PETE DOCTER: Yeah, I don't really like villains.
They don't seem like a reflection of reality.
I don't think anybody goes to sleep thinking,
"How can I do evil tomorrow?"
(IMITATES EVIL LAUGH)
You know?
Everybody thinks that they are doing the right thing.
And so that's how we approached Muntz in this film.
He is, in a way, the inciting incident for what got Carl and Ellie going.
He is the representation of what they want to be.
ELLIE: You know him.
(GASPS)
Charles Muntz, explorer.
When I get big, I'm going where he's going.
DOCTER: He's this dynamic, adventurous guy
who made a mistake along the way and chose that over relationships.
In a way, he's a reflection of Carl, who made a bad move,
and Carl would have become Muntz had he been allowed to,
if Russell hadn't come along.
Wait. Are you Charles Muntz?
Yeah, well, yes.
The Charles Muntz?
"Adventure's out there!"
So it was hard for us to find a way to defeat Muntz.
And we tried a lot of different things.
It would have been great if we could have come up
with some way to redeem him.
And we actually boarded a number of versions like that.
MUNTZ: You have no idea what it means to lose something.
CARL: I do. I lost everything. I lost my wife.
That's why I'm here.
DOCTER: And every time we tried that,
it just got to this weird place of like,
"Why are they standing around talking?" You know.
In the end, we figured, all right,
as almost a representation of Carl's old self, Muntz has to die.
By the time it came to, actually,
what are the means in which you can kill him...
There's so many ways to skin this cat.
One of my favorites was sort of a Stanley Kubrick Shining thing.
He actually goes into the labyrinth.
The bird lives in the labyrinth.
Dug calls it the twisty rocks.
BOB PETERSON: The labyrinth felt like a symbol of Muntz's obsession.
You know, he couldn't go in and get the bird,
he knew he'd get lost,
because once you go in, you can't get out.
It's a lot like some of the stuff we saw in South America.
It's like a maze, and literally people in those areas have gotten lost.
And the bird just ducks into this labyrinth.
(MUNTZ EXCLAIMS IN FRUSTRATION)
DEL CARMEN: And it would be the one thing that foils him.
PETERSON: Muntz sees the bird, he goes after it.
(FOOTSTEPS PATTERING)
(GUN FIRES)
MUNTZI (LAUGHING) I did it!
After all these years.
(BALLOON SQUEAKS)
(GROANS IN FRUSTRATION)
Fredricksen!
(KEVIN SQUAWKS)
MUNTZ: There it is.
PETERSON: And then Muntz is left to then wander forever in this labyrinth.
And that's cool, too, but it felt a little bit like it was Muntz's ending,
and it wasn't Carl's ending.
So what we did was truncated it
so that it all happened right there on the dirigible.
We tried one version where Muntz got stuck inside the house.
PETERSON: Muntz is still after his quarry, and that's what his undoing is.
(MUNTZ GASPS)
(BALLOON SQUEAKS)
DOG: Master has the bird. The bird!
(DOGS BARKING)
MUNTZ: No! No!
(HOUSE CREAKING)
But then that was creepy because we thought,
well, the house is kind of Ellie,
so we don't want, like, "Oh, Muntz is with Ellie?"
That felt wrong.
So we tried this version where Muntz leaps out
and his legs get caught on balloons and it pulls him up.
(GASPS)
DOCTER: But then it felt very indeterminate.
Like you weren't sure if he was dead.
You didn't know if that was...
"Is there going to be a sequel with Muntz or anything like that?"
In a way, Muntz's comeuppance was less important to me, personally,
than any of that other stuff.
I just kind of wanted to get him out of the way
so that we could get back to that connection,
to Carl and his wife.
What we finally ended up with was him getting caught in the balloon strings
and falling with the balloons.
You have to look at these films
as almost a hierarchy of...
The most important is your main character and his needs,
and Muntz's story has to support Carl's story.
And so if Carl, that part of him needs to die off, then that's what Muntz,
as a reflection of that, that's his job in the story.