Lois Lane’s secret in Man of Steel

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I was all mad at this movie, with its on-the-nose dialogue, repetitive exposition and female characters with zero agency. Roll-up-the-sleeves mad. Children of Men mad. Mad.

Then I realized Lois Lane’s secret, and now I’m OK with it.

Spoilers ahead. You know how I be.

Lois is an alien dispatched by the Guardians of the Universe to supervise Superman.

Hear me out.

A) She has hyper senses and seems impervious to harm. Like Superman, she navigates in the pitch dark like it’s no problem. Like Supes, she shows no discomfort in -40F weather and a padded jacket. Like Supes, she strolls around an ice cliff like it’s no trouble. She demonstrates Prometheus-level lack of self-preservation when confronted by a snakebot. Sure, it hurts her, but it has hurt Supes, too. If anything, the fact she survived an attack potent enough to hurt Supes proves she’s superhuman. I submit that she tolerates Supes “I’m gonna cauterize the wound with my laser eyes without even taking off your sweater” line of logic because she knows he can’t do her harm. Her Saw-movie screaming is but an act.
B) She has super speed. Twice Supes dashes off to have a high-flying punch-battle, landing at some random spot in Metropolis (once downtown, and once in a mass transit station), and each time Lois manages to jog up to him within minutes. It would be funny if it weren’t revealing: she has used her hyper senses and super speed to join him.
C)She provides only information, never action. Not only does she permit her rescue to be engineered entirely by Supes and Jor-El’s Consciousness DongleTM (no risk to her as she is invulnerable), but also in a baffling climactic moment she attempts to use the Consciousness DongleTM again, fails, says “this is supposed to work” and immediately gives up and wanders off. There is no reason for her to do this except to permit the agency of an earthling. That earthling turns out to be Richard Schiff, who sorts out the dongle issue on his first try, with no foreshadowing whatsoever, proving how simple the task would have been for Lois had her Prime Directive not compelled her to step aside.
It is so hard to stand by and do nothing like this
D) Supes knows it. This is why he and Lois kiss without any previous chemistry. It just feels natural.
As further proof, after the kiss she offers him some Lou Reed: “They say it’s all downhill after the first kiss.”

Why does Lois say such a strange thing? Possibly because Reed’s “Modern Dance” would resonate with any superhuman: “I need a guru, I need some law/Explain to me the things we saw.” She has found in this song a connection to the human world — its romance and bewilderment — and positions herself as the bridge Supes can use to connect as well.

Supes, lacking her subtlety, answers, “I think that’s only true when kissing humans.” As pointed out by long-distance co-heckler Donna, this comment would be quite insulting to Lois if she were human! But by saying it to a fellow alien, he reveals in his dunderheaded way that he understands she’s not human at all.

Put your space lips on mine
E) Lois has the ideal job for a super-powered alien, as Supes eventually discovers. Naturally, the thought process that leads Supes to become a reporter is the one Lois has already had. It’s a natural choice for Lois the watcher, which brings us to…
F) ~~Watchers~~ Guardians are well-established in the DC universe. Certainly the Guardians of the Universe would not limit themselves to the Lantern Corps. Certainly Oa would indulge the odd on-location observer, and certainly not every female they enlist gets stuffed in the Star Sapphires. Lois’s GotU training is why she i) Follows Jor-El’s orders without question, ii) refuses to obstruct earth’s collective will and iii) takes no action, as Supes seems to have all the life-threatening stuff in hand, however recklessly he goes about it.
I’m just so damn good at punching

With all that understood, I am no longer provoked to purple rage by Lois’s passivity and incompetence. She serves a greater mission than this pale blue dot can grasp.

So I will set aside the many other inept, helpless female characters in this movie and pursue the many other questions at hand.

1. Why do the characters speak dialogue par with “to my point of view, the Jedi are evil”?
A sample exchange:

Lois: I’m a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist!
Perry: Then act like one.
Lois: Print it or I walk.
Perry: You can’t. You’re under contract.

Why would Lois make a threat she can’t possibly back up? Lois would look really dumb and/or forgetful if we hadn’t already established she acts this way on purpose.
2. How many Valium did Lara-El take before putting baby Kal in the shuttle? Because I’ve shown more emotion gate-checking a guitar.
3. Could Jor-El not have passed on a Lara-El Consciousness DongleTM, too? What kind of monster is Jor to listen with a straight face as Lara grieves about never seeing their baby again? I guess the same one that dons a suit of armor while his wife wears a bathrobe.
Prologue is set entirely on the planet Ego

Also — a civilization capable of Consciousness DongleTMs should take better care of their data. Off-site backups, people.
4. Why does Supes seek advice from a priest? Is he Catholic? Because that would be super interesting. And why does the priest’s advice have NOTHING to do with God? I guess it’s harder to breeze into a therapist’s office for free “what does your gut tell you” guidance.
5. Could we have spent a little more time with the “Supes is painfully overstimulated by the world” angle? It’s incredibly interesting and important to the story later, but it’s introduced and resolved in one scene that could be called “Ma Kent cures autism.”
To be fair, my voice is really, really soothing
6. How can there be an element that’s not on the periodic table? More likely the Smallville jeweler Pa Kent visited blew smoke up his butt. You gotta make your fun in a small town.
7. Could Pa Kent have given Supes some advice — ANY advice — on how to deal with bullying? Kevin Costner is this movie’s empathy-generating device, but even he has nary to say about “use your words” or “express your anger” or “win friends and influence people.” This is a recipe for a Hulk, not a Supes. No wonder Oa sent Lois!

Suffer in silence, son. That’s what I always say.
8. Why do the baddies need to rough up Ma Kent? You don’t need to get someone to do the John-Steinbeck’s-The-Pearl sidelong glance to guess the giant space shuttle is stored in the FRIGGIN’ BARN.
Son, I think I’m bleeding internally
9. Is it really Pulitzer-Prize-level investigation to follow a trail of twisted steel and surfacing school buses? Maybe this film is an indictment of American journalism.
I can’t believe I’m the only one on the planet with this skill set
10.How do you muscle a bus out of open water from below? That would take some Super kicking.
11. How do the Clarks manage to forget their dog during a tornado in the first place? This scene actually worked pretty well so I don’t want to poop on it too much. Maybe the dog was Ma Kent’s responsibility. Stupid Ma Kent and her inability to get to overpasses.
Why doesn’t General Zod try diplomacy? Zod’s black-and-white broken gif kidnapper video is a pretty poor ice-breaker. Baddies should think they’re goodies. Sophisticated baddies should not make speeches that “morality” makes goodies inferior. But that happens, too.
We got it bad and that is good
12. Why do the Kryptonians need Superman whole to remake the Krypton space-babies? They took a blood sample when Supes was on their ship. Is that not enough cells? But I don’t really know how DNA of billions of creatures integrated into one’s cells is supposed to work.
13. What is the point of the “Jenny” character except to give Lawrence Fishburne someone to save? TWICE. If you need a character this freakin’ helpless, please use a child or a dog, though Air Bud would have demonstrated more agency than Jenny does.
14. What the heck was supposed to be happening with the gravitron/black-hole-generator/mass increaser weapon? Seriously, I have no idea.
And there’s no way this didn’t kill thousands of people

I also didn’t follow how the Phantom Zone was supposed to work, when it was a death sentence and then nullified and then a death sentence and then nullified again. But I enjoyed the flight of the frozen space peens.

I WILL FIND HIM and immediately state my intentions
15. After all the flying face-punching, shouldn’t killing Zod require a little more effort? Seriously. I thought it was going to take decaptitation-by-laser-eyes for sure. But no.
16. On a scale of 1 to 10, how problematic is it when Supes tells someone he’s above suspicion there’s nothing more American than being “from Kansas”? It is more or less problematic that the person he tells this to is black? Would Supes be less “American” if he were Hussein-El? WHERE MY MELTING POT AT?
The real message of this movie is there’s nothing more American than laundry

A-a-a-a-a-a-and SPENT.

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12 Lingering Questions about Star Trek Into Darkness

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Star Trek Into Darkness is optimal for heckling. It just wants to make you happy and feel a few feels. The actors are game and totally committed. It’s fun, fast and smart enough that its occasional nonsense isn’t offensive. I would gladly see it again. I would gladly buy it or put it in my Netflix queue.

Benedict Cumberbatch's sweet duster into darkness

Duster in Cryptkeeper Black by Hugo Boss

It makes finding haughty questions a worthwhile sport.

So let us find them.

Spoilers abound.

In no particular order.

1) Why is the full-body Alice Eve underpants shot in the trailer from a fleeting, gratuitous moment in the movie? Yes, this question is mostly rhetorical. I also stand by my assertion that all lady underpants shots played for laughs should have mismatched bra and undies. Ain’t nobody wearing matching undies that isn’t planning to have somebody see them. (See Fantastic Four for prior offense.)
2) Why does Karl Urban’s scenery-chomping Bones need Khan’s blood specifically? Doesn’t he have 72 handy frozen bodies with similarly super-powered blood?
3) How does Captain Kirk in another solar system make a cell-phone call to Scotty in San Francisco? Not even a satellite delay. That’s a very smart phone.
But the roaming charges are MURDER
4) Why does Captain Kirk wait until the last minute to deploy his murderous-native-distracting scroll? And why was it they were on that planet in the first place, if not to neutralize the volcano? And why did they have a volcano-neutralizing kit handy?
5) Speaking of, why do all these volcano-neutralizing devices and warp cores need to be managed by hand? Can’t we get some remote control/robots up in this piece? Not to sound meatist, but I think that’s an android on the bridge with the pale complexion and skull vent. Can we use one of his ilk for some of the more life-threatening stuff?
6) Also — I saw some people/beings with the wisdom to wear hazmat suits in proximity to Kirk’s heavily-irradiated body. However Bones is not one of them. Also the hazmat masks had only one aperture — for the right eye. I really have no idea what was going on there.
Would this face irradiate you, baby?
7) Did Captain Kirk ever figure out that his deceit-by-omission of Starfleet was way worse than Spock’s honest “backstabbing”?
8) Can Benedict Cumberbatch move his face above the mouth? Does the sound of his own Smauglike voice give him a boner? Can be he blamed?
Please forgive my self-induced voice boner
9) How and when did Spock develop insane superpowers of leaping and punching in the face? Also — Uhura is the world champion of “No, Spock, it’s too dangerous!” up until bloody revenge is on the line. Then she’s all like, “GO GET ‘EM.”
10) Why did ~~Robocop~~ Admiral Such-And-Such send all 72 bodies/torpedoes with Kirk? (Both Khan and the admiral explain that the admiral knew the torpedoes had bodies in them.) Did he really expect Kirk to use all 72? Or something?
Captain Kirk, renowned torpedo enthusiast
11) Why not send a secret agent captain with the torpedoes/plan instead of patsy Kirk?
12) Is anybody flipping out about all the Enterprise crew members and civilians who got killed during this movie?

A-a-a-and SPENT.

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Jack Reacher

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Louis CK told me to be judicious with “hilarious,” but Jack Reacher was hilaaaaaarious.

It was also ugly, with a prison rape joke in the first stanza of dialogue, but mostly it was hilarious.

Just look how big they ‘Shopped his noggin!

Yes, it was a functional action movie on the level of an above-average James Bond. Well put-together. Capably shot and acted. Densely plotted in a way that makes everything feel clever and agreeable until you start walking home.

But I got beefs. I got beefs like Burger King.

The plot problems are funnier, so let’s get the character stuff out of the way.

I haven’t read any Jack Reacher novels, but the character in this movie is split-personality to the point of actual mental illness. This is no crime. As written, he should spend some scenes as a charming jerk (rebuffing the advances of a woman 30 years his junior) and others as a dead-eyed sociopath (telling a baddie he’s going to “drink [his] blood from a boot.”) No problem. He also gives a few sincere, heartwarming pep talks. Er, all right. Workable. The Lethal Weapon franchise is proof of this.

The Back to the Future school of poster cast accumulation

Alas Tom Cruise plays every scene as “badass.” He’s like the first D&D character a middle school kid rolls up that takes a bonus in Intimidate and never touches Diplomacy or Bluff.

(Rampant spoilers ahead, which shouldn’t interfere with your enjoyment of the movie with the inevitable RiffTrax.)

This choice is boring, and it forbids engagement with the character. The scene with the very young flirting woman, Sandy, has a lot of unmotivated nastiness that would at least land softer if he were smiling through it. Later he shows up at Sandy’s work to find her (she’s conveniently at Reacher’s first guess, just as she conveniently shared her workplace info with a stranger she has been led to believe is a creep). Some Bluff or Diplomacy would go a long way here, but instead he threatens her boss, barges his way in, corners Sandy in an office and menaces her there. For a guy who prizes anonymity, this is pretty stupid.

He also menaces attorney and District Attorney’s offspring Helen (Rosamund Pike). He yanks her around by the arm. So does Helen’s dad(!), the aforementioned DA. Also topless Jack Reacher makes Helen all shuddery with lust (ha ha ha ha). Also super-young Sandy can’t stop hitting on him, even while crying, even after Jack has told her “the [women] you don’t pay for are the ones [he] can’t afford,” because in that scene he talks like Elmore Leonard fanfic. Also Jack asks Sandy why she runs with such a bad crowd, and she says, “That’s just what girls like me do,” which is a thing no one has said ever and is also a brainless answer, like the writer dropped in some temp dialogue and never went back to fix it.

Exposed to bad writing at a tender age

Oh, and later Sandy gets felt up by the camera a little more before getting creeped on by a baddie and then slowly murdered.

So it’s safe to say this movie is a rough watch for the ladies.

Anyhoo.

You know that rad scene from the trailer? Where Jack slips out of a police chase and into a crowd? And a cool older dude gives him his ballcap? Yeah, there’s no reason for the crowd to do that. His face isn’t famous. They haven’t seen him do anything heroic. There’s no undercurrent of cop corruption that would cause citizens to automatically abet a chased stranger. It poops on the trailer like nine pigeons on a balcony.

HE KILLED FIVE GRANNIES FOR ALL YOU KNOW

So that’s why this movie didn’t connect as an action film.

Here’s why it totally connected as a comedy:

The inciting incident is that one elite sniper frames another slightly less elite sniper at the behest of a Huge Evil Corporation who wants to disguise one woman’s murder as part of a random mass killing. No, wait! The woman interfered with Huge Evil Corporation’s plan by refusing to sell her business. This resistance is somehow a dealbreaker for HEC’s master plan. So instead of Diplomacy, Bluff or even Intimidate, HEC goes straight to Murder. I hope the woman’s company isn’t inherited by a hardheaded son or daughter, or this family’s next reunion is going to have a skimpy turnout.
In order to kill this woman, who seems to have made the troubling decision recently, the HEC arranges for an evil elite sniper to befriend a troubled but redeemable elite sniper. This befriending has been going on so long that they’ve taken multiple trips to a remote shooting range together. How does such a friendship begin? “Hello, I see you are also an elite sniper. Do you like Thai food?”

I like shooting dudes in the eye. Do you like shooting dudes in the eye?
The HEC is evil because it builds pointless things, like “bridges to nowhere” and “highways nobody uses.” They have done this in multiple countries. I don’t understand how this is a working or profitable scheme. Would it not be sufficiently evil if they used muscle to win, like, legitimate contracts? Isn’t a pointless bridge as expensive to build as a useful one? EVIL CORPORATIONS ARE A SILLY THING IN GENERAL.
I understand it’s hard to marry white-collar crime to wetwork. What you need is some character that occupies both worlds. A Patrick Bateman. A Stringer Bell. Not Werner Herzog as a hyperbolic one-eyed, one-fingered Siberian gulag survivor who doesn’t actually do anything, isn’t connected to the plot in a way I could follow, and turns up for the final shoot-out even though HE DOESN’T DO ANYTHING and he HAS NO FINGERS so he can’t even HOLD A GUN. Why is he here? I think it’s just “look spooky” and “be German,” which he does very well, but oh my God it’s so silly.

I really should not have come to this shootout
Rosamund Pike pretending to be overwhelmed by Tom Cruise’s topless physique is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a month. It’s just such a young adult novel thing to happen. Tom Cruise is plenty physically fit, but he is 50. Rosamund Pike is 33. There are only three reasons a woman that age would be overwhelmed by carnal feeling for a man his age:
- She is drunk.
- They have formed a deep romantic bond over many weeks and many incremental personal revelations.
- He smells like Cinnabon.
Someone dressed Rosamund Pike in multiple low-cut shirts. Cleavage is not a crime, but it is a funny fashion choice for a character who should have been dressed like Rose Byrne in Damages. Perhaps Helen prefers stretch fabrics because she gets yanked around by the arm all the time.

This bosom had more screen time than Werner Herzog
As mentioned previously, Jack Reacher tells a baddie, “I will drink your blood from a boot.” Alas he doesn’t then literally do it, which I believed was the only reason anyone would ever say this. I AM DISAPPOINT.
Jack Reacher asserts “there’s a bus station three miles away and I can walk there in twenty-four minutes.” I can run an eight-minute mile if I am pushing it and slightly afraid. For funsies, the Olympic racewalk 5K record, set in 1995, is 18 minutes and change. I invite you to imagine Tom Cruise elite racewalking right… now.

This, but in jeans and a leather jacket

(No disrespect to racewalking, where competitors walk faster than I can run on my best day with two cups of coffee and everything, but there is NO WAY this is what Jack Reacher means, which makes it comedy gold to debate what he is asserting.)
Jack turns a blind corner to outshoot a dude peering through a lock of Helen’s hair. If you were expecting Bluff, Diplomacy or even a shoe mirror to solve that standoff, YOU ARE DISAPPOINT.
Robert Duvall plays an eighty-year old elite sniper because this movie has elite snipers like my house has loose dog hair. In the final shootout he kills like nine dudes with his own registered rifle. How he is going to deal with the legal fallout of all this remains unclear. If you were hoping for a one-liner about how he is eighty and just needs to drag the trial out a few years, HAVE SOME DISAPPOINT.

Just for fun, I went to Wikipedia and got this description of the books’ Reacher:

Reacher’s demeanor is stoic, and he does not talk much. He has a propensity for saying “that’s for damn sure”. Reacher frequently does not answer when people make statements or ask questions, nodding or shrugging, preferring the other party to fill the silence… Reacher is 6′ 5″ tall (1.96 m) with a 50-inch chest, and weighing between 210 and 250 pounds (100–115 kg). He has ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair. He has very little body fat, and his muscular physique is completely natural (he reveals in Persuader, he has never been an exercise enthusiast).

Ha ha ha ha ha. I will say if this movie starred John Cena as a dude with half the dialogue who pretended not to work out, everything else in the movie would have made total sense.

I will drink your blood from a boot… ladieeees.

A-a-a-a-a-and SPENT.

23 Silly Things about The Dark Knight Rises

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Alfred, that is a lot of silly things

(Thanks is due to many co-hecklers in the production of this heckle.)

Nolan’s Batman saga is like a coin.

The first side features breathless cause-and-effect (Batman Skyhook-extradites a businessman because that businessman eloped with crime boss money because Batman/Bruce Wayne bookends are too good at what they do because Batman.)

The second side features wild coincidence (in a besieged city of 12 million, Bruce Wayne encounters Selina Kyle on a bridge) and wild oversight (Batman never investigates how to mess up the thing that lets Bane, you know, breathe.)

The first side offers great lines (“And you want to blackmail this person?”) and moments of humanity (“Bats are nocturnal!”)

The second side offers extended lectures about what characters want (“I’m Gotham’s reckoning.”) without actually explaining what they want (Reckoning for what?).

The first side has Michael Caine.

The second side has one-armed bicep curling a Liam Neeson.

Bring him a ruby the soize… of a tangewine.

This installment leans heavily toward the second side.

I didn’t have a problem with Bane’s Sean-Connery-doing-a-Bill-Cosby-impression voice (try it!) I thought Anne Hathaway did a fine job even if her character was confusing. But I think close-up fistfights are silly and on-the-nose dialogue is silly and vague pan-Asian torture spirituality is silly so I thought a lot of this movie was silly.

Here are the top twenty-three silly things in The Dark Knight Rises (SPOILERS AHEAD).

- Batman AND Bruce Wayne go on hiatus for eight years. Does anyone make the connection? No, until…

I put the Bat-suit on ice… LI-TE-RA-LEEEEE!

- John Blake (Joseph Gordon Levitt) intuits that Bruce Wayne is Batman because they had similar orphan upbringings and John Blake relates to Batman a whole bunch. Bruce Wayne makes no effort to deny this. The ease with which Blake figures it out and Wayne concedes it makes Commissioner Gordon look really, really dumb.

- Miranda (Marion Cotillard) and Bruce show up to abandoned Wayne Manor at the same time. I missed why. Because it is raining, they make out. Maybe this is because Miranda just picked up Bruce’s framed publicity still of Rachel Dawes, which reminds him what a great idea it is to get romantic.

- Speaking of figuring out who is who, Bane drops a bombshell on Gotham by revealing Harvey Dent killed two people eight years ago. However it’s hard to understand who in Gotham gives a rat butt about this since they are UNDER THREAT OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION and locked in their homes like I Am Legend and probably dead because I don’t know how they’re getting food into the city with all the bridges blown up.

This is a thing you still care about, right?

- Also, Bane thinks the Harvey Dent news is big, but when he finds out he doesn’t announce WHO BATMAN IS.

- I don’t know what Bane wants or why his death-willing followers are so loyal. It is probably some vague pan-Asian torture spirituality thing, but it is unclear.

- Gotham PD responds to a bomb threat by sending three thousand cops into stadium tunnels. WORST PD EVER.

- When these cops get trapped, a radio dispatcher tells new Detective Blake “every cop in the city is trapped in there!” Then Blake says, “Not every one!” And then there is a cliche singularity and Brett Ratner becomes self-aware.

What am I doing? My job!

- There’s a nuclear bomb that, according to Designated Science Guy, will go unstable and detonate in 5 months. That five months turns out to be about 90 days (according to TV-screen countdowns).

- Batman needs to recuperate because Bane beat him in a fistfight. Batman got into the fistfight because he was tricked, which is like Spiderman getting sneaked up on. He has the fistfight because he must have left his Bat-everything in his other Bat-pants. He uses no strategy or implements whatsoever against topless, breathing-impaired Bane, but maybe there was a reason and I missed it because I zoned out during this part so hard.

- Batman recuperates in a super death prison… somewhere… deserty. Somebody is running it for some purpose and feeding this prisoners a lot of protein. Also it gets electricity and satellite TV. Also a heueueueuuge amount of backstory gets delivered at this place, about two hours into the movie, plus a Liam Neeson cameo and Christian Bale re-enacting every platformer video game.

- Bruce Wayne climbs out of super death prison and there’s no guard or nanny-cam at the top. If there was ever a time for a nanny-cam, it is when you have Batman in super death prison.

- Bane’s regime forces the condemned to walk across a frozen bay. Nobody gets on their bellies and does the walrus. I woulda got on my belly and done the walrus.

- I’m not going to get into how crazy cold it would have to be for Gotham’s body of water to freeze and how in the non-bay scenes it looks like September, but that is a thing.

- Wayne Enterprises has a code repository for its Bat-Heli-Harrier, and Bruce Wayne commits code to that respository, and his username is “Bruce Wayne.” Also, that is not a terribly active project, because nobody noticed for six months. Also, depending on whether you believe Bane has been in charge for 5 months or 90 days, Bruce Wayne may have committed that code before he knew the Bat-Heli-Harrier existed. WHOA.

- Did the mayor die? Did Bane? I assume so.

I’m the Bat Manuel

- Miranda has the most snerkable death scene since Queen Amidala died of ennui.

- The ensuing here-I-go-to-die chit-chat with Selina Kyle and Commissioner Gordon are the most snerkable here-I-go-to-die chit-chat since ever. There is a nuke about to detonate. If ever there were a time for meaningful glances and a removed mask, THAT TIME IS NOW.

- Former-Detective John Blake throws his badge in the bay. That seems… frowned upon. Also, that bay is frozen, so that seems… ineffective.

- Three minutes later, Commissioner Gordon asks Blake, “I can’t change your mind? About leaving the force?” Which is a pretty great example of the IS THIS CLEAR ENOUGH? dialogue in this movie.

- Speaking of, someone outs John Blake’s real name as “Robin.” First, OW MY NOSE. Second, NONE OF THE ROBINS IS ACTUALLY NAMED ROBIN. Third, IF THAT WERE YOUR REAL NAME WHY WOULD YOU PICK IT AS YOUR ALTER EGO NAME?

- There is one more OW MY NOSE and it is Alfred’s cathartic cafe scene. You have been set up to know exactly what this scene means, so it would have worked better like Monsters Inc to have Alfred look up, smile, and cut to black. BUT NO.

It got all sneefy in here all of a sudden

A-a-a-and spent.

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Brave

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I’d have to be a total jerk to criticize Brave.

It’s fleet, entertaining, funny and charming. It’s eye-shatteringly beautiful, exquisitely animated and perfectly performed.

Its heart is in the right place. The slapstick is good-natured. It reestablishes bosoms and buns as comedy gold.

Even the pickiest of hair-splitters would merely be praising it with faint damns.

Yup.

Well.

That hair-splitter’s going to be me.

No hair puns please

Spoilers ahead.

From the advertising for Brave, I figured the movie was about a plucky heroine who runs away from home and inadvertently tangles with dark forces. Or maybe is called upon to defend her kingdom. Definitely something where she’s swording and arrowing it up in the black forest.

So I was a skosh surprised that Brave is a buddy movie about Merida and her mom.

I’m not even in the posters!

Also, weirdly, it’s her mom that has a literally transformative experience. It’s her mom that’s forced to see things from a new perspective. It’s her mom that has a change of heart as a result. Merida has a shallower arc, where she becomes sort of willing to make a sacrifice (but doesn’t have to) and remembers she really loves her mom. This latter part works and is the reason the story succeeds overall, but I still have beefs.

(Brother Bear (2003) is the other Disney animated feature where someone learns compassion after being turned into a bear. After a day at Disneyland, of [former] Bear Country and Country Bear Jamboree and Grizzly Peak, I am forced to conclude Walt Disney just really liked bears, and now it’s in the studio’s DNA.)

So. Beefs.

- Stakes unclear. Merida’s external conflict is she doesn’t want to get married, and her mother wants her to for the good of the land. There are plenty of reasons for a fifteen-year-old not to be real jazzed about an arranged marriage, but while Merida complains it’s “not fair,” she doesn’t quite express what her problem is with it. Is it that she doesn’t want to be told what to do — especially not something as significant as marriage? Fair enough, but not quite expressed. Is it that she’s afraid of losing her small portion of freedom? It’s never stated that marriage would end this. Is it that she wants to fall in love on her own time? That’s the conclusion Merida’s mom, Queen Elinor, reaches, but since Merida never stated this as her beef, it’s not clear that they really came to understand each other — rather than Elinor just giving Merida what she wants.

And what happens if Merida refuses to marry any of her suitors? Ostensibly there will be war, but the clans as presented just sort of squabble in amusing and harmless ways. It’s difficult to imagine Merida’s actions provoking them either way: to get along or to wage bloody war. Merida’s mother tells her a story — one time, a brother went his own way out of pride, and it caused war — but it’s not clear how that relates directly to Merida’s situation.

It’s possible at least one of the clans in Brave should have been menacing instead of funny. It would have paralleled the four clans in Merida’s mum’s story and helped establish the stakes.

- Too many helpers. Several times, Merida gets helped out of a dead end by Will-o’-the-wisps, a witch AND her three mischievous brothers. They’re all rad, but story-wise the wisps are plenty. The witch isn’t foreshadowed and disappears after playing her part. The brothers are highly entertaining but don’t contribute to main story (plus Merida doesn’t seem terribly alarmed that they’ve been turned into bears.) What these three do is solve Merida’s problems on the regular. Trying to escape castle with bear-form mom? Brothers. Can’t find witch’s cottage? Wisps. Can’t figure how to undo spell? Witch. Locked in a tower? Brothers. Even though Merida’s rock-climbing has been established! Oh well.

Thanks, brothers!

- Another bear subplot. There’s a baddie bear named Mordu. He’s an artifact of Queen Eleanor’s story-within-a-story, but I’m not sure he’s necessary, except to motivate Merida’s dad to really, really, really hate bears. It’s not clear why this bear has been laying low for ten years, or why he decides to start roaming the countryside again just because Merida falls in his den. Mordu’s existence does culminate in a fight with bear-form Queen Elinor, which is violent and scary and should fill up /r/AskReddit “What childhood movie traumatized you the most?” threads fifteen years hence.

This one. This one did.

- Red herrings. Queen Elinor gives Merida a necklace, which turns out to be valuable enough to buy the witch’s service. It never shows up again. There’s an enchanted Stonehenge-like-circle that frightens Merida’s horse, but aside from that and being a wisp hangout it demonstrates no magical properties. And! Merida’s horse Angus is established and compelling and then disappears after the first 30 minutes. Angus!

- Thematic messiness. The last act oddly involves Merida wielding a sword to protect her bear-form mother from her father. Her father refuses to believe the bear is Queen Eleanor transformed, and that’s typical movie hard-headedness that I don’t really have a problem with (though I would have liked to have seen Merida try a little harder to convince him.) Having Merida physically fight her dad, however, who has always been loving and understanding before, just has an odd flavor to it. She could have just thrown herself in the path of dad’s sword, a la Pocahontas or Fox and the Hound. This would have supported the theme of personal sacrifice, not called upon Merida to suddenly be apt with a sword, and not weirded me out.

One awkward conversation later, things were fine again

My West Coast Heckling Partner and I bounced story ideas back and forth with the idea of, well, what would a Pixar fairy tale be? It should take tropes and put them on their ear! Some ideas:

- Let the princess start off as a TOTAL COWARD. (It’s called Brave, after all!) As a little girl, she was foolishly fearless, until she endangered her family by breaking the rules. Now she’s overcompensating by being waaaaay too cautious, even carrying around a little abacus to calculate risk before even eating breakfast. When a Big Bad attacks her kingdom, she hides! She emerges to find her kingdom turned to stone/ice/bears/sleep. Now she’s the only one left! Can she use her math skills to undo the Big Bad’s spell before her kingdom shatters/melts/hibernates/is eaten by wolves? Will she learn to be BRAVE?

- Show a wish-granting antagonist (who in normal fairy tales is forever demonstrating to be careful what you wish for) as having good intentions — but just being overly helpful. This troll/fairy/witch might feel hurt and unloved when no one seems to want her spells. You said you wanted it never to rain again! WHY ARE YOU SO MAD AT ME?

I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED.

I had the idea to write up the story in this heckle, but then I think we got onto something and I think I’m just going to what we came up with as a standalone.

So.

You got that to look forward to.

A-a-a-a-and spent.

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