When we theorized a while back that Up's Russell was the new Adam Lambert, we didn't know just how close Pixar's chubby hero would hew to Lambert's coy trajectory. Like a certain glam runner-up who's willing to don glitter and platform shoes but won't come out of the closet, clues are being dropped to Russell's ethnicity without it being confirmed outright.
Today, Slashfilm's David Chen picked up on the same oddity we did: namely, that it's strange how Disney is excited to promote the upcoming racial diversity of The Princess and the Frog, but won't confirm outright whether Russell is supposed to be Asian (despite the fact that he's played by an Asian boy, Jordan Nagai, and is partially based on Pixar animator Peter Sohn according to a Scifiwire interview).
Does a post-Mulan Disney feel that Russell is a case of "been there, done that," or does Pixar itself have a mandate to treat the issue differently? After all the race wars caused by Monsters Inc., perhaps none of us can be too careful.
· Marketing Up's Asian-American Lead Character [Slashfilm]
· Up director Pete Docter on talking dogs, youth scouts and adventure [Scifiwire]