MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH and LEGACY: (Almost) Flawless Victory

Mortal Kombat: Legacy (2011) – Directed by Ken Tancharoen – Starring Michael Jai White, Jeri Ryan, Lateef Crowder, Darren Shahlavi, Tahmoh Penikett, Matt Mullins, Sam Tjhia, Jolene Tran, Ryan Robbins, Ian Anthony Dale, Kevan Ohtsji, Shane Warren Jones, Peter Shinkoda, Kirby Morrow, Erica Cerra, and Tracy Spiridakos.

Conceived by Ken Tancharoen, MORTAL KOMBAT: REBIRTH is an 8-minute short produced in the hopes of getting Warner Brothers to greenlight a new MORTAL KOMBAT movie. Instead of a movie, Time Warner approved a new web series, MORTAL KOMBAT: LEGACY, a series of nine webisodes telling six stand-alone stories.

It’s phenomenal.

I’m glad I didn’t get around to watching either the movie or the series until now, because the second season of LEGACY will air in a few months and a feature film is reportedly in the offing for sometime in this calendar year, too. I can’t wait.

REBIRTH takes the MORTAL KOMBAT franchise and grounds it as a gritty, realistic (more or less), contemporary drama. Jackson Briggs (Michael Jai White) and Sonya Blade (Jeri Ryan) work in the Deacon City Police Department. The world of Deacon City is not-quite-apocalyptic but things are bad. There are killers running around by the names of Baraka (Lateef Crowder) and Reptile (Richard Dorton), physical oddities who are monstrous in deed as well as appearance.ni

I love the storytelling technique in REBIRTH. The entire 8 minutes promo is controlled by Jacks (not Jax, apparently). Sitting in an interrogation room, he lays out the status quo to a prisoner who’s face is kept in shadow the entire time. Jacks tells this shadowed figure about Reptile and Baraka, the latter responsible for the death of Johnny Cage (Matt Mullins), an ex-actor who’s been working undercover for the cops after his career went in the toilet.

I love this reinterpretation of the franchise, but Tancharoen went a bit too far with the gore and grotesque for my personal tastes. I will say, however, that even though I didn’t need to see Reptile munching on the flesh of decapitated heads he keeps in his refrigerator, it’s useful to clearly mark REBIRTH as something new. The video games are rather violent, of course, and this mini-film isn’t shying away that violence.

After Sonya joins Jacks in the interrogation room, the identity of their captive is revealed: Scorpion (Ian Anthony Dale). Jacks and Sonya want to release Scorpion so he can join some bad-ass martial arts tournament featuring the baddest of the bad. Given that he used to be the best assassin, they figure simply releasing him will get him an invite. Befitting the violent tone of the film, Jacks and Sonya want him to kill everyone at the tournament. They believe killing all of the Reptiles and Barakas is the only way to save the city.

The success of REBIRTH led to the creation of LEGACY, which is even better. There’s a few continuity changes – Johnny Cage isn’t dead and the supernatural element has been folded back in, and they are both positive changes. There are six stories told over the nine episodes and they’re all largely stand-alone. LEGACY doesn’t tell a story as much as it sets up a future story. In effect, it’s just REBIRTH done longer and better.

This isn’t a huge complaint because most of the stories work wonderfully and you can understand why a Michael Jai White or Jeri Ryan wouldn’t want to stick around for 9 webisodes, and that the studio might not want to pay them to stick around, either. Not knowing this, it was a bit disappointing to see them dominate the first and second episodes and then vanish from the narrative. I was also a bit disappointed that each episode reset itself – meaning that after every short film, I had to sit through a credit sequence and then a new introductory sequence that – if it were a part 2two – recapped what I had just seen.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine, and I fully admit that this is a #firstworldproblem. But when I’m watching a series on Netflix, why do I have to watch the same intro and credit sequences over and over again? There should be a “skip intro” button.

So, I was annoyed, but that’s because I didn’t understand we were getting nine shorts instead of a full film.

My favorite of the nine episodes was the Scorpion and Sub-Zero entry, which takes the time to establish Hanzo Hasashi as a good father and husband before he becomes the assassin Scorpion, but the Raiden entry is equally strong. In that single-episode story, Raiden (Ryan Robbins) is teleported into an insane asylum and captured. He spends the rest of the episode dealing with a disbelieving, lobotomy happy staff. He convinces a fellow patient (played by Revolution’s Tracy Spiridakos) to kill him, which allows him to reappear in a new location. Raiden’s story is the most tightly told, and really crackles (heh) with a narrative intensity at seeing the god of thunder locked away in an insane asylum and at the mercy of merciless doctors.

It’s rare that I make recommendations for readers to go out and buy or watch a movie, but if you like action movies or MORTAL KOMBAT, I definitely recommend picking LEGACY out of the bargain bin and giving it a watch. Much like the Thomas Jane-starring Punisher “fan movie” released earlier this year was the best Punisher film we’ve seen, LEGACY is far and away the best MORTAL KOMBAT film and an excellent web series compared to anything else, too.

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And if you like good sci-fi action stories with strong female leads, please check out my 2011 novel,HARPSICHORD AND THE WORMHOLE WITCHES.

Harpsichord & the Wormhole Witches. The First Novel of the Deep. Now Available at Amazon.com in Paperback. From Atomic Anxiety Press.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY: The World is Not Found in Your Books and Maps

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) – Directed by Peter Jackson – Starring Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Cate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Manu Bennett, Lee Pace, and Graham McTavish, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Mark Hadlow, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Peter Hambleton, William Kircher, Stephen Hunter, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

At the end of the day, THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY feels like a victory lap more than it does a wholly realized story, but it is a victory lap I am beyond happy to take. The first part of the new Middle Earth trilogy from Peter Jackson and Company is a very good movie but a large part of the joy comes from the way the film echoes Jackson’s LOTR films and not simply because this film’s story is wholly enjoyable.

This early ’80s Ballantine edition was the first HOBBIT I read.

Part of the blame for this comes from Jackson and part must be shared by the source material itself. I love THE HOBBIT beyond all books, but a large part of that comes from the place in holds in my heart. I remember reading Tolkien’s book for the first time as a kid in elementary school. By the time I ordered THE HOBBIT from those Scholastic book order forms schools used to pass around a few times a school year, I’d already developed a love of reading through the Hardy Boys, the Narnia books, the Old Mother West Wind stories, and the Three Investigators, but it was THE HOBBIT that first blew me away, that made me first realize there was more going on in a story that I could understand (which would only be exacerbated when I turned next to FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING), and THE HOBBIT that first made me want to be a writer. I devoured the book and ended up buying or acquiring it in several other editions over the years from cheap paperback to high end hardcover.

I love the book, but THE HOBBIT is not without some challenges – chief among them is the sheer number of dwarves involved in the quest to reclaim their ancestral home of Erebor. When I was in grad school at Purdue a few years ago, I was taking a class on environmental literature and the professor made the point that when most people read a line in a book that says, “I walked past a maple, oak, and pine tree,” most people interpret that as, “I walked past a tree, a tree, and a tree.” That’s roughly the way I feel about the dwarves in THE HOBBIT. Certainly, a few of them are easily discernible, but there are thirteen of them in Thorin’s Company.

Thirteen.

Thorin. Balin. Dwalin. Bifur. Bofur. Bombur. Fili. Kili. Gloin. Oin. Dori. Nori. Ori.

Or, as you likely just read that: Lead Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf. Dwarf.

If there had been 13 Avengers, it would have been darn near impossible for Joss Whedon to fit all of them into their narrative in a meaningful manner, and they’ve all got varied costumes and famous people playing them. Here, there’s 13 dwarves and while the make-up and costume people have done an outstanding job of making them all different, none of them are played by recognizable stars. Certainly, if you take the time to watch and re-watch and pay attention, I’m sure most of the dwarves do have individual personalities, but other than Thorin (Richard Armitage), Bofur (James Nesbitt), Kili (Aidan Turner), and Balin (Ken Stott), most of them might as well be called, “Dwarf Number 6″ and “Dwarf Number 11.”

Jackson is in a bit of an impossible situation, of course. If he cut half the dwarves, fans would scream at him. And a large part of the charm of Thorin’s Company is in their numbers, rather than individualized, purposeful, and meaningful character arcs. The dwarves are largely background characters, as Jackson’s film revolves around three primary characters: Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and Thorin.

Martin Freeman is phenomenal as Bilbo and I can totally understand why Jackson rearranged his shooting schedule to accommodate him. It was important for Jackson to cast someone who brought something very different to the table than Elijah Wood brought to Frodo just to help give THE HOBBIT its own identity in the mind of film goers. Freeman brings an older soul to the table, and Jackson’s HOBBIT works as an offshoot of the white, middle class male, mid-life crisis genre. What separates Bilbo from, say, Kevin Spacey’s character in American Beauty, is that he doesn’t realize he’s having a mid-life crisis. He’s very comfortable living in his hobbit hole, a condition that Gandalf is bound and determined to change.

Gandalf repeatedly yells, “You’re a Took!” at Bilbo while he’s trying to convince our hobbit to agree to sign on to adventure with Thorin’s Company, and castigates him for reaching a point in his life where he’s concerned about his mother’s silverware and doilies. The set-up for THE HOBBIT, then, works most closely (in the cinematic context of the mid-life crisis genre) as a fantasy version of Fight Club, with Gandalf in the Brad Pitt role and Bilbo as a stand-in for Ed Norton, a guy who’s become something he consciously wants to be, but subconsciously rejects.

Jackson and his team of writers and producers have done an excellent job at setting up a three-part arc for Bilbo. At first, he rejects adventure but then decides to tag along after Thorin’s Company has left. Then, he decides to go home after Thorin’s Company is knee deep in the adventure. And finally, he embraces his role as part of the company by entering a seemingly hopeless battle and saving Thorin’s life.

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins

Like much of the film, Bilbo’s arc is folded into the larger spectacle – which is really what Jackson excels in, making big, emotionally-driven spectacles where the visuals serve to set up the weeping. It’s easy, of course, to dismiss Jackson’s LOTR films on emotional grounds if you’re uncomfortable with that style of storytelling, but I’m all for making films like Titanic and Love, Actually a part of my Blu-ray rotation. One of the things fantasy does extremely well, of course, is to transport us to other worlds, but in Jackson’s hands it strips away the noise of modern life and offers a simpler take on what’s important. It’s easy (and acceptable, I’m not telling you what to think) to hold up THE HOBBIT against something like Game of Thrones and reject Jackson’s film for its narrative simplicity, adherence to emotion, and its love of spectacle, but I’m happy we have both. If I’m only watching LOTR or Thrones for the rest of my life, though, taking LOTR is the easy, automatic choice.

That’s not to suggest THE HOBBIT is a perfect movie. While I like Martin Freeman’s performance as Bilbo better than Elijah Wood’s Frodo, THE HOBBIT is full of little problems, including its own worship of the LOTR trilogy. Time and again, the real joy in watching THE HOBBIT is in seeing all of the characters from LOTR pop up on the screen. Almost all of the battle sequences can be summed up by saying: “Hobbits get in trouble. Hobbits are on the verge of death. Gandalf arrives to save them.” That’s fine, and Jackson does a decent job varying up the execution of Gandalf’s last second saves. What hurts the film is paradoxically what saves the film: the arrival of all the LOTR folk.

We enter Bilbo’s story at a moment in time just prior to FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, which means we get appearances from both Ian Holm and Elijah Wood. As soon as we drop back into the present of THE HOBBIT, there’s Ian McKellen coming to call on Bilbo. Once the story gets going and the company needs a respite, we get appearances from Rivendell, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, and Gollum.

It’s in the Rivendell sequence where Jackson seems to most want to be, as he lets any moment with the LOTR crew linger for as long as possible. All of these characters are introduced in SURPRISE! fashion, with Elrond getting a huge entrance. The dwarves are under attack by a band of orcs who want them dead and Gandalf leads them through a secret passage into … SURPRISE! … Rivendell. Gandalf leads the wary dwarves to the city’s entrance but they are not greeted by Elrond. Instead, it’s revealed that Elrond had led the attack on the orcs that were after Thorin. The riders return and encircle the dwarves, but we don’t see Elrond until Jackson has milled the build up as far as he possibly could. Elrond’s inevitable appearance, then, is clearly designed as one of the film’s money shots, but it only has a significant impact if you’ve seen LOTR.

Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey

Otherwise, it’s just Johann Schmidt on a horse.

Gandalf and Elrond have a chat in which the Elven Lord tells Gandalf he thinks it’s a bad idea for Thorin to attempt to reclaim Erebor, but he’s not the person that the wizard has to bring to his side. Nope, that would be … SURPRISE! … Galadriel, and then … SURPRISE! … Saruman has popped in for a chat, too. These four LOTR alum then proceed to have a big discussion about the reclamation of Erebor, the alleged arrival of a Necromancer (Benedict Cumberbatch), and the potentially mushroom-addled brain of Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy).

What don’t we get? The dwarves. (Curiously, what we don’t get here is the scene that seems to be tailor made for Jackson’s LOTR victory lap – a discussion between Elrond and Bilbo, but perhaps Jackson is saving this for one of the two remaining films.) Earlier, Thorin had given Elrond a map in hopes that he can translate it, but when it’s time for the grown-ups to chat, the dwarves are nowhere to be found. Jackson attempts to hide their absence in the narrative, revealing that Gandalf was keeping everyone distracted so the dwarves could sneak away (like Elrond, Galadriel, and Saruman couldn’t find them in about 17 seconds), but the impact on the narrative is that consistent point that short people got no reason to live.

Unless you’re a hobbit.

The dwarves stay in Rivendell basically comes down to them looking spooked when the elves return from their ride and then looking like slobs when dinner is served. This is typically what the dwarves do throughout the movie. At Bilbo’s house, it’s just a mass of dwarves eating and singing. With the trolls, it’s just a mass of dwarves being prepped for dinner. With the Stone Giants, it’s just a mass of dwarves trying not to fall off the side of a mountain path. Inside the mountain, it’s just a mass of dwarves being held prisoner by the Great Goblin. And on and on.

Ken Stott as Balin

Only two real personalities emerge with the dwarves: Bofur, because he has a kick-ass mustache and is the dwarf who has a real heart-to-heart with Bilbo when the hobbit decides to cut and run after having taken one too many tongue lashings from Thorin about not belonging on the quest; and Balin, because he has a white beard and serves as the calm voice of experience. James Nesbitt and Ken Stott do really stellar work here.

Ian McKellen has never been better than he is in THE HOBBIT. He’s playful, cantankerous, and haunted throughout the film. It’s not his fault that there’s a bit of repetition between his actions here and in LOTR, just like it’s not his fault the plot details of Gandalf’s arc are repetitive, too. When the dwarves get themselves caught in a bad situation, the question is never, “How are they going to get out of this?” but “How will Gandalf get them out of this?” Saruman dismisses Radagast as being a chronic substance abuser, and you can practically see all of the leaf that Gandalf has smoked in the creases around his eyes. Jackson does feel a little caught between Bilbo and Gandalf as to who’s the most important character in this story, but he gives his preference for Gandalf away in how the camera always seems to find the wizard in the film’s most important moments.

Gollum makes an appearance, too, and we get a very nice rendition of the most famous scene in Middle Earth lore – Bilbo stealing Gollum’s ring and then besting the ex-Hobbit in a game of riddles. The Gollum/Bilbo sequence from the Rankin-Bass production is one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever made, and Jackson does the live-action version extremely well. As anyone who’s ready Adventures of the Five: The Coming of Frost knows, I have a serious thing for underground lakes.

There’s great performances from McCoy and Barry Humphries as the Great Goblin, who would have stolen the film if he had a bit more to do. The mountain trolls were pretty funny as villainous, carnivorous foodies, but the orcs left me wanting this time around. Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett) just never works as the Big Bad he’s supposed to be; he’s much better in flashback when he kills Thorin’s grandfather, but in the present he’s just a bully who makes other people doing his dirty work for him. Even when Thorin is laying on the ground, practically unconscious and unmoving, Azog sends a lackey to bring back the dwarf’s head.

What I’m left with is a film that I know is not perfect but is perfect enough for me. Like almost everyone else in the theater, I was ready for THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG the second THE HOBBIT was over. As disappointed as I was that Jackson didn’t show Smaug in all his glory, that disappointment rolled instantly into anticipation for the next installment.

I can’t let this reaction to THE HOBBIT finish without pointing out the ridiculous level of venom spat at this movie (before it was even released) in some quarters. If you don’t want to see THE HOBBIT, that’s cool. If you didn’t like LORD OF THE RINGS (or didn’t want to see them), that’s cool, too. But there was a particular branch of fandom that went out of its way to make overblown comments about how they could not care less about this movie, as if Peter Jackson had spent the last decade beating them up and taking their lunch money. I’m sure all fandoms have their venomous segment, but the sci-fi/fantasy branch seems particularly small minded, petty, and especially insecure. What struck me about the negative, pre-release reaction to THE HOBBIT (besides the inevitability of the hostility – the sci-fi/fantasy venom squad likes nothing better than to dismiss something popular like they’re having flashbacks to getting jammed into lockers in high school) was how many people offered these comments out of the blue. They did not just appear in Facebook, Twitter, and online comments sections in articles about the film, but were randomly sent up, like fireworks being shot off on August 7th in pathetic, desperate “look at me” declarations. I don’t get it. You don’t have to like a movie, of course, and you don’t even have to watch it, but very few movies are created with the idea of making your life miserable, so maybe it’d be healthier for you to just let it go, and talk up something you do like instead of proving how awesome you are by loudly proclaiming how much you don’t care about something other people do care about.

But hey, I’m not a miserable bastard, so to each their own.

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I mentioned Adventures of the Five up above. Here’s a description:

Atomic Anxiety’s flagship production is an all-ages tale of five furry friends trying to stop an evil human from conquering the fantasy realm of Wonderland 31.

Thirty years ago, Johnson Frost was just a kid from the Real who got lost and ended up in the Fantasy, where he was to meet his destiny by saving the Wonderland 31. When it was time to go home, however, Johnson refused, hiding in the mountains where he helped the Yetis battle the Nutcracker Army for control of Wonderland. Eventually defeated and exiled back into our world, the once wide-eyed kid grew into a bitter adult with dreams of making himself king!

In the present, a new generation of kids visit Wonderland 31. Farm the Half-Wolverine, Aurora the Fox, Jasper the Porcupine, Flake the Rabbit, and Notter the Otter find the entrance while exploring abandoned miner’s tunnels inside the Western Mountain. They encounter a world of Nutcrackers and Yetis, of Marshmallow Bogs and Gingerbread Castles, and learn that Frost is coming back to conquer Wonderland with his Army of Invasives!

It’s up to the Five to stop him. Ignored by their parents and the Meadow’s Elders Council, the Five embark on the most dangerous adventure of their young lives to save both their home and a world they only just discovered!

You can order a print copy of ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE: THE COMING OF FROST from the following sellers:

1. Through Amazon.

2. Through createspace.

3. At Barnes & Noble.

4. Available everywhere! Incluidng your local bookseller by giving them the ISBN number (1453682333).

Additionally, you can order a digital copy for your KINDLE through Amazon and be reading in minutes.

BRAVE: I’ll Be Shooting for My Own Hand

Brave (2012) – The 13th Pixar Animated Feature – Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman – Starring Kelly Macdonald, Julie Walters, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane, and John Ratzenberger.

In seemingly every conversation I’ve had about BRAVE over the past few months, or in things I’ve heard people say in person, on Facebook or in the theater, the idea has come up that Meridia (Kelly Macdonald) signals some kind of dramatic shift in the “Disney Princess.” People have said things like, they’ll “finally allow a Disney Princess into their house,” or that Disney has “finally made a positive Princess.” That’s all fine and good – it’s not my intent to tell you how to raise your kids, or point out there there are obviously several Disney Princess movies you’ve either not seen or critically misread.

I am here to say that I’ve just about had it with Meridia being called a Disney Princess. I know this probably matters to almost no one and I realize that given Disney owns Pixar that whatever Pixar does is Disney’s, but I like to think that there’s still a separation between what it means to be a “Disney film” and what it means to be a “Pixar film,” even if John Lasseter is now Chief Creative Officer for Walt Disney Animation and some college kid is probably already or soon to get paid to walk around Disney World in a Meridia costume. Perhaps over time a Disney film and a Pixar film will simply become the same thing, but for now, they’re different.

Disney acknowledges this, too. Despite all the talk about Meridia joining the ranks (as of BRAVE’s release, the Wikipedia page for Disney Princesses even mentions its expected, so you know it’s true), Disney’s official Princess site has yet to list Meridia among the ranks.

All of this Disney Princessification of Meridia rubs me wrong, too, because it completely ignores the very excellent TANGLED from two years ago, a film that wonderfully embraced the Disney Princess past while admitting its flaws and decidedly pushing it forward, too. Rapunzel is a great character and TANGLED is a great movie.

In fact, it’s a better movie than BRAVE.

That is not to say that BRAVE is a bad movie, because it is not a bad movie. It’s a good but not great movie. It’s enjoyable and moving, but it also feels oddly derivative and small. With all of the sweeping vistas and epic set-up, the movie’s ultimate focus on a daughter and her mom learning to put aside their differences and find a middle ground – while the mom has been transformed into a bear (we’ll get to it) – is touching but … lacking.

None of this is Meridia’s fault. The Pixar braintrust (so many people write, produce, direct, and generally have a say in these Pixar films it’s hard to think of them as belonging to a singular individual) has created a really great character. The daughter of a Scottish King, Meridia is a Middle Ages version of a tomboy caught by societal expectations.

Meaning, her mother.

All Meridia wants to do is shoot arrows and ride her horse Angus. All her mother wants her to do is be a proper princess – act like a lady, wear fancy clothes, tame her wild hair, and get married to protect the unity of the four clans. Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) arranges for a contest to be held to marry Meridia off to one of the first-born sons of the other clans. King Fergus (Billy Connolly) is the kind of king who wants to not be bothered with unpleasant things; he loves his daughter and encourages her wild ways, but also doesn’t want to anger Elinor.

The relationship between Elinor and Fergus is a bit of a letdown because it feels like they’ve come out of Sitcom Casting 101 – he’s the loud, boorish, infantile, man and she’s the woman who’s way too good for him. I expect a bit more out of Pixar than to have their characters feel like discarded ideas for Tim Allen, James Belushi, and Kevin James sitcoms. (There’s a hint that the film is going to get into why these women marry these losers when Elinor indicates her own betrothal was not the most ideal of happenings, but then it just lets it fade away.) It’s nice that the focus here is on the child-parent relationship instead of on the husband-wife relationship, but that brings up another reverberation I felt while watching BRAVE.

How To Train Your Dragon takes this same premise of parents trying to pigeonhole their kids into a societal norm, and delivers a much better film.

In the best sequence of the film, Meridia is beside herself at the idea that she’s going to be forced into a marriage with a kid who wins her at a contest, so using the rules to her advantage, she declares herself an entrant in the contest (after she declared the contest would be archery), and “wins” herself. This sends everyone into a tizzy, of course, which leads to Meridia jumping on Angus and taking off for the forest. She comes across a will-o’-the-wisp, which blaze a trail to a witch’s hut, where Meridia gets a potion that will change her mother, and therefore change her own fate.

This is how her mother gets changed into a bear. What occurs from here out is that Meridia has to care for her mother as she tries to undo the damage she’s done. There’s some really nice, really touching scenes between the two as the proper mother is forced to learn how to catch fish. They’ve only got two days to undo the spell by mending the bond that was severed, which Meridia takes to mean fixing the tapestry that she sliced into during a fight with her mom, but really means (or also means, if you prefer) that they need to mend the damage between them and realize they love each other and accept each other, and it’s actually all very touching.

But it’s just not particularly memorable. The mother-daughter bonding is quite nice, but it serves to make the King-clan stuff come off as nonsense. The clans are all mad because no one is telling them what’s going on and Fergus is rather clueless, and all of them feel completely antithetical to Meridia and Elinor in nearly every way, including the most important: the ladies feel like real people and the men feel like what would happen if Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, and Danny McBride decided to remake Rob Roy. The film would have been better without them.

There’s a back story here of a big, angry bear that was tricked by the witch a long, long time ago but it only really seems to exist so that we can have a big final action sequence.

All of this sounds rather negative, but this doesn’t mean that BRAVE is a bad movie. It has a good message about parents needing to let their kids find their own way, and kids needing to understand that parents are often right, and it’s a solid end that Meridia ends up re-establishing her familial bonds instead of simply gaining a boyfriend. It’s an enjoyable enough movie, with Meridia’s triplet brothers providing some comedy as they’re always playing pranks and getting turned into bears and generally being a nuisance. It’s a stunningly beautiful movie, too, as Pixar’s animation techniques remain at the top of the class. Yet, there’s something off here, too, and the result is a movie I enjoyed watching but neither thrilled me nor challenged me.

BRAVE simply feels too simple, too safe, too unoriginal.

Maybe Meridia is a better character than some of the Disney Princesses, but she’s not in an entirely different class, either. For all of her talk of being independent and not wanting to conform to society’s expectations, after her mother is turned into a bear Meridia becomes the embodiment of those stereotypical gender roles: she becomes a caregiver, she sews, she cooks, and at the end they even damsel-in-distress her, as it’s her mother (in bear form) who defeats the mean, angry bear. The movie’s message that you can be yourself and conform to expected gender roles isn’t a bad one, but it’s not exactly a rousing one, either. I enjoyed that BRAVE didn’t simply give us a “kid is right, parent is wrong” story, and that as much as she conforms to gender roles to help her mom, her mother also sees that there’s real value in Meridia’s atypical abilities to hunt and shoot and be independent.

It speaks to the high quality of Pixar’s films that BRAVE is closer to the studios worst film than its best because any company would be proud to produce BRAVE. For Pixar, though, BRAVE is a bit of a disappointment. This is a good movie, but not a great one, and Pixar’s unbelievable success has led me to expect great ones.