Brave

MacGuffin · April 24, 2012, 08:02:23 AM

New Trailer:

polkablues · June 24, 2012, 08:46:04 PM

This was great. Fuck the haters. If it was regular Disney instead of Pixar, with all the expectations that entails, people would be hailing it as the best thing they've done in 50 years. "The Bear and the Bow" was a way better title. I have other thoughts, but so little time. More on this later if I get around to it (I likely won't, so savor this post).

matt35mm · June 24, 2012, 10:03:24 PM

I agree! I had medium-level-expectations going in, but it just totally won me over. Unfortunately, every Pixar movie makes will be held up to their previous work, and this doesn't shatter the Earth like a few of their previous ones did, but it was a really fucking good movie. I thought I knew exactly what it was going to be, and it wasn't that, so it was a surprising movie as well as a well-told story.

modage · June 24, 2012, 11:41:41 PM

Disagree. Beautiful looking obviously but very generic & disjointed story. Of course it's waaaaay better than "Cars 2." Unfortunately it's probably not better than "Cars 1" (or anything else Pixar have done.)

Quote from: modage on November 07, 2010, 04:53:35 PM
John Ratzenberger as Rally the alligator

Whatever happened to this?

polkablues · June 25, 2012, 12:24:03 AM

Disjointed? I don't follow. In my opinion, it was laser focused on its themes, and it was all in all better than quite a few Pixars (Cars 1 & 2, Bug's Life, Monsters Inc). It's mid-level Pixar, on a par with Up or Ratatouille.

matt35mm · June 25, 2012, 12:51:12 AM

I can see why people would say it feels disjointed or uneven, because it's true that the story starts off in one direction and then takes a few unexpected twists that seem to come out of nowhere, and the audience can potentially get lost at those moments. However, those moments excited me because I realized that it wasn't going to be what I thought it was going to be.

It is resolutely a fairy tale, though, and what some people might call cliche or generic about the film, I'd call the paradigms of fairy tales and I liked that it stuck to those. It's not commenting on fairy tales or playing with fairy tales--it's an honest-to-goodness fairy tale. And as a fairy tale, it was well-told and I was swept up.

picolas · June 25, 2012, 01:12:41 AM

spoilers

the narrative logic is pretty flimsy a lot of the time. like how merida figures out she needs to knit the family crest back together. there was no reason for her to be so certain that was the answer. what if she hadn't broken the crest? how would the rhyme apply to anything? and there was no reason for the mom-bear to come back to the castle with her. she could've stayed a safe distance away in the woods while merida went and repaired the crest. which is ultimately what happened. mom-bear left the castle almost as quickly as she arrived and did nothing to help with the crest. and how did the dad never notice his wife was missing? weren't they in the woods for a day?

other little moments that bugged me:
- when the spell isn't broken for no apparent reason and then they wait a minute and it is. there should've been some other realization or little thing she had to do.. maybe it was to realize her love for her mom but that was never really made explicit as the ultimate cure..
- when merida is trying to escape the scary bear and there seems to be no escape and then she just happens to jump high enough.. there's nothing organic or character driven going on.. it's just sheer jumping. what if the mother had grabbed her giant hair or something?

this is not to say that i sat with my arms folded, stamping my foot or anything. i enjoyed most of the movie. the hair alone is amazing to watch. and the child version of merida is one of the most adorable pixar characters ever. it's just shoddy narrative work. Especially for pixar.

i'm hugely excited for that john c reilly videogame movie. it may just be all the videogame cameos though.. BOWSER is Actually in that movie! and a Pac-Ghost...

modage · June 25, 2012, 08:12:13 AM

Disjointed yeah because it basically takes 45 minutes to get to what the movie's actually about.

Spoilers

AND there was no reason Merida couldn't have told her father about what had happened since he would have seen pretty quickly (as she did) that her mom was the bear. Yes, he lost his leg etc. but he was a reasonable guy.

Also: no one seemed concerned when the three kids turned into bears. SO how did they undo their spell?

End spoilers

Quote from: polkablues on June 25, 2012, 12:24:03 AM
It's mid-level Pixar, on a par with Up or Ratatouille.

This is fucking crazy. On so many levels.

Pubrick · June 25, 2012, 09:26:13 AM

That bear thing better not be a major spoiler.

Just cos you hate good movies don't mean you gotta ruin it for errbody.

polkablues · June 25, 2012, 01:30:23 PM

MASSIVE SPOILER

There seems to be a lot of confusion about how the curse was broken. The important point is that Merida only assumed that "mend the bond" referred to the tapestry. The reason her mom didn't change back right away was because that was incorrect. The tapestry was a red herring; it wasn't until she actually mended the bond with her mother, you know, with emotions and stuff, that the curse was lifted.

Everybody go back and re-read the second paragraph of Matt's last post. He's spot on.

picolas · June 25, 2012, 02:26:53 PM

SPOILERS

ysee THAT makes perfect sense. but it was poorly communicated. maybe if it had been like a beauty and the beast type sequence where the transformation occurs right after "i love you" and it's all floaty and magical. i dunno..

modage · June 25, 2012, 02:36:45 PM

Spoils but who cares?

Yeah, that's what I assumed to begin with. But then how did her brothers get changed back? Where is their emotional arc?

matt35mm · June 25, 2012, 02:45:09 PM

SPOILERS

The kids ate the same cake that had the same spell. I don't really see that as any sort of logical problem.

BUT I will grant that, as far as I could tell, there was no need for mama bear to come back to the castle, except to create some tension in the story. It doesn't bother me that much, but it's definitely a legitimate criticism.

modage · June 25, 2012, 04:20:36 PM

SPOILS

I know the kids at the cake. But how did they get changed BACK to humans at the end and why was mom being a bear the entire dramatic arc of the film but kids being turned into bears was just an excuse for comedy? It didn't make sense. Why wasn't anyone concerned that THEY would stay bears forever? AND if her resolution of the relationship with her mother (which had been strained) was what turned her mother back to human, what turned the boys back to human since there was no thematic/dramatic thing for them to resolve?

polkablues · June 25, 2012, 04:57:03 PM

I'm trying to find a way to answer your question without my response being in all caps. So I will just take a deep, calming breath, and suggest that perhaps they didn't need a whole separate solution to change the kids back because their predicament was a byproduct of the same goddamn curse.