Potentially feuding clan chiefs are stripped of menace by being presented as harmless nitwits. So the real issue is comprehensively ducked.

Pixar's bravery does not apparently extend that far. However, this would have involved a possibly unsettling challenge to a sacrosanct piety. Her story could have acquired tension, purpose and drama. If Merida had been forced to confront the conflict between gratification and duty, she might have become a more interesting character. Merida's fashionable insistence on self-realisation at all costs threatens to plunge her homeland into war. Dynastic marriage, as so often, is a means of imposing harmony on potential chaos. Merida's nation, like so many, is inhabited by tribes potentially at odds with each other. In the case in question, the argument for compliance with social need is far from trivial.

It's a notion that could be applied to bankers, politicians and celebrities, as well as royalty. Privilege, insists Elinor, brings with it obligation. It's because Merida is a princess that she's asked to sacrifice a degree of autonomy for the benefit of others less fortunate than herself. She doesn't want to impose an arranged marriage on every young woman in the kingdom. Yet an interesting enough story is bubbling away beneath its stiflingly safe surface.įor Elinor has a point. The plodding predictability of this message gives Brave a dullness at odds with its luscious appearance. A society that refuses to accommodate it must of course be reshaped. Her mother, Queen Elinor, who dares question this creed, sacred though it be to both our age and Hollywood, must of course be re-educated.

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