As Merida resists her mother, she’s more or less devoted to her dad (who, you’ve seen in flashback, lost his leg to a magical-monstrous bear while saving Merida’s life when she was a child).
So far, the story of Brave sounds pretty regular - even if you remember that it’s Pixar’s very first feature with a girl protagonist. Merida, by contrast, is all enchanting poise and great courage and terrific intelligence, that is, when she’s not stomping her foot and whining to Elinor that she can’t possibly do what’s expected of her. So self-sufficient is Merida that she sees little benefit in aligning herself with a man, especially one of her three options, who arrive with their dads and promptly show off how inept they are: one’s too short, another too geeky, and the third too gangly. Merida herself is actually very good at such activities, you know from the start of Brave, where she appears in the woods, galloping over her 10th-century Scottish landscape on her huge black steed Angus, splitting arrows with other arrows, and stealing extra cakes from the kitchen in order to bribe her three little brothers. That, and, the men of the tribes gather and drink and shout, while competing in manly activities like throwing hammers, shooting arrows, and racing horses.
The deal, struck by Merida’s dad King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and the leaders of the kingdom’s three other tribes, is that each generation re-confirms their unsteady peace by bringing two tribes together. “Marriage isn’t the end of the world!” So declares Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), when her flamboyantly redheaded daughter Merida (Kelly Macdonald) insists she won’t marry a man she doesn’t know. Editor’s note: This review contains plot spoilers.
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