In regard to the plot holes mentioned above, I think that:You’re completely right about Merida being stupid about her wish, but I suppose without that you don’t really have much of a movie. As for turning into a bear, it doesn’t seem like that was really a side-effect so much as a combination of the witch’s obsession with bears and a too vague wish (Give me the strength of 10 men! Change my mother!).
As for the tapestry, I thought the same thing until you see that Merida fixing the tapestry doesn’t actually change her mother back. It seems that what was really necessary was for a more metaphorical mending of the relationship, which is what happens when Merida finally admits that it’s her fault and that her mother has always been there for her.
Now see, I thought the tapestry was a red-herring for the what was to be mended, and that somehow the clansman-turned-bear from long ago and the family rift was the bit that actually needed to be mended. But when the clansman-turned-bear died, all we got was a meaningful gaze from his blue ghost and then he wandered off.
You make a point there, AB, but it still doesn’t explain why Merida acted as she did:
[spoiler]Merida still believes that physically mending the tapestry is what fixes the spell, so why does she leave the room? It’s only later than we find the mending is meant in the emotional sense, but she doesn’t know that.
It’s suggested by her actions that she needs to put the tapestry atop her mother to fix the spell, but that’s never hinted at before that moment.
Furthermore, why does her mother change HER heart? During the speech scene, her mother suddenly decides it’s okay for Merida to follow her heart… but there’s no reason for her to make that decision at that point. If anything, Merida has at that point earned even less trust and respect.[/spoiler]
Having had an evening to think about it, I’ve changed my mind; actually, it’s worse than Cars. (Cars 2 is still far, far worse, overall.) Cars was boring and basically a ripoff of “Doc Hollywood,” but it at least had a coherent story that went from A to B in a logical fashion. Brave stumbled, logically, all over the place.
And for all the fuss people make about Merida’s hair, it wasn’t really all that interesting as a visual peice. Dark castles and huts has been done before.
Indeed, if you think about it, what’s neat about Pixar movies is not that they’re at the cutting edge of animation, though of course they are but Dreamworks et al. have caught up there. What’s visually cool about them is that their movies have a new and coherent LOOK to them every time:
- Finding Nemo was entirely underwater
- A Bug’s Life was entirely from the perspective of the very small
- Toy Story was of course mostly within the “landscape” of places toys would be, with beds as mountains and such
- The Incredibles had a cool James Bond tribute thing going on, splitting its time between a retro-60’s urban setting and a Dr. No - style jungle fortress
- Ratatouille was in Paris
- Cars, at least, had a very realistic vision of the American Southwest
- WALL-E had two distinct sci-fi settings
And so on. But “Brave” was set in a forest and a castle. We’ve seen this before; it was called “How To Train Your Dragon,” and actually now that I think about it, it was also called “Tangled” and “Shrek.”
If I hadn’t seen the title cards, but seen the movie, I’d have assumed it was a movie by a lesser studio, like Dreamworks or Sony or Universal. And that kind of insults them because the fact is that the other studios have now produced films that are better than some Pixar offerings:
Dreamworks has “Kung Fu Panda”
Sony has “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”
Universal has “Despicable Me”
Paramount has “Rango”
So I’m pretty disappointed. I was hoping this movie would be a huge step up from the Cars 2 debacle. It was pretty dull. I’d never have to see it again, really.
I thought the same thing, Cookies. The only thing about that would have been
[spoiler]if repairing the stone somehow ‘fixed’ the demon bear, it would have reduced the threat of her mother becoming permanently a bear.
I did find the whole spell to be needlessly vague. As if they couldn’t think of a more clever way to have a trickster turn it on them. At least the 10 men thing made sense.
[/spoiler]
And in response to RickJay’s comment about the visuals — I care little about the hair (it actually made her face look odder to have the hair so realistic) or the buildings. It was the landscapes that did it for me.
she has to simultaneously fix the tapestry and keep her father from killing her mother. If she doesn’t ride off, the men will get to her mother and kill her. She also seems to believe that the tapestry must be thrown over her mother to make the spell work (which makes some sense in the “way magic works in fairy tales” way).
I liked the “no handsome prince” part of the deal. It was really nice to have a story with a female lead an no romance.
I didn’t think there was a physical mending that needed to take place, but a cultural/emotional one.
I was perceiving the tapestry and the stone as merely metaphors and that the same adventure/struggle would resolve both.
Mostly, but not entirely.
Yes but the Short that ran before *Cars *2 was one of Pixar’s best.
Cars 2 was mostly a marketing decision. Disney has been doing great with the Princesses, but how about little boys? Well, little boys LOVE the Cars films. Yes, I didn’t care for them that much nor did you, but we aren’t the market the films are aimed for.
Back to* Brave-* altho I had a little problem understanding the dialog at times, the accents were authentic and the film- overall- was great. As** Chronos** sez, the landscapes were lovely (actually the landscapes in Cars 1 were pretty damn good too, the best thing about the film, imho).
Oh, and from what I heard, Pixar absolutely knows dudes want to see more *Incredibles, *but so far they can’t find a storyline that they think does justice.
My thoughts on a couple of the why questions above.
[spoiler]Yeah, you may question why she brought mom into the castle in the first place (though I’m fine with it just being because she’s afraid to separate since mom is starting to forget herself and if Merida isn’t there to snap her back she might wander, in full bear mode, into danger.
Or maybe it just because Merida pays so little attention to the girly arts that she has no idea where mom keeps her tapestry making stuff and needed mom to show her.
I’m sure, though, that if I were less entertained overall that would bother me more.
But there’s no mystery why, once that happened she had to ride the horse out. It was because she had to stop dad from killing mom.
I don’t know that there is any hint that she thinks she has to put the tapestry on her mom to end the spell, just that she was there with it, mom was vaguely injured in a fight and it was a comforting thing to do while demonstrating that she had done (what she thought) had to be done to end the spell.[/spoiler]
One thing I noticed in the archery contest trailer was how things were gotten right during Merida’s slo-mo shot namely, the fletching cut on her cheek and the arrow flexing sideways as it leaves the bow. I don’t know a whole lot about archery, but those, I knew were right. Curious, I looked it up and this guy says those were done right, and more besides, like her freeing her back, not her arms, from the dress’ confinement and not gripping the bow tightly until at full draw. Furthermore, the three sons all made mistakes beginners make in real life. “I see every one of these things on the range every single week,” he comments.
I thought it was neat that the queen was able to wield power in her own distinctive way.
Unfortunately, the splitting of the arrow was debunked on Mythbusters. The back and forth wavering of the arrow prevented it from being able to split through another arrow.
Especially a Scot.
Ah, but are you champing? 
Hating three of the last five means you must have hated Either Wall-E, Up, or Toy Story 3. I can see not loving them but now how any could be hated.
I don’t want to mess with quoted spoilers, I want to say that 1) I agree with the minor plot hole that was left unexplained that you mention here. 2) Otherwise I disagree on almost every level.
The plot is simple in execution, but deeply complex in implication.
Consider, who is the villain in the story? Well, antagonist.
Merida is the villain of the story. She is an unapologetic spoiled brat and what fixes he spell is not the tapestry, or the other bear, it’s her taking responsibility for how badly she has fucked everything up. How many times does she say the phrase “it’s not my fault” even before the whole bear thing. The story is about taking responsibility for your own actions and growing up to be a responsible adult. The whole marriage betrothal thing was a side issue in order to set things in motion, but every single problem in the movie is created by Merida’s own selfishness. She is even explicitly paralleled with the evil brother who turns himself into a bear and tears the country apart due to his own selfishness. She avoided his fate in the end by owning up to her mistakes. That is the fate that she needed to change.
Who is the hero?
It isn’t Merida. The case could be made that it’s the mom who at every turn is attempting to do the right thing and hold the new kingdom with its fragile alliances together and her horrible daughter is tearing it down because teenagers fucking suck. Her change of heart is also a side issue because it doesn’t really change anything, it just keeps everyone calm while she is able to figure out the whole bear problem.
But all of that is a side issue because the story isn’t about heroes and villains, it’s about parents and children and the transition from adolescence to adulthood and the pain that is caused by this transition to both parents and children. The whole evil bear thing is just a device to tell this other story.
In the end it is an significantly emotionally complex story about relationships between parents and children and growing up while taking responsibility for your choices with a lot of depth and complexity to the simple character story. You could not have introduced more plot without watering down the emotional weight of the mother/daughter relationship that is central to the story.
In terms of pure storytelling, this is probably the most interesting and rich story that Pixar has told since Toy Story.
Edit: I forgot about UP. UP was more emotionally complicated. But I don’t think there are any other contenders.
And thinking about it more while I really like How To Train Your Dragon they similarities are really really superficial. HTTYD is a hero quest story, which Brave is very much not. Brave flirts with the idea of the hero quest and then subverts it by having the hero, well see my last post. Brave has more in common with Catcher in the Rye than HTTYD. And comparing it to Tangled is an insult. Tangled was a mess of a movie that didn’t have any sense of tone or what it wanted to be or say. Shrek is a parody of hero quest movies so…I guess that makes it somewhat similar to HTTYD and Brave, but not really.
I thought it was good, but not a classic like the best Pixar movies. It seemed kind of shallow. I didn’t really get the thing with the sprites. I was for a moment awed by the scenery (in 2D) - that was at the boat dock when the ships were leaving at the end of the movie. It looked incredibly real. And of course the red curly hair was well done.
My kids (5 and 7) liked it, although the older one was a little scared during the climactic scene.
You really can’t rely on Mythbusters when it comes to anything weapons-related. You can split wooden arrows, you can tube aluminum and carbon fiber arrows. It happens all the time, it’s still a totally bitchin’ shot but it’s not at all unusual.
I shouldn’t have been so quick on the draw, I see that the Mythbusters test was quite specific about splitting an arrow dead-center from nock to tip like the old Errol Flynn shot.
That still seems weirdly specific and not entirely out of the realm of possibility to me but it’s not as outlandish a claim as I was thinking.
I find it interesting that a movie that is so much about the female experience…your relationship to your mother (and less to your father), the burden of female roles, what it means to be female, how much we as a society believe women are property to be controlled, is seen as shallow theming.
Ina time when the ability of women all over the world are having their ability to create their own destiny challenged, it seems like a very powerful theme.