Floating in a sea of summer blockbusters this year, from Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man to animated titles like Ice Age 4 and The Lorax, is ‘Brave’, Pixar’s latest upcoming feature-length flick. Pixar, the Californian animation studio known and loved for a whole raft of cinema-smashers including Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, is breaking out of its norm and venturing into unexplored territory with this new movie, taking the story in a direction they’ve never headed before. It’ll still be typical Pixar at the core – fun for kids and adults alike, featuring a plotline with twists and turns that makes Disney’s recent attempts look bland in comparison – but expect something different this year. And seems as it’s hitting the big screen in just a few months, what better time than now to find out why it’s so unique?
It’s the first Pixar movie set in the past. All of Pixar’s previous flicks have been set in the present, apart from WALL-E, which was set in the future. This is Pixar’s first feature-length foray into the past. It’s also the first film from the studio to be set in Scotland. Last year’s Cars 2 featured settings from all over the world, and wound up in Britain by the end, but we’ve never seen Scotland in a Pixar movie before.
It’s the first Pixar movie with a female lead. The closest Pixar has edged towards having a female lead before has to be The Incredibles, but even then, Elastigirl and her daughter Violet shared the spotlight with Mr Incredible and Dash. Brave’s lead character is Princess Merida, daughter of King Fergus and Queen Elinor, who rule over the Scottish kingdom in which the entire film is set. But don’t worry, Merida isn’t a generic Disney Princess; she’s a strong character, intent on changing her own fate.
It’s the first Pixar movie with a fantasy feel. Never before has a Pixar film featured magic. Here, in Brave, it makes its first appearance. When Merida rebels against her parents and asks a mysterious witch to change her life for the better, everything inevitably goes wrong, and she has to fight to get her old life back.
Now cast your mind back to Toy Story, Pixar’s first movie. Ever wondered why they chose toys as the lead characters? After all, Disney’s films had featured humans centre stage for decades. But because of the three-dimensional nature of the animation, there were lots of technical difficulties, especially for a company that at the time had only just been founded. At best, animated humans looked robotic. So it was a blessing in disguise that the main cast consisted of toys; they seemed more believeable as a result of the clunky, jerky movement that was commonplace in those early days of 3D animation.
- Animation model from Luxo Jr, an early Pixar short which featured only two desk lamps and a ball!
More eagle-eyed watchers will also notice that all the human characters in Toy Story had short haircuts. Even Andy’s mother had it snipped at the shoulders. And when Andy’s friends run around at his birthday party near the beginning of the film, we only see their feet. What’s more, none of the human characters in the film wear anything more complex than jeans and a T-shirt. The reason for all this is that hair and fabrics take a lot of computing power to render properly, whereas plastic, the material most of the toys are made of, takes little.
But animation has come a long way (see the evolution of Pixar’s innovative animation software here). In Monsters Inc, Pixar successfully animated Sully, a fairly hefty creature covered in long strands of fluffy fur. In The Incredibles, they animated Violet’s long sleek hair. And in Ratatouille, they rendered the coat of countless rats flawlessly. Yet they’ve never abandoned their original animation system until now. For Brave, Pixar had to rewrite the software from the ground up, which is no surprise.
The film is set in Scotland, so each scene will be full of shifting grass, swaying trees, and shaking shrubbery. The characters have wild heads of hair in a wide array of sizes, shapes, and styles, as well as crazy facial hair. Merida’s hair has been the subject of many an animation fanatics’ admiration – the unruly ginger mop is constructed from 1,500 separate strands, totalling to about 111,700 individually-animated hairs. That’s phenomenal.
Then there are the costumes. Each different fictional clan in Brave has a different type of tartan pattern on their outfits. While some characters, Merida included, occasionally sport quite simple dresses, others, such as King Fergus, wear heavy gear coated with various forms of fur and fabric, and a kilt that’s wrapped around the waist several times, resulting in more layers to animate and render. The detailed setting, uncontrollable hair, and complex clothing called for a renewal of Pixar’s animation system. And so they obliged, and rebuilt their software for the first time since they began roughly 25 years ago.
- King Fergus and Queen Elinor, Merida’s parents
ONE MORE THING
If you’re an avid Pixar fan you’ll know that this, the Pizza Planet truck, is a running gag that makes an appearance in all of Pixar’s films:
But how on earth is a Toyota Hilux pickup van going to fit into a historic Scottish setting where there aren’t even any roads? It’s pretty unlikely that the characters know anything about planets, let alone pizza. Some have speculated that there’ll be a wooden cart, or something along those lines, but that’s just something we’ll have to wait to find out for ourselves.
TRAILER PREVIEW -
Brave is due for release in Vue Cinema in Gunwharf Quays on August 13th 2012, roughly six weeks after the initial US release. Sign up for email alerts so you know when tickets go on sale!
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