“You’ve always been there for me - you’ve never given up on me,” a chastened Merida tells her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), in a climactic embrace.

She rides like wildfire through the forest, shooting arrows with Robin Hood accuracy, her tangled mass of violent red hair swirling in the wind like flame.īut “Brave” is not so much a celebration of a young woman’s independence as a paean to the biological obligation and spiritual connection of mother-daughter love. Is this distinction a testimony to Chapman’s talent, or an indicator of the lack of women in animation? Chapman’s only previous feature as a director was DreamWorks’ kitschy 1998 Torah-inspired cartoon, “The Prince of Egypt.” (The co-director of “Brave” is veteran animator Mark Andrews.)Īn expert archer who rejects the “duties, responsibilities (and) expectations” of courtly life as well as the inadequate suitors for her royal hand, Merida is a proto-feminist free spirit and a soul sister to Disney’s Mulan. Merida’s vanguard status is appropriate: The story is by Brenda Chapman, who also co-directs, making her the first woman to helm a Pixar feature. The trailers and posters for “Brave” focus almost exclusively on rebellious Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a teenage princess in an ancient Scottish kingdom and the first female protagonist to carry a Pixar project.

Young and the brave movie