Un-Bear-able (A Post-Credits Postmortem)

Pixar is in kind of a weird place right now.

While today marks the release of Inside Out (one of my most anticipated films of the year and, it goes without saying, the reason for this blugpost), the last time the once-unimpeachable studio put out a truly great movie was five years ago, with 2010’s Toy Story 3. The three films they’ve put out in the meantime have ranged from pleasant but forgettable, to weirdly mercenary, to downright disappointing.

Can you guess which is which? (HINT: I put them in order.)

It’s a troubling pattern, but the public at large – myself included – is extremely resistant to recognizing it as one. I’m going to see Inside Out today, and despite a full half-decade of evidence staring me in the face, I’m not even considering the possibility that it will be bad. Is that a problem? I really don’t know. My own philosophy involves looking for the good in every movie I see, but it’s definitely dangerous for any studio – especially one with such high standards to live up to – to be given what is basically a lifetime pass. And nowhere do I see that happening more clearly than in the reception to Pixar’s last original feature, Brave.

I really dislike Brave. Like, a lot. I think it’s a failure of storytelling on just about every level. (And this is coming from the guy who called Transformers “a perfectly capable and enjoyable movie,” so you know that’s not an accusation I throw around lightly.) I don’t know if I hold the minority opinion when I call the film a disappointment, or if I just happen to have a lot of friends with similar taste, but I can tell that it definitely isn’t the consensus.

It boggles my mind that the Academy would say that a film like Brave was the Best Animated Feature of 2012. To this day, it’s one of only two Oscar wins I still hold a grudge about. Sure, the movie has the whole feminism angle going for it (which, before I get myself into trouble, I’ll say is a refreshing change of pace), but did any of the voters actually watch all the nominees? Or, you know, any of them? That year wasn’t even a particularly weak field. It’s essentially proof that Pixar can now be an award contender just by showing up. Either that, or everyone was really impressed by how poofy Merida’s hair was.

Look at that. You won't find hair that poofy in Wreck-It Ralph. Just try.

So, even if it’s coming far too late to do anyone any good, I want to use today as an opportunity to share my dissenting opinion about this film, and perhaps make you rethink your own. Consider this a clearing of the palate as Pixar begins its climb back to the top, in the hopes that they don’t forget what they’ve left behind at the bottom.

First things first, we’ll look at a concept that’s applicable to more movies than just this one. This is blog is supposed to be vaguely educational, after all.

The phrase ‘Chekhov’s Gun’ has become a pretty well-known term, but for those who aren’t completely in the know, it refers to a pretty basic idea of storytelling: anytime something is pointed out to the audience, the writer is making a promise, namely that the information they showed us is important. Our end of the deal, therefore, is to remember it, and when a story doesn’t deliver on its end of that promise, the audience can get justifiably upset. Don’t put a loaded gun in the room if it isn’t going to go off, or at least get pointed at somebody. Couldn’t be simpler.

Brave, of course, fails at this completely.

The film’s entire first act – which I’ll be the first to admit is actually excellent – hinges on Merida’s love of archery. The first moment we’re shown of her life is the day that she’s given her first bow. When she goes out riding, it doubles as target practice. In the film’s best scene, when Merida defies custom and makes her first attempt at shaping her own future, archery is the vehicle she chooses. Every moment of Brave’s first half hour paints Merida as a strong-willed young woman with an unorthodox hobby that she will not apologize for, something that makes her far more interesting than your average princess. Even better? She’s really good at it! She’s so good, in fact, that she pulls a Robin Hood, splitting one of her opponent’s arrows in half, all the way down the middle, on the first try. A feat like that is, at the very least, mathematically impossible.

Many Mythbusters died to bring us this information.

This is all great from a storytelling standpoint. The character has a passion, and that passion gets her into trouble. It feels satisfying, simply because the problems that arise are unique to Merida and what we know about her. Plenty of teenage girls get in trouble with their mothers. I imagine that very few get in trouble with their mothers because they outperformed all of their potential fiancés in an archery contest and upset the power structure of an entire Scottish kingdom.

But then Merida turns her mother into a bear. And all of a sudden, for some utterly inexplicable reason, that becomes the thing that this movie is about, consuming every bright spot the film had going for it. From that moment on, Merida’s character becomes that of… a girl whose mother is a bear. Her desires haven’t changed – though she now has the added goal of making her mother not be a bear – but her traits rapidly start to fall away. Where’s the stubbornness? Where’s the desire for adventure? They’re all abandoned in favor of some vague need to ‘mend the bond’ – itself an arbitrary task assigned to the pair by the unnamed witch, who I’ve taken to calling ‘Diane X. Machina.’

But let’s get back to archery and the idea of Chekhov’s Gun. Once Elinor undergoes her transformation, Merida will only fire six more arrows before the film is done. One is used to catch a fish, a task that Merida is shown minutes later to be able to do with her bare hands. Four more are shot at the villainous bear Mor’du, but he shrugs them off like mosquito bites. So far, this integral ability isn’t feeling very essential, is it?

Arrow number six certainly serves a purpose – used to knock a sword out of King Fergus’ hand before he unknowingly kills his own wife – but the film doesn’t play the moment as if it were a pay-off to anything. It’s just kind of cool. During the actual climax, Mor’du is defeated when Elinor slams him against a large stone, which then falls and crushes him. That checks out – fight fire with fire and bears with bears – but wouldn’t it be nice if Merida, you know, contributed? Suppose the stone cracks, just as it does in the film, but rather than gravity, it’s Merida who makes it fall, by dislodging the exact right bit of rubble with a well-placed arrow. Isn’t that so much more satisfying? As it stands now, our main character’s favorite hobby and most significant skill plays no role whatsoever in the resolution of the plot, which goes a long way towards explaining why the film leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. It’s Chekhov’s Bow, and it most definitely goes unfired.

Also sadly unfired? The character designer responsible for this walking headache.

Speaking of applicable lessons, loyal readers may remember my write-up of Cars 2 from two summers ago. (New readers can just click here. Or don’t. I’m easy.) In that post, I argued that Cars 2 wasn’t a bad movie, but that it suffered from an overblown premise and a counterproductive moral: “Don’t change, because you’re already perfect.” And yet, whatever else you might say about Cars 2, and however snarkily you might say it, at least Mater learned something that he could apply to his life at large.

The moral of Brave, by contrast, is “Your mom loves you, so don’t turn her into a bear… unless it’s over something really, really important.”

Yes, the movie features a broader theme of mother and daughter learning to respect one another – I’m not a complete idiot – but if you actually examine the film, you’ll find that we aren’t given any scenes in which that happens outside the context of their immediate situation. Elinor learns that it’s important to be able to survive outside the luxury of a castle (but only if you’re a bear), and Merida learns that it’s important to know domestic skills like sewing (but only if you’ve accidentally changed your mom into a bear). Every bit of growth the characters undergo is solely in service of solving their current problem, and the film gets so overwhelmed by the bear twist that the pair’s reconciliation at the end feels like little more than a nice coincidence.

It’s easy not to realize it in the heat of the moment, but there is absolutely no point of connection between the plot of this film and its supposed emotional stakes. Things are resolved in the end – presumably because that’s what’s supposed to happen – but any real consideration of why it all works out the way it does brings about some pretty dark implications. The absurdity of Brave’s turn into Brother Bear territory is made all the worse by one awful, awful fact, namely that Merida’s plan to poison and manipulate her mother ends up doing exactly what she wanted it to.

Basically, it goes like this: Merida doesn’t want to get married, is told by her mother that she has to get married, changes her mother into a bear, changes her mother back into a human, and is told by her mother that she doesn’t have to get married. I just watched the movie again this morning. I promise I am not leaving out any steps.

That’s right, kids: even your parents can be fixed by turning them off and then on again.

The pivotal scene in which Elinor has her change of heart as Merida distracts the crowd is… fine, I guess. If pressed, I might even call it enjoyable, and the moment itself is played very nicely, with Merida ending up genuinely surprised by the words she’s speaking on her mother’s behalf. The trouble is that it all comes out of nowhere. Virtually nothing about their relationship has changed, and certainly not in regard to the issue of Merida’s marriage. But Merida is rewarded anyway, maybe because Elinor sees that she’s a pretty good public speaker? I couldn’t tell you. Either way, the whole thing reeks of a missed opportunity; Merida complains time and again that she could convince her mother that she’s right if only the queen would listen. Now, here Elinor sits, as captive an audience as she will ever be, and rather than make her case, Merida decides to talk about the power of friendship. It’s all very confusing.

I think the hole the writers dug themselves into here was crafting the story in such a way that Merida is completely in the right – can you imagine if she still had to marry Wee Dingwall in the end? – but pursues her desires in a way that demands some sort of retribution. You change someone into an animal, that’s no bueno. At the very least, you need to become an animal yourself. This is basic Arabian Nights stuff. (Or Emperor’s New Groove stuff. Take your pick.) Ultimately, though, Merida can’t be punished, because the argument between her and her mother is pretty black and white: either she gets married or she doesn’t. Unless Brave wants to take a stance in favor of arranged marriages – which I’ll admit would be a bold move – Elinor has to be the one to concede. That all adds up to only one possible outcome: the queen is forced to undergo a horrible and traumatic experience, and then essentially apologizes to the person who did it to her. If Merida were a man – or anybody besides Elinor’s daughter, for that matter – this would be all kinds of messed up. Even as it stands now, the princess doesn’t come out of the movie looking very good.

Why, then, do I seem to be the only one who noticed any of this? It’s the emotional disconnect I mentioned. Brave is so caught up in the machinations of its plot that the characters stop mattering. They’re basically just cogs, being led by the hand from one objective to the next until the story resolves itself. It’s not really Merida’s fault that Elinor became a bear. She just did what the witch told her to! And it’s not like she went looking for the witch, either. The Whisps led her there! Blame them!

Oh, I do. Believe me, I do.

Brave’s use of Will-o’-the-Whisps is the element that finally broke me. They are literally a dotted line connecting the film from scene to scene, foregoing any pretense of cause and effect. It utterly fails the Parker/Stone 'therefore' test, that's for sure. Would Merida have known about Diane X. Machina’s cottage if the Whisps hadn’t shown her the way? Of course not. But she had to get that bear spell from somewhere! Would Merida and Elinor have had any conceivable reason to visit Mor’du’s castle if they hadn’t been led there? Nope! But they still hadn’t figured out what ‘mend the bond’ meant, so fire up that trail of breadcrumbs!

The Whisps are an implicit admission from the writers that the characters would never do any of what they’re doing unless instructed, and that they couldn't be bothered to come up with a better alternative. Pixar movies are so widely lauded because every single thing that happens in them is driven by character - their fears, their desires, their relationships. But in using the Whisps like it does, Brave completely robs Merida and Elinor of their agency. They follow the glowy lights not because they want to, but because they're magic, and because they know their fate (read: the next plot point) will be waiting for them at the end. King Fergus is easily my favorite character in this movie, and only in writing this post did I realize the reason why: he’s basically the only character whose actions are consistently informed by his personality. Meanwhile, our two heroines are reduced to video game protagonists by the film’s end, rushing to do the thing the movie told them to do, but only so that they can undo the thing that Merida did, which she only did because the movie told her to. It’s an ouroboros of motivation, and not in a good way.

So there you go. Upon rewatch, maybe I am being just a bit too hard on this movie; it’s not like there aren’t hundreds of other films out there with similar flaws, and many of those are probably films I have an affection for. But to see a studio like Pixar make so many rookie mistakes, and to have those mistakes go completely unrecognized by the majority of audiences – it hurts. I just want Pixar to be great again, instead of only being told that they are. I can only hope that when I go to the movies tonight, I’ll get my wish.

I have a feeling I will.

Honestly, though? Give Brother Bear another try. It's underrated.