Brave -- Pixar's 2012 release

Okay so we're done with all the sequel idiocy for a while? Good. Anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEHWDA_6e3M

Billy Connolly doing a pretty good Tim the Enchanter there at the start.

looks good visually, aspects of the town/scenery/people might be too reminiscent of "how to train yr dragon"

This looks cute, though I will say it would have been nice if the main character was not a princess.

She appears to be no ordinary princess.

At least the Scottish accent is showing up in Scotland this time. That was the only thing that pissed me off about HTTYD.

Billy Connolly doing a pretty good Tim the Enchanter there at the start.

I think I spent most of my life youth assuming Tim was played by Billy Connolly.

"if you could change your fate ... Would you?"

And the teaser trailer was about how "we" have always had to be "brave" ...

But would our heroine vote for independence, status quo or devo max?

love pixar hate billy connolly

Sorry that won't make much sense to readers outside Scotland - but this film will be coming out (and receiving special attention in Scotland) as the referendum on independence approaches ... No set date as yet (or even certainty as to year) for the referendum but not too long a shot to think that this film be watched in this neck of the woods in that context.

looks good visually, aspects of the town/scenery/people might be too reminiscent of "how to train yr dragon"

Agreed; although I'd say HTTYD is more reminiscent of Brave, as Brave has been in development for quite some time...
Not sure that you get much of a sense of the story from the trailer, although I way prefer this to trailers that play out the whole plot.

This looks cute, though I will say it would have been nice if the main character was not a princess.

the intention was to make a non traditional princess film to try to subvert this animated-kids movie paradigm, though.

enough kid movies, pixar. use your technology for something important: a CGI reboot of jaws. or pirahna.

This would be a little easier to accept if Pixar and/or Disney had ever done an animated film with a lead female character that was not a princess. xp

...The Rescuers?

(Which is a way underrated film from the interregnum years.)

I probably should have said in the last 30 years.

tangled: rapunzel wasn't a princess. that I can remember anyway.

jessie in toy story wasn't a princess. I guess you could argue that she isn't a 'lead character' but her story line is at least as important to TS2 as Buzz Lightyear's.

Beauty and the Beast, surely!

despite the title, the lead character of The Princess and the Frog wasn't a princess for most of the movie

the female lead in the horrible, horrible "Hunchback of Notre Dame" was not a princess, either

There's definitely a consistent "olden times" theme running through a lot of Disney fare, though.

Hey, Pixar: Ringworld

Pixar doing Iain M. Banks would be insane.

Mulan wasn't a princess, either

plz ignore my pedantry, I am waiting for a long-running process to finish

Man I am super tired of storylines about how the world's first feminist wants to get to fight or whatever the fuck

is there like no other story to tell about a female heroine

man I'd forgotten some of these movies existed

did anyone see "Meet The Robinsons"?

Don't lie, you were in line to see Treasure Planet. (Sure, nobody else was...)

tangled: rapunzel wasn't a princess. that I can remember anyway.

jessie in toy story wasn't a princess. I guess you could argue that she isn't a 'lead character' but her story line is at least as important to TS2 as Buzz Lightyear's.

― akm, Wednesday, November 16, 2011 4:12 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

rapunzel is part of the 'princess franchise' and tangled is considered a princess movie

at least pixar's finally made a movie with a female lead. it was going to be their first feature directed by a woman too, but she was booted from the project and nobody seems to know why - kinda disappointing

whats the deal with the anachronistic tartans though, didnt we learn from braveheart :folds arms:

Anyway, another non-princess led film -- Lilo & Stitch!

i liked the original title more too (the bear and the bow)

whats the deal with the anachronistic tartans though, didnt we learn from braveheart :folds arms:

No. And nobody ever will.

Indeed, Rapunzel was officially inducted into Disney's highly marketable princess line in a live ceremony with a weird plastic-faced model:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20111003005892/en/Rapunzel-Welcomed-10th-Disney-Princess-Watched-World%E2%80%99s

rapunzel was a princess in tangled, she'd just been raised by a broadway witch her whole life and didn't figure out she was a kidnapped princess until the end.

Man I am super tired of storylines about how the world's first feminist wants to get to fight or whatever the fuck

i was going to post about this in the dark & gritty snow white thread, two upcoming movies AND the new "once upon a time" show portray snow white as this wood-dwelling badass with weapons. now, i have faith in pixar to do this well, but everyone else needs to starting mixing it up a little imo

you know what upcoming Pixar movie looks rad, is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreck-It_Ralph

oh man! drop that link into the new thread about 8-bit nostalgia and let's see what happens

xps Maid Marion and her Merry Men did it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiZGKT75rcY&feature=related

Okay so we're done with all the sequel idiocy for a while? Good.

Oh thank god. The Pixar schedule was looking horribly unimaginative for a while there.

There is apparently a Monsters Inc. prequel or something coming so fuck that but hopefully things will progress forward otherwise...

what's the point of a monsters inc. movie without boo :(

*shrug*

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/03/29/pixarmonsters-inc-sequel-is-actually-prequ/

“The film is a prequel that tells you a little bit about how (Mike and Sully) first met, attending Monsters University,” Hollis told theater owners gathered in Las Vegas on Tuesday for their annual CinemaCon convention. “Obviously everybody knows at this point Mike and Sully are amazing friends — the best of friends — but as it turns out, in this story, that wasn’t always the case. From the moment they met at university, they could not stand each other. This story takes you through the ups and downs, and how they overcame their own differences.”

Let hate be unconfined.

speaking of fresh plotlines

another monsters inc film will be alright. at least that's a good universe with likeable characters.

fucking cars2 was so horrible I felt like I needed a brain douche after seeing it.

wreck it ralph is not a pixar film.

I was gonna point that out but it's probably hard to know where one ends and the other begins these days

They're different studios!
Yeah I'm also looking forward to the Monsters prequel. Monsters Inc is one of my favourites.

but Lasseter is in charge of both

xpost A lot of the so-called Disney princesses or whatever aren't princesses ... until they marry a prince. Belle, Cinderella, Snow White, Mulan Tiana in "Frog," not princesses. Jasmine is a princess. Sleeping Beauty is a princess. So is ... Pocahontas, I guess. And Ariel. And I guess Rapunzel. Anyway, that's a pretty fair princess rate.

BTW, is this the thread where we scratch our heads at Brad Bird doing MI:4?

theres an mi4 thread already iirc

the joeks in this trailer were really flat

pixar trailers usually kinda suck iirc

BTW, is this the thread where we scratch our heads at Brad Bird doing MI:4?

and Andrew Stanton is doing John Carter. it's kind of weird to me that they both want to get into live action.

Y'know what looks good? That Aardman Pirates movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPJF6mR6krM

Damn, I had totally missed that!

AKA The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, in the UK, with an awesome sea-shanty trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWOFLtsDvbw

I'd be curious to see how this turns out btw - so many of the best pixar movies are very unconventional stories told in ways that really take advantage of the computer animation medium. in short, films that would never, ever work as live action films. this one it seems could probably be made as a live-action for 1/10 the cost.

yeah I promise that dozens of people and many thousands of dollars were spent on the main character's hair

the hair does look amazing to be fair

oh to be sure

i was going to post about this in the dark & gritty snow white thread, two upcoming movies AND the new "once upon a time" show portray snow white as this wood-dwelling badass with weapons. now, i have faith in pixar to do this well, but everyone else needs to starting mixing it up a little imo

― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Wednesday, November 16, 2011 5:06 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

otm

I'd be curious to see how this turns out btw - so many of the best pixar movies are very unconventional stories told in ways that really take advantage of the computer animation medium. in short, films that would never, ever work as live action films. this one it seems could probably be made as a live-action for 1/10 the cost.

Thus far I've thought "The Incredibles" was the only Pixar movie that could be made live action with really barely any changes. That was my only disappointment with that one.

Of course by "live action" in that case you mean "real human actors in CG robots, superpowers, airplanes, and volcanos"

yeah tbh i am not even really a pixar fan (though i like the ones everyone likes), and i have cranky indefensible old man beef over cg pretty much deading cel animation and yadda yadda, but i would actually prefer to see a lot of these cgi sfx spectaculars be totally animated in a pixar style.

getting a very vague "pixar's miyazaki fandom comes to the fore with this one" vibe off this trailer, but maybe that's just because of a.) the landscape shots and b.) the fact that it looks like more of a traditional adventure flick with a plucky heroine.

well between the character designs (which display a very overt miyazaki influence) and their stated intention to tell a story 'darker and more mature in tone' i think yr probably on the right track

http://i.imgur.com/SmEyz.jpg

i would actually prefer to see a lot of these cgi sfx spectaculars be totally animated in a pixar style.

agree w/this, and

Thus far I've thought "The Incredibles" was the only Pixar movie that could be made live action with really barely any changes. That was my only disappointment with that one.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, November 16, 2011 9:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

dont really get this! art direction, character design, visual storytelling all would be diminished by a live action treatment... its a cartoon through and through!

i hope the theme song of monster university is a version of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XqCQ6PpRdI

Thus far I've thought "The Incredibles" was the only Pixar movie that could be made live action with really barely any changes. That was my only disappointment with that one.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, November 16, 2011 9:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

dont really get this! art direction, character design, visual storytelling all would be diminished by a live action treatment... its a cartoon through and through!

― The sham nation of Israel should be destroyed. (Princess TamTam), Thursday, November 17, 2011 10:35 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

ya i totally agree - what a weird thing to be disappointed by

A whole bunch of new images!
http://disney.go.com/brave/#/characters/

<3 "Lord Macintosh"

Big Macintosh > Lord Macintosh

Between Shrek and every other Mike Myers endeavor, kind of Scottish accented out (sorry, Scots!). But this looks great and I can't wait to bring my daughters, even though I have a hunch the trailers gives everything away (monster is the bear, bear has cubs, bear not so bad after all, we all learn something).

we learn the bear likes the taste of bravado-filled redheads

The Brave and the Bold (BBQ Sauce)

Watch the first scene from Pixar's BRAVE now. (Deleted hyperbolic io9.com exclamation point.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOmc2GzWtSE

There's an article in this week's Time magazine that gives a little insight into the directors and people working on it:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2107515,00.html

(although the beginning bit about how it's a total 12-year-old-boy environment doesn't really ring true and seems to be just there for the narrative they decided on for the piece)

paywalled article, I fear.

Love the character design, and that clip is ace. Pretty stoked for this now.

Watch the much better Japanese trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8zzSqWUmlts#!

http://io9.com/5899668/weve-seen-the-first-30-minutes-of-pixars-brave

That said this part really caught my eye:

Aside from the texture, the characters, and that hair, the thing you'll be talking about most when you leave the theater? La Luna, the short film that will play before Brave. We did see a final cut of La Luna, and nothing has ever made me feel so profoundly that I was watching an Italo Calvino story brought to life. I can't wait to see it again in June.

Hell yes to that!

Taking the marketing a little too far there, John:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/26/business/DISNEY/DISNEY-popup.jpg

What? No such thing. More Scottish snare.

The way Pixar has handled this movie is very shady, imo: http://www.themarysue.com/brenda-chapman-discusses-brave/

http://www.disney.co.uk/brave/images/video_thumbnail1.jpg

yeah, this got our Amber's attention..

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/28000000/Princess-Merida-disney-females-28011547-480-254.jpg

The way Pixar has handled this movie is very shady, imo: http://www.themarysue.com/brenda-chapman-discusses-brave/

― Respectfully, Tyrese Gibson (Nicole), Thursday, 26 April 2012 16:09 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

This doesn't actually tell us anything though

Yeah there's nothing new in there.

I am just saying I'm dubious.

About what, exactly? Just wondering as I am kind of close to this movie.

Pixar does not have a great track record with female characters, and then they pull the female director on the project (who came up with the concept) under suspicious circumstances. And I'm sure they'll be promoting it will a lot of blah blah blah female empowerment when they don't practice what they preach.

Pixar does not have a great track record with female characters

then they pull the female director on the project (who came up with the concept) under suspicious circumstances

I'm trying to understand what you think is suspicious about the circumstances!

well they're suspicious because they're opaque

a lot of people were pretty disappointed when she was taken off the project, but none of the details are public

But surely that's to be expected for any big company. Speculation when you don't have information either way is not particularly helpful (posts that summarise ILX etc)

yeah i mean im reserving judgement. but i get why people are disappointed

Not a very positive review. This part is leaping out at me:

So far, so good, if nothing particularly original: It's a standard story about a tomboy princess who lusts for a quest of her own, a striving for freedom and independence, with some Stonehenge-type structures thrown in to give the movie some mystical resonance. You're fully expecting a full-throated action adventure in the second half of the movie, as Merida fights like her father while learning that her mother has a few lessons to teach as well.

That is not what happens. I am hesitant to give away the movie's big plot twist halfway through, but suffice it to say, when it happens, it's a needle-off-the-record moment that sends the movie careening off in an entirely different, much dumber direction. It signals that the movie is about to go silly on us, and not in a "Look, I'm Woody, howdy howdy howdy" fun silly direction. The mystery and potential scope of the first half is just sent flying off the back of the truck, and the movie becomes an odd mix of slapstick and fairy-tale flimsiness, an utterly conventional tale of derring-do that keeps bumping into the lane of the faintly ridiculous. The movie's second half is a weirdly aimless slog, as if it forget all the threads it set up in the first half. If I didn't know it was animated, I'd have thought they had to bring all the cast together for some last-minute emergency reshoots.

I have some guesses as to what this involves based on the trailers.

yeah, it seems fairly obvious

If you watch enough kids shows, the toy commercials have some pretty big spoilers so I already know the twist.

Some of the promo images for this are just teal_and_orange.xls to the fkin max

neg reviews oddly making me anticipate this quite a bit where i wasn't at all before

This was not the story that I was expecting or hoping for. Without giving anything away, bears figure prominently into this, more so than I would have liked. And I'm a fan of bears.
-Mark Ellis, """""Schmoes Know"""""

i mean the title was originally "the bear and the bow" so it seems like this is more a advertising-related problem

Reviews on this one are starting to rival Cars 2.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/critics-notebook-has-pixar-gone-the-way-of-the-simpsons

"All good things must come to an end."

hard left turn into batshit during 2nd act-- involves bears-- I'm intrigued!

6 or 7 bear tops.

bear say hi to me

Ha, forgot about the real thread. I had posted on the "Up" thread, too, that this one seems to meet a derailing digression mid-movie. Which is a shame, because the images released so far in clips and whatnot look gorgeous.

Would be interested to great your plot predictions! Although as usual, the 'art of' book probably gives things away. I don't get why they release these so early

Or maybe you could just watch http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cgi/meet-indias-answer-to-brave-called-kiara-the-brave.html

XP *to HEAR

the bear and the bow is a better title than brave, which they had stuck with it. I have a hard time believing this movie is bad at all. will see it.

i was a lot more excited about this when it was called the bear and the bow!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/06/20/merida_in_brave_and_the_fiery_redhead_trope_why_does_hollywood_think_all_women_with_red_hair_are_the_same_.html

Brave Passes the “Fiery Redhead” Stereotype to a New Generation
By L.V. Anderson | Posted Wednesday, June 20, 2012, at 8:38 AM ET

this movie was gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous to look at, but there was a distinct whiff of focus-group throughout. they leaned on madcap comedy/slapstick very hard, i fear in an effort to give boys something to watch in a "girl" movie, but it was still very fun and funny and the audience i was in laughed a lot.

as for the plot -- it did feel like they started out telling one very traditional kind of story, and then they swerved and did another, different kind of very traditional story, and in doing so it gave both halves less punch and power. the beginning of the movie sets up the various ways in which merida has non-traditional power, like her athleticism and weapons skills etc, but those don't really factor into the resolution of the story. the original title of "the bear and the bow" made me think of some kind of quest movie, where merida needs to use her misunderstood skills to save the day, but really "the bear" and "the bow" are more like symbols representing the two main characters. the bow is more a representation of who merida is. it's interesting, but it wasn't what i expected, and it wasn't what the first half of the movie kind of set you up to believe.

but (SPOILER) she doesn't fall in love with any guy in the end, so huzzah for that, anyway.

This is really good. The criticism above that says the plot twist is a needle off the record moment that sends it into a dumb direction is completely, totally wrong.

So many  reviews say that it doesnt conform to the expectation the trailer sets up - for me if this happens in a movie it is nearly always a very good thing. I like to be surprised and it's quite rare these days that a trailer is made that deliberately doesn't tell the whole story.

yes exactly.

Yeah, this was pretty good, not top-tier Pixar like the Toy Story movies or Wall-E, but perfectly enjoyable. (i.e., not Cars.)

Does anyone here remember Jane and the Dragon?

http://raspwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/20061210-janeflag.jpg

yeah it was weird

this isn't weird. and yeah, this isn't the best pixar film ever made but it's so much better than either Cars film, maybe better than Monsters Inc too. That Gawker review is ridiculous.

welp. the craft is intermittently brilliant asyou might expect: what the pixar magicians achieve with the hair and the horse alone is actually worth the price of admission.

the rest is what might have been a fine story, poorly told. title is more than a little ironic given that you can see exactly where the disney/pixar braintrust that greenlit a "darker and more mature" story lost their courage in the face of poor testing with families. the darkest moments end up getting played for laughs in a way that's not only tone-deaf but sort of morally troubling, and the tale proceeds more or less by the ancient device of "stuck? here just follow these will o'wisps to the next act"

I refuse to believe that Pixar focus-groups anything!!!!

The thing about deus ex machina is that it's an inextricable feature of fairytales, which is squarely what Brave is working in.

I'll grant the moral hazard argument, but to me this is definitely competent boutique Pixar, and while my taste level is probably devolving precipitously, I loved this film and am willing to overlook its ethical shortcomings.

this movie doesn't deserve 3/4 of the criticism it's getting.

so what is the big dumb twist that everyone is hating?

she's actually a robot and the robot is male

This is hilarious. Clueless American railing against the oppression and stereotyping of the Scots in Brave.

But the thing about setting this story in some magical version of historical Scotland, in addition to disappearing Scottish people of color, is that it allows the gatekeepers of the Patriarchy to keep telling themselves—and everyone else—that the lack of true freedom for girls and women is a thing of the past.

yeah this is a little bit much

Scottish people of color

Would love to know who they think these people are. There were a lot of Indian sub-continent people came over in the 1960s, and a decent handful of Chinese from about the same era, maybe slightly earlier. That's it.

the argument is that setting this story in "olden times" is motivated (partly) by the will to exclude those people.

This is hilarious. Clueless American railing against the oppression and stereotyping of the Scots in Brave.

― I found him in a Bon Ton ad (Nicole), Tuesday, June 26, 2012

oh dear. i just. sigh.

her undergrad humanities faculty really owes us all an apology. if not ritual suicide.

In other news, talking bears don't exist in the modern world.

so what is the big dumb twist that everyone is hating?

SPOILERS if you don't want to know the twist:

merida's mom, the queen, is transformed into a bear by a spell merida buys from a witch. a lot of the humor comes from her continuing to have very proper mannerisms, only she's a giant hulking bear.

On the Merida hairpiece sold to children:

I can't help but notice the wig is labeled "Merida's Wig," as if she too can just take off her hair when she's done playing "other."

Dear Disney: that's not "Merida's Wig." It's Merida's hair.

weird how this good-not-great movie is being interpreted as the possible herald of pixar's decline, considering how poorly cars and cars 2 were received. so they're allowed to be middling, but not actively bad?

i thought this was really good, if not thrilling. i have no desire to see it again anytime soon, which, with the exception of cars (i never saw cars 2), might be the first time i've ever said that after seeing a pixar movie for the first time.

weird how this good-not-great movie is being interpreted as the possible herald of pixar's decline, considering how poorly cars and cars 2 were received.

Might have something to do with it being the first film with a principal protagonist that's female.

Scottish people of color

Maybe she's thinking of the Black Irish?

A lot of the reviews of Cars 2 seemed to be of the "actively bad" variety, but maybe it is more the case that Cars 2 hit what it was aiming for, and this misses?

Maybe she's thinking of the Black Irish?

i think that's the case. the rest of it is bs but (i'm assuming everyone in this movie is white) the all-fantasy-characters-must-always-be-white thing is a legit/common issue anyway.

"so they're allowed to be middling, but not actively bad?"

whoa i meant to say this the other way around.

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/brave-new-hair/

Reticulating splines

Wow, what a tonally muddled misfire that was. Even my kids were kind of meh.

"Enchanted" >>>>>>>>>>>>"Brave"

Two more things, while this is still fresh. Didn't the movie go through a couple of directors, the first female, the second male? Might that have had something to do with its off vibe, let another its thematic ambivalence? People I respect cite the film's strong message, or feminist underpinning or whatever, but I don't really see it. It's all a jumble of themes, none brought to satisfying fruition.

Also, I got a lot of "How to Train Your Dragon" vibes, too, and like "Enchanted," "How to Train Your Dragon" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"Brave."

(Another aside: how do you focus group/test screen CGI films when it's almost impossible to change them once the story is locked? It's not as simple as reshoots.

So they're allowed to be middling, but not actively bad?

Cars II never seemed like it was supposed to be part of Pixar canon. It was like just a direct to Dvd movie, a greatest hits album to keep the label happy while you take your time in the studio creating a Sgt. Pepper. To have their next "real" movie be a disappointment is discouraging.

Haven't seen the movie yet btw, just piling on.

Brave was in production a very long time before HTTYD came out, just for the record.

(it is good though, especially for a Dreamworks film)

Brave was in production a very long time before HTTYD came out, just for the record.

The "Dragon" book was 2003; does the production of "Brave" precede that? Even so, it's irrelevant, really, since "Dragon" (the film) handles some similar themes with gusto but much greater coherence, and some similar visuals with surprising adeptness, considering it came out so many years before this one, with its fancy new visual system or whatever.

"Brave" really is a mess, and so full of potential.

Dragon book bears almost no relation to the movie iirc and the movie went through a LOT of changes only really getting near to what it turned out like quite late on.

Not fully seen Brave yet due to moving but will be v soon

So was "Brave" really in production before "Dragon," which came out in ... 2010? Which means it had to have been in production for a while, too? All the more reason "Brave" should have tried to distinguish itself more, especially since they had the luxury of an original story (as such).

OK, looks like "Brave" started rolling forward back in 2008. Again, no reason it should be the mess that it is, given that headstart. According to the wiki I found, it looks like the change in director resulted in less magical stuff, though of course, there's still way too much stupid magical stuff in this movie, and magical stuff that literally comes out of nowhere at that.

I don't even know why the stupid movie is called "Brave."

It was originally called "The Bear and the Bow". I just think Disney likes one word titles for animated movies to do with girls. "Tangled" for Rapunzel, and the movie in production now about the Snow Queen is titled "Frozen".

I came to it without any real expectations, but Tangled turned out to be ace. So how does Brave stack up against that?

I repeat, "Tangled" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"Brave"

"Tangled" is funnier, more heartfelt, more exciting, and pretty much just as great to look at.

Cheers - can feel a cinematic viewing of Brave slipping from my schedule with every passing comment. I thought Tangled looked pretty exquisite tbh (esp. the beautiful character design), was also impressed by how good the songs were for a new cartoon.

tried to watch tangled last week, but just couldn't hack it. dull characters, unfunny jokes, bad songs, exaggerated shrek-style smirking, and schmaltz without emotional resonance. fucking awful.

still wanna see brave

If you didn't like Tangled I don't see you liking Brave.

I like them both, but I think Brave is actually a really good movie. Gonna go out on a limb and place it in front of Incredibles, Cars, Up and Bug's Life.

Brave is very slapsticky, and I like that. My biggest complaint is with the amount of unnecessary verbiage in the last three minutes. And I don't, for the life of me, understand the global objection to the midpoint plot turn.

I liked this movie on paper (riot grrl does not want to end up with a dude and doesn't and has relationship issues with her mom that they fix by lists to each other)
but the execution was kind of bloodless and boring at times

*listening to each other

this movie was v v pretty but I feel like the most detailed animation was homegirl's hair

they fix by lists to each other

Superb typo. Would've added a great passive/aggressive twist to the story.

t minus 10 min from watching this in Diane digital 3d

And I don't, for the life of me, understand the global objection to the midpoint plot turn.

― uncondensed milky way (remy bean), Friday, June 29, 2012

fwiw i thought this was a total mess and the midpoint plot turn was one of the few things i did like.

It's totally bloodless and boring, oddly-so, given all the people walking into things or getting hit in the head with things or hitting each other or doing spit-takes or getting tuned into a half-anthropomorphized bear.

Again, someone help me out here: why is it called "Brave?" Is it because she's brave enough to tell her mom that she loves her? Brave enough to follow her bliss, with her mom's permission? Anyway, just a jumble of a movie. I will give it credit, though, for a whopping 10 minutes or whatever of bear mugging when even my daughter was basically "just mend the fucking tear already!"

Hair was better in "Tangled," too. "Tangles" rules, "Brave" drools.

A friend posted the reaction of the kids she brought to "Brave:"

https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/s720x720/552673_4238628841952_1451714355_n.jpg

roffle

your daughter OTM though WHOA WHOA HUGE SPOILER HERE the edge-of-your-seat horseback needlepoint sequence END HUGE SPOILER was up there with the dramatic photocopying sequence in THE FIRM.

would have been a lot more interesting if her daydreaming during sewing lessons had come back to haunt her in her time of need.

just saw this, thought it was pretty swell

waaaaaaaaaaay better than 'up' which was more like 'down' amirite

I was so glad that this movie was not the movie the trailer set up - that was a stupid fucking trailer

like maybe the worst thing you could say about this film was that it was a scene or two short, and maybe could have used more explication about the other bear. but this was a good movie!

though, I know billions of tearful processor hours were spent rendering her hair, I thought in the end it looked like that springy yarn you can get at A.C. Moore for $1.99

dayo is a crazy person, there is no way this was better than up

YOU CANT THREADBAN ME THIS TIME M BISE ON

I will have my revenge...in the Olympics thread

UP would have been better if it had only been 15 minutes long

tbh WALL*E kind of fell apart in the third act

on balance, i think that pixar is great with openings, pretty darn good with act twos, and falls to sentimentality at endings.

I think even I liked "Up" better than this. I can't pinpoint exactly which element felt the most ported in to satisfy some studio note or demo. BELATED SPOILERS!!!!The evil bear and its backstory? The three triplets? The three twins turning into bears? The random witch? The quest/fight or her hand in marriage? Stumbling bear LOLs? I'm amazed they didn't give her a Will O' Wisp as a cute sidekick, though they practically did. That torn tapestry that needs to be sewn together is like a metaphor for the movie. Also, I thought the concluding sentimental resolution/bear fight was totally unearned and dishonest, even for Disney.

the three triplets were awesome! I thought they would be bratty but they were great

Yeah, but they're clearly just there to further slapstick things up. I mean, they don't even have names, do they?

the slapstick was well done I thought, the sort of thing you just can't do w/ live action

Tell that to the Stooges.

I liked this thread better when we were laughing at Wrongo McBloggingpants, less so now that we're just engaging Josh so that he can say how much he disliked the movie in minutely different ways.

ILX is a neverending disappointment.

Here Josh, let me respond to that for you: Much like "Brave," amirite?

You guys don't know what it feels like to have your heart broken. Sniff...

the more i think about this, the more i like it

On a slightly more personal level, as the parent of two small daughters, I'm just looking for a movie that'll strike the same right chords for them that many of my childhood favorites struck for me. As Hollywood seems to have stopped making quality live action films for kids, Pixar is virtually all I've got, so I admit I hold them to a high standard.

so ridiculous to call the bear thing a mid-point spoiler or w/e. it's basically the entire movie. what a terrible ad campaign this had (including the title change)

The triplets names are mentioned at the start, if not in the trailer! Hubert, Hamish and... Harris? I thought this was great, btw. Looked mindblowing. Saw it in 3d and the projection was not great, made a dark movie too dark. Would happily watch again in 2d.

Just saw Madagascar 3. I take it back. Brave is a masterpiece.

If I have to hear the 'circus afro' line in Chris Rock's screech again, I will actually kill a zebra.

my student played this, this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21dN7d01Dc

Brave is a masterpiece.

I knew you would see the light. ^_^

i saw this again, and it held together much better now that i knew where the plot was headed from the beginning. it really is cool that the mother figure is essentially a second protagonist, and that her hopes/concerns/fears are taken as seriously as merida's. i was also able to accept the "our land is imbued with magic and we are part of the land" premise without as much grumbling this time, mostly because i love the sound the will-o-wisps make -- like a baby whispering and inhaling.

also if you know someone who likes "call me maybe" this is a great way to make them angry at you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmFT4sLCSA

mostly because i love the sound the will-o-wisps make -- like a baby whispering and inhaling.

The wisps were very Miyazaki like. Is it Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke that has similarly sweetly muttering sprites?

Man, seriously though, if I had stumbled into a 3D screening of the manic "Madagascar 3," it might have made me barf. I saw a review that accurately described it as a bunch of brightly colored moving shapes. It does have its moments of "Pig in the City" weirdness, though, and as a couple of friends pointed out there is this surreal druggy undercurrent.

Also, further proof - crossover with Wes Anderson thread - that Noah Baumbach is not funny enough to punch up a comedy. One of the better gags involves a boy getting stuck head-first up an elephant's butt.

Purgatory is endless loop of Madagascar movies for you, Josh; the worst are the ones that died in storyboard

The evil bear and its backstory? The three triplets? The three twins turning into bears? The random witch? The quest/fight or her hand in marriage? Stumbling bear LOLs?

this sounds fantastic!

^^^^

it is a really good! honestly, i think a lot of the criticism abt. story story clichés (girl proving herself, etc.) are rooted in a really ingrained sexism w/r/t the narrative structure; there's an implication in many of the negative reviews that an archetypal female coming-of-age/self-advocating story is trite and unworthy. but the film is at its very root about myth, legend, folk tradition, etc., and more about the telling than the tale.

Otm, and I think a lot of the hand-wringing about the demise of Pixar isn't just coincidental with its first female-centric film,l. Did people freak out with Cars 2, or were they just, Oh Lasseterpaws?

Ha, you mean the first female-centric Pixar film that fired its female director mid-development?

Oh, and people freaked the fuck out about Cars 2. Far more than they have for Brave.

Ha, you mean the first female-centric Pixar film that fired its female director mid-development?

This keeps getting brought up, but nothing I've read about it smells of any anti-woman shenanigans.

Pixar's recent run of movies has been disappointing: two sequels and two below par original stories, Brave being one of them. Brave is a Disney princess movie without songs. It's okay, but it's a bit muddled, a bit slap-dash. The animation of Merida's hair is the only outstanding thing about the film, and maybe people expect too much of Pixar, but Brave just isn't up to anywhere near their best.

that is hardly empirical

it is a really good! honestly, i think a lot of the criticism abt. story story clichés (girl proving herself, etc.) are rooted in a really ingrained sexism w/r/t the narrative structure; there's an implication in many of the negative reviews that an archetypal female coming-of-age/self-advocating story is trite and unworthy.

This. Guys who are like "mother/daughter relationship, ugh, cliche" should have to name five films off the top of their heads that focus on that. I've seen very few Pixar films all the way through, so I can't say whether it's up to the gold standard, but I liked it more than Toy Story and Up - all had great characterization, jokes, heart tugging, set pieces, but this one didn't have a fucked up message about the sanctity of your material possessions or turn a character into a murderer just to provide an action climax.

Also, I loved how every guy in this film was a well-intentioned oaf.

obv not in a place to say for sure, but i wonder if the identity/empathy issues were a little mature for small kids. saw it with my wife and sister and both were affected by it, but for all I know there are young girls who wanted it to just be a bad-ass tomboy adventure as much as a lot of adult men did.

It's hardly about their relationship, or barely. It's really just another story of royalty rebelling from destiny or whatever. Tangled had a more complex mother/daughter relationship.

^^ this post is madness, the entire thing is about their relationship! even ignoring the fact that half of the movie is literally a mother and daughter traveling around together, note how easily all the other tribe leaders agree to do away with the old marriage rule -- it's a mere blip in the narrative, because the actual story is about the mother and daughter learning to respect each others' strengths and point-of-view.

i did like that tangled showed a competitive mother/daughter relationship, but the ultimate moral of that story was "you mom is controlling and won't let you do what you want? thank god you have a REAL mother out there who has been gracefully loving you all along!" with brave, it's more like "your mom is controlling and won't let you do what you want? well she has some geopolitical reasons for doing so, but yeah eventually she'll realize that you're right about some things and will defer you to respectfully, and pretty soon you'll start seeing where she was coming from re: that geopolitical stuff, and anyway no matter what you do she'll love you and protect you."

I totally get that. I just meant that it did not seem to be about a mother/daughter relationship, specifically. It could have just as easily been about a father and a son, or a father and a daughter, or a mother and a son, that's all. That's why I felt it a little pro forma. I've seen the "rebellious kid doesn't want to be set up for marriage by parents" thing in plenty of other movies. "I want to marry for LOVE!" Not sure how this one was different.

What I didn't like about this is that the mother (as bear) actually caves to her kid's concerns with no real impetus. That is, the daughter had every reason to feel guilty: she turned her mom into a bear. But the mom? Why did she suddenly decide to compromise, to concede the marriage rule she had been pushing could go?

Honestly, I'd be happy to see it a second time, but my two daughters have absolutely no interest in seeing it again.

I'd go with you because I've recently been itching to see it again.

But the mom? Why did she suddenly decide to compromise, to concede the marriage rule she had been pushing could go?

Stockholm syndrome.

I think she probably just thought, oh shit, my daughter cares so much about this she turned me into a bear! But then used her valuable tomboy skills to teach me to catch fish! I should let her follow her heart!

heh, i agree that part shows some exceedingly fast character growth. a generous interpretation is that the queen was impressed by merida striding in there and addressing the situation in such a queen-ly fashion, behaving in a way that was both self-sacrificing and earnestly concerned for the good of the country, and she thought merida was equipped enough to be a proper queen apart from that particular tradition.

wow, how shitty was this. what a terrible, terrible film.

sort of Cars for girls I guess. tons and tons of talking, no honesty, would be explorations of gender roles that pivot in on themselves foolishly, bad emotional manipulation, ugly anachronisms, LOOK A BAD GUY. The real shame is that somewhere in this would-be-Tangled mess there's a really compelling, complex myth: mom loved you and was your advocate and now she's being lost, becoming an unknowable beast and mom and dad are going to kill each other over you and you're to blame. Real interesting opportunity and they piss it away on bad shuck and jive and musical montages. Deeply disappointing. Probably my new least favorite pixar.

really wish i couldn't point at and blame steve purcell but i think he's somewhat culpable here.

utterly disposable secondary characters. inappropriate comedy pieces thrown in at the wrong moments. out of control pacing. a "time for the audience to cry" scene that felt devoid of feeling. forced character development. you can absolutely see where this thing got beat to pieces in rewrites and lost its heart.

the opening cartoon was, per usual, utterly wonderful but man i left this all but furious.

stupidly predictable plot twists. one of the best things about pixar is that they always step to the table smarter and more considered of their story than you are. This is the first time I saw the entire third act in my head before it played out. so much audience pandering!

I wonder, though, whether any of the foregoing critics who’ve tolerantly yawned at Pixar’s latest effort could name a Disney princess besides Mulan whose mother is alive, let alone named.
It’s almost as if the critics have missed the constitutive element of the Princess Story in its capacity as cultural and commercial myth. As if the omnipresent witch/evil stepmother doesn’t capitalize on precisely that fictional hole—the vacuum left by an absent mother. e.g. Bambi, Star Wars, Star Trek, Hugo, you name it.

And yet, in Brave, there is a live mother, named and all. And then a remarkably boring thing happens: this interloping mother who has no place in this ordinary, predictable princess story suddenly becomes central to it. She gets turned into something that keeps on getting misread as a monster, something her loving and well-meaning husband has dedicated his life to tracking down and killing for the sake of his own story, which is built around victory and revenge.

It’s a bit as if, having heard the word “princess,” the reviewers all stopped listening and missed Brave’s real project, which is to quietly but determinedly recuperate the “princess story” from some of the qualities for which it’s been so universally condemned.

From this review, which I'm still read ATM.

*reading

I'll read that but can't help but think that the intention of this is less important than the impossibly flawed way it was presented

If you mean that you found the execution of the narrative poor (a notion which I disagree with vehemently), I'm not sure you'll be persuaded...

yeah i did and no i wasn't

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/sep/06/disney-challenges-uk-film-company-misleading-releases

I've seen this twice now and I have to say I think I adore it

It's not perfect by anymeans, and it's sorta clunky...but the first time I saw it the mother/daughter schism storyline just really threw me for a loop. I was not really expecting it and it really delivered on a v emotional level for me.

Definitely harkened back to my early teens and the hard-fought road my mother and I had to come to the friendship that we have now. Even more so her and my sister.

Not that you have to be a daughter to get it but that is a story that was definitely written by a mother, no question. I still got very weepy on my second viewing, so I guess I can't even really talk about whether this was 'good' or 'bad' because all that deep emotional heartstring tugging makes me an unabashed fan of this movie.

Also it has an added bonus of giving me an excuse to walk around for the rest of the day saying everything in a terrible Scottish accent. HAV YA SEEN BRRRREEEEVVVE, IT'S GRRREEEEEET :D

Most people that behavior = automatic groin punch, but for you we'll let it slide.

(The accent thing, not the emotional stuff.)

OCH, HAVIN' FEELINS ARE YE, WE'LL TAKE CARE O' THAT, LASSIE!

http://www.tmnttoys.com/reviews/misc/mortalkombat/series2and3/2410.jpg

Despite my mother being from Glasgow I am completely incapable of doing a Scottish accent. Not even a terrible one!

I liked the mother/daughter issues in Brave, but thought the bear part of the story a big distraction/goofy/annoying.

aw I kinda liked the bear stuff. Like all those fairytales I read as a kid. And I got lols out of Queen Mum learning how to eat and catch fish, all that guff

OCH AYE I deserve the groin punch, Phil, ME LADDIE

My daughter loves the bear stuff, so I am probably in the minority. I think she is slightly resentful towards me for not turning into a bear.

lol

Bear stuff is necessary for the Brechtian alienation effect that facilitates the reconciliation, no?

Ergo, find a bear costume.

count me in as loving the bear stuff and finding the rest to be subpar Dreamworks-level. the physical animations alone for those bits!

i suppose i shouldn't be surprised theres no ilx consensus on this, but i thought there was one and only one conclusion to make after watching this movie: disney has taken over pixars animation infrastructure for their own megamarketing purposes, and replaced pixar's excellent writers their own lame princess-story-factory hack department. ugh, and those lame songs they kept randomly inserting for no good reason except to sell cd's of the stupid soundtrack! i mean, how exactly was this movie any different from every other 90's-and-on disney princess movie ever made? do we really need to turn pixar into disney II?

i mean, ok ok, brave wasn't the worst movie i've ever seen. i liked the queen-trapped-in-a-bears-body stuff at least. but this seemed sub-sub-par for pixar, even compared to cars 2. sigh. pixar films have been a yearly dose of awesome for like a decade now, and i'm v sad to think it's all shot to hell now

:_:

1000% how i felt

eh i think the problem with brave had more to do with problems at the top wrt shifting roles and direction? the director got canned halfway thru right

also 50% of the complaints would've been calmed by keeping the original title (the bear and the bow) and NOT hiding the fact that the movie is about a bunch of fucking bears in the commercials

Yeah it's nothing to do with Disney. Change in directors was quite a shift. I liked that they kept the bear bits out of the trailer!

the fact that Brave isn't universally liked makes me wonder about the Animated Feature Oscar category this year. I enjoyed Brave and really liked the mother/daughter emphasis, but at the same time I'd love to see ParaNorman win and Laika get some recognition + prestige boost.

and replaced pixar's excellent writers their own lame princess-story-factory hack department. ugh, and those lame songs they kept randomly inserting for no good reason except to sell cd's of the stupid soundtrack! i mean, how exactly was this movie any different from every other 90's-and-on disney princess movie ever made?

i like how the word "princess" is repeated twice here

i must admit i haven't seen much pixar but since I've seen Toy Story, Up and most of the Incredibles - supposed highpoints the more mouth-foaming "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY PIXAR?" complaints seem really dubious.

like, is there someone who doesn't like brave compared to other mother/daughter movies? or is it just dudes who are like WHAT'S A PRINCESS DOING IN MY MAGICAL SEMI-SILENT CHILDHOOD SHIT?

if you're going to clown on this for being a re-tread of old disneys, the princess comparison is hardly the one to make -- disney has literally already done a movie where someone gets turned into a bear!

Xp nah, because Tangled was actually really good as Disney princess stuff goes, much better than Brave.

"not as good as tangled" is possible, never seen it.

though that's one of those "old witch hates young beauty, young beauty teams up with action dude" movies, right? mom dies in the first reel?

again, i feel like most of the people mad at brave couldn't give half a fuck about the aspect fans seem to like the most

forks upthread actually sheds a tear for the wasted mother/daughter story, but he seems disappointed with every aspect of brave to a ridiculous extreme, i.e.

stupidly predictable plot twists. one of the best things about pixar is that they always step to the table smarter and more considered of their story than you are.

toy story ended with the moral that you have to be nice to your toys, basically equating an irreverent but creative kid with dr mengele. up ended with a character being made into a threatening murderer just so they could have an action climax. it's a credit to these films that i didn't predict how they'd end, because they were shitty endings.

i'm also under the impression that most people like the first half of wall-e way more than the second

tangled has its own weird mother/daughter issues, as the witch is pretending to be rapunzel's mother and has raised her from infancy, but is of course selfish and evil and doesn't have her best interests at heart. but the witch's selfishness is played for laughs at the beginning (she's modeled after a broadway diva), and rapunzel is frustrated by her life but pretty tolerant of her mother as a person, so it's kind of jarring when the end of the movie gets all traditional and trope-y -- kidnapped princess realizes she's been kidnapped, "defeats" evil fake mother, lovingly reunites with parents she's never known, etc. a friend of mine hated the movie because she thought the message was irresponsible, like "defy your overbearing mother because she's probably evil and entrust your safety to strange dudes."

croup i get where you're going with this but imo the real tragedy of brave is that there is a genuine and powerful mother/daughter story buried under a pile of cheap hackwork, and the final cut seems to genuinely believe that the hack crap is the Important Part.

but "cheap hackwork" compared to what? there's definitely a lot of broad comedy (and i personally like how every dude in this movie is an obnoxious but well-intentioned oaf) and familiar climax, but christ, how "tragic" is that?

i'll admit i'm a pixar agnostic but i really don't see how the sillier aspects of this make it such a horror compared to the movie where a rat teaches a critic that you can't judge art

comparison would be stronger if you'd gone with the second half of up or wall-e. ratatouille is a masterpiece and the lack of any distinctive vision is exactly what's wrong with brave.

(nb i'm a brad bird stan tho i'd also concede he's never topped the iron giant and i'd grudgingly take brave over his sole venture into live action)

alright i admit i haven't seen ratatouille (though i already ref'd up and wall-e), in part because the message seems gross. in general i'd rather see a kid's movie that lacks "distinctive vision" if it's funny, touching and doesn't have a weird agenda

cool just sayin' the princess angle is not the problem bravewise and history will judge it only slightly more kindly than Cars 2

may not be your problem, but dude there are PLENTY of reviews that suggest many a guy's unsympathetic reaction to brave has something to do with not being able to tell the difference between an affecting mother/daughter story and the "princess angle" - just a little up this thread even - i mean, how exactly was this movie any different from every other 90's-and-on disney princess movie ever made?

hrmph that is a bit damning. i stand corrected :p

croup, you seem kinda focused on the plots and MORALS (which are basically where pixar plays to the kids) as opposed to the craftwork, turns of emotion (the mom in incredibles telling her kids they could be killed, the first ten minutes of up, the moment of joined community before the inferno in toy story 3) and occasional worthwhilesubtext

"princess" is shorthand in some ways for "underdeveloped and unrealized character aspirations masquerading as empowered heroines"; it's a disney hallmark and not unrealistic to want to lump this in with those many, many character driven animated films. I have no issue with strong female protagonists in cartoons; kiki and totoro jump to mind immediately. this is, again, wasted opportunity caked with multilayered bullshit when the company is capable of much better. frankly, you don't seem to much care for the studio or, to a lesser extent, the form so i'm curious why you're arguing your point so forcedly

brave's most meaningful "mother daughter relationship" moments actually happen when mom is a bear, so not sure how meaningful that really is.

anyways, i really disliked this film on a gut level.

it's ironic you're asking why i'm arguing so forcedly when you're throwing a million absurdities (brave's most meaningful "mother daughter relationship" moments actually happen when mom is a bear, so not sure how meaningful that really is - why would her form matter?) out and then copping to some "gut level" distaste for it. I really enjoyed the movie and it's getting a lot of bile that feels absurd and misguided.

also are you really arguing there's no "turns of emotion" in Brave, when plenty of people have said they felt affected by it? and i acknowledged the plots of earlier pixar films because YOU did, i literally cut and pasted your praise for pixar plots and contradicted from my own experience of them.

since i haven't seen nemo, monsters inc and ratatouille it's not impossible there's something hardcore pixar-heads specifically associate with pixar that they aren't getting from the more recent efforts, and that Brave was unsatisfying because of this. but from what I HAVE seen (including parts of Cars) - i'm not sympathetic to the idea that Brave was some ghastly nightmare of obvious plotting and broad comedy because i know that shit's prevalent in the previous films as well. if you don't want to get lumped in with the "girls, ew!" contingent, try a little harder not to just barf nonsensically.

brave definitely was less of an "IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE" experience than most of their earlier films

Like all their films it deals with oversized unlikely characters, in this case the Scottish

croup totally on point on this btw, and suggesting it doesn't contain turns of emotion is not a particularly effective way to dodge the "Ew, girls" bullet.

Missed some of this recent volley, but I know my own response to "Brave" was tainted by the fact that it followed two Pixar sequels, one of which ("TS3") I was underwhelmed by, the other ("Cars 2") the easy consensus worst Pixar movie, no less the sequel to the previous worst Pixar movie. And the next one up is a sequel, too. Now, that can be cool. Hell, I just saw "Monsters Inc." in 3-D today, and it was better than ever. But as a chance to finally have a Pixar movie with a female protagonist, plus beautiful animation, it really dropped the ball when it came to meeting the potential implied by the trailer and title. In other words:

also 50% of the complaints would've been calmed by keeping the original title (the bear and the bow) and NOT hiding the fact that the movie is about a bunch of fucking bears in the commercials

Also, "Tangled" was better. Most under appreciated grade-A Disney since "Emperor's New Clothes."

the craftwork, turns of emotion (the mom in incredibles telling her kids they could be killed, the first ten minutes of up, the moment of joined community before the inferno in toy story 3)

i agree that brave didn't end up having a moment of similar deftness (and i'd add the critic's childhood memory of eating ratatouille to that list, and maybe wall-e watching hello dolly and dreaming of love?). my emotional reaction to the mother/daughter story was more large-scale: how loving and close they are when merida is young, compared to how divided they are now, and generally how the mother's perspective is unusually prioritized throughout the whole thing. even when she does an Evil Thing by breaking merida's bow, it's clear she's doing it from fright and frustration and deserves forgiveness (as opposed to tangled's weird message of "maybe yr mom is weirdly controlling bcuz she's a witch?").

i feel like i'm bagging on tangled too much, i really liked it + consider it quality.

most emotional moment for me in wall-e is when he first sees eve from hiding and is totally paralyzed by how sleek and graceful she is and just stares at her in confused wonder and then makes a tiny noise and she immediately incinerates like half the nearby terrain. also possibly hardest i've laughed in a theatre.

have not seen brave tho was just popping in.

I wouldn't even have minded space so much without the stupid lolfatties storyline. That little Mo! robot was cuet

man i realize i'm in the minority something fierce but i just can't get over how the toy story movies take a cute notion like "what if your toys had lives when you were not around?" and extend it to "well they'd regularly be in danger and run the risk of abandonment or destruction unless you make sure to give them homes and tlc until the end of time"

like, i don't want to give them credit for taking the anthropomorphization of material possessions to that extreme

i think there is more to it than that, but maybe i'm crazy or overly sentimental

i realize the plots are chosen because of the need for drama and villains rather than an actual contempt for toy collectors, kids who give dolls haircuts and people who GOD FORBID throw childhood shit away, but there's something hysterically sentimental about the stakes they create that I just can't get over.

That's why "Toy Story 2" is great, by embracing the idea of toys as things to be played with - that's their identity, their reason to be - and introducing a villain who values hoarding over playing. For the toys in that one, thwarting the villain is tied to fulfilling their purpose.

phhhbbbbt. put em on the shelf, trade 'em on ebay, cut their heads off, throw 'em in the trash, they're TOYS

YOU MONSTER

I have an unopened Nat X doll that comes with an afro pick and does the black power salute.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41yN8aScdjL.jpg

Mr Veg had an unopened Minmai doll from Robotech. Our 5 year old niece got super into Robotech & Mr Veg had to try to explain to her why he couldn't take it out of the box. But the explanation made him feel like a jerk so he gave her the doll for Christmas. (Awwww.)

i get exhausted trying to have a conversation with anyone who tells me i'm "barfing nonsensically" but it's telling that your lead arguments are "people enjoyed it so how can you not recognize it as effective" and "you sound like 'girls ew'" as opposed to talking about what you enjoyed about the film.

i'm stepping out cause ad hominem argument is the dumbest + fucked if i'm going to argue on THE INTERNET about A DISNEY PRINCESS when i have episodes of my little pony to catch up on

As far as Disney's missed ops go, I should say this was much less of a missed opportunity than "Princess and the Frog," which outright pissed me off.

I thought it was marvelous. For some reasons, i connected with the mother/daughter story and that was enough for me to be charmed. The voicemail anachronism is the only thing that irked me.

look, over the last decade, pixar has made movies about: toys that are alive, a bug circus, monsters that run their alternate-dimension power plant on children's screams, a young clown fish that has adventures all over the pacific ocean, a family of superheros living underground in a world where superheros are considered bad, a rom com played out by anthropomorphic cars, a rat that that cooks in a five star restaurant, a robot stuck on post-apocalyptic earth, an old man who flies his house to south america where there are hilarious talking dogs, and 3 sequels, 2 of which were awesome.

meanwhile, over the same period, disney has made films about... oh, i guess they aren't *all* princess films. in my memory it's like little mermaid, beauty and the beast, pocahontis, the hunchback of notre dame, mulan, the princess and the frog, and tangled, but i guess i'm leaving out hercules, tarzan, meet the robinsons, and chicken little etc. mostly cause no one i knew had anything good to say about them, so i skipped them and pretty much forgot they even existed. i guess you can replace "disney's lame princess-story-factory hack department" with "disney's lame princess-story-alternated-with-a-bog-standard-everybody-knows-this-one-already-fairy-tale-story-factory-rinse-repeat hack department"

i have no problem with the mother/daughter theme of brave - it's the best thing about the movie, at least once she turns into a bear. but to my ears, apporxiamtely 100% of the mom's spoken lines could have been taken straight from a children's book, and most of everyone else's dialog just rang false/lazy to me. usually pixar dialog is sharp and witty, with a clever, multilayered joke like every other line, but not this time. and overall i just didn't think much of the rest of the humor was all that great, especially compared to the usual pixar level of quality - it's like "the claw CHOOSES" verses "scottish dudes with their kilts off, look you can see their BUTTS LOL!".

i'd love to see a pixar movie with a strong female lead. i just can't help but feel that, if disney hadn't had it's random-country-song-inserting hands on the tiller for this, we might have seen a REALLY RAD movie about girl that WASN"T A FRIKKIN PRINCESS ALREADY (and i'm sorry but i feel this is important if you're going to even mention gender roles in animated films)

ps. if you've only seen 1 1/2 pixar films in your life you're welcome to your opinion but i don't really care what it is - i am a huge pixar stan feeling PAIN here ok?

fair nuff re my inability to appreciate the anguish of the pixarite, but just fyi...

meanwhile, over the same period, disney has made films about... oh, i guess they aren't *all* princess films. in my memory it's like little mermaid, beauty and the beast, pocahontis, the hunchback of notre dame, mulan, the princess and the frog, and tangled, but i guess i'm leaving out hercules, tarzan, meet the robinsons, and chicken little etc. mostly cause no one i knew had anything good to say about them, so i skipped them and pretty much forgot they even existed. i guess you can replace "disney's lame princess-story-factory hack department" with "disney's lame princess-story-alternated-with-a-bog-standard-everybody-knows-this-one-already-fairy-tale-story-factory-rinse-repeat hack department"

the first two films you mentioned are pre-pixar, and of the post-toy story era you've left out lilo & stich, emperor's new groove, treasure planet, brother bear, home on the range, meet the robinsons, bolt and wreck-it-ralph. quality i can't speak for but you could easily paint a diverse picture of plots here. i saw bolt on a bus and it was terrible, but it was about the adventures of a tv star dog

woops, you actually ref'd meet the robinsons - missed it since you called out "bog-standard-everybody-knows-this-one" and apparently it's a sci-fi story based on a kids book from the 90s

so like, if your memory is that disney is a princess factory and now they've put a princess in a pixar movie and OMFG i apologize for saying "girls, ew" when i should have said "princesses, ew"

"meet the robinsons" was that not derived from the "danger will robinson" 50's show? lost in space or something? ie. not an actual fairy tale but not an original idea either

i don't deny that my understanding of disney's post-pixar work is far from complete. i was keeping up all through the 90's, but it just seemed like the quality tapered of sharply after a certain point, around the same time my friends entirely stopped saying things like "hey, i heard the new disney is pretty cool, let's go see it" and i pretty stopped paying attention. other than seeming to notice that all the new disney posters seemed to feature princesses

http://images4.fanpop.com/image/polls/626000/626134_1295779333893_full.jpg
^^^ i have no idea if that's a princess or not but i saw it and was like "wait lilo and stich is actually another disney princess movie in disguise?!?!?"

perhaps i shouldn't harp on the princess factor, and the gender studies ramifications of my fixating on that aspect are duly and respectfully noted. but for the record, my problems with brave is less about the fact that it's a princess (though i'll go on record saying i'd have strongly preferred a non-princess character for pixar's first starring female lead) but rather with the fact that, to me, brave adopts a lot of lame late period, post 90's renaissance disney-esque things that diminished my enjoyment of the worst of the last few disney flicks i actually saw, princesses or no.

cliches abound. dialogue seems stilted. less gags-per-minute, lamer gags. few surprises. stupid, bad songs thrown in at random for no particular reason.

"meet the robinsons" was that not derived from the "danger will robinson" 50's show? lost in space or something? ie. not an actual fairy tale but not an original idea either

nope it's a time travel tale based only partially on a children's book. disney definitely isn't above making a movie about a bug circus or a rat with a job.

i totally get that a drop-off in quality is the injury you and forks are suffering but you wouldn't be typing PRINCESSES in all caps if that aspect wasn't being taken loudly as an insult on top. yeah, the comedy is definitely broad and there are cliches, but i found the story affecting (and, royalty or not, really fresh material for a kids' film - way more than IN A WORLD WHERE THE SMALL ARE BIG), the cute stuff was cute, and it didn't have any of the yick subtext i associate with the pixar i have seen (and really creepy messages keep away from like 95% of kids films plus the knowledge that i'll probably have to see them all anyway when i eventually do have kids). if you want to hate on it being set in scotland-land fine, though ratatouille has a character named alfredo linguini so...

keep me away from 95% of kids films, i mean

"princess" is shorthand in some ways for "underdeveloped and unrealized character aspirations masquerading as empowered heroines"; it's a disney hallmark and not unrealistic to want to lump this in with those many, many character driven animated films. I have no issue with strong female protagonists in cartoons; kiki and totoro jump to mind immediately.

not to mention persepolis, coraline, spirited away, ghost in the shell, princess mononoke, the secret of nimh, all of which i loved.

reviews of tangled on rotten tomatoes: "A version of Rapunzel that lets down its hair just enough to deserve a place of honor with all the other glorious Disney "princess" tales.", "Don't let its princessness put you off - Tangled is Disney recapturing its magic ", "Yet another princess story calculated to revive the public's cash-dispensing interest in that kneaded-to-death formula."

apparently i'm not the only person in the universe that thinks disney's focus is a bit princess-centric

yes they have made plenty of movies about young female royalty, and i know you're not the only other person who associates them with it. all i did was point out you could also write a long paragraph describing the numerous adventures Disney's made about anthropomorphized animals and sci-fi family scenarios.

i dunno, i'm probably getting defensive because i knew from the get-go "<roles eyes> oh look another disney princess cartoon" is unfair prejudging, and i don't know how able i was to let that go. i mean, i literally thought brave was the new disney film, and was like "hey where's this summer's new pixar?!?!?" and was a bit horrified to realize they were sort of one and the same. i *tried* to watch brave with an open mind, and i'd like to think, if it was another impeccable, untouchable film in a long line of pixar classics, i could have let go the fact that it was DISNEY + PRINCESS go. i'm not sure if i was successful. maybe i judged the movie by it's poster and couldn't get past that. i mean, it's not the worst feature length cartoon i've ever seen. maybe if it wasn't pixar, i would have given it a 7/10, just for the awesome bear slapstick?

but, i just couldn't like it that much. disney's imprint was all over it. i'm not happy about this. pixar should be pixar, and they should do a cool, awesome new film, in the style of their previous films, about a grrrl who is awesome and not a goddamn princess ffs.

idgi, what's wrong with princesses? Is it general anti-royalist sentiment (which I as a Yank don't really feel)? Brave's attention to the mother-daughter relationship is a corrective to Disney's history of films with young female protagonists and absent mothers, within which conventions it both deploys and undermines. What's more, to tell a story as they tell, they probably needed to focus on the aristocracy for it to have any semblance of familiarity to modern viewers, is my guess.

I think the number one reason there are so many Disney princesses is that so many of those movies piggyback off of public domain properties or other fairy tale stuff, which frequently focuses on princesses (and certainly royalty in general). The number two reason, of course, is that the princesses are huge properties from a bottom-line standpoint. There's a famous piece I may have mentioned or linked to before about the making and marketing of "Cars," and how the movie was specifically conceived to market something to boys for a change.

Pathological need to take a parent or parents (but especially mom) out of the picture - from Dumbo and Bambi on down - a much more disturbing Disney trend. But I suppose that's a necessary concession to the machinations of drama. Even my daughter now, when she's writing stories, begins by killing off one or both parents.

What's more, to tell a story as they tell, they probably needed to focus on the aristocracy for it to have any semblance of familiarity to modern viewers, is my guess.

Yeah, it's worth pointing out that this is the first Pixar film set primarily in anything resembling the real world.

though it's not disney, how to train your dragon is also set in ye olde land of funny accents, and the male protagonist is the son of a viking chieftain. i do wonder if there's a sort of plot shorthand at work there, where "this takes place in the hardscrabble past" is countered by "but our main characters are at the top of the food chain, so their lives are more familiar to you coddled westerners."

btw i saw lilo and stitch for the first time like two months ago, and that shit is harrowing. takes the disney trope of the orphaned child and treats it with utter seriousness, child protective services and all. the part near the end where lilo and her big sister are talking in the hammock had me bawling, even with the foreknowledge that everything would end up okay becuz they made a spin-off tv show from it.

Yeah, it's worth pointing out that this is the first Pixar film set primarily in anything resembling the real world.

I don't know that "medieval Scotland but people can be turned into bears and also magic voicemail" is per se more "real" than "contemporary Paris and also this rat can cook."

Fair point, though the fact that Ratatouille is about the rat first and foremost does skew things a bit.

Like, it matters where and when we are in Scotland, more so than that we happen to be in Paris now instead of Rome 100 years ago.

"Brave" and "How to Train Your Dragon" would make a great double feature.

There was a TV show called "Jane and the Dragon", it's like they demerged it to make those 2 films.

so like, if your memory is that disney is a princess factory and now they've put a princess in a pixar movie and OMFG i apologize for saying "girls, ew" when i should have said "princesses, ew"

Brave is not my favorite Pixar movie, but a lot of the criticism of it makes me uncomfortable because much of it does seem to boil down to "girls, ew".

Pretty sure most of the criticism boils down to "her mom turns into a bear and bumps into things a lot."

but those were the best parts of the movie! and yes, they tie into the whole mother-daughter stuff.

They were the best parts of some other movie. See also: talking dogs flying airplanes in "Up."

Pathological need to take a parent or parents (but especially mom) out of the picture - from Dumbo and Bambi on down - a much more disturbing Disney trend. But I suppose that's a necessary concession to the machinations of drama.

You can't have an adventure if you're safe! Yes, completely necessary.

Eh, I don't know why they do it. There's a single parent in "Toy Story," but of course that fact/she has nothing to do with anything. Same with "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" et al. (no moms, no explanation). There are a lot of Disney flicks with only one parent. Sometimes I think it just has something to do with ease of storytelling. (see also: Spielberg, who does this all the time, though almost always to jumpstart adventure). Lack of mom is important to "Finding Nemo," of course, a movie that dramatically kills her and most of her kids in the first two minutes!

Just scanning the list, it's pretty impressive how well Pixar has been able to avoid princess stuff, let alone families or traditional domestic scenarios, for so long. And when they did focus on an intact family, "The Incredibles," the hit it out of the park.

The mother thing there then is an implication that if you were having an adventure but your mother didn't know, she'd be a Bad Mother, but with fathers, fathers be off fathering somewhere! Or in short ♥ Finding Nemo.

I wasn't idly speculating, I was stating a fact. Adventures for children can't happen if their parents are at the top of their world keeping them safe and keeping anything interesting from happening to them. You can only be a hero on a quest if there's an element of uncertainty or danger to your fate, even if it's only as perceived by the child's mind.

Identifying with characters who are left alone or put in danger is an acceptable way of experimenting with independence and unprotectedness for a child.

There are a lot of Disney flicks with only one parent.

Are you being fair and balanced here, or do you have a long list of those with only the mother?

Well, it'd probably be easy to cobble one together. I'm lazy, but I saw some claim that"out of 27 prominent Disney heroes (as of the end of 2010), only eight have onscreen mothers who aren't killed before the credits roll.

Here's some big piece I saw: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1308584/Why-does-Disney-hate-parents-Ever-noticed-favourite-films-kill-Mum-Dad-.html

Don't have a prob with lack of parents myself, and yeah, it's no doubt to spark adventure. Also, like I mentioned earlier, it's far from unique to Disney, and indeed it often stems from the source material:

http://www.snopes.com/disney/waltdisn/mother.asp

This guy is more thorough in his (already outdated) list of "Disney animated features where one of the parents is missing from the beginning of the story without any real explanation:"

http://theformer786.blogspot.com/2011/07/disney-and-single-parent.html

He sums up toward the end that "out of the 50 theatrical animated feature films that the Walt Disney Animation Studios has produced to date, 35 prominently feature a single-parent family, an orphaned child, missing parents or parental death."

Finally watched this last night, it was gorgeous to look at but everyone itt saying it was like a boilerplate Disney movie is right. I mean, watching the La Luna short afterwards just shows how much heart Pixar is capable of injecting in their films and reinforced how little of it was actually in Brave.

what exactly do we mean by heart

i mean jesus it was a cute fantasy about a lil boy and his elders working on the moon

human organs

I guess by "heart" I mean that intangible "something" that made me feel real human emotions instead of "lol those Scottish guys are naked under their kilts!" for the third time.

if only pixar had put more heart into brave - like, i dunno, made her a small child with big eyes who only says three words

less joeks more accordion

I mean, I haven't kept up with this thread closely because I hadn't even seen the film until last night, but it seems super obvious to me why this particular one would feel less like a Pixar movie and more like a Disney one. But I guess if we didn't like this movie we are supposedly sexist or something? idgi

dude you're the one saying there was no emotional content in a movie all about mother/daughter drama

What's wrong with being sexy?

Ha, just made myself laugh imagining the shit Disney would get for making a sexy Scottish mother/daughter drama.

I didn't say there was "no emotional content"! Sure, there was, just none that resonated with me in the least. Guess I should have been more clear in my post about La Luna.

sorry, there was nothing that made you feel "real human emotions" as opposed to the little boy and his dad scraping starfish off the moon for three minutes

sorry, there was nothing that made you feel "real human emotions"

But did you feel any bear emotions? I did, a little.

Jeez I kinda feel like I've personally offended you by not liking this movie, da croupier.

La Luna has the the qualities that ppl associate with Pixar, because of their shorts - and that is telling stories with imagery over dialogue.

But Pixar movies themselves don't have this quality. Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Cars, Incredibles, are all the same KIND of movie that Brave is. It's just that Brave told the story with a bunch of bears and a princess and that seems to make people clench up way more than a bunch of toys/monsters/superheroes.

It's like Brave wasn't Pixar enough. Which I take to mean that if the princess was a mr potatohead doll this would have all been cool right?

I get it. I just think it's kind of funny and a bit like hairsplitting.

that sounded way snottier than I meant it to be. oops :)

exactly. i just think it's hilarious how shitty a job the anti-disney squad is doing defending itself from the possibility they're being reflexively antipathetic to "for girls" content. can't just say it's not a pixar highlight. it's gotta be the WORST - just a bunch of broad jokes and PRINCESS shit!

I feel like there's a lot of projecting going on itt about why people might not live this. For me the biggest thing was that the writing wasn't nearly as clever as other Pixar movies.

"live" = "like"

so you're ditching the "heart" theory

Dude, you are just being willfully obtuse about this now. I still think La Luna emotionally resonated with me more than Brave did, that hasn't changed. The clever writing thing was an attempt to get at why Brave failed to resonate with me, but it seems like you've already got it figured out for me, so why bother arguing with you anymore?

Now I remember why I hate talking about films on ILE and I really regret chiming in with my thoughts.

Honestly, I think the problem with "Brave" - which is similar to the problem I had with "Princess and the Frog" - is that it's not enough girl stuff. Like, "Princess and the Frog" was a big deal, because it was the first black princess, and then she spends 95% of the movie as a frog (and is rescued at the end by a deus ex whiteperson). In "Brave," they set up this great, strong female character, but then she spends much of the movie dealing with bumbling bears and magic, which might be fine but was not at all what I was expecting, which was more of an adventure/quest with a strong female lead, not a movie that featured said lead mending her relationship with her mom by literally learning to sew.

see jon, when people have been discussing for days about how brave-haters have been exaggerating the film's flaws and pulling some WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PIXAR shit over princess content, and then you stroll in saying a film about teenage daughter's conflicted feelings towards her mother made you feel no real emotion and lacked "heart" compared to the near-silent three minute tale of a wide-eyed boy and his dad taking stars off the moon, a backpedal to "oh it just wasn't as witty" is just going to be more gristle for the mill.

You keep repeating the plot over and over as if that's going to suddenly make it resonate more with me. Also I'm not sure why it's confusing to you that a film I found to be fairly rote in its storytelling and joke construction didn't resonate with me. Also, my main beef with the movie, as stated in my first couple posts, had nothing to do with the princess stuff, more with the lazy "lol kilts" jokes.

oy. i know i said i was out of this but damn

the PRINCESS shit you are hung up on is shorthand among animation fans. It's disney's self-referential labeling for merchandising and vapid barbie adventures. this is not something we are making up.
http://disney.go.com/princess/#/home/
Over the past few decades, disney has ground out about five princess films that reveled in gender stereotyping and crass sexism aimed at little girls and they are not good movies. they are attempts to cash in on a market.

there is fear among afficianados of the form and stans of the studio that pixar is finally bowing to pressure from disney to mitigate its approach. that brave did not notably elevate above PRINCESS status is not ew girls, it is pixar fans' way of saying that it missed the mark. that you don't know or care about or are misreading the perhaps easily misinterpreted jargon of cartoon fans does not equal your consistent presumption that all us nerds are hella insensitive sexists or that we're bound and determined to hate this because it's a princess movie. I like a few princess movies: Castle in the Sky, sleeping beauty, princess knight. It's not the princess that's the problem. It's the tropes.

brave is bad pixar. it is bad pixar like cars is bad pixar. it is over focus grouped and pandering. if you enjoyed it, good for you; I'm glad you were able to overlook the weaker elements and find something meaningful.

with due respect though, you are not somebody who is a stan for the studio or who has even seen/enjoyed the majority of the work. most of the folks railing against this movie are. the reason stans in this thread keep saying THE FEEL and THE MOMENT is because many of us get touched by the work the studio puts out. When we get touched it's almost always the product of rigorous engineering, a "lubitsch touch" moment where our irony and sarcasm is shredded and they get us in spite of ourselves. Pixar is good about tucking in a few of these and keeping the butt jokes to a minimum. that's why they're beloved by grown up animation fans.

fuck i probably need an ilx break, i know i have more important things to think about than this.

xpost But it's not really about her conflicted relationship with her mother, it's about her being pissed off that her mother is marrying her off. Which is a legit grievance! And given that that is what sets this all in motion, her mother's decision to let her go her own way comes about through no process. She wants her to get married, she turns into a bear, then as a bear there's that scene in the dining hall where she basically just changes her mind and figures, heck, let her follow her heart. I wish the film did a better job of capturing the deeper dynamics of a mother/daughter relationship. I found the bear stuff got in the way of that.

"Brave" was miles better than "Cars," and at least both were gorgeous to look at.

it is over focus grouped and pandering. if you enjoyed it, good for you; I'm glad you were able to overlook the weaker elements and find something meaningful.

vs

When we get touched it's almost always the product of rigorous engineering, a "lubitsch touch" moment where our irony and sarcasm is shredded and they get us in spite of ourselves.

exactly: badly done engineering vs well done engineering

congratulations is if you were tricked, but you gotta be on some LUBITSCH shit to trick me!

I always forget which of you have kids. Because I find that watching these (or really any) films with my kids (two daughters) is really tied into their reaction or lack thereof, what I feel like the movie is aiming for vs. what the kids take away from it, which in turn affects, to some degree, what I think of the movie.

congratulations is if you were tricked, but you gotta be on some LUBITSCH shit to trick me!

I think it's interesting that Cars is considered bad Pixar. I know a lot of people didn't like it but I have also wondered if a lot of that was cultural cringe. I've been a Pixar fan from the start, and I haven't heard an argument against Cars that hasn't boiled down to 'ew nascar' 'ew Larry the cable guy'. Then again I don't travel in wide cartoon circles, so I'm sure there's more cogent arguments for why it's bad.

Which is why I still take the Brave criticisms with a grain of salt, because Pixar fans can be so damn precious about what a Pixar movie is supposed to be that they crawl up their own ass. imo.

it's my personal feeling that Pixar fandom allows a weird kind of elitism over 'normal' cartoon movies, while ignoring the fact that most of the Pixar movies get their 'heart' from the evil Disney movies they're supposed to be better than.

I have a kid, but he's only 18 months old and aways from watching movies with us.

I'm at work and trying to type up responses between other tasks, so forgive me for not having time to really compile my thoughts here. But da croupier, can't it be enough to just disagree with us about the movie? I mean, it's 100% legit for someone to have found this movie disappointing without having to be pinned as sexist.

yeah i gotta admit this preciousness is new to me, probably since i haven't been on many pixar threads

and josh, that totally makes sense re: kids. i don't have any (saw the movie with my wife and sister, both of whom liked it a lot), but i already kind of judge kids movies to some degree on whether i'd want my hypothetical kid to see it so i can imagine their actual two cents would be very affecting. but there's enough sexist bullshit going on around brave that you're going to have to deal with it being called out.

i've said repeatedly i can understand someone being disappointed with for totally sympathetic reasons

its fair to call out the sexist bullshit, absolutely. i've seen a lot of stuff well deserving of your ire, fwiw. but you're painting everyone with the same wide brush here, there can be other reasons to find a film disappointing.

and, fwiw, maybe it was unfair of me to bring La Luna into this because i've always loved Pixar's short film work and often find it more affecting than the majority of their feature-length work.

i'm from the south and grew up next to a race track. i got no inherent argument with nascar or larry the cable guy except that they're not my bag. My argument against cars is that it failed as a story and that pixar did not find a way to make cars engaging as characters.

pixar films aren't the only animated ones with heart of course and they're hardly a perfect studio. Films like Incredibles and Bugs Life are just okay. When they're very good they're very good.

are you reading "a movie with animated characters touched me emotionally" as precious, croup? your degree of venom and head of steam seems out of proportion and i think you're reading something into the conversation that's invoking this level of snark.

i'm quoting vg, re: preciousness forks

xp short form work in animation can be much more emotionally effective; the thin needle bursts the bubble easier

also you should know by now that opinionated snarking requires seriously little effort for me

As someone who heard about this film like a year early and wanted it to be great but will not be seeing it based on disappointing reviews + this thread, I've been dipping in occasionally to see what the talk was.

Jon, I think it was the blitheness with which you sped past Brave having "no heart" despite being primarily about mother + daughter, and then praised a father + son film that was short and virtually speechless and explained almost nothing. It was probably an accidental juxtaposition but a really ill-fated one.

ah so preciousness is unrealistic expectations i guess. i'll cop to being guilty of that but with some justification: who the hell could've thought the third installment of a cartoon film about anthropomorphized toys would focus on the nature of the relationship between man and god and resolve with a sharp secular humanism moral

fwiw, i honestly didn't really read La Luna to be about a "father/son" relationship at all, or at least i didn't read that as being the driving force behind the story.

even this news that "hey princess is just shorthand for bad work" seems sketchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Princess

Disney Princess is a media franchise owned by The Walt Disney Company. Created by Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney in the late 1990s, the franchise features a line-up of fictional female heroines who have appeared in various Disney animated feature films.
The ten current members of the franchise are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, and Rapunzel.
In July 2013, Mérida from Brave will be joining the line-up.

The Disney Princess franchise has received generally mixed reception from critics and customers. On December 24, 2006, Peggy Orenstein published "What's Wrong With Cinderella?" in The New York Times. In her article, Orenstein discussed her concerns about the effects of princess figures on young girls. Orenstein used the Disney Princesses specifically to present many of her points. Orenstein also noted the pervasive nature of Princess merchandise and that every facet of play has its princess equivalent. Tamara Weston of Time magazine criticized the franchise, referring to the princesses as "damsels in distress" and negative role models for young girls.

Hi, I'm an enormous Pixar fan and da croupier is on point here.

Also? Talking about how these male-led films have a specific FEEL that the first female-led one is missing? There's a limited number of ways to do that and look good, and you're not really hitting any of them imo. I'm not saying it's your only argument, but by itself it's another shitty "lady, if you have to ask".

i think vg's post got straight up ignored in this swordfight so

La Luna has the the qualities that ppl associate with Pixar, because of their shorts - and that is telling stories with imagery over dialogue.

But Pixar movies themselves don't have this quality. Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Cars, Incredibles, are all the same KIND of movie that Brave is. It's just that Brave told the story with a bunch of bears and a princess and that seems to make people clench up way more than a bunch of toys/monsters/superheroes.

It's like Brave wasn't Pixar enough. Which I take to mean that if the princess was a mr potatohead doll this would have all been cool right?

I get it. I just think it's kind of funny and a bit like hairsplitting.

gosh, when a man says it i'm suddenly struck by how true it sounds

also fyi forks, re pixar fan preciousness i'm mostly referring to "shins will your change your life shit" like every moment of these films is carefully calibrated; there's nothing in them that hasn't been considered.

croup do you understand how digital animation/CGI works? there are no accidents. moreso than any other filmic artwork, this stuff is meticulous because IT IS BUILT BY COMPUTERS. so injecting the human into it is the magic trick and that's why it's hard to do it well and why so many studios ***coughcoughdreamworkscoughcough*** do it poorly

xpost "Cars" was terrible on its own merits (animation aside). The NASCAR-stuff and Larry the Cable Guy were just gratuitous hedges/sops. Like, the world of "Cars" didn't even makes sense on its own terms - driverless, autonomous but still functioning cars going to tracks to watch other driverless, autonomous cars race? Going to the movies? Making fart and bathroom jokes?

Basically, want I want to know is: who built the cars? WHO BUILT THE CARS!!?!?

Hopefully they'll delve into that in "Cars 3." I still like the idea of a "Planet of the Apes" scenario, where the humans destroyed the planet and everyone died, and these cars evolved to supplant us. Ergo, "Cars 3" should be about the discovery of the last surviving human, and then go into a bunch of religion/free-will bullshit, who is the driver, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jvqPvDUEW8

anyways, this is on my mind because tomorrow i am finally seeing PADAK the korean take on finding nemo in which the action takes place in a sushi tank and i think this is gonna be MUCH better than brave but if one of the fish is a princess i will report back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIFy35o1Vwg

i mean, if you wanna talk about increasing the stakes

smh at this thread taking off while I'm working! anyway xxxxxp what was the deus ex whiteperson in princess + frog? whiteperson doesn't end up saving her, True Love does.

even this news that "hey princess is just shorthand for bad work" seems sketchy

Not sure why princess = "vapid barbie adventures", or why barbie is any more vapid than a transformer.

did you click that disney princess link upthread and explore the website?
Transformers is vapid too! Who said they weren't?

forks there's a difference between feminist writers critiquing disney's princess culture and guys who think no one appreciations animation like they do using "princess" to mean shitty shit that's shitty

appreciates, rather

xpost Barbie is far worse, because there are body image issues going on, not to mention the blatant materialism/outright sexism of the very scenario. Transformers are toys, too, and designed to sell, but no one would accuse Optimus Prime of setting an unattainable standard for impressionable boys.

idk, i'm still trying to grow my shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.

Hey, you're either born with it or you aren't.

Barbie is far worse, because there are body image issues going on, not to mention the blatant materialism/outright sexism of the very scenario.

Disney Princess dolls are not exactly, uh, body-positive; and at least Barbie has actually been a doctor, astronaut and banker unlike SOME ROYALTY.

Barbie is far worse, because there are body image issues going on, not to mention the blatant materialism/outright sexism of the very scenario. Transformers are toys, too, and designed to sell, but no one would accuse Optimus Prime of setting an unattainable standard for impressionable boys.

Sorry, but I think that's horse shit. The Transformers send out a message that problems should be solved with violence and destruction. And there's a lot of materialism wrapped up in the idea of collecting all of the different action figures.

I'm sure we can agree that mass-marketed, gender-distinguished toys aimed at the lowest common denominator of attention span and leveraged to the freaking hilt by multinational entertainment industry GIANTS are horrible for everyone involved. There's probably even a thread for that, somewhere.

Definitely.

except for sectaurs

And Star Wars.

and stretch armstrong

and the bible

surprised we don't have a thread about BRATZ except for the failed movie but they are kind of the pinnacle of nu-barbie false empowerment niche marketing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjhWo7vduG4

Dolls are doll are dolls. They're all to be collected/bought/sold/marketed. But the Disney princess dolls (do such things exist? probably) are ancillary to the main property, which is the movies. Barbies, on the other hand, start with the dolls. The dolls are the main point. And the dolls themselves are materialistic - dream house, dream car, wardrobe, etc. Just the very existence of Barbie, a picture of Barbie, is innately offensive. But a robot that turns into a dinosaur or a car? Nah. I can't say the Transformers promote violence any more than I'd say Barbie promotes mashing together invisible genitals with Ken.

Bratz promotes an unhealthy ideal head size.

You can't fool me, Stretch Armstrong IS in the Bible. xxxp

But the Disney princess dolls (do such things exist? probably)

Have you been in a store with a toy section? Ever?

But a robot that turns into a dinosaur or a car? Nah. I can't say the Transformers promote violence any more than I'd say Barbie promotes mashing together invisible genitals with Ken.

this is absurd if you've ever seen a transformers cartoon or movie (also many of the toys come with laser guns) but god i would love it if literally all the transformers did was turn into cars and drive around

like if the autobots and decepticons were just rival taxi services

I'll back up again. The movies and comics, the cartoons, they all give you instruction as to what to do with the toys. But the toys themselves, which preceded the movies et al., are mostly spaceman innocent, I think. But the Barbies, even before the indoctrination of movies, books, cartoons, etc, are innately offensive to me.

xpost I swear to god, as a parent of 5.5 year old and 8 year old girls, I haven't stepped foot in so much as a Toys R Us since they were in diapers, and that was always for ... diapers. Actually, I guess that was Babies R Us. Anyway, for all you future parents worried, it's amazingly easy to avoid exposing your kids to a lot of shit. Step one: don't go to toys stores that sell the stuff. Step two: don't buy them shit like Barbies and Transformers or whatever.

i'm completely on board with "mass produced gender stereotype toys are all bullshit" rhetoric, full stop.

what transformers et.al. bring to the table is a continuing universe of sci-fi fan fic and endless comic book ADVENTURES whereas most disney princess stories tend to be about getting married and ruling the kingdom peacefully after your one adventure which is early brainwashing that women get one go at fun but boys can have fun forevvveeerrrrrrrrrr. cars gets sequels, how much you wanna bet we've seen the last of merida?

Like, the Disney princess begin with the movies, so when kids play with the spin-off toys, they largely adhere to the plot of the movies. Which can be problematic, too, but I find it to be less insidious that flight attendant Barbie getting dressed to go clubbing with her buddies.

My wife's mom wanted to promote a healthy and equal view of gender, so she gave her daughters tonka trucks. Which the girls then piloted with Barbies.

Merida is the featured character in the current Disney on Ice tour, so there's that.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/4e1176ea018140950aee88f52ecc3129/tumblr_mhc1rwj3Un1r7cp63o1_500.jpg

My daughter was Merida for Halloween. She was not the only one.

pic is less "princess" and more female protags generally tho

Going back to what jon was saying re: La Luna, I too found it very moving, but it was almost entirely due to the visuals and sound. it was just sumptuous to experience. brave had some of that too, in merida's hair, the blue sprites that made the baby whisper sound, etc. but La Luna was just denser with it.

I do find myself in some of these movies getting almost overwhelmed by their preturnatural beauty. Story almost has nothing to do with it. Factor in looking over and seeing your kid wide-eyed, in awe ...

reddening otm, i guess i should have been more clear that it was the visual aspect that i loved most about La Luna. also, otm, re: how gorgeous Brave could be. the rendering of the fur in the horses and bears was great. even in my least favorite Pixar flicks, they make me really happy to have a big HD screen to watch 'em on.

La Luna definitely was beautiful. The story and the visuals reminded me of Maurice Sendak for some reason.

Even if I've seen a movie a dozen times, looking over and watching my kids see it for the first time is almost better than me seeing it for the first time. My wife has had to explain to them the concept of "tears of happiness." Can only imagine how their rapidly developing brains process these hyper-detailed, neo-realistic movies. It's been really hard explaining CG to them.

"Is Harry Potter flying on a broomstick for real?"

"Well, no."

"So how did they do that?"

"They used computers to make a broom for him to fly on."

"So is he really flying?"

"Well, no, not really. It's just an illusion."

"How about the actor playing Harry Potter? Is he real?"

"He is in this scene, but sometimes he is not."

"How about the actor playing Dobby?"

"There is no actor playing Dobby."

And so on.

one thing i'll say is that i saw the movie in a shitty theater and that the visual nuances were lost as the film was slightly out of focus. i'd probably be a lot more forgiving if i coulda just focused on the pretty pretty hair

meanwhile, in the good(?) news dept: does it seem like pixars writing department have swapped over to work at disney, where they are glitching the disney princess motif with gender bending video game characters and good dialogue and stuff in wreck-it ralph?

The other good news, after Monsters U this summer, original Good Dinosaur next year, followed by another sequel (Dory), but then followed (supposedly) by:

The Good Dinosaur will be followed by a film titled Inside Out "about the inside of a girl's mind."[45][46]

In April 2012, Pixar announced their intention to create a film centered on the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos[47] and to be directed by Lee Unkrich.[48]

Both of which have prima facia non-sequel potential.

lol, disney certainly tried but they got shot in the face
http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2013/05/17/disney-stands-behind-sexy-new-brave.html?page=all
http://www.avclub.com/articles/disney-quietly-nixes-its-gussied-up-version-of-mer,97793/

and once more for those who were unclear on the "disney princess" slam
http://jezebel.com/disney-pulls-sexy-merida-makeover-after-public-backlash-494274022

on that jezebel site, a lot of the changes can be explained by the difference between animated and static images - you don't want all the gloss and detail when you have to animate 25 frames every second.

also, disney appears to have removed merida rather than reverted the style, i just don't see her on that page. (that buggy, processor intensive page)

a lot of those changes can be explained by hypersexualizing images for children but hey whatevs

Verrrrry excited about Inside Out.
Every aspect of the character design for Merida was painstakingly thought out so to have Disney just do that had me smh

Well, the story should at least make it clear that Merida's not "another Disney Princess", if Disney themselves consider her outside the range.

Koogs - you are probably, like me, getting shunted over to the UK version.

yeah, i'm not saying it's not a travesty.

and actually, looking at the two merida images at the top (and not the traditional cell animated images at the bottom) the good merida is actually more complex than the made-over version, because she's 3d modelled and lit realistically. plus she has hairy hair.

Andrew: the point is that Disney very much intended her to be "another Disney Princess" and would certainly have pigeonholed her that way had there not been sufficient public backlash to point to diminished returns on that marketing plan

instead we get "I AM STRONG AND I'M A PRINCESS" which makes it pretty clear that Diz knows they have an image problem with this stuff so Meridia is gonna get called on to do damage control and maybe see if there's folks willing to buy into that message.

Well if you want to separate out intentions, then Disney meant to do that now, and may have meant a to do so a year ago, but Pixar meant to do something else, and succeeded - hence the public backlash.

I don't agree with your 'pretty clear', but that's probably you know pretty clear.

Disney meant to make money on this and whether they make money with good ideas or bad ones doesn't seem to matter to much to them.
Pixar's intent, as I argued at length above, seems notably more watered down than it usually is but that's open to interp.
Public backlash is a delicate thing; the nosejobbed heroine from the princess and the frog was added to the harem as an overidealized vision and there was notably less hue and cry.

Anyways, now there's this:
http://video.disney.com/watch/merida-i-am-a-princess-4dc2af5d4e65d49a9e9eda76
which is hardly a subtle shift of messaging from what they'd been putting out there; this looks like a nike jr. commercial.
good on them for finally recognizing they're dragging a dying stereotype but it's notable that princesses are still fully able bodied and skinny according to that video.

You don't think Disney is aware that the Princess line has an image problem?

I may be misinterpreting - are you saying that Project Merida from the start is an effort from Disney to create a new type of Princess?

no, not at all. i think they tried to fit her into the princess fold, noted the backlash and figured she'd be more helpful (read profitable) as a tonic.