Hello all!  Today I'd like to bring up something I know that is quite a bit late coming but still rubs my fur the wrong way whenever I come across a piece of Brave merchandise or fanart.  Yep, this journal entry is about Pixar's Brave and why I was far less enthused by it than I was hoping.

Now if it was any other film by any other studio, I don't think I'd feel nearly as strongly about this.  The same would be true if Brave didn't beat out Wreck-It-Ralph at the Oscars but we'll get into that in a moment.

Like many other Disney/Pixar/animation fans, I was highly anticipating the release of Brave in the theaters.  When it did finally come out, a huge group of friends and I rushed to the theater to see it.  With it coming from Pixar, I felt safe placing high expectations in the film and was sure that I would be leaving the theater enriched and emotionally moved.  After all, isn't that what audiences everywhere experienced after viewing Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story?

So the film played out and we left the theater.  I was not emotionally moved and had come to the confusing and upsetting conclusion that the film was rather lackluster.  What on earth had happened?  The animation was drop dead gorgeous and the humor genuinely funny and scattered generously throughout the film yet this wasn't enough.  There was something massive missing and it had left me feeling extremely dissatisfied.

With the creativity and heart we have come to expect from Pixar's films, I did feel that Brave was very creative at all.  Instead, the limited scope of the move and the way the story writers neglected to flesh out the story of Mor'du and his three brothers (there was so much potential with that) made it feel like we had just scraped the surface of Merida's world and it's history.  To make matters worse, this film has been being hailed as a great tale of female empowerment, which, if you actually take the time to assess things, comes across as more of a joke than anything else.

Check out this excellent review linked below which assesses this aspect of the film in great detail as well as as compares and contrasts Merida to Mulan, another of Disney's heroines that has been hailed as a strong female character.  The conclusion may surprise you; I know it did me.

"Why 'Brave,' In My Opinion, Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be" by abderian-aeolist

Now, with all that under our belts, let us return to the fact that Brave won the Oscar for best animated feature film.  Oh, yeah, let us take a moment to ask the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences why they felt that they should reward Pixar for mediocrity when it can obviously do so much better??  Heck, maybe if Brave was one of only two or three other films and those other films were so-so this would make more sense.  That is however not the case.  Brave was up against Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, and Disney's Wreck-It-Ralph.  A crying shame when I feel that Wreck-It-Ralph has a much better thought out storyline, a main character that I feel more for than I ever did with Merida, and creativity in abundance.

I've quit trying to wrap my mind around why so much of the general public is just gaga over Brave.  The most I can chalk it up to is that they went to the theater, saw a shiny, pretty, lushly animated film that made them laugh and took them on a quick romp through the Scottish highlands and that was enough to satisfy them.  Like I stated previously, this film would have been good and grand if it had come from any other movie studio or maybe had not been paraded about with as much hype and grandeur as it had, but when it comes to Pixar, I've come to expect characters and stories that capture my heart and really sweep me off my feet and this movie just did not deliver.

Agree? Disagree?  Please, leave a comment with your thoughts!  I'd love to hear your thoughts of the film and how how you think it holds up to past Pixar movies and other movies that boast strong female leads.

--WildSpirit



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