Brave

Finally rented and watched Brave. Not a bad movie, but sadly it didn't live up to the hype for me. I just think they kind of wasted the potential for it to be more captivating/enchanting than what we got in the end. Though to be fair, the relationships among the family members were done very well. And I was treated to one of the most awesomely scary Disney villains I've seen in the company's recent history.

edited 25th May '13 11:41:59 AM by nervmeister

Yeah, not one of Pixar's finest movies, but it's really, really pretty so I guess that makes up for something.

Not Pixar's best, but honestly, it around the middle of my Pixar ranking.

I think early part before Merida meeting the witch was too slapstick heavy, and Pixar story artists really suck at slapstick. Besides the slapstick not being funny, it also derived time that could have been devoted to Merida's and her mother's relationship. If they spent more time on that, maybe it wouldn't have come off as heavy handed as it did in the version that we saw. I also thought the resolution to the conflict was revealed too soon. I wish there was more build up to that, instead of action.

edited 27th May '13 12:40:30 PM by harkko

.... I think Pixar is good at slapstick! Where is this coming from?

There are some people who don't like slapstick in general, and those people deserve a little slapstick.

Some Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow and films and Warner Brothers and MGM shorts have great slapstick, whereas slapstick in Pixar films is usually just mindless stumbling and crashing to objects.

I checked to make sure the username was the same one from 4 comments ago. It is. Figures.

Be nice.

Could you give some specific examples?

Observe.

Why did whatever language that dub was see fit to give Mike the voice of Jar Jar Binks?

Shut up. That's the Latin American dub and its made out of pure awesomeness.

Don't know what link you guys are talking about, but that's the original English recording.

What bothered me about the whole Merida redesign discussion is that all the people acted as if Merida is something special. Have you seen the redesign of the Princesses? They ALL look horrible. Belle looks like a hooker, Cinderella like Barbie, Aurora somehow managed to look like both and Snow White has suddenly boobs. Pocahontas and Mulan are stereotypes central. And they complain about Merida wearing a dress which is actually from the movie (it's the one she wears in the very last scene, only the neckline is a little bit lower)? I don't get it...either you petition against the whole line-up, or not at all. Those people act as if all the other princesses in it actually are sparkling bimbos in their movies. Well, they wanted Merida in the line-up, so they will have to deal with her turning into a sparkling bimbo, too, because that's what the merch of the line-up is about. Sadly.

Exactly.

Back before the official princess lineup, they were just characters. Now they're official role models. Merida is supposed to be the 'You Go Girl lolTomboy' Princess. It's okay for the other girls to look coyly off-screen, but not her.

So I just discovered that the lame-looking game that I had grudgingly accepted as part of the discount deal for the PS 3 that I bought a few months ago is actually based on a Disney film, and that the protagonist is officially considered a Disney Princess. Imagine my surprise when I discover that, unlike all of her predecessors, Merida and her story are not based on any known fairy tale, but rather seems to be Pixar/Disney's original creation. Heck, Frozen's protagonist is apparently going to become a Disney Princess too, and her story is loosely based on The Snow Queen.

Is Disney Princess going to become the character type equivalent of a Cash-Cow Franchise? (Cash Cow Trope?)

Weren't they already?

OK, point taken. Still, it doesn't sit well with me that they are extending the status to non-preexisting Fairy Tale/legendary/historical^note Mulan's story is technically a legend rather than a fairy tale, and Pocahontas is a historical person whose story has been embellished and romanticized after her death heroines.

I'm fairly deep in the Fandom of the franchise (because I'm a fan of the movies and love to discuss them, I loathe the franchise in itself), and most of the fans there were NOT happy about Merida being thrown into the Line-Up (which was, btw, originally not Disney's idea, they just discovered that those movies had especially enthusiastic fans and build a franchise around it). Either way, there are neither happy about a Pixar character joining, nor do they think that Merida is really such a great character, and that her story is not based on a real folklore is also a bone of contention. Frozen is another matter, because it actually is based on the Snow Queen and nobody expects a faithful adaptation anyway (because none of the Disney movies are, not even the classics). The main worry there is that it might end up too much like Tangled.

edited 27th Jul '13 4:52:16 PM by swanpride

I just ignore Disney's silly line-up. I only count the princesses from the old fairy tales. The legendary/historical/original characters are good but separate.

I love the art that shows the difference between the royal beauties◊ and the fighters◊.

Saw it recently. It's.....narratively lacking. It felt short, anticlimatic. :/ I'd be interested in a sequel with a bit more drive to it though.

I'm sure this has been discussed at length, but I realized something disturbing about Brave and my reaction to it.

The core of my problem with Brave has always been "it's more like something from the central Disney machine than a Pixar movie". Wreck-It Ralph felt more like Pixar than Brave did.

But last night I realized that Brave is the first Pixar movie to center on women. (This analysis is very reductive and doesn't take into account the strength or weakness of the subordinate characters)

• The Toy Story movies are about Woody and Buzz's relationship with each other and Andy. The sequels put more and more focus on the ensemble, but it's still Woody and Buzz's show.

• A Bug's Life is about Flik and the circus bugs. Princess Atta is mainly Flik's love interest. There are two women in the troupe, of whom one is a wife and the other is a surrogate mother.

• Monsters Inc concerns Sully, Mike, Randall, and a Macguffin Girl who's just learning to talk.

• Finding Nemo is about a father, a son, and the comic relief female sidekick

• The Incredibles is a pretty balanced ensemble film, but at its core is the conflict between Mr. Incredible and Syndrome

• Cars is Lightning MacQueen's story, Cars 2 has an even tighter focus on Mater.

• The only female character I can think of in Ratatouille is Linguine's love interest. And his dead mother Renata.

• Wall-E has EVE as love interest.

• Off the top of my head, the only female characters Up has are Walter's dead wife and I think the bird is female. The bird doesn't count as a female because it acts like an animal, and as beautiful as the prologue is, it's still Women In Refrigerators.

Geez, the last non-sequel before Brave is Up? Curse you, Disney, for raising the value of my stock without having any new ideas!

So anyway, at first I was worried the reason I didn't like Brave was based on the fact that the Pixar ideal I was holding it to was male-centered. But then I remembered that I've recently been quite refreshed by female perspectives. Verity is my favorite Doctor Who podcast that's just discussion, and my favorite, Oodcast, wouldn't be nearly as charming without Laura Sigma's contribution. There were other examples once, but I can't recall them now. Also, before I saw Brave, I was excited by the idea of a female-centered story.

So now, if it has anything to do with gender, I think it might be Brenda Chapman's firing. Putting man in charge of a story about women sounds like the formula for all the classic Disney Princess movies, which is essentially what this felt like.

If we are to believe Pixar's announcements, Inside Out will center on Joy, a little girl's cognitive personification of the emotion of joy, who is female. ...not to mention said human girl.

... and Dory's gonna be the main character in the Finding Nemo sequel.

edited 23rd Sep '13 12:11:41 PM by kyun

Well we'll have those to compare to in a few years.

The strange thing with Pixar is that they have a ton of compelling female characters...Jessie, Dory, the entire cast of The Incredibles...but none of them are the protagonist of their movies. But the moment they try to do a movie with one, they fall back in the Disney Princess archetype Disney used in the early 90th. I emphasis, early 90th! Back then, this was a big step forward, but even Disney itself hasn't used this one anymore since Mulan. I'm not sure if Chapman herself would have done better if she had been allowed to finish the movie...honestly, I don't think so. The main problem with it lays in the way Merida herself is portrayed, and she is Chapman's brainchild. (I especially can't get over Merida acting all gleeful when her mother is in pain after taking the poison).

edited 24th Sep '13 3:09:42 AM by Swanpride