“I wish they would have had Merida at an older age. A fifteen year old girl not wanting to be forced into marriage isn’t really so strange, in fact it would have been stranger if she had wanted to be in an arranged marriage. There was nothing risky or refreshing about it. It would have really been great to see a full grown woman have the choice to take or leave a relationship, and in the end feel complete without one.”
You mean like The Princess Diaries 2?
Actually, historically, women of noble blood were betrothed at extremely young ages, if not at birth. Most noble women were married off at puberty. 15 is a pretty late age for a noble woman to not be married. She’d almost be considered an old maid at that age.
Posts tagged brave
“I’m a girl and I never noticed that Pixar had never done a female lead until Brave. And you know what? I don’t/didn’t care. I know some people get so uppity about stuff like that, but I could really care less. Pixar has made some of the most brilliant movies and I can relate to them all, even without a female lead.”
It’s fine that OP does not have a preference for the gender of a lead character, but I think that OP’s assertion that their gender doesn’t matter is a bit narrow-minded. Since we are in a very technologically advanced age, we consume hours and hours of media daily and it teaches and socializes us. A lot of what we see we internalize in our subconscious which guides a lot of our actions and thoughts without us knowing. Our views on gender are already very skewed due to stereotyping, marginalization, and just plain lack of representation.
It’s great that you don’t have a preference for a character that you admire, but do not deny that there is an obvious bias.
“Pixar is starting to become the money making corporation that I hate: No vision, no direction, and just making movies to make money. Look at Cars 2 and how Brave seems like a mix of “How to train your dragon” and “Braveheart”. They couldn’t even use an original name for the movie, they just cut out the heart, the one thing they need more than ever now”
I can agree on the Cars 2 part, but let’s look at the synopsis for Braveheart, shall we?
William Wallace, a commoner, unites the 13th Century Scots in their battle to overthrow English rule.
And the synopsis for Brave
Determined to make her own path in life, Princess Merida defies a custom that brings chaos to her kingdom. Granted one wish, Merida must rely on her bravery and her archery skills to undo a beastly curse.
Is the Princess not content to live by her predicted path trope old? Yeah - just like nearly every other story.
And for How To Train Your Dragon;
A hapless young Viking who aspires to hunt dragons becomes the unlikely friend of a young dragon himself, and learns there may be more to the creatures than he assumed.
Those all sound rather different to me, but you saw that they had towering fathers, black animals, and Scottish settings (Or vaguely - HTTYD takes place in the fictional land of Berk, which is I think less Scottish and more Scandinavian?) and immediately thought Brave was a hybrid.
“Pixar is starting to become the money making corporation that I hate: No vision, no direction, and just making movies to make money. Look at Cars 2 and how Brave seems like a mix of “How to train your dragon” and “Braveheart”. They couldn’t even use an original name for the movie, they just cut out the heart, the one thing they need more than ever now”
What are you even talking about? lol! Just because “Brave” - a story of a young princess questing for help from a shady witch so she doesn’t have to be wed to someone she doesn’t even know due to tradition and as a result, gets herself in oodles of trouble and has to break a curse - is set in Scotland doesn’t mean it has anything to do with “Braveheart” - a story about an underdog Scottish army taking on the larger, stronger, and heavily armed England. See, I really can’t even see where you’d connect the two. Celtic people are tough as shite, get over it, haha! And as far as “How to Train Your Dragon”, again, I can’t see the correlation. Maybe only because they’re CGI. But then that goes to say that “Brave” is just like “Tangled” too, right?
I do agree that “Cars 2” wasn’t up to par. Then again, not many sequels are.
tomorrow-will-bring-them-true:
“Pixar is starting to become the money making corporation that I hate: No vision, no direction, and just making movies to make money. Look at Cars 2 and how Brave seems like a mix of “How to train your dragon” and “Braveheart”. They couldn’t even use an original name for the movie, they just cut out the heart, the one thing they need more than ever now”
I only agree with Cars 2, that was made for money. But I don’t agree with Brave. At all. Sure, it is placed in Scotland and involves fighting. Those are basically the only similarities. I mean, have you SEEN the trailer? It is nothing about a group of rebels involving Mel Gibson. And I see no dragons in this movie. It is about a princess who wants to break from the tradition and participate in a tradition that for so long only allowed men to compete in. She wants to fight. She wants to prove herself. She is 1 of the 2 princesses that knowingly goes out into danger. I can’t even see anything about this movie that suggests it’s only about money making. It’s about visuals, it’s about telling a story that hasn’t been told.
“Pixar is starting to become the money making corporation that I hate: No vision, no direction, and just making movies to make money. Look at Cars 2 and how Brave seems like a mix of “How to train your dragon” and “Braveheart”. They couldn’t even use an original name for the movie, they just cut out the heart, the one thing they need more than ever now”
LEST WE FORGET, THAT OUR PRECIOUS MOVIE MAKING STUDIOS ARE ACTUALLY STUDIOS, AND CORPORATIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE. THEY HAVE TO MAKE SALES, OR THEY GET TOASTED.
I also think its extremely presumptuous to criticize Brave when the movie has not even been released yet, and call Pixar out on a project that has been in development since BEFORE How to Train Your Dragon by Brenda Chapman. When has Pixar NOT been a money making corporation, movies are stories that are designed to bring profit, and are obviously not done for free and merchandising is one of their biggest incomes in the case of Cars.
Please try to remember that Pixar, like any other studio in history has fluctuation and sees times of ups and downs as any business would. They are not a god like entity, they are not exempt from management changes and a moving of employees in and out, because businesses transform constantly. It’s just the natural process of being as large and as powerful as Pixar has become. Truthfully, being at the ‘top’ of the animation heap, there’s no where to go but down and we’ve seen that switch happen in the past when Disney Animation Studios was surpassed by Pixar in the late 90s/early 2000s as being “the elite company”.
Just because that Pixar might be undergoing the same process is not something to criticize and jeer at them for, as we all know that there are still hundreds of talented and dedicated artists there ready to make amazing art. The main thing at the end of the day to tell a good story and in so doing, make a good profit that will keep their business as it is.
By presuming such a natural course as some kind of personal gross betrayal is a bit far in my opinion. I love Pixar, and we should all hope that if Brave doesn’t go well, there will be some serious revision to the departments and a call to tweak a few things so that they will grow to be better in time, even if that means giving up their “top studio crown”.
