Brave

In fairness, the slapstick was executed extremely well. Best part of the movie for me, personally.

edited 24th Jun '12 8:43:25 PM by Wackd

Why is the Witch so obsessed with Bears, she's got bear carvings Bear Spells, which seem to be her solution to all problems she's presented with. Are Bears sacred?

She's supposed to be mysterious. We'll never know.

In fairness, bears usually are a valid solution to most of life's problems.

Maybe she used to be a magical bear that turned into a witch once upon a time.

Or maybe she just has some strange obsession with bears we'll never be able to understand.

Maybe she just knows the one spell and uses it for everyone.

Want to be a real boy? Bear potion. Want to avenge your father and be king? Bear potion. Want to find your way back to your owner? Bear potion

That could be a Black Comedy fanfic.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of fics pop up for this.

edited 24th Jun '12 9:52:00 PM by Mort08

absolclaw, Your answer was hilarious, I retract my question.

And terlwyth find himself against the fora yet again,whether it be a preference for Batman over The Dark Knight, Mako over Bolin, or as of new,enjoying Cars 2 and Brave and what's more,more than Ratatouille,the original Cars or Monsters Inc

Seriously,except for Mordu not getting enough time I can't name a thing I hated,and I'm sorry but if there's any Red-headed protagonist Pixar botched,...it's Linguini (even the name sucks,that's not even counting the dickery he did to Colette and Remi).

Alright and maybe the stakes coulda been a little darker,..but everything else went great

Not sure where people get the idea that Merida is some kind of coward,she came off as very brave and level-headed the whole time,despite needing a serious humbling and honestly both sides were very nicely handled

And Fergus was Crazy Awesome.

Easily the best in the Pixar vault since WALL-E (Up and Toy Story 3 are superlative,but they aren't fun in large doses)

edited 24th Jun '12 10:07:39 PM by terlwyth

Okay. I haven't watched the movie again, but I've thought long and hard about it, going over everything I can remember from it. So here is my final, left-fielder-shock-free verdict.

It's a good movie. The animation is gorgeous, the plot is easy to follow and moves at a mostly good pace (although the first act could have been a little shorter), and it wasn't boring.

However, it didn't feel like a Pixar flick. I don't mean it was tainted by Disney or anything like that; I mean that any of the major animation studios could have made this film, and it would have turned out relatively the same. It's just that generic.

What Brave has made me realize is that Pixar's movies find a way to leave an impact on their audiences. An "I was here," if you will. They can do this through colorful characters (Dory, Edna, the aliens), a Signature Scene (the "Married Life" montage, the Incinerator, Anton Ego's speech), or even just an Ear Worm ("You've Got A Friend In Me," "If I Didn't Have You," "Woody's Roundup"). Their characters stand out, the writing is clever and touching, everything just has this...this spark of life in it. Yes, even Cars.

Brave does not have that spark. The script is dull, the characters aren't unique, there's no standout scene. Even the Tear Jerker moments are conventional in nature. They put together a good movie, but they didn't go the extra mile to make it great.

I'd put it on the same level as A Bugs Life: it's perfectly fine, but I can assure you that it won't be the first movie people think of when they hear the name Pixar.

edited 25th Jun '12 1:55:54 AM by Mort08

So they should stay away from princesses then?

Not necessarily. Atta and Dot are both good characters. I just don't think Merida was. I thought she was an archetypal Rebellious Princess with nothing unique about her. All she really wants is to run around in the woods. To me, that wasn't a good enough excuse for the trouble she causes. As I said earlier, saying she'd rather die than conform and slashing the tapestry was a dick move. What really rubbed me the wrong way, though, was her use of Never My Fault after what she does to Elinor. By the time she admitted that it was, I'd already lost sympathy for her.

edited 25th Jun '12 6:48:20 AM by Mort08

Not necessarily. But they need to go back to being more original. And be more honest in their trailers.

As for The Witch, if it indeed turns out that she was obsessed with bears, then the whole thing would have made more sense. But the film needed to make that more clear. So yeah, the story itself is good- but it needed to be polished.

Anybody else wondering now what those "creative differences" that got the (female) director replaced were?

edited 25th Jun '12 6:42:51 AM by Sijo

I know one of the major things cut was the unnatural winter weather in the middle of summer that would have occurred as a side effect of the curse.

That may have made it too much like the upcoming Frozen, which Disney is making without Pixar.

So are they going to set the story straight in the sequel and have her tie the knot with a prince? Brave 2 - Bound. (All puns intended.)

Well we can never have a lesbian Disney Princess, but they haven't done a bondage one yet. (When's the last time a DP got even tied up?)

edited 25th Jun '12 9:54:58 AM by hcobb

No way, it will be called Beautiful Coward. or whatever word works best as an antonym of brave while also being a sort of adjective and a personality trait.

Merida could just be asexual. Granted, I haven't seen the movie yet, so I can't really label her as one.

Still, haven't seen it, but from what's been said, I can surmise that while its not a bad movie, it isn't very Pixar-ish, huh?

Another problem I had with the movie was the witch. After giving the spell she does nothing else, just the cauldron gag and the after credits scene. She felt more like a way to get the plot moving rather than an actually character. Granted she did have a few funny scenes. they should have made her a trickster mentor, trying to teach both Mordu and Merida to appreciate what they have. Or else, and I argued with my friends a lot about this, make her the Big Bad. Make her bear curses deliberate, in that she wants to cause war between the four brothers/ lords, and take their land and power. This could have been used to draw parallels between the past and the future. Mordue could have been The Dragon or something.

I can't argue with the trickster mentor idea. Probably would have made better use of her if they'd revealed that she had some connection with or was behind those little fire spirit thingies and was using them to help teach Merida a lesson.

In my opinion, I like Brave the same way I like Hercules. That is to say, they're fun, loud, feel good movies that hide a lot of problems.

First off, I didn't hate Brave at all. The animation is fantastic, the score is awesome, the characters are all fun and lovable, and we're treated to a nice little adventure.

But the problems I have with it are still there. For one thing, they disguise a weak story by moving quickly and never letting us rest. The real story is pretty much "girl turns mom into bear and has to fix it" with a TON of padding added in to make it a full movie. I was really hoping to see a movie where Merida accidentally unleashes Mor'du on her kingdom and gets her family turned into bears by wishing to change her fate, but instead we get "Brother Bear in the Scottish Highlands."

The other problem I have is just how easily everything gets fixed. Merida fixes the suitor problem by talking it out, she fixes the bear problem via a massive Disney Deus Ex machine, and Mor'du might as well not have been in the movie at all the way he just isn't used.

I mean, it's a good film, yeah. Have there been better Pixar films? YES. Oh so yes. But as for a Disney film, I'd rank this up there with Tangled, Hercules, and Princess and the Frog. It's fun, it has it's genuinely heartfelt and emotional moments, and Merida is a pretty kick ass Disney Princess. It's worth seeing if only to have an animation-gasm.

Interesting...

If this person is telling the truth, then the suits may very well be to blame for what we got.

edited 25th Jun '12 5:55:57 PM by Mort08

To those who say the film wasn't really that dark: There's plenty of Nightmare Fuel in this story- its just that the way it plays, you hardly notice it. To whit:

• Mor'Du was a prince who wanted to have more strength than other men. He got it by- becoming a bear. And was trapped in that form for at least decades, maybe longer, killing people, possibly even his own castle's folk, and likely EATING them too. We see his spirit grateful of being liberated in the end. Was he, on top of everything, still partially aware of what was going on, but couldn't help himself? Yikes!
• The film plays it for laughs, but the fact remains that Fergus had a leg bitten off and had to use a pegleg. How come nobody is shouting "that's being insensible to the crippled!"
• Whether evil or just plain dumb, The Witch is a menace. How many more times is this going to happen? She wasn't caught or corrected by the end!
• The will-o-the-wisps are (apparently) ghosts, not cute fairies. Which means the whole sequence of events -maybe even Mordu's- may have been the result of undead spirits manipulating things from beyond. Gives the whole "fate" thing a new angle, no?