Pixar’s Brave both challenged and upheld the Disney princess tradition
Image: Screenshot: Brave Film Features The Pixar Moment
Brave, Pixar’s 13th film, marked multiple milestones for the animation studio. It was the first Pixar movie to center on a female protagonist, as well as the first to be directed by a woman—Brenda Chapman, who also has the distinction of being the first woman ever to helm an animated feature for a major studio. When work began on the film, Pixar implemented a new animation program, Presto, to render a digital version of the Scottish Highlands that was almost as lush and gorgeous as the real thing. Brave also represented Pixar’s first foray into Disney’s most cherished territory: princess movies.
But Brave isn’t your typical Disney princess tale, not even after Disney crowned Merida one of its own in 2013, just one year after the film’s release. The story was first conceived of by Chapman in 2006, the year the Disney-Pixar merger was finalized. Chapman took inspiration from her Scottish ancestry and her own relationship with her plucky daughter, and began to weave a story about a spirited medieval princess, her overbearing but well-meaning mother, and a bear. All elements that could easily fit into the Disney template, with which Chapman was quite familiar: She’d worked as a writer and storyboard artist on several Disney films, including The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast, before directing Dreamworks’ The Prince Of Egypt.
Under Chapman’s early guidance, the core relationship of the film was between Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) and her mother Elinor (voiced by Emma Thompson). Their dynamic is loving but tense; Elinor tries to prepare Merida for a life of leadership and diplomacy, while Merida strains against the confining conventions of being a princess. Things come to a head early in the film, when, during a contest for her hand in marriage, Merida rejects and roundly embarrasses the sons of the lords of the three clans that, along with her own family, the DunBrochs, form some vague alliance that needs bolstering in the form of a political marriage. At her wit’s end, Elinor insists Merida fall in line, ignoring everything her daughter is trying to tell her about wanting to forge her own path in life. Merida snaps, calls her mother a “beast,” tells her she’ll never be like her, and takes her sword to the family tapestry.
Elinor is hurt by Merida’s lashing out, but she still commands her: “You are a princess. I expect you to act like one.” Their rift is what sets the story in motion, as Brave loops in that other Disney standby, a witch, and embarks on a trip wherein the two sparring parties learn to see the world through each other’s eyes. But where Brave diverges from the formula is in keeping its focus on the relationship between mother and daughter. There’s no handsome prince who helps Merida soften her views, either on marriage or her mother’s strict ways. Instead, there is Elinor as a bear (the result of a potion from a witch who admits she’s not great at her job), whom Merida looks after, fiercely and tenderly. As they work to undo the spell before it’s too late—while also evading another cursed bear and King Fergus (Billy Connolly)—Elinor and Merida finally begin to understand each other.
But it’s not just the lack of a love interest that sets Brave apart from other Disney princess stories. Chapman refused to cast Merida from the same wasp-waisted mold as so many other female Disney leads. Pixar showed its commitment to her vision by using Presto to create Merida’s intricate mass of hair, a mane as unruly as the little Scottish archer sporting it. Elinor’s very presence also marks a significant departure; the majority of Disney princesses are motherless, or treated horribly by stepmothers. But though she is caring, Elinor represents, for much of the film, stifling conventions and gender roles, and therefore still stands as an obstacle for Merida to overcome. The two women eventually decide to defy tradition together, leaving room for everyone to “write their own stories.”
That’s a nice sentiment, but one that comes with an asterisk. With its feisty heroine, medieval setting, magical forest, and lesson-imparting original music, Brave still looked and sounded like its House Of Mouse predecessors. In fact, it’s probably the most traditional Disney movie Pixar’s ever made, despite its commentary on convention. Even one of the film’s firsts is qualified—Chapman was removed as director in 2010 by John Lasseter, who comes with his own asterisk. Mark Andrews was brought in roughly two years before the film was set to be released. Chapman is still the only woman to ever direct a Pixar film; after 22 features (and counting), Merida is one of only three female Pixar protagonists. In the end, Brave could only break from so many traditions.
197 Comments
I still feel like this is the year that Disney and Pixar each wrote a movie idea down on a post-it note and then exchanged them, as Wreck-It Ralph came out that same year, which totally has the Pixar premise.
I was going to say the same thing. And that, oddly, Disney did the better film. As much as I enjoyed Brave, Wreck-It Ralph is just fantastic from beginning to end. It even has the Pixar Tears moment (at least for me – when the cart gets smashed up. Well, sniffles rather than tears).
I really like Wreck-It Ralph for the first half-hour or so, but I’ve never warmed up to the whole Sugar Rush segment. I like Vanellope as a character, and some of the jokes land.But man, I just don’t like jokes about candy nearly as much as the movie wants me to.
Not even “Are you hurt, sir?” “No, he just glazed me!”?I can get that though. There’s a lot of fun in Ralph mixing it up with the other games so there is a shift when it settles into one (fictional) game for the bulk of the film.
The Oreo bit cracks me up every damn time.
The guards doing the Wizard of Oz chant as “Or-e-o, Or-e-ooo-ooo” is my favorite gag in the whole film.
The donut cops never fail to crack me up.
Completely agree. The trailer also set the movie up to fail. It showed Ralph hopping from game to game, which I thought was a great idea for an adventure. But they get to the Sugar Rush world early on and… stay there. I get that the filmmakers wanted to focus on Ralph’s relationship with Vannelope, but because there’s no longer much forward momentum, the movie never quite lived up to its potential for me.
yea, i thought we were getting an arcade movie and instead it was a candyland movie
Agreed, the last act in Sugar Rush is too long. It was more fun when they were jumping around.
I still find it interesting how a J-Pop band sang on a Disney film.
I’d say that Ralph’s fall towards the mountain is generally considered the tears moment, but yeah the sentiment stands.
Agreed. I got a lump in my throat when he blew up the kart, but man – even though I knew there was no way Ralph was gonna die in his own Disney movie, when he started reciting the Villain’s Creed as he plummeted to what he thought was his certain death, I just lost it. I still do.
Also, how great of a one-two punch was Paperman and Wreck-it Ralph in the theatrical run?
It even has the Pixar Tears moment (at least for me – when the cart gets smashed up. Well, sniffles rather than tears).
“I’m bad . . . and that’s good! I will never good, and that’s not bad! There’s nobody I’d rather be . . . than me.”I just teared up writing that. It’s one of the best, most deftly set-up moments of pure pathos in film in the last decade. Among mass-marketed films, you have maybe Captain America’s end-of-the-line confession to Bucky, or Tony Stark’s death, or Miles Morales sending Peter Parker home in a leap of faith. Offhand, this hasn’t been a good decade for pathos in non-Marvel films, but boy howdy, Wreck-It Ralph earned it.
That film is also an absolute masterclass in storytelling. There’s no clunky exposition. Everything is seamlessly woven into the story, from the way the bugs work, to “going turbo”. Everything is so well thought-out.
For me it’s Ralph reciting the Bad-Anon pledge as he plummets toward the Mentos-Diet Coke volcano
Yeah, WIR was incredible, and I think I thought Brave was just “fine.”Ralph Breaks the Internet was a total misstep, though.
Apropos of nothing but Madagascar 3 came out that year and it was *great*. I really didn’t think I’d end up enjoying a Dreamworks sequel more than the latest Pixar.
I haven’t seen the third but Madagascar 2 was surprisingly good and completely surpassed the first movie. I watched it with my friend and his young nephew and was not expecting it to be so funny.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone saw that coming. Very fun (and incredibly animated) film.
For some reason it boggles my mind that those two came out the same year. They’re temporally FAR apart in my mind, and I can’t explain why.
Wasn’t this the first one that was entirely Post-Lasseter Pixar (after he moved to Disney Animation rather than being #metoo’d)?
Agreed – I remember thinking at the time that Disney had made a Pixar movie and Pixar had made a Disney movie, and they both did pretty well there.
Speaking of Wreck-It Ralph, I very much enjoyed Merida’s “Disney princess” cameo in Ralph Breaks the Internet (never understood why they didn’t just call it Ralph Wrecks the Internet, but oh well) where she has such a thick Scottish brogue that no one can understand what the fuck she’s saying.
I feel it’s around this point that Disney animation regained the spark that Pixar had taken and started to produce the more consistent pictures. Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana- that’s a run of outstanding pictures on par with Pixar’s pre 2010 record.
Yes! Thank you. I’ve been ranting about that since they came out. (Not the Post-It note part. That whimsical bit is all yours.) Brave is a great animated movie but only a Pixar B-lister.
I’ve never seen this Pixar movie as it came off like your average, generic Disney Princess movie and those movies had long since been rendered formulaic and generic (says a guy who didn’t really care for those movies to begin with). There didn’t seem to be anything Pixar to it
Audible groans in the party when Brave beat Wreck-It Ralph for Best Animated Feature. This was when it was clear the Academy just blindly votes for Pixar
this was the first forgettable pixar movie.
I seriously thought that Pixar did Wreck-It Ralph.
The thing about that movie that always baffled me is why they had Tudyk doing the villain voice as pure Mad Hatter. Like, where was that coming from? Did Tudyk pitch it?
I would argue that Helen is the actual protagonist of the movie Incredibles 2, which would make it four female leads (along with Brave, Finding Dory, and Inside Out).
But the marketing still focused on the entire family, so I guess it’s kind of a wash. Still a sadly low number out of 22 movies.
And heck, during the period where Helen was out of commission, Violet kind of took the reins.
Helen’s the protagonist but Violet is absolutely the MVP of the film for me (and I like that she’s the focus of the first and last scenes in the film). The voice work is fantastic and the facial expressions (see: attempting to destroy the suit) are Pixar at their best.
Side discussion – what’s everyone’s favourite Pixar short? I think mine is probably For the Birds, though a lot of that might be how many times I’ve seen it (I don’t think I concentrated on the first bit of Monsters, Inc. the first time I saw it as I was still thinking about For the Birds).Presto’s awesome as well (again, thanks to seeing WALL-E so many times at the cinema, I saw it quite a few times) as are Lava and Bao. Some of the new ones on Disney+ are pretty good but I hope Bao wasn’t the end of their cinema run.
Presto is my favorite. The timing in that thing is unbelievable. Geri’s Game remains a ton of fun too.
Presto’s timing stands with any classic Warner short. And while it eventually has a bit of uplift at the end, it’s mostly about causing as much chaos as possible, it’s easily my favorite.
Dug’s Special Mission, mainly because it’s hilarious. I still laugh everytime I hear Alpa yelling “I will get even with you, DUG!”.
Alpha’s voice box is one of Up’s greatest gags.
Does Olafs Frozen Adventure count?
It never does.
not pixar…
right. forgot they only put it in front of Coco because they didn’t think anyone would want to go see Coco on its own.
wait… what?
Prest or For the Birds, for sure.
I’m going to have to go with Boundin’. We bought a Pixar DVD (I think WALL-E maybe) way back when, and it came with another DVD with all the shorts up until to then and that ended up being my favorite.
Bound! Bound! Bound and rebound!
I would love a whole feature centered around Bound’s Jackalope.
Piper was pretty fantastic.
Oooh so many. Probably the one about the old man playing chess with himself.I can definitely tell you the one I dislike the most: that silly short about the two volcanoes in love. It just felt cloying and pandering and I was mostly fixated by the creative process behind it. Like, how long was this story hashed out in committee? “Are you sure it should be a volcano? What about a geothermal vent? Or maybe a geyser in a national park somewhere. No, no, volcanoes are easier to animate.”
I thought it was too depressing, even for Pixar. I mean, if you’re a living volcano, and you’re in the middle of the ocean, and you’re lonely…there’s not a lot you can do about that situation.My personal least favorite was….I believe they did something with living umbrellas once? It was at that point when the whole “inanimate objects with feelings” premise really started to feel tired. Sentient volcanoes was pushing it, but umbrellas….it just seemed like we were running out of objects to do this with.
The one from Inside Out, Lava, has grown on me a lot.
Hard to pick just one. The ones you mention are great. I also like Sanjay’s Super Team a lot. The only one I don’t really like is Bao, because I feel like the message is very muddled and my 4 year old(at the time) freaked the hell out when the Mom ate the dumbling son.
The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. is interesting cause it really puts the early years of computer animation into perspective, especially the length. People have brought up the evolution of Pixar’s animation through their first ten feature films, but you might as well start with the short films that came in the decade before too.
It is fascinating to see the evolution even just in the first ten years. Though the same could be said about Disney of course—compare the early 1920s silent “Alice” shorts (or Oswald five or so years later)—with the first 3 strip technicolour short, the Silly Symphony Flowers and the Tress (and yes than five years later—Snow White) and it’s breathtakingly remarkable.
You’d probably enjoy this.
Wow that’s terrific! (and LOL at some of the Bosko and Foxy gags…)
Definitely Presto if you’re talking the theatrically-released shorts.Big fan of Kitbull, too.Honestly, though, my absolute favorite wasn’t a Pixar short – it was Paperman.
LOVE Kitbull.
Paperman is my favorite as well.
Ball shots may be low comedy, but even so, I have rarely seen low comedy executed as well as Presto!
Boundin’, also I really enjoy Presto.
For the Birds makes me die laughing all the time, Lava makes cry like a big baby.
I’m a little amused by the Lava love here, I think it’s fine myself, but remember people hating on it when it came out. Glad to see that’s blown over.
A lot of cultural critics bought into a narrative that saw Lava as terribly sexist-fat man, finds love with skinny woman- oblivious that it was intended as a loving tribute to Hawaiian icon Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and his wife. There was a particularly tone-deaf screed written about this on Slate.
I really enjoyed “Lifted”, although “Sandpiper” is another favorite because the behavior of the sandpiper chick so strongly reminded me of my younger daugher.
Piper was one of the ones that was better than the film it was attached to (the fun but forgettable Finding Dory)
I was shocked to see that no one mentioned Feast, only to realize it was not a Pixar-made short. I usually notice stuff like that. But I’m going to mention it anyway because it is awesome. For actual-Pixar shorts, I’d have to go with Presto.
Oh! That was the one I was going to mention – I could have sworn I first saw it in a Pixar collection, but I guess not 🙂
Gery’s Game. The filmmaking is so clean and clear, it would work if shot live action. And it’s much less horrifying than Gerald’s Game.
Definitely Presto, but I love Lifted and Night & Day too.My husband is an ex-lyricist so I’m legally prohibited from liking Lava and its repeated reliance on that awful rhyme.
For The Birds is hilarious, no doubt. But I actually really liked the short Float (it is a “SparkShorts” production, so it’s on Disney+). It dealt with a child that could float in the air at will, his father’s struggles in dealing with it, and his eventual epiphany/acceptance when he realizes how his actions are affecting his son. I realize my description just makes him sound like Rudolph’s dick-of-a-dad from the Christmas special, but it is actually presented in a much more relatable way that I found very affecting as a parent. It also manages to do it with almost no dialogue.
Float’s great! That and Kitbull are probably my favourite Disney+ ones (the new ones, Loop and Out, are both pretty good). Plus the one with the knitting working at the bro finance place, though I had no idea when I put it in for my 4 year old that it would use the work prick in a punchline.
Presto by far. It’s perfect. To round out a top five:One Man BandLifted (the moment where the alien gives up and just swipes his arms all over the controls in rage is the best)Boundin’Jack-Jack Attack
Ditto to the list, except for “by far” I love all five
“Jerry’s Game” (or is it Gerri?).I also like the umbrella one.
Of the ones attached to films, “Boundin’” is still probably my favorite, but the recently-released “Loop” is the best overall.
The new Out is sweet. The FAQ shorts are all delightful. (Don’t click out too early — there’s always a last joke after the credits start.)
The Forky shorts are great! Living in the UK we only got Disney+ at the end of March and it certainly helped keep track of time during lock down with the 4 year old when we had a new Forky every Friday. Some weeks we’d literally count the days to it. The friend one gets played so much in my house that my 2 year old – who can’t even say Daddy yet – quotes “What? No!” along with it.
I was going to reply Paperman before realizing it’s not a Pixar short! As an animator, the experience of seeing that in theaters completely eclipses the memory of Wreck-It Ralph
Because no one mentioned it, and also because it probably is my favorite (or tied with For the Birds), I have to mention Partysaurus Rex.
If you’re restricting it to theatrical shorts, the proudly weird “Geri’s Game” is still my favorite; not the most sophisticated visually, but wonderfully directed and acted with a marvelous story. After that would be “Presto”, “Day & Night”, “For the Birds”, “Piper”, and “Boundin’”.If you’re looking at Pixar’s entire library of shorts, then “Kitbull” takes the crown; visually it’s delightful, and I think the story alternates between heartrending and hearwarming perfectly without feeling forced. “Purl”, “Wind”, “Knick Knack”, and “Dug’s Special Mission” deserve mention too. And I still have a soft spot for “Red’s Dream”, the only Pixar short to end on a truly depressing note.
Piper and La Luna are great.
If I want to watch an overall comedy short, it’s For The Birds.But Bao is up there for me because it was just so relatable. It wasn’t just that it was steeped in Chinese culture, which I claim half-descent. My mother for a while had a hard time letting go when I went to college was difficult and the short brought all those feelings of grief, angst, and then relief and understanding back to me.
All of my love for Jack-Jack Attack.
“HAVE YOU EVER SCHEEN AN EXCHPLODING BABY MR DICKER?!”
Presto, For the Birds, Lifted, La Luna, Piper.
I still love Geri’s Game.
I really need to give this movie another watch. My wife loved it when we saw it theatrically, and I didn’t like it nearly as much as I hoped to. I want to love it – I love the idea of it. Maybe 8 years later, it will be better?
I liked it plenty but it was the first Pixar film I only watched once. I blame 2012 just been stacked for films so, even when I picked up the blu-ray, I was probably sticking Moonrise Kingdom or Avengers in for another spin instead.
I watched it a year or so ago after seeing it in theaters when it came out, and my opinion didn’t really change. There’s lots of good elements in it, but it doesn’t quite come together as I’d want it to – the emotional stuff, which is good, gets a little buried under the magic/adventure stuff, which isn’t as compelling as it could be. The themes are also a bit muddled. But it looks great, has a strong lead voice performance, and is perfectly fine.
We had a little Disney mini-marathon yesterday and we almost put on Brave but it was outvoted by Moana instead.
Good vote. Moana is great
The academy totally nominated the wrong song. “You’re Welcome” would have given us an Oscars ceremony with a singing and dancing Rock, ferchrissakes.
I prefer You’re Welcome – and there’s no reason why they couldn’t have both been nominated! – but seeing 16 year old Auli’i Cravalho belt that song out live was the highlight of that Academy Awards. And I’m including the whole Moonlight/La La Land fuck up
Well, yes, I don’t mean to take anything away from Cravalho. She’s awesome.
Oh, I didn’t think you were. I agree on the lost awesomeness of a singing The Rock at the Oscars! As I say, there’s no reason they couldn’t have dropped, say, the one from Trolls and had two Moana tracks (just as La La Land had two that year – even then the wrong one of those won)
We watched Princess and the Frog yesterday for the first time. We were doing ok until that firefly sidekick character got squished – my kiddo did not get over that, and has decided she doesn’t like that movie. She wants princess stuff in just the worst way, but outside of Moana and Frozen I’m having trouble figuring out movies for her that won’t involve any deal-breaking scenes. (she’s already nixed Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast)
I didn’t care for it, either. At the end of the movie, my daughter asked me why it was a big deal that there was an apparent new star in the heavens, and telling her that the lightning bug-dude was finally with his Evangeline choked me up.
I liked the rest of the movie, but my daughter was in tears. It was totally unnecessary to kill off the comic relief like that – it’s manipulative and nasty, and the movie would be better without that sour note.
Ponyo
………You’re welcome.
I’m in the minority, but I honestly loved the heck out of the film, even though the seams in the film are fairly evident. The “plot”, such as it, is needlessly convoluted, because Act 2 is basically a big plot snarl to hide the ball from Merida about the very-obviously-symbolic way to remove the curse, so that there can be a ticking clock in Act 3. Plotwise, it kinda works and doesn’t devolve into an Idiot Ball, but that’s mainly because the timeframe is very short, and Merida is very harried by the misdirection. But the boys turning into bear cubs is entirely extraneous, and exists mainly for madcap antics and as a way to keep Merida from recognizing the obvious. Curses are a standard fairy tale obstacle, and as solutions go, the curse Merida brings down on Eleanor is pretty basic, and requires very little in the way of cleverness to untangle.But the strength of the film was the relationship between Merida and Eleanor. Part of it was that, dude, it’s Emma frickin’ Thompson, who never brings anything less than her A-game. But the more the story backburners the curse antics, and more it foregrounds the politics, the better the movie gets. What I found intriguing was the fact that, really, the king isn’t the one with power; it’s Eleanor who singlehandedly holds this little petty kingdom together through force of personality. And a lot of the pressure she’s putting on Merida stems from her erroneous belief that Merida will have to replace her, rather than believing she should change the political structure so that an Eleanor 2.0, which Merida neither wants nor can be, is not necessary.To my mind, if they’d focused more on that, it would have been a much stronger film, but it also would have made it a far less quintessentially Disney/Pixar film. They may have been hamstrung by the intended audience here.
I loved it, too, for many of the same reasons. It is one of those movies I wish had come out when I was a kid, because I would have had Merida on everything I owned. Stories about mothers and daughters are kind of hard to find in animation, it seems, and this one had a particularly fraught but loving relationship, which was very relatable.
I’ve never seen it. I should watch it.
Often under monarchies, the queen (or duchess, or electoral princess, or whatever the term) wielded considerable power behind the scenes, because they were usually in charge of match-making. This was a particularly important role because it influenced a lot of the realm’s diplomacy, and the chance to expand the realm peacefully through inheritance and dowries. This was the first “princess” movie I’ve seen that at least hinted there was often a lot more at stake in royal marriages than finding “true love”.Wait, Sleeping Beauty also mentioned this, come to think of it.
Middle Ages queens also did duty as primary administrator, since at the time, kings were expected to go and fight wars. Frequent wars meant the actual day-to-day administrating of the realm often was left to the lady of the manor.
As someone who wanted to love this movie…. It’s fine.
it has one good “pixar” scene in an otherwise forgettable movie
I wasn’t very high on it the first time I watched it. Seeing it again years later, I liked it more. I honestly can’t remember what my original problems with it were.
I remember being underwhelmed at the time, and I think part of the reason for that is the way the ads went so heavy on the archery element. I was hoping for a LOT more bows and arrows. Maybe enough time has passed now for me to watch it without expectations.
The “getting transformed into a bear” thing also reminded me of one of Disney’s lesser animated offerings, Brother Bear, which didn’t help the then new “Pixar’s finally run out of ideas” sentiment when Brave was released.
For a while, Disney released a “Human transforms into an animal” movie every three years like clockwork:2000: The Emperor’s New Groove2003: Brother Bear2006: The Shaggy Dog (remake starring Tim Allen)2009: The Princess & the Frog2012: Brave Sadly (?), the tradition ended there.
Just as the Mayans predicted.
How did I forget they remade the god damn Shaggy Dog, of all things.
I’ve only seen a few scenes, but it irritated me that they cast a Bearded Collie as what was obviously supposed to be a Tibetan terrier.
Two of those movies are very good, one (Brave) is a’ight, & the other two I never bothered to see.
Of course, in ‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ no one was meant to transform into an animal. The potion was accidentally used instead of the poison. The poison for Kuzco. The poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison.
The pellet with the poison was in the vessel with the pestle, if I recall. Couldn’t they keep that straight?
Since Disney has done a lot of buying of studio rights, you can also retroactive send that back a few more years. 1997 had a Princess and the Swan direct to DVD sequel with swan transformations, 1994 had the first movie in that series in it, and 1991 had Rock-a-Doodle, featuring a horrible little boy turned into a useless little cat. I think it ends there though, since there’s no animal transformations in Oliver & Company or… uhhh… Return to Snowy River.
The movie felt like a hodgepodge of various Disney films. Merida is basically a mix of Pocahontas, Jasmine, Belle and Mulan and the plot is a reversed Brother Bear.
I always resented this movie for copying Brother Bear and no one acknowledging it. For the record, I don’t like either movie.
*looks around*I like Brave more than Up. Nothing compares to the opening sequence of the latter, but Brave works much better as a whole film for me.
That’s more of a skewering of Up than you probably intended.
I said what I said.
The bear thing comes out of nowhere. Rebellious princess, challenging her mom, poof, mom’s a bear.
I remember when I was watching the film and I honestly did a double-take when the bear thing happened. Absolutely love the film, but it was truly a moment that stuck with me.
I’d say it was a swift reminder to be careful what you wish for.
‘90s sitcom theme song band:“Rebellious princess,
Challenging mom,
THE MOM BECOMES A BEEEEAAAR!”
Spin-off from Too Many Cooks?
(clap clap clap clap clap)
“So no one told you life was gonna be this way/Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your mum’s become a beeeeeeeaaaaar!”
‘your life was gonna be unfair’
That’s the marketing keeping that little nugget- which ended up being the whole damn plot- pretty well hidden. Depending on who you talk to, it was either clever or deceitful.
I’ll bet I know where you come down, RobGrizzly.
I took my kids. They cried their eyes out. Wouldn’t have gone if we’d have known what we were in for.
Consequence of the movie having two directors. Chapman wanted the story to focus on the mom/bear stuff from the start, but the higher-ups wanted to focus more on the “princess doesn’t want to do princess stuff” angle because they thought it would market better. When Chapman pushed back, Lasseter fired her (this is also when the movie was renamed Brave, changed from Chapman’s original title, The Bear and the Bow.)
So what you end up with is a movie where the first half is basically full of Meridia doing cool defiant stuff to serve as trailer fodder, all of which is rendered meaningless once we shift into the bear stuff (AKA, the chunk of the movie that Chapman had mostly completed when she was fired.)
I don’t see them as being at odds. The “princess who doesn’t want to be a princess” is a source of the mom disagreement, which leads to the bear stuff.
If they had called it The Bear And The Bow, like Chapman wanted, there would have been no problem. But they had to pick a title that made no sense.
Once Upon A Time had a Merida-centric episode called that in Season 5.
Now I’m in the grays!
Brave is one of my daughter’s favorite movies. She even dressed like Merida for Halloween in 2013. So i’ll always have a soft spot for it.
And for me, I think it’s a great story as well. I have a fondness for Medieval settings, standing stones, will’o wisps and magic. So I do have a bit of a bias. Also Mordu is completely terrifying and the DM in me wants to stat him up for a one-shot.I can see how it fits the mold of Disney story rather than Pixar story, but I don’t let that color my perceptions.
This isn’t a bad film, and it certainly represented somewhat of a bounce-back from Pixar’s (so-far) all time nadir in Cars 2. But despite all the promising elements, ti me, this is probably the studio’s most middling effort. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but nothing really good either. The plot just seems to run out of steam too soon.
I think it’s perfectly entertaining and has some nice messages to deliver, but it’s not one I’m going to seek out.
Pretty much this. It was fun for a Saturday afternoon watch with my daughters, and that’s it.
I still wonder what this movie would have been like if Ms. Chapman had not been fired.
Ive always had feelings Lasseter toned down or changed certain elements. Brenda has never mentioned what the original film was fully like. Wish she did.
I get the feeling it would have never come out, as the big problem is that it was composed of two incompatible stories that came from Chapman’s time. The bear plot seems to have been the original premise, while the marriage plot obviously grew out from writing the preamble but ended up growing and being both too resonant for Chapman and just good to be downplayed or cut even within the “kill your babies” rules of writing. Eventually, Lasseter sacked the woman who couldn’t make them fit and brought in a professional fixer to apply duck tape. If I remember them all correctly, his very vague reasons for cutting her are very consistent with that storyline.
It’s nuts. If that was what happened, why on earth didn’t they axe the tired bear plot and double down on the marriage story and arising themes that remain the best part of the film? The bear stuff is what “kill your babies” should’ve been applied to.
I always thought the most intriguing thing about this film was the way the marketing hid it’s plot so effectively. I went in expecting one thing and got something completely different. The bear stuff came out of nowhere, and I was thrilled by that. That was pretty much all I was talking about during the walk from the theater.
I’m genuinely glad you enjoyed the twist, but I could post your exact same comment and just substitute the word “thrilled” with “disappointed” and it would capture my feelings about this movie. I should probably give it another chance soon- I really liked the movie until that twist.
Same.
I don’t even think it was about how much I enjoyed it. I think my reaction was more to the novelty of a major studio successfully hiding almost the entire premise of their movie when the trend in the industry had long been moving so far in the direction of “show every moment of the plot point for point in the trailer”. I consider the movie as a whole to be a middling effort for Pixar.
I hear what you’re saying, and on some level I am also astounded by the audacity of it. I just suspect that they hid it not to preserve an artistic narrative twist but because they recognized it would’ve hurt the film’s marketing. I came away feeling conned.
Yeah, I can definitely see that perspective.
I’m genuinely glad you enjoyed the twist, but I could post your exact same comment and just substitute the word “thrilled” with “disappointed” and it would capture my feelings about this movie. I should probably give it another chance soon- I really liked the movie until that twist.
I think the idea of the story was good, but I just found withe lush setting that it was a little too unambitious..
Brave is always an interesting one for me as I really like the film and the characters in it. The bear thing is so wild that it makes it almost impossible to explain to others, but still thought a lot of the things they did with were pretty smart.However, the more I learn of making of the film, the more amazed I am that it managed to be as coherent as it ended up being. It also makes me at times wonder should I feel guilt for liking the final version as much as I did as Jesus Christ this was the point when the issues at Pixat became blatantly evident.
Holy shit THE MOM’S THE BEAR!?!?!?HOW ABOUT SPOILER WARNING???????
Well she is one of the bears. There is more then one bear in the movie
Guess I shouldn’t mention that Darth Vader is Luke’s dad, then.
Wait until he hears that Harry is the last Horcrux.
. . . No conversation about sleds with President Zod then, I see.
Brave was also notable for its advancements in sound engineering technology – it was the debut film for Dolby Atmos technology, which provided 128 discrete audio tracks with location metadata to be played on up to 64 speakers. Rollout was limited to 25 global theatres in 2012 (with I think 12 or 14 in NA) so its mixing benefits weren’t widely accessible, but the technology has since been adapted for home use.
Oh my god! Mom is bear! How can that be!?!
This deserves better than being the last comment on the page.
I shoulda got here earlier.
Brave was… fine. Not bad, not great, just… fine.
I don’t think “Brave” is bad (you start on a good foot for me when you have Billy Connolly) but it’s one of those movies where the production battle is all over the finished product. It always feels like two movies trying valiently to co-exist as one.The wonderful final trailer always got me wondering what-if
Yes. The trailer is selling a much better and more interesting movie. (I don’t think they were hiding the bear switcheroo in order to maintain a surprise – I think they were probably a bit embarrassed about it.)BRAVE – Bear Plot + More Scottish magic stuff & standing stones & dark forests & will-o-wisps would have been great. The trailer makes it seem like we’re getting an Incredibles-style family storyline, and instead we got Freaky Friday but With Bears.
It’s crazy, having seen the movie, how manipulative that trailer is. It leans so heavily on footage from the first quarter of the movie- how many times can it show Merida riding her horse in the forest and snow capped mountains to make us think it’s going to be some kind of quest movie?
It’s crazy, having seen the movie, how manipulative that trailer is. It leans so heavily on footage from the first quarter of the movie- how many times can it show Merida riding her horse in the forest and snow capped mountains to make us think it’s going to be some kind of quest movie?
The whole “we came to this land, a land of magic” bit really has me imagining a story based around the Fae, which is a big part of Celtic folklore and could give you a really interesting antagonist. Imagine if Merida made some deal with the Fair Folk to change her fate, only for it to endanger the kingdom and force her to go on a quest to fix things. (A quest where she shoots a fuckload of arrows.) I can see that movie being up there with ‘The Incredibles’ and ‘Finding Nemo’.
“What-if” is right (especially @ 1:51). Brave’s teaser trailer also got me pretty hyped. This was legitimately one of my most anticipated movies that summer. I loved the locale and time period, and there was enough arrow action and ‘defiant hero daughter’ to make this seem like it as going to be some sort of Scottish-set mythical epic. Will Pixar make my new favorite movie?
Perhaps my expectations were too high…
Nope, my expectations were sky high too for those exact reasons. I didn’t even hold Cars 2 the previous year against it, considering after Cars 1, we got maybe the greatest peak era of Pixar over the next four movies.
I wanted to like this movie so much more than I did. Disney really need to retire the “one person turns into a wild animal in order to learn a lesson” trope.Here’s a really great break down of why this movie had a lot of potential but just didnt work:
Anyone else find it odd that for all the talk of “Disney Princesses” they only actually made three Disney Princesses in the first seven decades of their existence (Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty). Was only in the Disney Renaissance that they really took off, and those princesses were already trying some some degree to be a corrective to the “traditional” princesses.
They really didn’t start marketing them as a canonical group until probably the late 90s, by which time the Disney Renaissance had petered out.And that princess from The Black Cauldron seems to have been banned from the club and stricken from the record. I can’t even remember her name, other than it was Welsh.
Eillonwy, and she’s not the only one on the outs. There’s only 12 princesses, and the last one in was Moana. There’s a bunch of … basically princesses that didn’t get in, like Maid Marian, Kida, Megara, or Giselle.
BRAVE was the moment that I realized Pixar’s unstoppable run was actually over. We were willing to forgive CARS 2, because it was ostensibly aimed at smaller children, and had become such a merchandising juggernaut that a sequel was desperately needed.But BRAVE…. man, that was mediocre as hell. The entire plot could have been resolved if Merida had just explained the curse situation to her father, which she had no reason NOT to do. People love the “I’ll shoot for my OWN hand” scene, and forget that the other characters in that scene are cartoony grotesques played for laughs. And that turns out to be the high point of the movie, when the silly bear plot happens.In retrospect, Mater plugging State Farm in CARS 2 is the moment Pixar’s golden era died. “I’m a secret agent”“OH YOU MEAN LIKE AN INSURANCE AGENT? (singing) LIKE A GOOD NEIGHBOR… MATER IS THEEEERE!!”I cannot believe that line made it into the actual theatrical release. This was PIXAR, man! They needed State Farm’s money so badly that they actually sang the commercial jingle?!
My hype for this movie was through the roof. And I was with it for Act 1. When the transformation happens, it’s even kinda funny at first. Cute little mishap. Was ready to get back to normal and move on with the story, though. Whenever you’re ready, Brave. Aaany minute now. I saw the trailers! Surely Merida was prepped to go on this huge quest of self-discovery. But…it kept not happening. Arguing with her bear-mom? This…this is how Pixar handled their first Princess movie?
As I slumped in my seat, disheartened and dismayed (with still half a film to go), I knew I had checked out, and it was going to be hard for me to enjoy what’s actually here. I need to give this film another chance one of these days. I know it’s not “bad.” What Brave is doing seems to work for what it is. My problems with it are purely on a concept level. If I can give it credit, the ending is incredibly moving.
You capture well the sinking feeling I had as I slowly realized the bear transformation was not just an interlude but the main plot of the film.
Her quest of self-discovery involved helping save her mother. I think that’s pretty interesting.
Presto is awesome. Top spot. But shout out to a couple of my runner ups:
Lifted. I loved the idea of framing an alien abduction like a driving test.
Also Partly Cloudy. Nobody thinks about the stork who has to deliver all the dangerous babies!
I thought Brave was one of Pixar’s lessor efforts. Better than Cars and that ilk, but not as good as their top tier.
I feel like the core problem is the mother-daughter relationship that’s supposed to be the center of the film–or was in Chapman’s version–mostly falls apart once the mom is a bear. She doesn’t talk. It’s just a basic adventure movie for a while until things are fixed and then a happy ending. I wanted so much more from this movie.
Having rewatched this with my young daughter, thanks to Disney+, I’ll one further than saying Brave is uneven or mediocre. It sucks. There is no coherent plot to this film. The movie posits the question, “Well, what if the Scottish medieval princess rejects her betrothal?” and never, ever follows up on it. Instead there’s “mom’s a bear” which derails their Act I conflict, and turns the movie into a bumbling comedy. In most of these human-is-an-animal movies, there’s the scene where the protagonist needs help. So they go to the third central character – who in Brave is the dad – who always disbelieves the main character, until human-animal does the one thing that other person recognizes and then they’re convinced.
Those movies always do that because human-is-an-animal plots are stupid, but are timeless so people like them, and you need to move the story along to its resolution. Brave never does it, so it becomes a mess. The rest of the movie is wasted on prolonging the bear curse’s easy resolution. Then it’s just…over. All the political questions raised by the movie are never answered. We’re never even shown which path Merida is adamant about being able to take for herself. And if the counterargument is, “But the movie’s for kids,” well, my test audience of 1 doesn’t give a crap about Brave. There are dozens of other, better movies and shows out there with women and girl main protagonists. We haven’t seen it again and she never talks about it.
Yeah, I’ve been low-key mulling how to fix the plot of this film, and while I can’t exactly see the film without the bear, the best thing I can come up with is to delete the incompetent witch, have the curse come from the tearing of the tapestry alone, turn the King into the bear instead of the Queen, and have the curse be the result of Elinor’s actions rather than Merida.I mean, it’s not like Fergus actually does much as a character anyway. Sure, it’s Billy Connelly, who is always a delight. But at a plot level, he’s just a dangling plot tumor who never becomes relevant aside from the fact that both Elinor and Merida love him. Making him the bear gives him relevance to the plot, because at least then he’s the MacGuffin that they have to repair their relationship to save.Beyond that, the biggest plot problem with the film is that no, Merida isn’t really wrong about anything, and no, she really isn’t the one who has to change fundamentally. It’s Elinor who has to realize that while her way of holding the kingdom together has worked, it won’t work in the next generation with Merida. Not just because Merida is a different person than she is, but because politically, it’s not like Merida can marry all three of those future chiefs; any alliance is going to leave an equal-sized contingent of the country unhappy and left out to align together, which is a recipe for conflict. She’s making an understandable error in taking what worked before and using it again, but she’s doing so in a context where it will only aggravate the underlying tensions between the clans.The way out is for Merida to adapt Elinor’s strength of diplomacy to what Merida herself is good at, which is forming bonds of friendship and camaraderie with other people, while Elinor is forcibly sidelined because it ultimately dawns on her that she was the one who brought down the curse rather than Merida, so the ticking clock at the end is hers, not Merida’s.
The only problem with that treatment is that it sets aside one of the few things about this movie that is nearly unique among Disney/Pixar princess narratives, which is that it’s about a positive mother-daughter relationship. It’s hard to even think of a princess character in their movies with an alive mom. It’s basically what, Aurora, full stop, and she’s not a relevant character?
Offhand, Helen Parr is the only one that comes to mind, though I think you could also say that Moana’s relationship with her grandmother fits as well (her mother’s alive, but kind of a tertiary character).But regardless, I don’t think it undermines the strength of their relationship, or Elinor as a character. It’s not a bad thing to be wrong; most of us are wrong about most things, most of the time. The problem is more from doubling down on the wrongness when we see the impacts. And in that treatment, you see Elinor’s strength not just in her force of personality, but her ability to grow as a person to continue to be the parent that Merida needs. It’s conflict rooted not in one person being morally incorrect, but simply misapplying rules that worked in her own life, and not seeing that they won’t work going forward.
I think what I liked best about this movie was how both mom and daughter were strong, but wielded their power in different ways. Elinor was the power behind the throne, the adult in the room among all the kings, and she could calm a room by raising an eyebrow. Merida was physically strong and capable. I love that at the end they each learned something from each other and were better because of it.
“That scaffy witch gave me a gammy spell!”
One of my favorite lines in the whole movie. I love that they kept regional expressions and speech like this. Adds so much character to the world. You don’t need to know exactly what it references but you still manage to appreciate fully the sentiment behind it.
Can’t believe no one’s posted the abbreviated plot synopsis(I actually don’t like W-IR 2 but this scene is intensely funny to me)
There’s a real problem in that this film builds a genuinely interesting mother-daughter relationship and then it’s absent from the next half of the film because the mother is a bear. I said elsewhere in this thread that you could easily have Merida go to the Fae instead of a witch, and instead of Elinor becoming a bear the Fae could kidnap her. Then Merida would have to rescue her and the two escape from the Fairy Lands together, which would allow them to keep talking and building their relationship.As it is, I can’t remember anything that actually happens during the mum-as-bear section.
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I’ve always loved this movie, and it still stands as one of my favorite Pixar movies, right up there with The Incredibles. I see the complaints that people have about it, but they just don’t diminish it in my eyes.
While I readily admit that “Brave” isn’t one of Pixar’s best, it holds a very special place for me. I (a curly redhead) lost my mom (a brunette with whom I often argued about my path in life) six months before the film was released. So it got to the scene where Merida was begging her mum not to go, and I was sobbing in the theater. I still can’t get through that part intact.