Brave (Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, 2012)

Brave is at once the most visually distinctive project Pixar has yet made and their most derivative work. Slightly dimmed as if filmed by natural light, the Celtic realm of stone and forest achieve a new level of realism for the studio's animation; even by their standards, I can think of no other Pixar film that invites such pure pleasure merely in scanning the frame for all its absurdly fine detail. Yet with this new peak of visual sophistication comes a story that mines Disney princess tales and blends it with the style and thematic content of Japanese animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki. But if this setup is less fundamentally "original" than, say, Ratatouille or Up, it nonetheless offers an important opportunity to alter and update a classic form of storytelling. After all, from old elements can come wonderful, new things.

For the first act, at least, Brave demonstrates this in spades. Merida (Kelly Macdonald) instantly establishes herself as an entrancing heroine; the daughter of a king who presides over a group of allied Celtic clans (Billy Connolly), Merida is groomed by her mother, Elinor, (Emma Thompson) to behave like a proper lady but above all cherishes a bow given to her by her father. The precocious child grows up to be an adventurous teenager, strong-willed enough to climb a sheer cliff just because it's there and so skilled in archery that various targets she erects around the castle woods might as well be quivers for how many arrows they hold in their bullseyes. When Elinor announces that the day has finally come for Merida to choose a suitor, the young woman's outrage burns so hotly that the flippant faux-independence of some recent Disney princesses looks even more laughable. When she says she doesn't want to marry right now, she damn well means it, and she goes to unexpectedly drastic lengths to defy her mother's wishes.