths behind the balloons, Michael Giacchino's score, the box office and awards, and the afterlife of the characters in Dug Days and Carl's Date. It starts easy and works up to questions for people who know which Cannes prize Dug won. Every answer has been checked against reference sources and is explained once you answer, so it works for a family movie night or a Pixar round at pub trivia.
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Q 01Who voices Carl Fredricksen, the grumpy widower at the centre of Up?
Ed Asner
When shown a model of the character, Asner joked, "I don't look anything like that." The writers tailored Carl's lines to his voice, favouring short sentences with lots of consonants.
Q 02What breed of dog is Dug?
Golden Retriever
Dug is a Golden Retriever, the friendly outcast of Muntz's pack; the collar Muntz built translates his thoughts into speech, which is why he keeps announcing squirrels mid-sentence.
Q 03Which merit badge is Russell trying to earn when he stows away on Carl's porch?
Assisting the Elderly
Assisting the Elderly is the last badge Russell needs to become a Senior Wilderness Explorer, which is why he knocks on Carl's door offering to help him cross the street.
Q 04Where does Carl want to fly his house to keep a promise to his late wife?
Paradise Falls
Paradise Falls, the South American waterfall from Charles Muntz's newsreels, was Ellie's childhood dream; the house lands on the far side of the tepui, so Carl and Russell drag it across on foot.
Q 05Where did Carl and Ellie both work as adults?
The city zoo
Both worked at the city zoo: Carl sold balloons from a cart and Ellie was a zookeeper in the South America house; their Paradise Falls savings jar kept getting raided for car repairs and roof leaks.
Q 06What is the name of Charles Muntz's airship?
Spirit of Adventure
Muntz's dirigible is the Spirit of Adventure, seen in the newsreels young Carl and Ellie watch; decades later Carl finds it moored in a cave near Paradise Falls, full of trophies and dogs.
Q 07Which veteran actor voices the villain Charles Muntz?
Christopher Plummer
The same year, Plummer also voiced the elder leader in the animated film 9 and played the title role in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
Q 08At the end of Up, what does Carl pin on Russell as the 'Ellie Badge'?
A bottle cap
A bottle cap Ellie gave Carl when they first met as children, so it has been on his lapel for the whole film.
Q 09What message has Ellie written on the last page of her scrapbook?
Thanks for the adventure – now go have a new one!
'Thanks for the adventure – now go have a new one!' closes the pages Carl thought were blank; Ellie had filled them with photos of their ordinary life together.
Q 10What is odd about the voice that comes out of Alpha's collar?
It is squeaky and high-pitched
It is squeaky and high-pitched, like a broken record player stuck at the wrong speed, undercutting the pack leader's menace every time he opens his mouth.
Q 11Which actor voices Beta, one of Muntz's pack dogs?
Delroy Lindo
Delroy Lindo voices Beta, the Rottweiler; Jerome Ranft voices Gamma, Josh Cooley voices Omega and David Kaye is the newsreel announcer, so all four are in the film somewhere.
Q 12Bob Peterson based Dug's line "I have just met you, and I love you" on something said to him by whom?
A child at a camp where he was a counselor
Peterson, who wrote and voices Dug, heard 'I've just met you and I love you' from a child at a summer camp where he was a counselor in the 1980s, and kept it for the dog.
Q 13Dug made an early cameo as a shadow barking on a wall in which earlier Pixar film?
Q 21Roughly how many boys auditioned in the nationwide casting call for Russell?
400
About 400 boys auditioned nationwide; Jordan Nagai won the part, and Docter tickled him and held him upside down to get the right squeals for Russell's first meeting with Kevin.
Q 22Carl's appearance was designed to resemble which classic Hollywood actor as he looked in his final film?
Spencer Tracy
Carl was modelled on Spencer Tracy as he looked in his final film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), blended with Walter Matthau and the animators' own grandfathers.
Q 23Which Asner TV role did writers say helped balance Carl's likable and unlikable sides?
Lou Grant
Ratatouille
Dug's shadow appears barking at Remy on a wall in Ratatouille (2007), two years before Up, an early nod to a character Pixar was already developing.
Q 14What was Up's working title when Pete Docter first conceived it in 2004?
Heliums
The idea grew out of Docter's own fantasy of floating away from irritating social situations.
Q 15How many balloons did a technical director calculate it would really take to lift Carl's house?
23 million
A Pixar technical director worked out that 23 million balloons would be needed to lift an 1,800-square-foot house; at that number they would look like dots, so the film uses far fewer, oversized balloons.
Q 16How many balloons were rendered for the lift-off sequence?
20,622
Pixar rendered 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence and 10,297 for ordinary flying shots, each balloon simulated as its own object tugging on the house.
Q 17Which country did Docter and eleven Pixar artists visit for on-location research?
Venezuela
The team went to Venezuela in 2004, reaching the tepui Monte Roraima by plane and helicopter, then sketching for three nights among ants, scorpions and snakes; those tabletop mountains became Paradise Falls.
Q 18Which real bird did the animators study at the Sacramento Zoo to design Kevin?
Himalayan monal
Kevin was based on the Himalayan monal, a pheasant with iridescent plumage the animators studied at the Sacramento Zoo; new software had to be written just to render those feathers.
Q 19Russell's look was modelled on a sketch of which Pixar artist?
Peter Sohn
Pixar staff habitually sketch each other in meetings, and one such drawing of Sohn became the model. Sohn later directed The Good Dinosaur.
Q 20How did Jordan Nagai end up being cast as Russell?
He came along to his brother's audition
About 400 boys tried out; Nagai stood out because he simply would not stop talking, which is exactly Russell.
Asner won five of his seven Emmys playing Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off.
Q 24Who voices young Ellie in the film's opening prologue?
The director's daughter
Elie Docter later became the inspiration for Riley in her father's next film, Inside Out.
Q 25Who provides the uncredited squawks of Kevin the bird?
Pete Docter, the director
Docter also has a credited role as camp master Strauch, the scout leader at the badge ceremony.
Q 26Pixar good-luck charm John Ratzenberger voices which character in Up?
Construction foreman Tom
Ratzenberger, who had voiced a part in every Pixar feature up to then, is construction foreman Tom, the hard-hat who keeps asking Carl to sell the house to his boss.
Q 27In the newsreel that opens Up, why is the explorer Charles Muntz disgraced?
His giant bird skeleton is declared a fake
His giant bird skeleton is declared a fake, so he vows not to return from Paradise Falls until he brings back a live specimen; decades later the obsession has consumed him.
Q 28What is the name of the retirement home a court orders Carl to move into?
Shady Oaks
Shady Oaks is the home whose nurses George and A.J. arrive to collect Carl; the pair got their own 2009 short, George and A.J., about the fallout after they watched the house float away.
Q 29In Up, a construction worker damages what, provoking Carl into hitting him with his cane?
His mailbox
His mailbox, the one Carl and Ellie painted together, which is why a small dent sets him off and lands him in court.
Q 30Russell chases after the airship using a bunch of balloons and what household tool?
A leaf blower
Russell ties himself to a bunch of balloons and steers with a leaf blower; Carl then throws all his furniture out of the house so it is light enough to fly after him.