Japanese trailer for Pixar’s Brave has a Mononoke vibe

ok, this is just stunning, and completely changes my assessment of Pixar’s new film Brave, in both plot and in tone:

My earlier complaint that Brave was going to be just another Princess movie was taken up by Erik over at Forbes, who rightly pointed out that there doesn’t seem to be any love interest in the movie, and the trailer above confirms that the plot is definitely not a standard Disney formula.

In fact, as Nordling at AICN remarks, it’s actually got a much more Miyazaki vibe. Maybe it’s all a matter of the trailer editing process, the different emphasis for Japanese vs American audiences, and choice of music. But the movie looks more like Princess Mononoke or the (non-Miyakazi, but Miyazaki-esque) Secret of Kells.

There was never a chance i wouldn’t faithfully see Brave just like I see everything by Pixar, but the trailer above has me substantially mollified. Maybe the earlier trailer was just aimed at the Disney demographic that expects the formulaic plot, as a kind of lure. There’s a reason that appreciation of anime hasn’t gone mainstream in the US and why Ponyo didn’t garner the respect it should have.

To return to Erik’s response to my earlier post though, he’s right that Brave is a Pixar film more than a Disney one. This is a 3D animation film with Lasseter et al running the show, not something out of the old animation studios (though I was quite impressed with Princess and the Frog). My complaints centered on the Disney Princess franchise, of which Rapunzel from Tangled is the sole 3D member – the rest are all pure animation. Thematically, Rapunzel fits – her old dream of seeing the lantern lights fulfilled, her new dream is her man, as per her own literal confession. And the theme of escape is there, which the first trailer from Brave certainly overplayed.

The key complaint I have though remains, and Erik’s post doesn’t really address it. Where are the male role models for young boys? In UP, the main characters are an old man desperate for sentiment and loss, and a young kid who’s basically a round goofball. The animal sidekicks have more personality than the boy does. Moving, yes. Beautiful, yes. But it doesn’t address the void I perceive (though still, a masterpiece on its own merits, in its own category).

Erik goes on to list other counter-examples:

Toy Story was about friendship rather than romantic love; Finding Nemo explored the relationship between father and son; The Incredibles dealt with the sometimes-rocky travails of having a family, and of finding great things even in the mundane; Monsters Inc. was about friendship in the workplace and the fear of the other

All true, but again, none of these provided a role model for a young boy dreaming of adventure and finding his place in the world. These are all movies about adult relationships and family, they look inward rather than interact with the outer world.

Maybe I’m not articulating what I am looking for properly.. I certainly am NOT asking for more testosterone or railing against a proliferation of wimposity or anything like that. What I want in a nutshell is to see characters in Disney animation that a boy can relate to with the same part of the brain that I as an adult relate to when I see a character like John Crighton, or Han Solo, or Samwise Gamgee. These archetypes appear in other media, there’s no shortage in our culture of them, but they don’t seem to have penetrated children’s animation yet.