Cartoon Corner- Brave

Originally posted at the DL July 2015
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So this rewatch, unlike most which are just me going "I totally want to jabber about this thing", was inspired by conversation.  I found I was having an uncommonly low opinion of the movie.

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This rewatch has only lowered my opinion.

So when you're basing your movie on a relationship, that is, of two distinct characters resolving differences and coming to a new understanding and sense of togetherness and stuff, as an audience I need to feel that both characters have a valid viewpoint.  Otherwise, when they compromise and come to a middle ground in the end, it doesn't ring true.  This is basically what I was talking about in Inside Out; the movie centered too much on the protagonist such that her foil wasn't presented as sympathetically as she needed to be.

So for this rewatch I figured something like this is why I remembered not really clicking with Merida and Elinor's relationship (in a movie where the Mother/Daughter dynamic is kinda the point).  And it was.

But what I didn't tune into the first time around is the degree this happens.  Elinor isn't just presented too much from Merida's viewpoint, she's... outright abusive.  Like, not just tyrannical.  A lot of their interaction int eh early going is Elinor as a tutor, which is fine.  But a princess must be perfect?  A princess must wear an outfit she demonstrably cannot move or breathe in?  ANd everything else that says basically "a princess must be insufferably feminine and without a will of her own"?  Yeah.  Abuse.  I can only read it that way.  Sorry.

and where the last Pixar movie was pretty good about having moments where our maligned non-focus main character got to show some positive traits and win the focus character over, in this one we're... apparently supposed to conclude that Merida was being selfish and was the one mostly in the wrong?  No.  Sorry.

So yeah the core dynamic of the movie is just a complete no sell for me.  We can intellectualize this as Elinor trying to teach power through femininity as it were, but that's not how it's presented.  She kinda sorta models it, but there's two main flaws here.  a) she never makes any visible attempt in the movie to reason with Merida over it, to explain why she should know these things.  They're just a pile of duties and if any of them are done even the slightest bit wrong Merida will have caused the downfall of her entire civilization.  b) Merida is generally presented with a very modern sensibility, and since the movie is heavily framed from her point of view the (highly anachronistic) medieval setting and the realities thereof are things that only exist in the abstract.  They don't make sense in this movie despite nominally taking place during them (probably).  So yeah.  A desperate act stemming from a lifetime of abuse isn't the crime the movie frames it as I don't think.

When we take all that away there's... not really a lot of movie left.  Some Scottish Hijnks.  THey're.. there.  And the triplets.  Scottish Huey, Dewy, and Louis!  They can stay.  I do like how the mystical elements are omnipresent but have a very light touch.

Rating- 4/10.  Yeah I dunno.  Um... I can't say it's hard to watch really.  Moves at a fine pace.  But yeah the beginning stuff is very distracting now.