BRAVE

BRAVE
Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman
Written by Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman and Irene Mecchi
Voices by Kelly McDonald, Emma Thompson and Billy Connolly

Princess Merida: If you had a chance to change your fate, would you?

Not surprisingly in the least, Pixar’s 13th animated feature, BRAVE, is breathtaking from the very beginning. The sprawling Scottish highlands are already beautiful in their natural state but when Pixar uses their imagination and technical ability to recreate something, that place is reborn anew on screen. Ordinarily, they have the same ability to reinvigorate even the oldest of stories and this time around, they take aim at the very familiar princess archetype and while they do make BRAVE into an altogether compelling and rousing coming of age tale, I’m not sure I would call it an altogether brave effort.

Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly McDonald, who replaced Reese Witherspoon when she couldn’t do it, thank God) has always been more interested in playing with swords instead of playing with boys. Her father, King Fergus (Billy Connolly), encourages her while her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), strives every day to make her into a proper princess. In order to maintain the order of the land, Merida must marry one of the first born princes from the neighboring kingdoms, but Merida is adamant about not wanting to be any part of this. In fact, this is what Merida is best at, knowing what she doesn’t want as opposed to knowing what she does. This is why, when she pays a mysterious (and hilarious) witch to change her fate, she isn’t the least bit specific about how exactly she would like it to be changed. And so it is altered, but the question becomes, is this new path any better than the old one she was on or is it actually worse? And worse still, can Merida even make it back to her true path now that she’s embarked on this one?

BRAVE is efficiently told without a trace of fat to be found. And while there are no unnecessary distractions as a result, the whole thing feels a tad rushed and bit slight considering the pedigree putting it out there. That said, Pixar’s best efforts (especially for a film that changed directing hands, and subsequently changed direction drastically, half way through) do elevate BRAVE far past its minor shortcomings to be extremely enjoyable and exciting. Merida should stand strong and proud in the long line of great Pixar characters. She shows us and herself that our fates are living and breathing inside of us at all times; we need only be brave enough to see them and embrace them.

Be sure not to miss Black Sheep's interview with BRAVE director, Mark Andrews.

Black Sheep Interviews Mark Andrews

PIXAR, THE BRAVE.
An interview with BRAVE director, Mark Andrews

Who would have ever thought that the studio who brought you rats in kitchens, robots in space and monsters in closets would be considered brave for telling a princess story? Yet, here we are. Pixar Animation Studios is set to release their 13th feature length animated film, BRAVE, this month, and all anyone can seem to focus on is the fact that for the first time in Pixar history, the protagonist is a girl.

“It is weird,” BRAVE director, Mark Andrews, tells me when I ask him if the attention his main character’s gender is garnering, is at all strange to him. “It’s not like we have a big dry erase board that says, ‘Pixar films until 2025: Girl picture, giraffe picture, something in Saudi Arabia!’ If we focused on that aspect, on marketing, on what we haven’t done, then we would be playing to that instead of playing to the strengths of the character and the story.”

These particular strengths are what Pixar has come to be known for and this can be at least in part attributed to their incredibly organic attention to detail. “We are more focused on building something from the ground up instead of hitting some bar or some expectation,” Andrews tells me of the Pixar philosophy, when we meet at Toronto’s Casa Loma, during the BRAVE press tour. “We’re still very much in the canon of Pixar, which is to say you’re going to get something where you don’t really know what to expect, but trust us, its gonna be good.”

The film had just screened, to great fanfare, for Toronto audiences the night before. Naturally, Andrews wore a kilt to the event. In what is now a great Pixar tradition, a number of the film’s animators, along with Andrews, spent a couple of weeks in and around the highlands of Scotland to take in the scenery. Andrews considers this research pilgrimage to be invaluable if you want to get out of your head. “You have to go, you have to touch everything to get here,” Andrews motions toward his heart at this point. “And once I get here, then I can get it on to a page or into a painting or tell somebody else about it because I can give them these details to hold on to. You get to the character of it all.”

Andrews, hard at work

The character everyone is talking about is Merida, a red-haired fireball of a character, as bullheaded as she is fearless and forward thinking. Not only is Merida, voiced in the film by BOARDWALK EMPIRE's Kelly McDonald, the first Pixar girl but she’s also a princess at that. “Disney’s done the princess, y’know, a lot,” Andrews jokes boisterously. “We knew we had a princess. It serves the story and raises the stakes but we knew we were making an anti-princess. She’s everything a princess is not.”

Taking on a princess in a long line of princesses, while still making sure to make the character modern and relatable to today’s crowd, meant tweaking the formula a little. “Being a princess and being a woman are very different things. It’s not this old adage that you have to be saved, that you have to fall in love to be complete,” Andrews states with the pride of a father. “Merida’s not questing for happily ever after. She’s discovering who she is and how she fits into this world, on her own terms.”

Merida marches to her own beat

And so even though I began all of this by pointing out how odd it is that there is so much focus on Pixar first’s in BRAVE (add first fairy tale and period piece to the list while you’re at it), as opposed to the film itself, Andrews is happy for the attention nonetheless. “I kinda like that everyone is gravitating to the specifics about the film so that when they see it, they’re going to see it’s so much more than just a picture about a girl.”

Trailer for Pixar's Brave

The teaser and poster for Pixar's much-anticipated 2012 release, Brave, just came out recently, seen first by audiences treated to 3D viewings of Cars 2.  Needless to say, this new film should act as a credible rebound from their latest effort.  The film alone seems to be a major departure for the animation studio, which made its success in showing that animated films don't have to be about princesses.  According to IMDb, the synopsis goes a little something like this:

Scottish princess, Merida, defies her parents by persuing an interest in archery, but inadvertently jeopardizes her father's kingdom in the process.

Directed by Oscar-nominee and short film director Mark Andrews (One Man Band) and penned by the film's erstwhile director Brenda Chapman (scribe of Cars and Beauty and the Beast) and Irene Mecchi.  Featuring voice acting by very-Irish Kelly Macdonald as Princess Merida alongside Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters, Craig Ferguson, and Billy Connolly.  Trailer below.

First Image of Pixar's "Brave"

The first image of Pixar's Brave has shown up over at Pixar Times.  Looks cool, huh?  And I should say, isn't this quite the brave move by Pixar?  From what I understand, Brave is going to be Pixar's first female-led animated film.  I'm not trying to create some feminist debate here, but Buzz, Woody, WALL-E, Remy, Carl, Marlin, Mike Wazowski, etc. were all men and all the stars of some of Pixar's biggest hits.  The closest the studio ever came to giving a female co-lead billing was Mrs. Incredible, who (by the good graces of Holly Hunter) carries the film.  But seriously...look at her awesome hair.

But nevermind that.  I'm very excited for this film.  Pixar hasn't released much information regarding this 2012 film, but what we do know is that it's being directed by another new-to-helming director, Mark Andrews.  Andrews was Oscar-nominated for the animated short One Man Band, and marks Pixar's third newbie director since the trifecta of Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, and John Lasseter helmed most of their 00s films.  But on board for the first time are two female scribes, in the duo of Emmy-nominee Irene Mecchi and Brenda Chapman, who became the first American female to direct an animated picture back in 1998 with The Prince of Egypt. 

As a rule, Pixar never let's me down at the movies.  I don't expect them to start here. Looking  good.  What do you think?


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