Pixar’s first female lead does not get a kingdom, a quest, or even a clean wish. Merida gets a bear for a mother and a short window to fix it.
Brave arrived in 2012 as a milestone the studio had somehow avoided: a Pixar feature built around a girl. Directed by Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews, it runs 93 minutes and carries a tagline that promises more than the film delivers — “Change your fate.”
Trailer, via Pixar.
Merida of DunBroch Draws the Bow
Set in the Scottish Highlands, Brave follows Princess Merida, voiced by Kelly Macdonald, the unruly daughter of King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). Fergus gives her a bow and arrow as a birthday gift. Elinor disapproves.
The trouble starts when Merida learns she is to be betrothed to the son of one of her father’s allies. Failure to consent could harm DunBroch. Elinor tells her the legend of a prince whose pride and refusal to follow his father’s wishes destroyed his kingdom — a warning Merida ignores.
The clan chieftains and their first-born sons arrive for the Highland games, competing for her hand. Merida twists the rules and announces that, as her own clan’s firstborn, she will compete for herself. She wins easily. Then Elinor confronts her, Merida slashes the family tapestry with a sword, and Elinor throws the bow into the fire.
A Witch, a Cake, and a Bear
Merida flees into the forest on her horse, Angus. The will-o’-the-wisps lead her to a menhir circle and then to the hut of an eccentric old woodcarver — the Witch, voiced by Julie Walters. Merida bargains for a spell to change Elinor. The Witch hands her an enchanted cake.
Elinor eats it and becomes a bear. She cannot speak, but she keeps most of her human mind. Fergus and the other clans hunt her. Merida’s triplet brothers — Hamish, Hubert and Harris — help her evade them.
That is the engine of the film: a mother who cannot explain herself and a daughter who has to guess what she means. It is also where Brave is strongest and where it stops being a princess movie at all.
The Voice Cast, and the One Who Got Away
The cast is deep, and it is doing more work than the script asks of it.
- Kelly Macdonald as Merida
- Emma Thompson as Elinor
- Billy Connolly as Fergus
- Julie Walters as The Witch
- Robbie Coltrane as Lord Dingwall
- Kevin McKidd as Lord MacGuffin and Young MacGuffin
- Craig Ferguson as Lord Macintosh
- Peigi Barker as Young Merida
- Steve Purcell as The Crow
Reese Witherspoon was originally set to voice Merida. She joined the cast in 2010 alongside Connolly, Thompson and Walters, and worked on a Scottish accent. Andrews said Witherspoon was on the project for “quite some time.”
“She was getting her Scottish accent down, she was working very hard and it was sounding great but as we were continuing with the movie she had other movies lining up, so unfortunately we were unable to continue with her and had to get a replacement,” Andrews said.
Witherspoon later said she left because she could not master the accent. Macdonald, a Scottish actress, took the part in 2011. It is the right call. The film sounds like the place it is set.
Pixar Rewrites Its Own Engine
Brave is the first Pixar film starring a female protagonist, and Chapman became the studio’s first female director of a feature. She drew the story from her relationship with her own daughter. The film was first announced in April 2008 under the title The Bear and the Bow.
It is also the first film to use the Dolby Atmos sound format, and the first animated with a new proprietary system called Presto. Pixar completely rewrote its animation system for the first time in 25 years to get there. Patrick Doyle composed the score.
Those are not trivia. They are the reason the Highlands look the way they do — the wet stone, the hair, the forest light. The technical ambition is visible in every frame.
Where the Story Slips
The three lords are the problem. Lord MacGuffin is enormous, Lord Macintosh is surly, Lord Dingwall is disagreeable, and all three exist mainly as comic relief. They get screen time the mother-daughter story needed.
The film also spends its first act building a betrothal plot it clearly does not believe in. The Highland games sequence is loud and long. Merida’s real conflict — that she and Elinor cannot say a true thing to each other — arrives late and then has to share the clock with a bear hunt.
Brave premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 10, 2012. It was followed at Pixar by a run of female-led features: Inside Out, Finding Dory, Incredibles 2, Turning Red, Elemental, Inside Out 2, Hoppers and Toy Story 5.
That run is the film’s real legacy, and it is a strange one. Brave opened the door and then did not walk through it as far as it could have.
What Brave Gets Right
The bear is the best idea in the movie. Elinor keeps her mind and loses her voice. Merida has to read her mother’s face, her posture, her silence, and decide what she is being asked. That is a sharper portrait of a parent-child standoff than any speech the film writes.
Thompson does the hardest job in the cast with no dialogue. Macdonald carries the anger without making Merida a brat. The tapestry Merida cuts and the bow Elinor rescues are the two objects the film actually needs, and it knows it.
The Score
Brave is a beautiful, ambitious film that keeps reaching for a smaller, better one. The animation system, the bear, and Macdonald’s Merida are worth the ticket. The lords, the games, and a third act that never quite earns its ending are not.
It was the studio’s first female-led feature and its first film directed by a woman. That is the honest read.
6.9 of 10.
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