A Brave girl film with an prejudiced burden DreamWork's heroines don't have.

I saw Brave last week and while it is not not one of Pixar's better efforts compared to their daring and beautiful films like Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up!, it's a decent effort with a special twist for an adventure film.

However, the opening act is basically a standard "You Go Girl" plot where an athletic girl defies her society gender role constrictions to beat the pants off anyone who dares to push her around. If there is one thing that Pixar used to be known for doing, its to take the less travel road for stories and create fresher plots that challenge what stories American animation and film could tell.

However, the film quickly redeems itself when the lead character makes a terrible mistake to get her way with her mother, forcing them to go on an quest together to undo it and learn to understand each other along the way. That is writing more worthy of Pixar; the dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship in a classic fantasy adventure story is, for better or for worse for Western culture, fresh story material. From then on, the story has considerably more charm and thrills for a meaning story.

However, my new top tier movie blogger, Scott Mendelson, is on the money that this film is rife with weaknesses.  For instance, the older Disney animated feature, Mulan, handled the matter of gender roles with much more nuance to the point where it doesn't need to be so blatant as Brave's two competing monologues of mother and daughter. Instead, the title character takes action for a purpose that seems to be a familial purpose, but has also shows a subconscious need to be more.  Maybe Mulan has to deal with the usual Disney elements of its time like obtrusive comic relief like Eddie Murphy's Mushu and musical numbers, but that girl's actions carry the film in a way that feels thematically whole and credible.

Furthermore, that fact that Pixar has to resort to making Merida in Brave a princess is a lamentable surrender to one of the oldest role stereotypes for animated fantasy films.  Again, Mulan didn't need to be one in her story, even if she is now lumped into the rest of the Disney Princesses marketing campaign. We know Pixar has the talent to create something more, but they didn't and so, the company's artistic spirit is compromised yet again.  As noted, the blow is not fatal with the film's second half redeeming a lot, but this company is supposed to be better than that.

Finally, Mendelson noted that there is a repellent sexist cowardice with too many film pundits about the market potential of a girl centered adventure story with the boy audience. As he notes, there was no such fuss with Mulan's box office potential 16 years ago in 1998 and you'd think the spectacular success of this year's The Hunger Games with Katniss' adventures in the story would prove the point.  Heck, I remember when I was 8 years and I lived to watch the Wonder Woman TV series in the late 1970s and that was when the idea of active female action heroes was still a relative novelty to a degree. Why is it that people are reverting to the most mealy minded prejudiced idiocy in each medium?  The basic truth is that you have a female character in a well written and produced action film/TV show and boys will jump at it, especially older ones who could enjoy watching a pretty girl kick butt on top of the action.

This is another reason why my favour is to DreamWorks Animation now.  For one thing, the original director for Brave, Brenda Chapman, was fired midway through production and replaced by a male director. As such, there at least some suspicion that this film proceeded in part because Pixar didn't want to make themselves a big PR target for killing a female centered project and the film suffered for it..  By contrast, DA treated Jennifer Yuh Nelson with more respect making Kung Fu Panda 2 and the company was rewarded with the #1 animated film worldwide and the biggest money making film directed by a woman.

Furthermore, DA has steered clear of the princess cliche, except in the Shrek series where it is sent up for all its comedic worth.  Otherwise, their finest full fantasy films haven't resorted to that stereotype: the Kung Fu Panda franchise has Tigress and Viper, fierce and self-confident martial arts warriors who are definitely not royalty and neither bow to any male or need to give a speech about their need to live their own dreams. Likewise, How To Train Your Dragon has Astrid Hofferson and Tuffnut, equally mighty young warrior proteges who are ordinary viking girls who live a feminist empowerment dream in a story world that believably gives them a place.  Heck, Monsters Vs. Aliens has been described as the most successful superhero movie with a female lead with Susan, an ordinary modern woman turned heroic giant who learns to love her strange new life with fire and inner strength.

Take all that together, and you will know what DA understands and Pixar doesn't.  Now, let's see if Warner Brothers will too as they consider finally giving Wonder Woman a chance to shine on the big screen with as her brothers (Superman and Batman) in the DC Universe.

The Fall of Pixar and the Unsung Rise of DreamWorks

Like most animation fans, I had a great respect and admiration for Pixar Animation Studios at least as far back as their first feature film, Toy Story, in 1995. For 15 years, they had an almost unblemished record of artistic excellence other film studios would sell their soul for.

This especially with the period of 2007 to 2010 when they took marvelous artistic gambles with such seemingly unlikely story material like a culinary talented rat in Ratatouille, a largely silent post-apocalyptic robot love story in Wall-E, a high flying adventure with a geriatric hero in Up! and a grand conclusion to Woody and friends' adventures in Toy Story 3. Each time, they dared and hit the bullseye perfectly each time.

For all that success, Pixar paid the price for that track record and arrogantly betrayed its artistic principles in 2011 making that sorry dreck called Cars 2. As such, they underperformed in the box office for the first time in over a decade and AMPAS gave it the Oscar snub it deserved. John Lasseter can deny it all he wants, but the sole reason for sequelizing their weakest film can only be for the $5 Billion in toy car merchandise from the first film. I don't care if that film is really popular with children, Pixar is a company that was supposed to be better than that, but they threw away a film standard of excellence matched only Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) in Japan for mere money.

Now, their reputation is indelibly tarnished and their newest film, Brave, which could have been welcomed as an experiment in a new direction, now can only look like an attempt to return to their previous standard.  Given the fact that film is rating only 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is shockingly low for Pixar, it appears their self-inflicted wounds are not healing for some time.

That's why I am as annoyed as Scott Mendelson when he reads how people complain Brave is as bad as DreamWorks Animation. As Mendelson notes, DA may not have gotten all the kudos Pixar has, but it has grown to become a real artistic competitor with a largely steady determination to become far more than what they began as since 2008.  Although their work has been more inconsistent over the years, it still has become a company that has been working hard to become better with brilliant films like the Kung Fu Panda series and How to Train Your Dragon.

Heck, their Madagascar series is a shining example of the studio's maturity.  Yes, the first film was a rushed attempt to head off Disney's The Wild, and its Tomatoscore of 55% is deserved, but the series has steadily improved with the second film's 64% and the current one with 75% as it found its own voice and heart.

Unlike Pixar, DreamWorks Animation has never had the opportunity to rest on their laurels even after it won the first Animated Feature Oscar in 2002. As an independent company, each feature has to be a hit or they are sunk.  However, for this struggle, DA has learned from its mistakes and has grown into a fine company that is still trying for be more than merely Jeffery Katzenberg's grudge work against Disney.  While they did sink into a nadir with 2007 with some bad film and alienating Aardman Animations (Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit), they ultimately dug themselves out with superb films any studio would be proud of.

The end result is that while I look forward to seeing Brave and the rest of Pixar's future projects, DreamWorks Animation is the company I root for as I eagerly await for Po and Hiccup's new adventures from a company that has earned more respect than too few people seem to recognize.

With the upcoming premiere of Cars 2, the saying "Everyone has their price" appears to have been justified again. For Pixar, that price apparently is $5 Billion in movie merchandising alone for the original Cars.

Now, I wonder if Pixar realizes the bigger price they are paying now; Cars 2 currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 45%, the lowest critical rating for the company of all time. Before this artistic debacle (for them), Pixar had a largely unblemished reputation for artistic excellence unmatched by any major film production house in North American in recent decades with their films typically hovering in the high 90%s. Cars was the major exception with only 74% and it was beaten out by Happy Feet for the 2006 Best Animated Feature Oscar. I know Monsters Inc. lost against Shrek in 2001, but that was more for DreamWorks Animation surpassing all expectations that year with their film putting them in the animation big leagues at last.

Now if the Pixar company head, John Lasseter, really went by his motto, "Quality is the Best Business Plan," he would have conceded that Cars was below his company's standards and take the experience as a lesson to see how they can avoid such relative failures in the future. However, for the sole believable reason that this film made a killing in merchandising that they decided to throw away their hard won artistic integrity to the wolves for the craven cash-in this film is seemingly proving itself to be.

I will just love to see if Lasseter will make the mealy mouth excuse that this film is necessary to fund more artistically daring projects, like the upcoming film, Brave. Namely, that would be a bald faced lie considering their previous films like Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up surpassed all the dismissals to become smash hits and classics of American animation. This is a studio with nothing to prove and a shining example of the best of what Western animation could strive for. Now they have thrown away this cherish reputation for the sake of mere money when they have shot for higher ideals and made blockbuster profits.

At Walt Disney himself had the excuse in the 1940s when he had to make his cheapie animated anthology
films like Melody Time and Make Mine Music because his company was hanging by a financial thread above bankruptcy after his best films like Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi bombed earlier in the decade. Pixar has no such excuse with it being one of the all time most successful film companies in the world and that makes the very existence of Cars 2 all the more unacceptable.

What I do that is that Jeffery Katzenberg is likely savoring this moment. He walked away from Disney to help create DreamWorks out of spite and through hook or by crook made the first major animation house to rival Walt Disney Pictures by producing a sustain line of animated feature films and ushered in a golden age for the art. Now, his film have artistically been largely relegated in the shadows of Pixar's kudos outside of his Shrek series. Now, with his studio really hitting its stride with more mature talents really creating masterworks like the Kung Fu Panda series and How To Train Your Dragon, he has now proven his company can match them at their best. Now that Pixar has artistically stumbled with this newest film, the face of American feature animation be in for a profound change, at least for a year.