- “What you are now witnessing is footage never before seen by civilized humanity: a lost world in South America! Lurking in the shadow of majestic Paradise Falls, it sports plants and animals undiscovered by science. Who would dare set foot on this inhospitable summit? Why, our subject today: Charles Muntz!”
- ―Newsreel Announcer on Paradise Falls
Paradise Falls is a location in the 2009 Disney/Pixar animated feature film, Up. Paradise Falls is based on the real-life Angel Falls, located in Venezuela, South America (where it's also known as Salto Ángel in Spanish). The peculiar mesas depicted in Paradise Falls are called tepui, or “house of the gods” in the language of the local Pémon.
Role in the film[]
Charles F. Muntz has been accused of fabricating the skeleton of a giant bird he had claimed to have discovered in Paradise Falls in South America. Muntz vows to return there to capture another giant bird alive.
Best childhood friends, Carl and Ellie eventually get married begin to grow old together. Unable to have any children, they repeatedly pool their savings for a trip to Paradise Falls, but end up spending it on more pressing needs. An elderly Carl finally arranges for the trip, but Ellie suddenly becomes ill and dies, leaving him alone and lonely.
Years later, 78-year old Carl still lives in the house, now surrounded by urban development, but he refuses to sell. He ends up injuring a construction worker over his damaged mailbox. As a result, he is evicted from the house by court order and ordered to move to a retirement home. However, Carl comes up with a scheme to keep his childhood promise to Ellie: He turns his house into a makeshift airship, using thousands of helium balloons to lift it off its foundations. He then floats his house to Paradise Falls.
Trivia[]
- Director Pete Docter and a select group of artists visited Canaima National Park in Venezuela to witness the tepuis firsthand, and to collect the sketches, photographs, and video that would later be used by art and technical directors as reference in creating their own "Lost World."
- The name is likely based on Angel Falls, which is the highest waterfall in Venezuela.
- The Plateau of Paradise Falls, closely resembles the one from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.
- In the English version of Up during the "Married Life" sequence in the part where Carl and Ellie make a savings jar, it is labeled "Paradise Falls". In the international versions of the film, the word itself was simply replaced by a picture of Paradise Falls itself to get over the language barrier.
