Brave

In 2012, Pixar released Brave, directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, Pixar’s first female director. Starring Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, and Craig Ferguson, the film grossed $539 million. It ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, The Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Best Animated Feature and Best Animated Female, The Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and a Grammy for “Learn Me Right,” performed by Mumford & Sons and Birdy. It lost the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature to Wreck-it Ralph.

In the low middle ages, Merida (Macdonald) lives with her father King Fergus (Connolly) and mother Queen Elinor (Thompson) who wants her to marry the eldest son of the head of one of three neighboring clans. But Merida encounters a witch (Walters) in the forest and buys a spell hoping to change her mother’s mind on marriage. But it has unforeseen consequences and Merida must undo it before it becomes permanent.

The Tangled review mentioned how hair is the number one aspect to avoid in 3D animation. The Disney animators didn’t get the memo and neither did Pixar. In fact, they scrapped their entire code and rewrote it from the ground up, just to make sure Merida’s hair was perfect. Such attention to detail further shows why Pixar continues to be one of the greats of animation, even if some plots aren’t that great.

And the plot to this film is actually pretty good, focusing on familial love and repairing broken relationships between a mother and her daughter. In everything that happens with Merida being unwilling to marry for political reasons and Elinor constantly being exasperated with Merida’s adventurous spirit, the two reconciling and finding a way to compromise makes for a good resolution. And it shows how the two come to understand each other. Merida has to use the diplomacy she learned from her mother and Elinor has to rely on her strength as a bear. It shows how the two can use the qualities they don’t often show.

On the other hand, Merida is kind of a mashup of quite a few of the Disney princesses in terms of character. And there’s the flowing landscapes of Scotland. Or what little we see of them. Pixar really didn’t use the highlands to their advantage. We got some of it and we got a lot of forest and ancient ruins. But Scotland is much more than that and the films should really have shown off more than just a couple sequences. Sequences that were rushed to boot.

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