Episode Transcript
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patreon.com/Next Picture Show. It's
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very difficult to keep the line
0:58
between the past and the present.
1:00
You believe that someone out of the
1:02
past can enter
1:04
and take possession of a living being.
1:07
We may be through with the past, but the past is
1:09
not through with us. Welcome
1:15
to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast
1:17
devoted to a classic film and how it's shaped our thoughts
1:19
on a recent release. I'm Tasha
1:21
Robinson, here with... Scott Tobias. And Genevieve
1:23
Koski. Thanks
1:53
for watching. just
2:00
a really great, really memorable movie in a
2:02
while, and that these days it's leaning
2:04
too much on sequels instead of originals. There
2:07
are certainly different reasons to push back on
2:09
different elements of all of that. I'm curious
2:11
how you feel about it. I
2:14
feel pretty good about it. I
2:16
feel pretty good about Pixar. I
2:19
mean, you look at prime Pixar
2:21
and you look at what has
2:24
come out the last eight or 10 years, and
2:27
I think there's a pretty
2:29
significant contrast in quality, or
2:31
at least inconsistency between
2:33
one period and the next. I mean, I guess
2:35
it shouldn't even be inevitable. I don't know what's
2:38
going on, but I find a lot of the
2:40
times that even with
2:42
the Pixar films, I do end
2:44
up liking a recent vintage. I'm
2:46
more of an apologist than a fan of
2:49
these films. It's like, well, I'm kind of,
2:51
you know, I really like Luca because it's got a
2:54
really nice little, it's small and
2:56
it's well scaled. It's hard to
2:58
make arguments like, you know, when
3:00
you're dealing with Ratatouille or WALL-E or
3:02
the Toy Story movies, it's just like
3:04
there's a scope and
3:07
a weight and, you know, a significance to
3:09
those films that I'm just not quite seeing.
3:11
It feels like we're getting at best kind
3:13
of a lot of small
3:15
base hits from this current
3:17
run of Pixar movies, not
3:20
much in the way of home runs. I
3:22
agree broadly, but I think I
3:24
also want to like extend a
3:27
little generosity and I guess maybe
3:29
push back against the argument a little bit, just noting
3:32
that Pixar is operating in
3:34
a much different movie
3:37
making landscape than it did when it
3:39
was wowing us with all of these
3:41
originals. Streaming is a big part
3:43
of that. And there's a part of the current
3:45
era of Pixar that sort of the divide is
3:47
that a lot of the originals are going right to
3:50
Disney Plus and the sequels are
3:52
what is getting into theaters. And,
3:55
you know, looking at the box office
3:57
of the movie that inspired this week.
4:00
pairing, like you can see the
4:02
logic behind that, you know, and
4:04
it does kind of undermine the
4:07
idea of Pixar as this original
4:09
groundbreaking studio, but that's also a
4:11
reputation that was originated 20 years
4:13
ago in a much different context.
4:16
So, you know, it feels
4:18
maybe a little simplistic to just like kind of
4:20
write it off as a quote unquote slump, or
4:23
having lost the magic, like there's a
4:25
lot more elements at play than I
4:28
think just pure creativity or lack thereof.
4:30
Yeah, I feel like one of the
4:32
biggest things that's changed is that we've
4:34
just come to expect a lot more
4:37
from animated films because of Pixar, you
4:39
know, they moved the barrier so hard
4:41
on what American animated films could be.
4:43
And so many other studios sort of
4:45
came along and took the lessons that
4:47
they'd laid down and followed in their
4:49
footsteps. And suddenly, they're in a much
4:51
more competitive environment where it's kind of
4:54
like the Matrix sequels, you know, I
4:56
think nobody would argue that the Matrix
4:58
looks groundbreaking when it came out. But
5:00
you can't have every movie
5:02
you make be a groundbreaking,
5:04
like industry changing
5:06
phenomenon. Does that mean that the
5:09
Matrix sequels aren't great? Yeah, no, it actually
5:11
does. I just don't think that those movies
5:14
are great. I can
5:16
thoroughly acknowledge that it
5:18
is possible to move the needle and then
5:20
just not have the gas to keep moving
5:22
the needle. But that said, I
5:24
kind of feel like especially some of
5:26
the more recent ones like Soul,
5:29
I thought had some
5:31
just incredible sequences. And
5:33
I feel like when Pixar does like
5:36
put something really, really strong on screen,
5:39
the kind of ubiquitousness of this narrative tends
5:41
to sort of keep people, I
5:43
think, from seeing what's actually there as opposed
5:46
to what they expect to see. But we
5:48
can get into it with this
5:50
pairing, you know, which brings
5:52
up an older Pixar film and a newer
5:54
one. Genevieve, you want to get us into
5:56
the details? Sure. The new
5:59
Pixar movie inside. Out 2, directed
6:01
by Kelsey Mann, is a sequel to
6:03
2015's Inside Out, Pete Docter's movie
6:05
about the anthropomorphic representations of emotions
6:08
at work inside 11-year-old Riley, and
6:10
everyone else in the world. In the sequel,
6:12
Riley is now 13, she's hitting puberty,
6:14
and she's about to hit high school,
6:16
and she's experiencing brand new emotions like
6:18
anxiety and embarrassment. Logical
6:21
pairing would be to compare these two movies, but
6:23
the new film is so much of a piece with the old
6:25
one, from the visual design to the humor to
6:27
the characters, that the contrast seemed
6:29
more like nitpicks than like fruitful discussion.
6:32
So we're looking further back in the Pixar
6:34
canon, to the studio's first film centering on
6:36
a teenage girl, 2012's
6:38
Brave, about the 16-year-old daughter of a
6:40
Scottish king and queen, which, yes, technically
6:43
makes her a Disney princess, though not
6:45
like any Disney princess before her. For
6:47
both of these movies, the directors and writers
6:49
drew heavily on their own fractious relationships with
6:51
their own kids. Both are
6:53
fantasy stories. Brave is about how that princess
6:55
fights her mother over an impending betrothal
6:58
ceremony. Inside Out 2
7:00
turns emotions into characters in active and colorful
7:02
conflict. But they're both rooted in
7:04
real experiences and the real feelings of being
7:06
a young girl trying to define her own identity.
7:09
So this week, we're heading back to medieval
7:11
Scotland for Pixar's first fairy tale and first
7:13
princess story. And next week, we'll
7:15
bring in Pixar's second Inside Out movie, which
7:18
is short on princesses, but taps into some
7:20
of the same feelings as Brave does about
7:22
coming of age, dealing with other people's expectations,
7:25
and maybe not expressing teen angst in
7:27
the healthiest possible ways. Stay
7:29
tuned. I want my freedom. But
7:40
are you willing to pay the price your
7:42
freedom will cost? Careful
7:45
what you wish for, my mother would say.
7:48
What's the worst that could happen? Normal
7:50
fighting! Sure little decorum! Feast
7:52
your eyes! Ah! Ah!
7:55
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
8:04
If you had the chance to
8:07
change your fate, would you? By
8:12
2011, Pixar Animation Studios had produced 12 feature-length
8:15
films, and it had become known
8:17
for exceptional, industry-leading innovation in everything
8:19
from ambitious visual design to big,
8:22
successful narrative risks. But it had
8:24
also become known for producing only
8:26
stories about male protagonists, with female
8:28
characters almost exclusively in minimal roles.
8:31
And these movies were written almost
8:33
entirely by, and directed exclusively by,
8:35
teams of men. So
8:37
it was international news when Pixar announced in
8:40
2008 that Brenda Chapman, the director of DreamWorks
8:42
the Prince of Egypt, a Disney veteran who'd
8:44
served as head of story on The Lion
8:47
King, would be Pixar's first woman in the
8:49
director's chair, and would be bringing Pixar's first
8:51
female protagonist to the screen. In
8:53
interviews, Chapman was frank about how the project,
8:56
originally titled The Bear in the Bow, was
8:58
drawn from her relationship with her own teenage
9:00
daughter. In the movie, the
9:02
protagonist, Merida, a 16-year-old Scottish princess with
9:05
impressive archery skills, a wild mane of
9:07
red hair, and a fierce independence streak,
9:09
pushes back against her mother, Queen Eleanor,
9:11
who she sees as prim, fussy, and
9:14
controlling. Eleanor expects Merida to
9:16
marry one of the scions of the three other
9:18
local clans, whose leaders fought alongside
9:20
Merida's father, King Fergus, in battle.
9:23
The marriage is meant to keep the peace between
9:25
these feuding clans, though it seems like it's only
9:27
fueled their rivalry. Desperate to
9:29
avoid betrothal to a stranger, Merida asks
9:31
a suspiciously bear-obsessed witch for a spell
9:34
to change her mother so they can
9:36
finally be at peace with each other. The
9:38
witch complies by changing Queen Eleanor into a bear.
9:41
That leaves Merida to try to break the spell while
9:43
keeping her bear mother safe from King Fergus. But
9:46
given that their kingdom is already haunted by
9:48
a huge, vicious black bear called Mordu, which
9:51
might possibly be a demon, Fergus is
9:53
pretty obsessed with bear killing. According
9:56
to an LA Times article published in 2011, Chapman spent
9:58
six years working
10:00
on Brave before Pixar removed her from
10:02
the project and replaced her with Mark
10:05
Andrews, who'd previously helmed the Pixar short
10:07
One Man Band but had never directed
10:09
a feature before. Exactly what happened
10:11
there has never been revealed in any detail.
10:14
At the film's premiere in 2012, Andrews
10:16
shrugged off questions, saying that male directors were replaced
10:18
all the time and nobody made a big deal
10:20
out of that. Chapman has spoken
10:23
about Pixar's decision as a tremendous disappointment
10:25
given the personal nature of the project,
10:27
but hasn't said much about what exactly
10:29
happened. The usual phrase, crowded
10:31
out in this kind of case, creative differences,
10:33
got liberal use in articles at the time.
10:36
And later revelations about the working environment
10:39
for women at Pixar, from systemic sexual
10:41
harassment to a boys' club culture where
10:43
female leaders were judged solely by their
10:45
looks or dismissed as difficult, certainly hint
10:47
at the possible causes for Chapman being
10:49
sidelined. There's no way of knowing how
10:51
different Chapman's version of the project would have looked. She
10:54
said in some cases that there was a
10:56
struggle at Pixar to streamline Brave, that her
10:58
version of the script had too many characters
11:00
and needed focus, and that the move from
11:03
traditional cell animation to 3D animation was slow,
11:05
laborious, and challenging for her. And in a
11:07
Collider interview in 2020, she offered this fascinating
11:09
snippet about what the studio changed after removing
11:11
her. Quote, There are a lot of little
11:13
things, but for the most part, there may
11:15
have been things that had more depth in
11:18
my version. Like The Witch's Curse was less
11:20
about bears and more about the wish Merida
11:22
had, make my mother more like my dad.
11:24
Her dad is a big bear of a guy. There's
11:26
more to that curse than what ended up in the
11:28
film. So what are we to make of
11:30
the version that hit the screen? There are
11:32
certainly things about it that feel rushed
11:35
and frantic, a heavy emphasis on slapstick
11:37
humor, particularly regarding the cheerfully dumb, belligerent,
11:39
proud men at the heads of all
11:42
four Scottish clans and regarding
11:44
Merida's three little red-haired brothers who race
11:46
around the castle stealing pastries, playing pranks,
11:48
and causing chaos. There's
11:50
a lot of boy energy and brave.
11:53
From the doofus clan scions vying for
11:55
Merida's hand in marriage, to that big
11:57
bear of a father who clearly loves
11:59
Merida's time. a tomboy streak and encourages her
12:01
to learn archery and act like one of
12:03
the guys, but who won't listen to her
12:05
or take her seriously when danger arises. But
12:08
the core of the movie is still Merida's relationship with
12:10
her mother, a link that seems
12:12
equally difficult on both sides. Eleanor
12:14
isn't a villain in Brave. She's the
12:17
glue holding these bands of squabbling boy-men
12:19
together, and she expects her daughter to
12:21
follow suit. In this fable, a
12:23
magical event neither of them really wanted forces
12:25
them to actually see each other clearly. It
12:28
takes Eleanor's voice away, so she finally has to
12:30
listen to her daughter. And it
12:32
threatens to take Merida's mother away, so Merida finally
12:34
has to acknowledge how much she loves Eleanor. It's
12:37
hard not to wonder what Chapman's version would have been
12:39
like, but it's still worth considering the version that did
12:42
make it to theaters. Still is
12:44
a groundbreaking story for Pixar, and
12:46
is a new model for how a Disney princess
12:48
could get that label while still breaking the mold.
12:50
Then, out of
12:52
nowhere, the biggest bear you've
12:55
ever seen is how you'd
12:57
littered with the weapons of
12:59
fallen warriors, his face scarred
13:01
with one dead eye. Adieu,
13:04
my sword. Halt! Wish!
13:06
One swipe, his sword shattered,
13:08
then chomp! Dad's leg
13:11
was clean off. Down
13:13
the monster's throat it went. Oh,
13:15
that's my favorite part. Nor
13:18
do has never been seen
13:20
since, and is
13:22
roaming the wilds waiting his
13:25
chance of revenge. AHH! Let
13:28
him return. I'll finish with a
13:30
guddle in the first place. Merida,
13:32
a princess does not place her
13:34
weapons on the table. MOM! It's
13:37
just my bow. So guys, I don't know
13:39
about you, but I have not seen this
13:42
movie since it first arrived, and when it
13:44
first arrived, I was kind of wroth with
13:46
Pixar about this whole story, about Chapman's removal
13:48
and some of the things she was saying
13:51
in the press at the time. We
13:53
talked a little bit before recording, and Scott,
13:55
you also had not seen the movie since
13:58
then. Genevieve, are you in that
14:00
scene? boat or is this a movie you've written? Okay,
14:02
so all of us are coming back to it for
14:04
the first time since CNN
14:06
theaters. How did it play
14:08
differently for you kind of
14:10
outside of that immediate set
14:12
of expectations? You know, I want
14:14
to say that like there's a really
14:16
great movie here that was
14:18
kind of overshadowed by the
14:20
extra textuals, if you will,
14:22
of the moment. But I think like
14:25
it ultimately is just kind of a
14:27
pretty good serviceable Pixar, you
14:29
know, at the end of the day.
14:31
I have no like strong
14:33
dislike toward this movie, but there's also
14:35
like no real strong affinity, I feel,
14:38
toward it, which is kind
14:40
of weird considering it's like
14:42
a mother daughter story that seems
14:44
designed to like push a lot
14:46
of my emotional buttons. But
14:49
I just I'm still trying to put my finger
14:51
on why exactly this
14:53
movie doesn't hit emotionally the
14:56
way so many not
14:58
just Pixar's but like stories of
15:00
this type often do for me.
15:04
Not even at the level of Inside Out 2.
15:07
Yeah, and it may have to do with what
15:09
you're talking about about sort of the the compromised
15:11
vision that that we got. But
15:13
you know, just kind of taking it
15:15
by what's on screen like it's like
15:18
okay, yeah, it's sort of like destroying
15:20
the princess narrative and like
15:22
that. I feel like even
15:24
at the time that didn't feel
15:27
all that fresh because we'd gotten
15:29
like tangled at that
15:32
point. And you know, and
15:34
like this does evolve the
15:37
Disney Princess paradigm, you know, in
15:39
one substantial way. But
15:42
it doesn't feel that like exciting in hindsight
15:44
as far as or doesn't feel dangerous, I
15:46
guess, you know, it just feels kind
15:49
of like nice, you know,
15:51
it's a nice story. But I had
15:53
trouble tapping into a deeper level with
15:55
it. Am I alone in that? You
15:57
are not I had exactly the same
15:59
the that
18:01
it's hard for me to get over. Yeah, I'm
18:03
with you on that. I when when Genevieve
18:05
was talking about like the lack of emotional
18:07
connection she had to this movie, the thing
18:09
that kept kind of coming back to me
18:11
is I find Merida
18:13
a little hard to connect with. Yes,
18:16
yes. I'm
18:19
looking back at an interview that I
18:21
did when Brave came out for the
18:23
AV Club with Mark Andrews, who stepped
18:25
in as director and one
18:27
of the producers. And they're
18:29
talking about how Chapman when Chapman
18:31
pitched this story to John Lasseter
18:34
originally, she was looking at her own
18:36
six year old daughter who was
18:38
a humongous handful, just like, you know,
18:40
willful and acting out and, you
18:43
know, going through the terrible twos at age six. And she
18:45
was saying, like, what would what is this girl going to
18:47
be like when she's a teenager?
18:50
And I feel like that simplicity
18:52
that you see in Merida is
18:54
because she does feel like a six year old
18:57
in a teenager's body. She just she
18:59
keeps kind of like kicking
19:02
and saying the same thing over
19:04
and over and over again. And
19:06
as you say, there's there's a lack of
19:08
depth there. And maybe that's because, you know,
19:10
she's pushing back against one giant thing in
19:13
her life. But I find her very the
19:17
dreaded word shrill. Which,
19:19
you know, is a terrible thing to
19:22
say about a woman in an environment
19:24
where that word usually means like has
19:26
an opinion and speaks her mind. But
19:28
I don't know. She's
19:30
just her teenager hood, I
19:32
guess, comes across in
19:35
a lot of yelling,
19:37
just like yelling everything all the
19:39
time. There's not a whole
19:41
lot of listening to anybody about anything in
19:43
her family. You know, this is a problem
19:45
that all of the family members have right
19:48
down to the little kids who aren't verbal
19:50
yet. So it's not like
19:52
she stands out in that regard. But
19:55
there's just there's a whole lot of
19:57
like yelling instead of speaking in this
19:59
movie from. from just about everybody.
20:02
And it kind of just makes the whole movie run at
20:04
a fever pitch for the most part. And
20:07
it isn't until the very end, the
20:09
kind of the climax of the movie,
20:12
that that dies down. The best parts
20:15
of this movie, I think, are Merida
20:17
and her bare mother fishing together without
20:19
words. And Merida
20:22
and her bare mother, you know, connecting
20:24
in the end of the climax. The big
20:27
fight where nobody needs to say anything
20:29
because they're doing what they need to
20:31
do. And the moment at
20:33
the end where she does manage to bring
20:35
her mother back, spoiler for people who
20:38
don't understand how fairy tales work. But
20:40
I just I feel like the
20:43
script for me is just about a
20:45
whole bunch of people yelling so it'll
20:48
feel better when they go quiet. And
20:51
it starts feeling a little exhausting. What you
20:53
say is so correct
20:56
to about the
20:58
pitches that clarifies things to me to
21:00
such an extent because a six
21:03
year old who rebels does not
21:05
rebel in the same way as a 16 year
21:07
old. They're way different.
21:09
It's way more complicated. You
21:12
know, there may be some willfulness involved
21:15
with a 16 year old, but there's
21:17
so much more sophisticated at that age.
21:19
And the ways that they can rebel
21:21
are so war varied and subtle and
21:24
complex as they become much more complex
21:26
human beings. And so if you try
21:28
to supplant, if you try
21:30
to put the mind of a six year old,
21:32
the willful six year old into the body of
21:34
a 16 year old, that you're going to miss
21:36
a lot of nuance and a lot of things
21:38
that are kind of important about girls
21:41
at that age. There's also
21:43
the tomboy of it all,
21:45
which I feel like making
21:47
your female protagonist like a capital
21:49
T tomboy is such like it's
21:52
just such a simplistic shorthand. And
21:54
Merida, like Merida's whole thing
21:57
is like, well, Tasha, you kind
21:59
of. over
24:00
and over and over and over
24:02
without variation, but has her actually looking
24:04
at what her mother is doing
24:06
and saying, I don't want to be
24:09
in charge of being the adult
24:11
in the room. Like, I don't want
24:13
my job to be controlling
24:15
all of these manchildren. Like, why do
24:18
I have to be the kindergarten teacher
24:20
while they get to run around? If
24:22
what she wants is to go
24:26
galloping around the woods and shoot things, she's
24:28
not that different from what the
24:30
boys want and being told,
24:32
you know, that the movie Skims is so
24:35
close to this without actually saying it. Just
24:38
the idea of being
24:40
a woman is being a grown up and
24:42
being a man is being a kid. And
24:44
one of those is more fun than the
24:46
other. And that that kind of hits me
24:48
wrong both on a couple of
24:50
levels. One is marrying off the 16 year
24:53
old to one of these doofuses. And
24:56
the other is, you know, with
24:58
the sort of historical Scotland feeling
25:00
that then she's going to be chattel. But
25:02
the other is just sort of the idea
25:04
that, you know, it's kind of back to
25:07
the gender essentialism thing in this world where
25:09
there's only really three
25:11
women of significance. Your 16
25:13
year old protagonist, the
25:15
queen who is in charge of managing
25:17
literally every other character in the movie.
25:20
Oh, sorry, four. And the witch who
25:23
is outside of society is kind
25:25
of kind of cracked and kind of
25:27
out of touch with everything. And
25:30
the fat lady who like
25:33
runs around squealing a lot and
25:35
gets everything either gets everything taken
25:37
away from her when we're not
25:39
literally looking down her her ginormous
25:41
cleavage. So those are your options
25:43
for women in this society. Like
25:45
no wonder Merida wants to be a boy. I mean,
25:48
not that she says she wants to be a boy, because that's
25:50
a very different thing these days. But no wonder she wants to
25:52
play with the boys instead of,
25:54
you know, being one of four women
25:56
in this entire society, and therefore being
25:58
in charge of like running it. It's
26:01
also interesting, an interesting reading of Eleanor
26:03
in particular to take into her whole
26:06
transformation into a bear
26:08
and specifically the scenes
26:10
where she does kind
26:13
of give into her her bareness,
26:15
which as you I think alluded
26:17
to earlier, Tasha,
26:19
like are some of the most
26:21
successful scenes in the film, like
26:23
every time, you know, the
26:25
eyes change, you know, the human eyes go
26:27
and the bear eyes come and there's that
26:30
moment of like, is she coming back? It
26:32
hit every time for me, like not enough to
26:34
make me cry. But you know, I
26:37
could feel the emotional weight there. And
26:39
to take what you're talking about, about sort
26:41
of the lack of appeal
26:44
of roles women have
26:46
in this society, like, like
26:48
I almost find myself kind of like, wishing
26:50
that Eleanor could just wander off into
26:52
the woods and be free and not have to
26:55
deal with all this anymore. You know, like there
26:57
is a reading that like, maybe she is better
26:59
off just going off and being a bear for
27:01
a bit. Well, just
27:03
briefly, I'm kind of perplexed as
27:05
to what, what everyone's beef
27:08
is here. You know, I mean, it's
27:10
not this isn't exactly Ron or something.
27:12
Why don't we talking about war, you
27:15
know, tension between clans, like, like, where
27:17
is that tension arise? Like, where, you
27:19
know, they seem kind of
27:21
interchangeable. You get to it, you get
27:24
to this moment when the, when the women
27:26
go away, where they're all in a room,
27:28
just kind of randomly firing arrows at each
27:30
other. And it just seems kind of like this rowdy
27:33
party rather than an actual war. Like
27:36
I don't understand. None of that is
27:38
really clear to me why a
27:40
union between one clan of the other is going to
27:42
be all that important to the future of this whole
27:45
ecosystem. All that seemed
27:47
kind of arbitrary to me. As
27:49
I took it is these four clans
27:51
were already allied and had
27:54
an agreement in place that the princess
27:56
would marry within those clans. So
27:58
the conflict was less. about they
28:01
are fighting over who's chosen and
28:04
they are fighting because she rejected
28:06
that agreement in the first place.
28:09
And that just like threw things into
28:11
disorder. Like, I think we're meant to
28:13
assume that if she had agreed
28:16
to marry whoever won the
28:18
games, because that's sort of how this is set
28:20
up. It's not even her choice. It's just whoever
28:22
wins the games wins her hand
28:24
in marriage. So since
28:26
she rejected that premise, that just
28:29
throws them all into chaos.
28:31
And now this alliance that they have
28:33
is coming apart. I don't think that
28:35
marriage was meant to form the alliance
28:37
in the first place. Well, it's
28:39
one of the places in Brave where I think the world building is
28:41
skimmed over a bit in order to give
28:43
other things some room. And
28:46
one of the big things I think is the
28:49
way the visual design of this
28:51
world was kind of held forth
28:53
as, you know, a big
28:56
new breakthrough for Pixar in a lot of
28:58
different ways. So there
29:00
are a lot of aspects of that that we can talk
29:02
about, but I think first we're going to take a break
29:04
and then come back and talk a little bit about the
29:06
visual design and the visual storytelling in
29:08
Brave. So again,
29:10
I'm looking at
29:12
this AV Club
29:16
interview that I
29:18
did with
29:25
the director and producer. And
29:27
man, first of all, it's
29:29
giving me nostalgia for the time when
29:31
we would be able to sit down
29:33
with filmmakers for like 30 or 40
29:35
minutes and really dig into things. Like
29:38
there's a lot more depth here than I remember.
29:40
And I'm thinking about the interviews we get these
29:42
days that are very often eight minutes to 10
29:44
minutes long. And I would have
29:47
had time for two of these questions at most,
29:49
alas, Babylon. Anyway, at the time,
29:51
the thing that Pixar was
29:53
really emphasizing was in part
29:56
Merida's hair and how complicated it was
29:58
to animate. over
30:00
100,000 individual strands and thousands of
30:02
them animated individually by hand.
30:04
I gotta admit, I don't like Nerda's
30:07
hair much. I find
30:09
it very, very distracting. There's just
30:11
so much of it. It seems
30:13
so unlikely. It's kind of a
30:16
wonder of animation, you know, how
30:18
independently all these little chunks with
30:20
different textures and colors move
30:23
from each other, like how they
30:26
respond to her riding harder, standing
30:28
still or stopping suddenly or whatever.
30:31
But man, I did spend like half
30:33
of this movie, both originally and this
30:35
time just kind of wanting to take
30:37
a hairbrush to her. Oh, I love
30:39
the hair. She's like the Scottish Mary
30:41
Elizabeth Master Antonio. Wow.
30:45
That was on all of the posters now that I think
30:47
about it. I mean, it kind of goes back to what
30:49
we were talking about, about sort of the simplistic
30:52
characterization of Merida,
30:54
like she's unruly. Her
30:57
hair is unruly. Get it? You
30:59
know, but it's I think
31:01
I agree with you, Tasha, that I found
31:03
it a little distracting while still being,
31:06
you know, technically impressive. And I
31:08
think it's just like I think they just
31:10
maybe took it a little too far because
31:12
that was like their big symbol of who
31:14
Merida is. It's how you visually represent who
31:17
this character is without changing the
31:20
Disney princess face, which she still
31:22
has, you know. And
31:25
it's just like a simple way
31:27
to underline this like character trait.
31:31
But it's a little blown out of proportion
31:33
in a way that, as we say, becomes
31:35
distracting. Like, I think like her hair could
31:37
have been like 30 percent
31:39
the size it is and you still
31:41
would have gotten that character that characterization
31:43
still would have come through without it
31:46
being quite as distracting. And you still
31:48
would have gotten like the visual humor
31:50
of her trying to stuff it under
31:52
that hood and everything, you know. But
31:56
it's yeah, it feels a little like
31:58
playing with their toys. than anything
32:00
else. You take a 30% hit at the
32:02
box office for that, I think. Just straight
32:07
up percentages. To me though, it's
32:10
like better express
32:12
this theme, simple
32:14
theme visually than with
32:16
talking. So it's like, I'm fine
32:19
with her having this explosion of
32:21
hair and also color, I think
32:23
too. It really helps give the film a very exciting
32:30
visual pop, which is kind of what you want
32:32
from a Pixar movie. But I mean,
32:34
that was kind of a Pixar thing for such a long
32:36
time. We're just like, we're going to look at
32:39
the dust everywhere. It was like
32:41
the water. Look at the water, the fur,
32:43
the blue fur. I
32:46
will say, talking about
32:49
renderings of hair, I thought
32:52
Bear Eleanor's fur was
32:54
quite lovely to
32:57
Bear Eleanor too. It's amazing. The
32:59
way the light lands on her fur
33:01
and the way it shifts, especially when
33:03
she's running around the castle, is
33:06
spectacular. And kind of the textural
33:08
differences between her fur and Mordu's
33:11
fur in particular is
33:13
just very clearly thought through and
33:15
well executed. I
33:18
love, one of the things I love, we're coming
33:20
across as a little negative on this movie, and
33:22
I do think that there are a lot of
33:25
things to praise. One of the things that lands
33:27
with me most is the way Bear
33:29
Eleanor moves when she's Bear Eleanor, as
33:31
opposed to has lost herself
33:33
Bear, the way they
33:36
map this very prim controlled woman
33:38
who's very aware of her reputations
33:40
and her surroundings and the idea
33:43
that somebody might be looking at
33:45
her, the way she moves as
33:47
a bear is spectacular. And the
33:50
scene at the falls
33:52
where she starts turning into a bear and
33:54
moving like a bear, and then she gets
33:56
herself back and suddenly she stands upright and
33:58
starts mincing. I
34:00
think it's just amazing. Yeah. Yeah. The way
34:03
she takes off her crown, so good.
34:05
Yeah. And delicately puts it down on
34:07
a rock to get a stand in the
34:09
water and eat fish. Yeah,
34:11
the thing with hair is painfully
34:14
literal. I mean, Merida
34:17
has wild hair. Her mother has extremely
34:19
structured braided hair that's
34:22
completely under control at all times.
34:25
When her mother's trying to control her, she
34:27
controls her hair. When she's trying to rebel
34:29
in a small way against that
34:31
control, she pulls out some of her hair. When
34:34
she's indicating that who she is and who
34:36
she wants to be, she pulls her hair
34:38
back out in front of everybody. And
34:41
then at the end, when Eleanor has
34:43
been softened and has gone through this
34:45
traumatic experience, literally her hair
34:47
has been let down. It's come
34:49
out of the braids and it's all loose
34:51
and chaotic around her. And she's more like
34:53
her daughter in that way. I don't
34:55
know. The kind of thing that
34:57
I would find cool, subtle
35:00
filmmaking, like good character work
35:02
if it wasn't, if
35:04
Merida's hair wasn't so much, if it
35:06
wasn't so over the top and blatant
35:08
in your face in every single shot.
35:12
And if they hadn't hyped
35:14
it up so much too, maybe. That's
35:18
extra textural, sorry. Can we complain
35:20
about the other character designs in
35:22
this? I just feel like
35:24
the men, the large men between
35:29
the blockiness and the Scottish
35:32
accents, not enough
35:34
distance from Shrek for me and
35:36
these characters, not enough.
35:39
Too evocative of a film I don't like. I
35:41
did not, I was not getting Shrek from
35:44
this movie. I was too busy thinking about,
35:47
this is one of a couple of
35:49
movies that set off a kind of
35:51
a big rolling online conversation about the
35:54
weird sexual dimorphism in animated
35:56
movies. Like the
35:58
thing we see here where Fergus is a ginormous
36:01
mountain of a man and his
36:03
wife is a wee little pencil
36:06
is very common in animated movies.
36:08
And you know, again, it's symbolic,
36:10
you know, men are like big
36:12
and maybe scary and stately and
36:15
like women are narrow and prim
36:17
and self-controlled. I'm thinking about how
36:19
much flak, in fact, Pixar
36:22
took for lava, the short that
36:24
played with the first Inside Out,
36:27
where there's the male volcano is a
36:29
big and broad and fat and the female
36:31
volcano is pretty and thin and
36:33
has long hair. Because
36:36
this comes up a lot, you know, people
36:38
have done TikToks and YouTubes
36:40
and like visual essays and all
36:42
this stuff. You see it in
36:45
the How to Train Your Dragon movies, you see
36:47
it in, oh, I'm trying to think of some
36:49
of the other examples that I've seen. It's just,
36:51
it's very, very common in animation
36:53
to do this like very stylized
36:55
shape is personality thing where somebody
36:58
who's a line just
37:01
like in overall character sketches very different from
37:03
somebody who's a block, who's a
37:05
square. All of the Inside Out
37:07
characters, for instance, are, you know,
37:09
built on shapes to indicate
37:12
their the space they take up. And
37:14
here we understand that Fergus is a
37:17
big bear of a man who takes up a
37:19
lot of space because he's a giant square and
37:22
like Eleanor is a small line. But when
37:24
you look at them both as people,
37:26
as like human beings who are married
37:28
to each other and produced children, I start
37:31
getting weirded out. Yes, my
37:33
thought drifted there briefly as well.
37:36
Very, very unpleasant. Well,
37:39
there is the scene at the very end where he
37:41
literally jumps on top of her and Meredith kind of
37:43
backs off and goes, ew, because it does
37:46
look like it pretty
37:48
primal and also just a little squeaky.
37:50
But I do. Yeah, we
37:52
have been pretty negative about this
37:55
film that I actually think I did log like
37:57
a three out of five or a three out
37:59
of five. the odd letterbox.
38:01
I mean, this is kind
38:03
of a mixed leading positive thing. So I feel
38:06
like I need to mention a couple things I
38:08
like about it just for my
38:10
own justification here, which is I
38:12
think the music is really pretty and
38:14
the songs are really pretty and carry
38:16
it along really well. And
38:19
I think that that sequence that we keep bringing up
38:21
when we are talking about what we like about the
38:23
film, when Eleanor and
38:25
Merida are on their own
38:27
and in nature and
38:30
kind of in more survival mode
38:32
or getting to know you mode in a way, there's
38:35
a freedom, there's like a freshness to that
38:37
and it's comedic and it's sweet
38:39
and it looks incredible. And like
38:42
you just crave more of that
38:44
because I just don't think
38:46
any section of the film is nearly as satisfying
38:48
as that, but that section is quite satisfying. So
38:50
you can kind of see
38:52
enough elements here.
38:55
You can see the glimmers
38:58
of something really special
39:00
that could have been made from the story
39:03
had the focus been really
39:05
even heavier on this mother-daughter
39:07
relationship had it been drawn
39:10
out even more, had the
39:12
characters been more sophisticated, particularly
39:15
Merida and some of that
39:17
play and drama between
39:19
them when they're on their own is gold and
39:22
I just kind of wish there were a
39:24
little more of it. I think that the
39:26
sequence where the two of them both kind
39:28
of try to speak their truths, but they
39:31
don't speak to each other. She's role-playing
39:33
with Fergus who is pretending to
39:35
be Merida and Merida is meanwhile
39:38
having a heartfelt conversation with the
39:40
horse, but Eleanor and Merida are
39:42
both talking to each other and
39:44
the edits have them talking to each other. We're
39:46
just given to understand that all of these very
39:48
important things for them to both say, they're
39:51
saying to the wrong person. They're
39:54
trying to unburden themselves. They're trying to
39:56
communicate. They're just doing it all wrong.
39:59
And that strikes me as a, a really
40:01
cool symbol that isn't overplayed. Just the idea
40:03
that they both know what's wrong and they
40:05
both even know how to say it, they
40:07
just can't seem to find a way to
40:10
say it to each other, I think
40:12
illustrates pretty neatly both what's going
40:14
on in each other's heads and
40:16
why they can't see eye
40:19
to eye. Because they can't seem to find
40:21
ways to say these things to each other instead
40:24
of to whoever else is around
40:26
or is listening. Another interesting illustration
40:28
of the divide between them that
40:31
I like is the two
40:33
main settings
40:36
we get in this, the
40:38
castle, which is very much
40:40
associated with Alinor, and the outdoors,
40:42
the forest, the wilderness which is
40:45
associated by Merida and the two
40:47
of them, the story ping-ponging back
40:50
and forth between putting them
40:52
in those settings as sort
40:55
of embodiments of their two
40:57
personalities. Specifically,
40:59
I like the symbol of the tapestry
41:01
and how it is brought out of the
41:04
castle in the climax
41:06
of the film to sort
41:08
of literally mend their relationship.
41:10
Although, I do remain annoyed
41:12
that neither of them seem
41:14
to process the symbolism in
41:16
that spell, which is very, very obvious
41:20
when they went right to the tapestry
41:22
instead. Speaking of things that could be
41:25
a little clear, I would like
41:27
to know if actually repairing the
41:29
tapestry was a vital component of
41:32
this counterspell or if they just
41:34
assumed there and it was all
41:36
about the mother-daughter bond that it
41:38
was clearly referencing the whole time.
41:41
I feel like it was clearly the mother-daughter bond and
41:43
the tapestry didn't have anything to do with anything. But
41:46
while I'm frustrated with their,
41:49
both of them being kind of idiots about
41:51
that, I also think it's like a fun
41:53
story beat because I think it's so obvious
41:56
that the vast majority of the audience, like
41:59
even, you know, and some fairly young
42:01
kids are gonna look at that
42:03
and think, like, no, you need to talk
42:05
to her, not go sew up a piece
42:07
of cloth. It's not about this. And
42:10
we'll be waiting for the moment where she
42:13
figures it out, like, however she figures
42:15
it out. I think that adds some
42:17
kind of some fun tension to the whole situation. I
42:19
just assume when they sew that thing
42:21
up that everything will be fine. But
42:24
that was my way of thinking. I
42:28
mean, you know, it's like the
42:30
true love's kiss or something. It's
42:32
just it's a physical action that
42:35
needs to be taken. So yeah, I
42:37
thought that sewing would probably take care
42:40
of things. I
42:43
don't have the sophistication of a small
42:45
child. I've often
42:47
said that about you, Scott. So
42:51
one of the things that I found really
42:53
interesting and that I mostly like, although there
42:56
are aspects of it that I'm, I
42:59
guess, a little back
43:01
and forth on, is the world building
43:03
in the script here is just really
43:05
unusual. You know, we
43:07
find out about Mordu, the
43:10
demon, quote, unquote, demon bear, when
43:12
he attacks. You know, there's no lengthy
43:16
scene setting and leading up to him.
43:19
He's just suddenly there. We
43:21
find out what relationship these clans
43:23
have to each other well after they're
43:26
all introduced when Merida starts telling them
43:28
their own history. We
43:30
find out, you know, what's
43:32
actually going on with Mordu really
43:35
late in the film, even though
43:37
he's sort of theoretically the villain. We
43:39
find out that magic exists in this
43:42
world, like almost by
43:44
accident. It's not an upfront kind
43:46
of thing. It just
43:48
it seems like there are a
43:50
lot of cases here where we
43:52
find out really important parts of this
43:55
rather unusual world, like in the exact
43:57
second that the story needs them and
43:59
not before. And given how much I
44:01
dislike this movie's like fussy,
44:05
silly, like voice over
44:07
about, I don't know, blah, blah,
44:09
fate, destiny, something, something. I kind
44:12
of like the bluntness of, you
44:15
know, you don't need to know, you don't need a bunch
44:17
of stories about this bear. You just need to know, oh
44:19
my gosh, there's a bear attacking. Like you don't need to
44:21
know a bunch of stories about the relationships here. You
44:23
need to see how they operate with each other
44:25
and see what, what actually
44:28
they'll listen to, you
44:30
know, what the clan leaders will respond
44:32
to and connect to. It's
44:35
really unusual structuring. It
44:38
doesn't 100% work, but I
44:40
kind of like how daring it is. I kind of like
44:42
how different it is. I do think
44:44
it works in the case of the,
44:46
the more due reveal and, you
44:48
know, that it, that this is the
44:50
same spell, although
44:53
it does raise the question of why
44:55
this, this is the only spell this
44:57
witch seems to have at her
45:00
disposal. I'm, I'm pretty good
45:02
with that. She does not seem like the
45:04
world's most competent witch. And the fact that
45:06
I kind of love the fact that the
45:08
whole more do thing is foreshadowed
45:11
in such a silly way with her,
45:13
her being like, no, I don't, I
45:16
don't do spells for people anymore. Too
45:18
many unsatisfied customers. Like
45:20
she's talking about the guy that she
45:22
turned into a bear because he wanted to be super
45:24
strong. And then he was mad about it. Like, what
45:27
are you going to do? You give a guy
45:29
what he wants and suddenly he's an angry bear.
45:31
Like why is that her fault? He can't complain about
45:34
being a bear when that's kind of her thing with
45:36
the shop. You know what I mean? Like
45:38
she, that's kind of the only trick she's going to
45:40
have in the bag. It's like, it's like the wonder twins
45:42
when they only turn into like ice jet. You remember
45:44
that Tasha, the one turn into an animal.
45:51
I'm going to turn into a bucket. Sorry.
45:53
Yeah. And that plays off. in
46:00
just some interesting ways at the very
46:02
end of the movie, but we'll get into that later.
46:05
I like the fact that Merida
46:08
kind of forces this woman's hand.
46:10
Like she is not a villain.
46:12
She is not a schemer. She's
46:15
not another version of Ursula, like
46:17
lurking in the dark, putting curses
46:19
on people for fun. She just,
46:21
she's got the one spell. She really likes bears
46:23
and she knows how to make bears with
46:26
her hands, sometimes with a
46:28
potion. I think that's
46:30
a really hilarious joke that the movie
46:32
does not oversell in any way. Yeah.
46:35
I admit that like it is
46:37
only like fully clicking into place
46:40
now that like she just likes
46:42
bears. Maybe I like
46:44
was not paying enough attention to
46:46
the wood carvings or something, but that is
46:49
sort of a funny read on that character
46:51
of this, like this is her thing. Or
46:53
maybe, you know, maybe she doesn't love bears
46:55
more than anything. Bears are just all she
46:57
can make. She's tried to carve
46:59
other things and they just don't come out well. She
47:02
knows what her talents are. They're making bears,
47:04
making bears out of wood, making bears out
47:06
of people, just making bears. It's
47:08
Scotland you should expect more. Anyway,
47:12
that was my more. More
47:15
than bears? Yeah, that was
47:17
my, that was a silly, silly more
47:19
joke. Yeah, I don't
47:21
know. Oh dear. Yeah,
47:23
you're getting it now. What
47:26
was I gonna say? I don't know. I just,
47:29
have you all said enough nice things about this film? Are
47:32
you kind of on balance, kind of
47:34
negative about this film or what? Cause
47:37
again, I was sort of like mixed to
47:39
positive. This is still feeling like a pretty
47:42
negative segment to me. I
47:45
feel like this is one of those movies
47:47
that I watch and think about its potential.
47:51
Where I watch and think all
47:53
of these elements feel like they're at
47:55
about 70% of
47:57
where they should have been to be just
47:59
like an abdication. absolutely fantastic movie. And
48:02
that can be more disappointing and leave you
48:04
with more of a negative feeling than
48:06
a movie that's just absolute garbage. Because
48:09
the garbage movie, you can stop thinking about
48:11
two minutes later, unless
48:13
you're hung up on how much you paid on the ticket. But
48:16
with Brave, it's been a long time.
48:18
And I'm still wondering what Brenda Chapman's
48:20
version of this was. I'm
48:22
still wondering what she
48:24
wanted to see in this story. Again,
48:28
going back and looking at that AV Club
48:30
interview, I asked Mark
48:32
Andrews a bunch about what he brought
48:34
to the movie specifically or how he
48:36
changed it, what Pixar
48:38
wasn't seeing in her version that
48:41
they wanted. And one of the
48:43
things he talks about was he was
48:45
on the movie as a consultant on
48:47
Scotland. His whole deal, as
48:49
far as the movie, was just they'd come
48:51
to him and say, okay, what did people
48:53
wear at this one particular time
48:55
in history? Or what would they have eaten?
48:57
Or what's a good reference book for
49:02
what the castle should look like? And
49:05
the idea that this guy was promoted above
49:07
the woman that had
49:10
already directed an animated film that had a
49:12
lot of responsibility at Disney that
49:17
had all this experience under her belt, doesn't
49:19
sit super well with me. And
49:23
it's that old thing where when
49:26
Spielberg steps in on a Stanley Kubrick film,
49:28
you're gonna look at it and say, well,
49:31
all of the stuff that I feel tonally
49:33
dubious about, that was probably Spielberg. And
49:36
everything that I loved was probably Stanley
49:38
Kubrick. And then Spielberg comes along
49:40
later and says, yeah, literally the exact opposite.
49:42
Everything you just said was something of mine.
49:44
And you have completely the wrong idea of
49:47
what Kubrick wanted this film to be. It's
49:49
entirely possible that everything good in this movie
49:51
came from Mark Andrews. I
49:53
just don't believe it as a narrative.
49:56
Something that I just, I cannot stop
49:58
thinking about. watching this
50:00
film is Cassandra Smallsick's
50:03
essay about her time at
50:05
Pixar. At the time, it
50:07
was a pretty big
50:09
deal. You can still find it
50:12
online under the headline Pixar's Sexist
50:14
of Boys Club at Medium. She
50:16
published it in 2018. And there was a lot of analysis
50:19
of it after
50:22
the fact and a lot of conversation about it.
50:24
It's very, very long. And
50:26
my personal feeling is that you can
50:28
kind of skip down to the Pixar
50:30
stuff because she gives some very specific
50:32
and in-depth stories
50:35
about what women went through at
50:37
Pixar, which went way, way, way
50:40
beyond John Lasseter and his
50:43
handsiness and his, you
50:45
know, just general
50:47
ickiness. She tells a lot of
50:50
very specific stories about Lasseter, but also about other producers
50:52
and leaders there and the things that they
50:55
did to women and the way they dismissed
50:57
them. And she talks a bunch about Brenda
50:59
Chapman and some of
51:01
the labels that got put on her as,
51:04
you know, indecisive or, you
51:06
know, difficult or strident or opinionated or
51:08
whatever. You know, all things
51:10
that you don't tend to hear about male
51:12
directors. And you certainly don't tend
51:14
to hear about Pixar male directors. So
51:17
I guess it comes back down to
51:19
like when I read that article the
51:21
first time, I thought, how could this
51:24
environment possibly produce like
51:26
a solid story about a female
51:28
character? How could people who feel
51:30
this way about women produce anything
51:32
about women? You know, how could
51:35
they enable female creativity? How could
51:37
they tell these stories? And
51:40
I don't know. I mean, does this
51:42
movie in the end feel to you
51:44
like it came from a place of
51:46
institutional sexism? Is that going too far?
51:49
I just I don't know
51:51
what to make of this movie coming
51:53
out of the studio at this time.
51:55
I think a lot of the stuff
51:57
that we've been talking about and the
51:59
characterizations of Merida and and Eleanor specifically,
52:02
and sort of the simplified
52:06
sanding off of edges that
52:08
both kind of receive here
52:11
could be attributable to some
52:15
of these attitudes that are being suggested.
52:18
I can just like sense
52:20
Scott's shoulders going up at
52:22
that very suggestion and
52:25
its extra textualness. So
52:28
like I don't want to say
52:30
that I think that is definitely the
52:32
case, but I think that that is
52:35
certainly a reading you can bring to
52:37
the relationship between that article and what
52:39
we see in Merida or what we
52:41
see in Brave. Scott
52:44
would you like to disagree? No, I wouldn't actually. I
52:46
think that makes sense. It's not a, yeah, it's a
52:48
legacy in retrospect. You
52:54
know, when all of this was
52:56
sort of revealed and then you
52:58
kind of look through the filmography
53:00
and look through Pixar from that
53:02
particular prism, I mean, you definitely
53:05
see some holes in
53:09
the films that kind of bear
53:11
all that out that reflect that
53:13
environment in some way. Also, it's
53:15
interesting to note, I
53:17
think that, you know, for all
53:19
of the hubbub about, you know,
53:22
this being Pixar's first female
53:24
protagonist and all that, she's
53:27
also one of the very, very
53:30
few human protagonists in
53:32
Pixar movies. And
53:34
especially up until this point, like it
53:36
was pretty much just like up and
53:38
like maybe the Incredibles, but, you know,
53:41
obviously superhero, you know, they were not
53:43
necessarily dealing with down to
53:45
earth human experiences, you know. So
53:48
Brave almost sticks out even more
53:50
than it already would by virtue
53:52
of being like an unusual
53:54
Pixar character and an unusual
53:56
Pixar narrative, regardless of gender.
53:59
gender. And it's sort of
54:02
it's tempting to speculate that like,
54:04
you know, when given the
54:06
chance to do its, you know,
54:09
its first female lead, they defaulted
54:11
to a princess, you know, because
54:13
that is the type
54:15
of human female that we are
54:18
used to animated movies being about
54:20
instead of like a female fish,
54:22
maybe like Finding Dory a few
54:24
years later, you know, that's
54:27
a spin off, but not
54:30
particularly relevant here. But just
54:32
in terms of like, you know, the
54:34
type of story that is being
54:36
told here, it's not necessarily Pixar's
54:38
bread and butter up until to
54:40
this point. And so maybe they
54:42
were already like a little bit
54:44
of a disadvantage here of how
54:46
to tell this type of story.
54:49
And then when you bring all
54:51
the gendered baggage into it, it
54:53
becomes even messier in that
54:55
regard. Yeah, it's certainly
54:58
easier to accept a character being
55:00
like a little two dimensional and,
55:02
you know,
55:05
just like simplistic in a way when they're
55:07
a bug or a toy or a robot
55:09
or, you know, whatever other
55:12
thing Pixar's deciding to give
55:14
emotions to this week. But I
55:17
think the problems in Brave come in part from
55:19
the difficulty of putting believable
55:21
humans on screen at this point in
55:23
time, you know, with the technology they
55:25
were using. I am still a
55:27
little bugged just by Merida's face
55:30
and like her her character design
55:33
compared to like how sophisticated animated
55:35
faces have gotten. So,
55:37
you know, it's hard to tell.
55:39
But we actually have a really
55:42
good opportunity to kind of compare
55:44
and contrast where Pixar has gotten
55:46
with believable human emotions
55:48
and particularly believable human teen
55:50
girl emotions and faces
55:52
and models and stories.
55:55
And we'll get into that next time when we
55:58
get into Inside Out 2 and some connections
56:00
between those movies. In the
56:02
meantime, normally we would default to feedback
56:04
at this point. We'll talk about that
56:06
in just a minute after this break. Now
56:18
it's time for feedback, but before we get into
56:20
it, we want to give a shout out to
56:23
Film Spotting, the next picture shows Mothership podcast hosted
56:25
by Adam Kempinar and Josh Larson. As
56:27
we're recording this, Adam and Josh's latest episode covers
56:29
Inside Out 2, Richard Linklater's
56:31
Hitman, and the widely beloved drama
56:33
Ghostlight. They've also given us
56:36
a bonus episode covering the top five Richard
56:38
Linklater scenes of all time. I
56:40
am so glad we don't set ourselves
56:43
challenges like that. I cannot imagine trying
56:45
to narrow Linklater down to five
56:48
scenes. What would you put in there
56:50
from where'd you go Bernadette? I mean
56:53
the whole movie. Can you just count the
56:55
whole movie as a scene? Because
56:58
you probably can. I should be mean to
57:00
that movie. It's actually got some interesting things in it, but
57:03
I could do it. I love doing that stuff, making lists.
57:05
That's what the boys do over at Film Spotting.
57:10
They fight over lists. They fight
57:12
over lists. They make top fives. Remarkably
57:14
little fighting most of the time on
57:16
that podcast. It is fun when they
57:18
get into it. Give me half an
57:20
hour and I'll come up with five
57:22
Richard Linklater scenes. So are they.
57:25
Madonna Papsemer from Slacker.
57:27
That's on there for sure. Okay.
57:30
Bold. Very bold. I
57:34
will say when Adam
57:36
and Josh do strongly disagree about
57:38
something and get into it, it's maybe
57:40
my closest window into what it's
57:43
like for fans of this podcast to listen to me and
57:45
Scott fight about stuff. Because I
57:47
do definitely like when they strongly disagree,
57:50
get kind of a yeah, go, go
57:52
fight kind of feel to it. I
57:54
do really like when they disagree strongly about things, but
57:57
it is normally quite amicable. So
58:00
as for feedback, we're recording this pairing a
58:02
lot earlier than we would normally would. This
58:05
is literally the day that our episode on
58:07
Furiosa drops, so we have not left much
58:09
time for people to send in feedback. Jennie
58:12
suggested that instead we should use this space
58:14
for a little discussion on the Disney Princess
58:16
phenomenon. The Disney Princess product
58:19
line was created in 2001 as a
58:21
marketing gimmick to target sales to younger
58:23
female Disney fans, and it
58:25
brought in about $3 billion over the course
58:27
of its first three years. It has been
58:29
a remarkably lucrative success,
58:33
and they just keep adding Disney Princesses to
58:35
the story. I think that there are entire
58:37
films that may have been greenlit out
58:39
of a feeling of, we need more
58:41
Disney Princesses to keep this line going
58:43
and make more money. At
58:46
the same time, Disney has taken a lot
58:48
of criticism for some of the specific products
58:50
they've marketed under this line. The massive
58:53
emphasis that they've put on
58:55
Princesses over everything else, the
58:57
sort of gender presentation
58:59
of these Princesses, and specifically
59:02
how they included Merida from
59:04
Brave in their Princess marketing.
59:07
Jennie, when you brought this up in the first place,
59:09
was there a specific topic that you wanted to raise
59:11
or a specific direction you wanted this discussion to go?
59:14
I mean, we already kind of
59:16
touched on it in our discussion,
59:19
how Merida kind of
59:21
arrived at a turning
59:23
point for the Disney
59:25
Princess and embodies
59:27
a certain pushback against the quote unquote
59:30
old Disney Princess and sort of like
59:32
brings her into a new
59:34
context. And as I said, we
59:36
were already kind of moving in
59:38
that direction prior to Brave with
59:40
Tangled and Princess and the Frog,
59:42
Tiana and Princess and the Frog,
59:45
even Mulan. I think Mulan is
59:48
probably sort of the beginning
59:50
of this shift
59:53
into making
59:55
our Disney Princesses
59:58
strong female characters. too. But
1:00:01
what I think is particularly
1:00:03
interesting about Merida in this
1:00:05
context is she is the
1:00:08
first Disney princess to
1:00:10
not have any romantic
1:00:12
interest, you know, no
1:00:14
sort of prince figure that she
1:00:16
ends up with at the end of the film. And
1:00:19
every princess since her, granted
1:00:23
only been two, Moana and Raya from
1:00:25
Raya and the Last Dragon, but they
1:00:27
have no romantic storylines. And it's interesting
1:00:29
to me because Brave is all about
1:00:31
Merida sort of rejecting marriage
1:00:34
and that whole narrative. So
1:00:36
it does it does feel notable,
1:00:38
I guess, that the Disney
1:00:42
princess stopped needing to have a
1:00:44
romantic happily ever after after her.
1:00:47
So, you know, points for
1:00:49
that, I guess. I'm
1:00:51
just checking what your Frozen was, because
1:00:53
for me, it felt like that was
1:00:55
the the breakpoint, where
1:00:58
Disney rejected most strongly the
1:01:00
idea of its princesses needing
1:01:04
to have, you know, some form of
1:01:06
romantic interest. But that was until 2013,
1:01:08
which is a bit later. I
1:01:10
mean, not much later. And I
1:01:13
thought there was a romantic interest in
1:01:16
Frozen, wasn't there? Not for Anna, right?
1:01:19
You need to rewatch Frozen.
1:01:21
I mean, there sort of is. With
1:01:25
the with like the. It's not a
1:01:27
prince. Put it this way. Frozen very
1:01:29
strongly, Rose, rejects the
1:01:31
the whole prince. Oh, yeah. Sure. For
1:01:34
instance, princess and the frog did not. Yeah.
1:01:37
Right. Right. Although for reasons
1:01:39
I don't really understand, Anna
1:01:41
and Elsa are not considered
1:01:43
Disney princesses. I always
1:01:45
assumed that was a marketing thing because. We
1:01:47
can't just profit off of that forever. All
1:01:49
these care. We can't we can't call the
1:01:51
princesses just to make money. That's not
1:01:54
right. That's not us. Oh,
1:01:56
yeah, that's probably it, Scott. Yeah,
1:01:58
Disney rejected. the profit motive. No,
1:02:00
I think it's because Frozen
1:02:03
made so much money as its own
1:02:06
property and has its own
1:02:08
massive wave of lines, product
1:02:10
lines, like marketed under Frozen and they
1:02:13
didn't want to stick Anna and Elsa
1:02:15
just under an umbrella
1:02:17
with 50-year-old princesses that didn't have
1:02:19
much going on. I think they
1:02:21
were more profitable on their own.
1:02:23
But yeah, your point about Merida,
1:02:25
I mean, Merida's whole thing is
1:02:27
like she's not just rejecting unwanted
1:02:29
betrothal for herself. She's rejecting
1:02:32
it for everybody her age. And maybe one
1:02:34
of the funniest moments in that entire movie
1:02:36
is when all three of the princes speak
1:02:38
up and say, you know what? Yeah, we
1:02:40
just want to marry whoever we want. Good
1:02:45
luck, gents. They all
1:02:47
seem not
1:02:50
like the most appealing fellas, but
1:02:52
should I not have
1:02:54
insulted those guys? Well, every
1:02:56
single one of them is young. They grow
1:02:59
into something. Merida's eventually going to figure out
1:03:01
how to braid her hair and the boys
1:03:03
are going to grow up. As
1:03:05
far as the Disney princess line
1:03:07
stuff goes, I think it's been
1:03:09
really interesting watching it evolve and
1:03:11
particularly sort of watching how
1:03:13
they're marketed. It seems like Disney
1:03:16
is maybe a little more interested in playing
1:03:18
around with or kind of
1:03:20
puncturing that image, the
1:03:23
self seriousness of the
1:03:25
little girl as princess
1:03:27
thing. But I
1:03:30
don't know, the whole thing still just
1:03:32
makes me very, very weary. The idea
1:03:34
of selling princess hood is
1:03:36
aspirational to little girls. Princesses aren't
1:03:39
really cool anymore. It's cool to
1:03:42
push back against princesses that even
1:03:44
in the first inside out, there's
1:03:46
sort of a rejection of princess
1:03:49
culture in that
1:03:51
too. So it seems like
1:03:53
the new trend in princesses
1:03:55
is to maybe be a little anti-princess
1:03:58
even if you are one. like
1:04:01
Merida say. So that is, she is
1:04:03
maybe a bellwether in that regard. Yeah,
1:04:05
Princess Diaries has called and they like
1:04:08
to just wave like humongous amounts of
1:04:10
money at you and snicker. Yeah,
1:04:14
I think it's just one of those things where,
1:04:16
you know, people want to be like edgy, but
1:04:18
still princesses. And, you know, it's kind
1:04:21
of, you know, the have it
1:04:23
all aspect of feminist culture that can be
1:04:25
a little fun. You can kind of like
1:04:27
mix and match your influences and your flavors.
1:04:31
But that does mean that, you know, the
1:04:33
Disney Princess line with its unbroken
1:04:35
connections back to the 1940s. That's
1:04:38
that's what makes me a little weary. Like
1:04:40
I'm all for kids kind of trying
1:04:43
to model themselves after, you know, Vanellope or
1:04:45
Merida or Moana. You
1:04:47
know, whoever the new
1:04:49
character is who's been conceived of for the times. But
1:04:52
the whole Disney Princess line seems to
1:04:54
be about just sort of batching them
1:04:56
all together and saying, sort of, they're
1:04:58
all the same thing, though. You
1:05:01
know, they're a little bit different from each
1:05:03
other, like American Girl dolls, but they're also
1:05:05
all the same thing and all the same
1:05:07
product. Don't particularly love it. But maybe there
1:05:10
are people out there with very strong feelings
1:05:12
about Disney Princesses or particularly parents whose kids
1:05:15
have some kind of specific relationship. Maybe
1:05:17
I should speak about that
1:05:19
for a sec. I don't know. I
1:05:22
mean, I have two girls have relationships
1:05:24
with this line. I just think it's
1:05:26
a fit. I don't know this film,
1:05:29
but the whole Disney Princess thing, it's
1:05:31
just a little moment out of time.
1:05:33
It's it's it's a little phase like,
1:05:36
you know, like my
1:05:38
youngest had had a really powerful
1:05:41
Barbie phase that that has sort
1:05:43
of gone away. And, you
1:05:45
know, my oldest would get these
1:05:47
sort of little princess dresses
1:05:49
and run around. And it was like
1:05:52
all that was kind of over at four
1:05:54
or five, six years old and
1:05:56
was just a way of playing pretend and
1:05:59
just another kind of two. in the
1:06:01
toolbox in terms of just stuff that
1:06:03
she could mess around with when she
1:06:06
was in the house. I
1:06:09
never felt it was, I don't know,
1:06:12
I found it fairly harmless and not
1:06:14
a terribly lasting thing in
1:06:17
terms of the impression that it ended up
1:06:19
making on them, it was just a bit
1:06:21
of play. I mean, there was
1:06:23
a moment a decade
1:06:25
or so back where you could
1:06:27
not open Buzzfeed without there being
1:06:30
a which Disney princess are
1:06:32
you quiz or a mashing
1:06:34
up Disney princesses with the other thing.
1:06:36
Were that weird face that was just
1:06:38
like fan artists, like here's what all
1:06:41
of Disney princesses would look like as
1:06:43
mermaids and here's what they would all
1:06:45
look like as birds and here's what
1:06:47
they would all look like as rocks.
1:06:49
Yeah, there was definitely like a cultural
1:06:52
moment where it extended beyond like the
1:06:54
moment that you're talking about, I think
1:06:56
Scott and like adult women were maybe
1:06:58
supposed to have an
1:07:00
opinion on Disney princesses, which
1:07:02
is, yeah. And
1:07:05
I think that that moment also kind
1:07:07
of aligns with brave and the shift
1:07:09
that we're seeing here. Makes
1:07:12
sense. But I think that's really good
1:07:14
perspective, Scott. I definitely would
1:07:16
prefer to not be the person who
1:07:19
doesn't have kids who has strong opinions
1:07:21
about how other people's kids interact with
1:07:24
literally anything, including culture.
1:07:26
So that's I think a
1:07:28
good and healthy way to look at it. But
1:07:30
as I was saying, if people
1:07:33
listening to this have strong opinions one way
1:07:35
or the other about Disney princess culture and
1:07:37
its relationship to kids or adults, feel
1:07:40
free to let us know. We
1:07:42
appreciate when our listeners share their thoughts and their
1:07:44
recommendations. If you feel so inclined, we
1:07:46
can feature your response on a future episode. To
1:07:49
reach us, you can leave a short voicemail at 773-234-9730. Send
1:07:54
us a voicemail or email us
1:07:56
at comments at nextpitchershow.net. That's
1:08:04
it for this episode of The Next Picture Show.
1:08:06
In our next episode, we'll talk about Inside Out
1:08:08
2 before bringing Brave back into the discussion. Look
1:08:10
for that episode next Tuesday on
1:08:13
your podcatcher of choice. For ad-free
1:08:15
versions of the podcast and extra
1:08:17
content, find us on Patreon at
1:08:19
patreon.com/nextpictureshow. Find us at nextpictureshow.net
1:08:22
and on BlueSky at The Next Picture
1:08:24
Show if you want to keep track of when new episodes
1:08:26
drop. Until next week, if
1:08:28
you're going to ask a witch to radically change
1:08:30
one of your family members, maybe pay attention to
1:08:32
that witch's side hustles first so you know what
1:08:35
you're getting.
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