Brave - a weird movie, but I guess in a good way
Thanks to our wonderful Hungarian film distributors, I only got to seeing Brave this afternoon.
After reading all sorts of things about the plot and the heroine Merida (including some people suspecting her to be lesbian O_o) I went to the movie with certain expectations, only to be proven wrong regarding pretty much all of them.
Merida was so very... normal. No, I would not even call her a tomboy as some do, I think she's pretty far from that actually. She feels like an average teenager with interests uncommon for women in that era. That's pretty much all of it. Yeah, so she does not want to marry either of those three guys she saw for the first time, err... just how many women would want that, anyway? I mean, even her own mother admits she was less than thrilled by her engagement back in the day. Sure, sure, perhaps such an attitude can be seen as odd for the Middle Ages, but something tells me the film did not expect us to approach its characters with a Middle Ages-outlook.
But, make no mistake, this "normal"-ness of hers is actually what makes her character so refreshing. She does not become some kind of exaggerated parody of teenage insecurities or generational conflict - even the differences with her mother eschew much of the over-the-top drama it could have contained. I am grateful for that and enjoyed it quite a bit.
By the way, I loved the family dynamics. The little troublemakers were adorable - I can only hope they will gain some wisdom as they age, or else I see tough times ahead for the denizens of the castle. (Who am I kidding, they have tough times already. :P) Queen Elinor had a difficult role, since on one hand her position as a tradition-abiding parent has been done to death by gazillion movies in the past, while on the other hand the relationship with her daughter had to drive most of the movie forward. In the end, regardless of the dangers of cliché, I think she fulfilled her role nicely. As for King Fergus, I would only mention one thing: he was perhaps the first supporting character I've ever seen who could yell "Come at me!" (Not sure of the original line, I saw it dubbed) at a monstrous bear without either looking comical for his overconfidence or stupid for his recklessness. He was part of many jokes of course, but when he was really serious, you did take him seriously - he never crossed the line to become some simple buffoon. I must salute the creators for that as I think it's really hard to do.
As for the plot... well, that was odd. It started going in one direction, then Elinor ate that cake, got turned into a bear, and things abruptly started going in a different direction for the greater part of the movie from then on. Not sure how to describe the difference, as the mother/daughter conflict was pretty obvious from the beginning, but this "turned into a bear" plot device somehow came completely out of left field for me. Things like this make me wonder how the change of directors affected the script; whether some subplots or other things originally made this transition less strange, but were cut for various reasons.
Although if secondlina is right and the movie originally had a romantic subplot... well, good riddance. At least if the main character would've been involved - wouldn't that have gone against the whole point of the ending? Perhaps some documentaries will explore this part of the film's development later on, as it happened with Aladdin. I certainly would be interested. :)
Lastly, but on a somewhat related note, dear Disney and Pixar, I beseech you, don't make a sequel! There are only a few directions you could take the story from here on, and I think those are better left to the viewers' imagination. I like Brave as it is: unconventional in some parts, does not try too hard to be groundbreaking in others - but very enjoyable overall. :)
After reading all sorts of things about the plot and the heroine Merida (including some people suspecting her to be lesbian O_o) I went to the movie with certain expectations, only to be proven wrong regarding pretty much all of them.
Merida was so very... normal. No, I would not even call her a tomboy as some do, I think she's pretty far from that actually. She feels like an average teenager with interests uncommon for women in that era. That's pretty much all of it. Yeah, so she does not want to marry either of those three guys she saw for the first time, err... just how many women would want that, anyway? I mean, even her own mother admits she was less than thrilled by her engagement back in the day. Sure, sure, perhaps such an attitude can be seen as odd for the Middle Ages, but something tells me the film did not expect us to approach its characters with a Middle Ages-outlook.
But, make no mistake, this "normal"-ness of hers is actually what makes her character so refreshing. She does not become some kind of exaggerated parody of teenage insecurities or generational conflict - even the differences with her mother eschew much of the over-the-top drama it could have contained. I am grateful for that and enjoyed it quite a bit.
By the way, I loved the family dynamics. The little troublemakers were adorable - I can only hope they will gain some wisdom as they age, or else I see tough times ahead for the denizens of the castle. (Who am I kidding, they have tough times already. :P) Queen Elinor had a difficult role, since on one hand her position as a tradition-abiding parent has been done to death by gazillion movies in the past, while on the other hand the relationship with her daughter had to drive most of the movie forward. In the end, regardless of the dangers of cliché, I think she fulfilled her role nicely. As for King Fergus, I would only mention one thing: he was perhaps the first supporting character I've ever seen who could yell "Come at me!" (Not sure of the original line, I saw it dubbed) at a monstrous bear without either looking comical for his overconfidence or stupid for his recklessness. He was part of many jokes of course, but when he was really serious, you did take him seriously - he never crossed the line to become some simple buffoon. I must salute the creators for that as I think it's really hard to do.
As for the plot... well, that was odd. It started going in one direction, then Elinor ate that cake, got turned into a bear, and things abruptly started going in a different direction for the greater part of the movie from then on. Not sure how to describe the difference, as the mother/daughter conflict was pretty obvious from the beginning, but this "turned into a bear" plot device somehow came completely out of left field for me. Things like this make me wonder how the change of directors affected the script; whether some subplots or other things originally made this transition less strange, but were cut for various reasons.
Although if secondlina is right and the movie originally had a romantic subplot... well, good riddance. At least if the main character would've been involved - wouldn't that have gone against the whole point of the ending? Perhaps some documentaries will explore this part of the film's development later on, as it happened with Aladdin. I certainly would be interested. :)
Lastly, but on a somewhat related note, dear Disney and Pixar, I beseech you, don't make a sequel! There are only a few directions you could take the story from here on, and I think those are better left to the viewers' imagination. I like Brave as it is: unconventional in some parts, does not try too hard to be groundbreaking in others - but very enjoyable overall. :)