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?

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.

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.

Lilo and Stitch