Yeah, I come back to rant
How the fuck did Brave win Best Animated Feature?
How the FUCK did Brave win Best Animated Feature??
The only answer I can think of is that it's Pixar and the Academy gives the award to Pixar by default.
Either that or they thought they should give it to Brave in honor of Pixar's first female protagonist.
Now Brave was an okay movie, but it was riddled with cliches and a lot of it seemed to be saying, "Hey LOOK, we've got a FEMALE PROTAGONIST!!" Not to mention that they completely ripped off Brother Bear. In fact, the whole character-turning-into-a-different-species motif has gotten REALLY old in the Disney canon. It was done in Beauty and the Beast, The Emperor's New Groove, Brother Bear, The Princess and the Frog, and now in Brave. Did Pixar REALLY need to reuse that old plot? Couldn't the creative team at Pixar come up with something a LITTLE more original than lifting the Brother Bear plot?
Oh sure, the protagonist is female, but you know what? Instead of cheering about it, maybe we should be asking Pixar this question:
Why the fuck did it take them SEVENTEEN YEARS to have a female protagonist??
Seriously, think about it. Why couldn't they have had a female protagonist earlier? Why did they have to consciously create a movie AROUND having a female protagonist in order to have one?
Okay, gender issues aside, Brave still isn't a great movie. For one thing, there's the witch, who's not so much a character as a plot device. What's her motivation to change people into bears? Given that Pixar always claims to be all about story, you'd think they'd want to devlop this character into something more than just "My sole purpose in the movie is to change your mom into a bear and that's it!"
For another thing, there's Merida herself. Couldn't her resentment of her mother and her situation be something more than just the overdone "I don't want to get married!" plot. At the beginning of the movie, when Merida is always moaning about being a princess, she sure doesn't come across as the "strong female character" they're going for - she just seems like a whiney brat. Yes, I know, she gets better later and her character is meant to have an arc, but given that the suitors are portrayed as unappealing as possible and they advertised that "shooting for my OWN hand" scene in every trailer, it seems that we're supposed to be on Merida's side there.
There was one scene where they really had potential to do something different, but of course they didn't. It's when Merida is announcing to the four clans that she's been selfish and we assume she's about to agree to marry one of the suitors. That would have been a chance for her to be truly unselfish and actually NOT project 21st century ideals on a medieval world for once, but of COURSE her mother had to randomly decide that marriage should be about love, so then Merida conveniently doesn't have to sacrifice anything. Again, taking the cliche road.
(sighs) I really thought this could be the year for Disney to win with a movie they actually MADE instead of one they just distributed through Pixar.
How the FUCK did Brave win Best Animated Feature??
The only answer I can think of is that it's Pixar and the Academy gives the award to Pixar by default.
Either that or they thought they should give it to Brave in honor of Pixar's first female protagonist.
Now Brave was an okay movie, but it was riddled with cliches and a lot of it seemed to be saying, "Hey LOOK, we've got a FEMALE PROTAGONIST!!" Not to mention that they completely ripped off Brother Bear. In fact, the whole character-turning-into-a-different-species motif has gotten REALLY old in the Disney canon. It was done in Beauty and the Beast, The Emperor's New Groove, Brother Bear, The Princess and the Frog, and now in Brave. Did Pixar REALLY need to reuse that old plot? Couldn't the creative team at Pixar come up with something a LITTLE more original than lifting the Brother Bear plot?
Oh sure, the protagonist is female, but you know what? Instead of cheering about it, maybe we should be asking Pixar this question:
Why the fuck did it take them SEVENTEEN YEARS to have a female protagonist??
Seriously, think about it. Why couldn't they have had a female protagonist earlier? Why did they have to consciously create a movie AROUND having a female protagonist in order to have one?
Okay, gender issues aside, Brave still isn't a great movie. For one thing, there's the witch, who's not so much a character as a plot device. What's her motivation to change people into bears? Given that Pixar always claims to be all about story, you'd think they'd want to devlop this character into something more than just "My sole purpose in the movie is to change your mom into a bear and that's it!"
For another thing, there's Merida herself. Couldn't her resentment of her mother and her situation be something more than just the overdone "I don't want to get married!" plot. At the beginning of the movie, when Merida is always moaning about being a princess, she sure doesn't come across as the "strong female character" they're going for - she just seems like a whiney brat. Yes, I know, she gets better later and her character is meant to have an arc, but given that the suitors are portrayed as unappealing as possible and they advertised that "shooting for my OWN hand" scene in every trailer, it seems that we're supposed to be on Merida's side there.
There was one scene where they really had potential to do something different, but of course they didn't. It's when Merida is announcing to the four clans that she's been selfish and we assume she's about to agree to marry one of the suitors. That would have been a chance for her to be truly unselfish and actually NOT project 21st century ideals on a medieval world for once, but of COURSE her mother had to randomly decide that marriage should be about love, so then Merida conveniently doesn't have to sacrifice anything. Again, taking the cliche road.
(sighs) I really thought this could be the year for Disney to win with a movie they actually MADE instead of one they just distributed through Pixar.