Pixar always comes up with great stories when they do their own films: That’s their biggest strength, and they can think about what would simply make a good story. The interesting thing to watch for this movie will be that they are following a more traditional story telling method pioneered by their parent company, Disney.
I’m confident, however, that the heroine will be appealing, without being cliche. This will be a very interesting one to watch as it develops, and how it would compare to the more standard Disney Princess fare like Rapunzel and Princess and the Frog.
I’m especially excited that Brenda Chapman is directing - not only is she the first female to direct @ Pixar AND the only female on the brain trust, but she was head of story on The Lion King, director on The Prince of Egypt, and wife of the director of Enchanted!
All great signs, especially when combined with the cast and designs shown at the Disney meeting last year:
And a Thomas Newman score? This has been my most anticipated film since '08
Kevin McKidd is reportedly attached to the film now, too. He’s probably best known for more serious roles from Trainspotting, HBO’s Rome, and most recently, he’s on Grey’s Anatomy.
He’s done a lot of voiceover work for games, so he’s a veteran in that regard.
Eeee! OK, now I’m excited. I know of him from “Topsy Turvy,” the movie about how Gilbert & Sullivan wrote “The Mikado” - he’s the actor who plays Nanki-Poo in “Mikado.” (Oh, and aside to any fans of the Lord of the Rings movies - Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, is in “Topsy Turvy” as the Cockney choreographer and is a hoot! “They walked down the stage in the Japanese manner because they are Japanese!”)
Oh, and Thomas Newman doing the score sounds interesting - he was really well-suited to Nemo and Wall-E, and makes me think this is going to have more of a “serious/epic” feel.
I KNOW that I am going to be getting a lot of angry posts about saying this but as soon as I heard about The Bear and the Bow, I felt confused, worried, and then slightly insulted. It’s not the fact that the film will have a princess (I mean, they already had Atta and she is one of my all time favorite PIXAR characters), but more from the fact that PIXAR is going back on an original 1990’s goal from the company.
According to The Pixar Story , back in 1990 when the studio was still trying to think of a concept for their first film, John Lasseter stated that what he wanted the studio to be completely different than Disney. “We did not want to do a fairytale, we did not want to do a musical. Disney had their own thing going and we wanted to be different.”
So, after 21 years of creative and original films and stories that could not be further from Disney, the fact that they are suddenly breaking their original goal and working to create a fairy tale upsets me, even if the heroine seems more than a strong willed character than most Disney Princesses. The film is going to be great no matter what, but I don’t think I will be able to like it as much as their other works, like WALL-E and Toy Story. What’s next, a musical? I always feared the Disney-PIXAR merger might affect the studio’s creativity and this only seems to enforce my fears.
If you read the The Pixar Story, then you should know that Pixar’s original goal was not about just being different from Disney - their goal is and always has been to make a good story.
At the time, they wanted to be different from what Disney was putting out there, sure. That’s understandable. But reading the book, I never got the sense that they were just working toward not making fairy tales and musicals. It’s always been about story, story, story.
If now, some directors at Pixar wanted to write a fairy tale (Bear and the Bow) or a musical, I’m sure Lasseter and friends would be more concerned about making the story work than about why they’re daring to write a fairy tale.
I think the thing about not doing fairy tales applies more to not making adaptations of pre-existing fairy tales. A lot of studios other than Disney had a tendency to use fairy-tales for plotlines, whereas I think Pixar wanted to use original stories. Brave is not an adaptation, so I don’t think it counts as being a fairy tale movie in the same sense that Snow White, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are fairy tale movies.
True. In fact it could be stated that classical Disney (with the odd exception) seems to almost… do AU fanfiction of fairytales or historical things (like in Mulans case). They take the original concept and put their own spin on it. While of course no story is completely unique anyway, Pixar more starts from scratch instead of basing off already existing works. Or at least not directly anyway. (It’s impossible after all to not at least subconciously be inspired by other works anyway.)
Not that this is always a bad thing (using original fairytales and putting their own spin on it)! Far from it! I mean Princess and the Frog is terrifically and very far removed from the original concept, but it’s overall better than the original. More memorable at least, while there are certainly things which could be classed as ‘Nightmare Fuel’. Plus it’s set in the 20th Century, which doesn’t happen very often at all. I overall think this is a good addition to their works.
Of course sometimes what they USE for inspiration is strange because you wonder why they even came up with the idea of making that more family friendly. (Greek mythology…ahem…do I really have to say it? Hunchback while cool is also odd and it will maybe ruin your childhood if you find out what the characters are -really- like too in the original works.) But sometimes it works out pretty well.
Truth is Bear and the Bow won’t even be the first princess from Scotland where the Disney logo could be sported on a DVD cover. There is a princess from Gargoyles after all and the castle was in Scotland during the times Vikings were invading, though of course her role was more minor while still being important and that is probably an entirely different concept.
(Just mentioning it out of pure Gargoyle love).
This Princess won’t be the first one to be more independent either.
But also will be different in the sense there is probably no original fairytale/historical event/mythological legend to bounce off from. At least from what I’m hearing.
I mean I’m sure there were various things which could sparked off this idea, like everyones is but there won’t probably be one defining fairytale etc they can point to as their original source.
Yay for mentioning Gargoyles! I do think that this will definately be a different kinda fairytale- not exactly like all the Disney ones. But I think that’s why I’m so excited! I absolutely love Brenda Chapman, and I’m Scottish, and my favorite movies are Disney Princess ones. I can already pretty much tell this is going to be a a pretty big film to me <3 I really want to see some concept art! Although, we haven’t even really seen that much from Cars 2, which I’m guessing we’re quite a while away from seeing any Brave related stuff Do you think the trailer will be with Cars 2?
Heh. Gargoyles is awesome, and almost everyone who watches it agrees. Well, the first two seasons are. It makes me happy that the creator says season 3 wasn’t canon because he wasn’t on the team (and dang it shows).
The first two seasons of Gargoyles are one of the best things America has produced in terms of cartoon television series in my opinion. Which says a lot, since most of my favourite animated shows ARE from there of course.
Actually simply in terms of television series in general scratching out the animated part. It’s just simply awesome.
I think it kept me interested enough in Macbeth to scrape a B in GCSE English. Sad but true.
I’ve actually done some archery on holidays, it’s good fun. Apparently I have a knack for it.
Of course that’s using those little MODERN bows. I no doubt suspect the bows in medieval periods would be a whole lot harder to fire.
Though in getting back to American cartoons, I wonder what her skill level would be. Would she be on the level of say the Archers on Avatar: TLA? Or will she merely be above average? or a stark brand new enthusiastic begnner with sparks of talent and she improves as things go on? There WERE women archers even in the older days in some countries but not so much in the British isles in that period if I understand correctly.
Hopefully this WON’T be too like Disney’s Mulan. I like that movie (and that character) but of course it’s possible it might share some things with that movie (except being set in Scotland and the whole bear thing and hiding like a man… actually that’s quite a lot which could be different scratch that XD).
While Pixar has dabbled in things of certain fantasy elements (toys to life etc.), this might be the first time they might actually refer to ‘magic’ directly (the bear is under a curse yes?). Could be interesting to see how they handle it.
I just -really- hope that if they have some witch they don’t treat them like classic Disney would though. But since they want to be different, that hopefully wouldn’t happen.
Id have nothing wrong with a scotish princess YD in fact it reminds me of one of my favorite books, though shes a 15 year old queen. YD ive been wondering is this movie is going to be close to the book but i havent herd much about it. And idk if Pixar would do a movie baised off a book because i think they like to have thier own unique ideas
I like the little pictures of Merida and her mother! I didn’t see them until they were pointed out on the blog. I hope that Pixar release a clean image of this soon, so that I can look at the details more closely.
I think this more complicated logo suits the film, and makes it stand out next to Pixar’s simpler logos (which I like).
That’s a very pretty logo! I love Celtic designs, and the way Merida and her mother have been cleverly included in this new logo is pretty intriguing and not something Pixar has done before.
Do you think the trailer will be with 
