I’ve watched The Pixar Story twice on Netflix. I’m sort of an expert on Pixar, is what I mean.
So, I know things like: without Steve Jobs, Toy Story never would have happened. That Antz was a rip-off of A Bug’s Life, and not the other way around.
I also know that there’s going to be a Toy Story 4, which makes sense because Toy Story 3 is the highest grossing animated film of all time. Perhaps that was incentive for great patriarchs of American cinema Tom Hanks and Tim Allen to actually be involved in it. And frankly thank god because there’s nothing worse than a sequel where they replace a crucial character with a new actor and everyone pretends not to notice. It’s insulting, am I right?
(Hint: yes)
All of my bragging about knowledge that’s easily acquired through Wikipedia is leading up to some thoughts on Pixar’s latest, Brave. Brave is number one in the box office right now*, which means that I wasn’t the only one counting down the days on her little iCal until this movie came out (But, hopefully not the only one older than twelve).
There’s been a lot of hype about how Pixar is finally introducing a hero who’s not a boy and not a boy-crazy princess. To be fair, though, most of the Pixar protagonists have not been boys. They’ve been animals and/or inanimate objects somehow imparted with the ability to think and feel. Woody, Nemo, WALL-E, that ant from A Bug’s Life: not your typical heroes. The great thing about Pixar is that their movies are original. Generally unexpected. Outside the box.
Brave’s Merida is a fantastic heroine. She has great hair. An adorable accent that makes your heart melt when she says the word “fate.” She’s awesome at archery…maybe even better than Katniss Everdeen. But Brave doesn’t give her a chance to shine.
What happens in the movie is this: Merida wants her mom to stop telling her what to do, how to act, and who she should marry, so she seeks out the help of a witch. Somehow Merida’s excruciatingly vague wish to “change her mother” doesn’t work out. (How did that happen?!?!) So, with a bite of magic cake, her mother turns into a bear. Chaos ensues. Merida spends the remainder of the movie trying to change her mother back while hiding the fact from her father, who’s known to kill bears on sight since one ate his leg off years ago.
Though, on the surface, the mother-turning-into-a-bear plot twist feels enormously creative, it’s really just a way to spice up the beaten to death “I’m- an-independent-woman-who-doesn’t-want-an-arranged-marriage” premise. And, it’s not even a very creative one since fairytales where people are cursed into turning into animals are not exactly in short supply. Think ribbit.
Brave should be a story about how girls can have adventures, too. Instead, the movie felt a little bit like it was written by an emotionally fragile mother who’s just heard her daughter, in a hormonal rage, scream “I hate you” for the first time. It’s the movie equivalent of daydreaming about how if you were dead, then they’d be sorry. By the end of it, Mom and Merida reconcile and you’re left feeling like you should go and hug your mother, not go on a quest.
Which is a problem, since going on quests is clearly on the top of Merida’s bucket list. True she follows will-o-the-wisps to a witch’s lair and that’s adventurous and all, but as a result, she totally fucks up and spends the rest of the movie trying to fix her mess. What message does that send? Assert your independence and you’ll ruin your family? As a result Merida never really strays from her home in the Scottish foothills. For someone who just wants her freedom, Merida is very clearly tied to one place.
Also troubling is Merida’s lack of ass-kicking. In no way do her archery skills save the day. Yes, in one scene she gallops through the forest on horseback, shooting targets with military precision. And, yes, in another scene she out-shoots the three goons vying for her hand, but she never, like, pierces somebody in the throat with an arrow. That’s what I want to see happen. The one time where she gets into serious trouble and tries to kill her bear attacker with arrows, it doesn’t work, and she has to be saved by her mother-bear.
By the end of the movie, normalcy is restored. Not much has changed for Merida except that the three goons from neighboring kingdoms will have to court her, not win her. But, it’s still pretty clear that she’ll eventually have to marry one of them and rub his feet like a good little wifey. So, by the end of the movie, Merida hasn’t won her freedom. She’s just delayed imprisonment for a few more years.
*This was true when I started writing. Days of procrastinating later, Ted is now number one.
ishouldhaveablog 