Brave (Page 1 of 3)

This should be interesting. I liked the film, and it's message. You rarely hear "daughters, your mother is sometimes right" from a story like this. Hell, the fact both parents are alive makes it an incredibly daring and subversive movie 

Thanks for another great show.

I was installing my sink when I heard Trey say Zack Snyder was the god of all storytelling. I washed my hands and rewound the podcast...OK, I HEARD THAT WRONG.   

Brave is a lot like The World's End and Prometheus, if you say you don't like it then people are compelled to inform you that it's your own fault for having your expectations too high, which is easily one of the weakest defenses for a bad movie.

Only up to the witch part of the episode, but while I agree the movie has problems, all the fixes mentioned fix the wrong thing. The Queen rules the kingdom. That's clear, based on what they show. All the men are idiots, if well meaning ones. It's not the daughter who's being sold to some prince, but the prince who is being forced to marry her. What should have been strengthened is the idea that the women do this to keep the kingdom in line, because nobody else can. The daughter being so wild should endanger the kingdom, her family and friends.

(in a way, the "no, you can't be as free as you want to be" message is no different from Monster University one of "no, you can't achieve your dreams no matter how hard you try")

Thanks for this guys

This is maybe my favorite episode you guys have ever done. Really, really good discussion and fixes. I was hoping you guys would get to this movie someday to talk about Pixar and their (supposed) method and etc and it was just great. I hope you guys get around to Wall*e before too long; I'd love to hear some of these discussions carried on a commentary for that movie.

Also, every time you put up a video of you guys doing a commentary I spend a good amount of time thinking that Brian looks exactly like Bradley Cooper to the point that it has actually made me think more highly of Bradley Cooper when I see him on tv.

So when are you going to do Frozen?

Yes, but can you sing the songs by heart? That is the question

Edit (post episode listening):

This was a great episode and one of my favorites in recent months (sorry, the whole Harry Potter thing burned me out. I'm sure I'm not the only one).

This movie is, well, like the Nitro character from Down Periscope. He is always short of wiring and uses himself to fix it, resulting in electrocution. I trust you see the connection

I really enjoyed the fixes postulated by everyone, and a tip of the hat to Jimmy B, for providing some exposition on Scotland. Really love the fact that this forum has people from around the world to provide that information. It gives a lot more depth than I think just rattling off facts would.

I think my biggest gripe with this movie is that it could have been so much more. That there was the potential for a very strong, positive message in here, ala Mulan, but without a coherent world, much less a story, the message feels kind of deus ex machina, except, via bear. There were so many missed opportunities here, that it is sad to think of them all.

A couple of fixes, just as sort of a stream of consciousness as I was listening and thinking:

The whole bear thing-this is kind of inspired by Tolkien who came up with ideas like the legends of elves and things, and the idea of a mythology that led to those legends. In a similar vain, why are there no bears in Scotland? Well, because the king slew them all, but to kill the last one was to bring a curse on the family, so then you have the journey to the witch and an explanation of how to end the curse. Work in progress, sorry.

Overall, good work, gents!

Last edited by fireproof78 (2014-06-05 03:30:20)

I have a lot of responses to this film and this podcast.  I'm going to break them up into a few post because they are largely separate thoughts. 

I have a big blind spot for this movie.  First, I'm an animation junkie and story, schmory this film looks great.  Like Pinocchio, the flaws of the story get a huge pass from me because of how damn good it looks.

My blind spot is widened by the fact that as father of a young daughter, I am starved for stories to show her that she likes that feature women with agency.  This is a mainstream action story for children that has a young woman as the hero and her relationship with her mother at the center.  The value of these things cannot be understated. 

Yes, they meet in the middle despite Merida being entirely right but what my daughter takes away from the movie is that Merida is a badass who trained to become excellent with a weapon.

So, for these reasons I am too close to the sun.  Y'all seem convinced that this isn't a just a flawed movie but a bad one.  I want to push against that assessment hard but I think I may be too close to the sun on this one.

Last edited by Isaac (2014-06-06 22:59:47)

I think Brave's flaws are due to the fact that Pixar now makes Disney animated features, and Disney cartoons are clearly toy commercials first and stories second, right?  The Bear and Bow version of the film was probably a better story, but the job this movie had was to create a character for the Disney Princess branding line that the feminists wouldn't raise a stink about.  I don't know nothing about nothing, but I'm guessing those corporate concerns were the problems that needed "fixed" in this movie.  The needle to thread would be that Merida had to be a "strong female character" without actually undermining the core ugly notions of being a princess.  Surely it also is why there are cute bear cubs. 

By the way, Teague, do you have links to the online comments you mentioned in the commentary?

Also, multiply this critique by a hundred and you arrive at Frozen.

I know you asked Doc, but I will throw this out there (especially being a recent movie I've watched with my daughters) is Mulan. When the panelists were discussing this, that was the first example that came to my mind, because it is one where we have a female lead who makes her own choices and has to weather the consequences.

Pocahontas (another recent watch) is a little bit a long the same lines, though I think Mulan is a better example. However, Pocahontas and Mulan have a similar break with tradition theme that demonstrates an interesting societal commentary as well as the free agency of female leads.

Brave, for all it's beauty, is a bit, bi-polar (for want of a better descriptor) in terms of Merida's agency and the message it communicates. In one instance, she is trying to control her fate and the other is she is trying to respect tradition (insert Fiddler on the Roof image here). As the panelists pointed out, it comes to a conclusion, but in a way that doesn't really flow with the rest of the story.

Frozen has a similar problem but the message comes through much more clearly, even if the story is a bit of a mess. I think that Frozen and Brave are on a similar footing, but the message was easier for me to discern than Brave. This is another reason I prefer UP or Wall-E over Brave. While the story telling is a bit lacking, I can still discern a message.

In my opinion, I have no problem with Merida, or Anna and Elsa (from Frozen) and I don't think these ladies are bad characters. They are just in poorly developed stories with an unclear message or poor delivery.

Lilo and Stitch