Brave -- Pixar's 2012 release

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."