Miscellaneous Movie Musings the Sequel

[Prudence]

We saw Brave on Saturday. The more I think about it, the more I like it for a few particular reasons:

Spoiler:

First, the lead character is a princess, but very specifically does NOT end up with a prince, much less require saving by one. I appreciate that she's not confined to girly-girl activities, but for me it's more impressive that she wasn't subject to the (no longer) inevitable pairing that seems to be part and parcel of Disney-affiliated princess movies. Also, I appreciated that essentially all the main characters were women: Merida, her mother, the witch, and even the primary comic relief. (The boys were annoying slapstick, so I'm pretending they didn't exist.)

Saw Moonrise Kingdom the previous weekend. Had no idea what to expect going in, but loved it.

[alphabassettgrrl]

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."

Entertaining. A few good lines in it that have stuck with me that I really liked.

Ending? Absolutely impractical. Against every law of physics. But it was funny in its craptacularosity.

[Gemini Cricket]

I saw "Brave" last weekend and I guess I was underwhelmed by it. I loved certain moments in the film but didn't love it overall.

Random thoughts:

Spoiler:

As mentioned, I love that the film broke away from the whole "a prince saves the day" ending.

Meridia was a strong heroine.

I was rather confused if the tapestry had anything to do with breaking the spell at all. (It did come in handy, tho.) If it didn't, what was the purpose of the whole "Meridia has to sew to save the day" scene then?

Pixar keeping the whole bear part of the story a secret was pretty cool, tho. Although, I noticed today on their Facebook page they actually showed a picture of the three bear princes and captioned it "do these bears look familiar?" or something like that. I also saw the bears at Meridia's meet and greet at DL before the movie came out.

I didn't not spot the Pizza Planet truck but found out where it was later. Very cool.

The bear part reminded me of "Brother Bear".

It seems the queen became more feminine once she became a bear (that is until the whole Jekyll and Hyde thing kicked in). It would have been nice if the some of queen's movements/habits were repeated by her in bear form.

I put "Brave" low on the list of Pixar films with "Cars" and "A Bug's Life". I dunno, maybe the film needed more heart or more Pixarishness.

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed with Brave.

I don't see what the big deal is about a princess who's not rescued or subjugated by men. I mean, sure, Disney recently told another ancient tale that had a princess/prince thing - but Pixar's never done that, and this hardly seems a groundbreaking thing in Twenty Twelve.

I rather liked the low-key and sorta-surprise way the tale turned out to be. I didn't see any characters at the Disneyland Meet'n'Greet, so I wasn't spoiled and it's not at all the type of road I expected the story to go down.


So while that was a plus, and while it was a really cute story - it was also a bit of a let-down. Just a very low key thing that I somehow didn't feel suited a Pixar TM release.

There's nothing wrong with it ... it just didn't WOW me, and so I also have to group it with the lower rungs of Pixar films, the same ones Gemini Cricket listed above. And I agree with him totally - needed more heart or more Pixarishness (though I did tear up once).

Also ... I didn't really cotten to the main character. She was, to me, quite Meh. Though her hair is awesome.

And in that vein of uber-computer-rendering ... I really find insane levels of verisimilitude in most of the scenery and the horse, Angus, conflicted poorly with the doll-face design of most of the human characters. The few cartoonish characters came off better ... but it was still an odd disconnect, since it seems Pixar went to great lengths to have the backgrounds look photorealistic.

Oh, and I think big nosed nice bod young suitor from the MelGibson clan was kinda hot. But when they next toted out fey prince from the other clan, I began to feel an overload of tropes. If it's something Monty Python made fun with over 30 years ago, it seems a little stale now.

I still put my Funny Scots Cartoon money on How to Train Your Dragon from a few years back (it was about Vikings, but they were all Scottish for some reason).

[LSPoorEeyorick]

I liked Brave - especially the treatment mother/daughter relationship. But I had a problem with its twist, having been used in another Disney film in the last decade (as Brad noted.)

As for the independent-princess thing, the doesn't-need-to-be-rescued thing, that was incredibly meaningful to me. Is it perhaps a gender divide? Most of the women I've talked to who've seen it have agreed, and it didn't seem to have an effect on the men.

[Alex]

For me the significant departure was not the "didn't get a boyfriend" but that she was the primary actor throughout the movie. She got herself in trouble, she got herself out of trouble and she took responsibility for the former on her own.

It is far more common in fantasy that the "hero" is extremely passive in their own story. Often they're just living out Calvinist prophecy (Harry Potter, Aurora, etc.) or reacting to events they had no hand in causing.

Then they are guided to the solution for their problems by others with greater knowledge manipulating them. Then maybe at the end they get a little bit of control.

I found a protagonist actually driving their own story to be refreshing in a princess movie/fairy tale.

[innerSpaceman]

I agree with Alex about the lame passive hero stuff, but that doesn't ever seem to have been the case with Pixar films.

Oft times in tales, the hero is supposed to be our "window" into the story, and thus everything just sort of happens to them. Blech. Yet it's been one of Pixar's unsung hallmarks that I cannot recall a single main character being that way. So that was not really a breakthrough for me with Merida.

Perhaps it is a gender divide ... but I really don't see why anyone would feel such a character being female was a big deal. I was much more impressed when a main character was a robot. I've known tons of women who were complete people, and it's absurd to me that portraying one in an animated film is some kind of triumph. But I lack the proper chromosomes for that opinion, I suppose.


I feel bad being a bit disappointed. The tale was enjoyable. Merida was fine enough. I DID really love the mother-daughter stuff and was heart-tugged at the arc growth of the main character. But minor key where I was expecting something else, I guess. And I really don't think Merida carries a film the way other Pixar leads have done.


Also I have to wonder why they switched directors mid-stream. If they were going for more BIG or less feminine or something, I don't think they got anything of the sort in the finished product.

[Alex]

It isn't remarkable for Pixar. But it is remarkable for being within the genre they chose.

As someone who doesn't particularly care for most of the classic fairy tale movies, I felt it was a cut above that. But know I don't think it was up there with the Rataouille/Wall-E/Up/TS3 sequence. But leaps better than Cars 2.

[alphabassettgrrl]

Sure, real women are complete, independent people, but it's nice to see it in "print." It's rare- in a world where so many of the stories (even the Nancy Drew that I read as a kid) require someone to help her get rescued. That's actually the thing that made me stop reading the Nancy Drew- she never was shown as competent and I got annoyed. She should be capable of getting herself out of trouble, at least once in a while!

Male characters are certainly shown to be active, so why shouldn't female ones? But they rarely do show us that way. And it's probably not something the average guy is going to notice. Kind of like a blonde may not notice all the characters are blond, but a brunette will (from feeling left out). It's something you notice by contrast or absence, rather than directly.

[innerSpaceman]

Well, then was anyone bothered by Merida being a brat and kinda mean and her arc being simply to grow up a little? I know that's a standard arc for a teen lead ... but I hate that kind of thing, because it requires your lead to be a brat and mean, and I don't find that particularly likable in a character.

Spoiler:

I know Merida was supposed to be a little naive and in-the-dark about how the witch's spell would change her mom ... but really, she seemed to be taking a rather nonchalant chance about her mother, mad at her or not, and I found that incredibly mean ... even for a teen!

So I guess that's rather in line for fairytale type stories. But isn't anyone more upset about the fairy tale heroine being just as STUPID as every other fairy tale heroine? Perhaps more upset by that than how glad that she's too young or stubborn or lesbian to want to be married off??

Spoiler:

Also, her main gender-noncomformity skill seemed to be archery ... but where did that pay off for her? She hit the mean bear 30 times alright, but it didn't effect him one bit. I'm really at a loss at what was supposed to be so groundbreaking about her butch princessness?